William Redd

The second night, we started off practicing at night, and the coach would make up — so they say, “Okay, I want you to play left tackle.”  And this guy played and went, so — make a line, defense and offense.  Well, I didn’t know, they didn’t know me, this was only my first year, the fellow that’s playing over me on defense was all-state in 1953.  Plus I weighed approximately 170 and he was tipping the scales at 230.  You can imagine what happened.  First time I’m back in the backfield dancing with them.  So coach say, “Okay on this play, I want you to block from this.”  Same thing happened.  So he walks over to me and say, “Uh, fellow, who you supposed to be blocking?”  And I didn’t know who he was.  So I just looked at his jersey, I said, “Number 62.”  He say, “Block the man.”  So rather than say, “Yes, sir,” I say, “Right.”  Now you wouldn’t think that’d be much, would it?  “Right, hell, block the damn man.”  I said, “That son of a bitch, he got a lot of nerves, man done ran over top of me, in front of my so-called friends, in front of all these people, and he got nerve enough to curse at me.”  I wanted to just walk off the field right then but I said, “That’ll really cause a scene.”  So I said, “Man,” I made it to practice.  Got in at school at the end of it.  Took off my uniform, dropped it in middle of floor, took a shower, and went home.  Had made up my mind no more football.  So the next day I go to school but instead of going to practice I go to Lafayette Theatre downtown.  And right next to it was a little hot dog stand, Pete’s, and right next to that was the Downtown Athletic Store, right?  So I go into Pete’s to get me two hot dogs to stick in my pocket, and come out the door, and he walks out.  “Fellow, you wasn’t at practice today.”  I made up a lie real quick.  “I went to the doctor.”  True story.  So what happened?  They played 11 games.  They tied zero-zero.  Won the next 10 games.  Undefeated.  State championship.  And I lost out on it.  So I made up my mind I was going to come back the next year, which was ’55.  So I played from ’55 to ’57.