The Horn Blows at Midnight

by Jeff Baker

There’s nothing like small-town High School football. And our team usually played nothing like small-town football. We didn’t have the worst record in the state but some people were surprised to hear we even had a team.

The D’Artagnan High School Knights games did bring out the town, there wasn’t a lot to do on Friday night in Western Kansas but our cheer should have been “better luck next time.” That’s probably why they let my younger brother Scotty Turner on the team, even if he usually just warmed the bench. Me? I was a year older than Scotty and had been on the bench all the time, okay up in the bleachers. I was a tuba player in the school band and we usually did better than the team. Not that William Gaines Turner Junior was planning on a musical career. Nope. Community College, Economics, that was the idea.

Anyway, right before Halloween and our Homecoming game we were playing the Millington Dragons and my buddy Mickey Mayak nudges me and says since our director wasn’t paying a lot of attention (flirting with one of the pretty teachers in the front row) we should start something. So, Mickey kicks Mark Lebsack, sitting in front of us with his trombone, and tells him what’s going on. In another minute, word has spread through the whole band and we kick into a march and the crowd cheers.

And somehow, Scotty thought that was a signal for him to run onto the field. This was during a play and I guess it meant they had too many players out there and the referees blew their whistles and the coaches for both teams started yelling and Scotty stood there with a “Wha’d I do?” look on his face.

Me and Mickey were laughing and the director looked pissed.

The gist of it all was they had to run the play again. Scotty stayed on the bench but since Millington stupidly was doing the exact same thing they did before we grabbed the ball and Martin MacFly (No kidding! That was really his name!) ran for a touchdown for our side! Maybe that gave us some momentum because we won the game, just barely. It didn’t mean a lot in the grand scheme of things but it meant our record for the season was 3 and 0 and not 2 and 0. And MacFly got the nickname “Flypaper,” for holding onto the ball (he’d dropped it on the very first play of the game.)

When it was all said and done my Dad had us stop in at Casey’s for a couple slices of pizza. There were a couple of employees carrying a couple of stacks of pizza out to a customer’s car and a woman with her bicycle leaning against the wall selling tacos. Yep. Small-town football. Gotta love it.

Somebody said later the school paper had wanted to run a story calling it “Marching Band Wins Football Game” but the Journalism teacher nixed it. And Mickey and I got a stern lecture from the director next Monday at band practice.

But my Brother Scotty got the last laugh. He went off to college, fell in love with this girl and married her. Yeah, the Coach’s daughter.

So now, every other Thanksgiving or Christmas, I have to hear “Hey, Billy! You remember your Brother’s bonehead play that saved the game?”

—end—

NOTE: And that’s me reflected in the bell of the tuba! —-jeff