The Junction Boys

“If you quit here, you will quit on the goal line.”  Paul “Bear” Bryant, Junction, TX, August 1954

 Coach Paul Bear Bryant

In October, 1954, Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant brought his first Texas A&M football team to Fort Worth, TX to battle Texas Christian University. Twenty-seven players stepped off the bus. "Coach," a local reporter asked in amazement at the small squad, "is that all the boys you have to play?" "No," Bryant answered, "This is all the boys I want to play."

Junction, TX: it is striking how barren this place is, even by West Texas standards. I have driven 350 miles south on US Highway 83 from Canadian, TX, burning a full tank of gas in the process, just to reach this particular patch of arid Texas rangeland.

I am here to pay homage.

An elderly grounds keeper told me he was "pretty sure" this is where the practice field was located back in 1954.

I am standing on ground that 63 years ago was witness to perhaps footballs’ most legendary ever two weeks of summer practice. Coach Paul ”Bear” Bryant brought his 1954 Texas A&M team, his first at the College Station school, to this 400 acre “campus” to conduct for his Aggies a pre-season training camp. The Bear intended to find out quickly who of the 114 prospects he brought west to Junction wanted to play football, and who didn’t.

The facilities for the camp, as Bryant had demanded, were Spartan. In 1954, this area of West Texas was in the midst of the worst draught anyone could remember, in a summer that had seen the thermometer climb over 100 every day for six straight weeks. In 2002, when the movie The Junction Boys was made, to reconstruct the environment of the camp, the filming was done in the Australian Outback.

Bryant’s methods were brutal, maybe even inhumane. By today’s standards, they would be considered criminal.

Practices started before dawn and with only a few breaks throughout the day in barracks lacking air conditioning, lasted until dark. Water breaks were not allowed during practice and it was not unusual, due to the sweltering heat and humidity, for a player to lose 10% of his body weight in one day.  Bryant’s methods were not for the meek. According to sportsjones.com, during the camp, Bryant head-butted tackle Henry Clark after a blown assignment, leaving the player on the ground, dazed and holding a broken nose.

 Kitchen/Cafeteria

Dr. Arnold LeUnes is today an A&M professor of sports psychology. He was an A&M undergrad during the years the Bear ran the Aggies football program and has studied Bryant’s methods. According to LeUnes, Bryant’s word was the law in a time, especially at a military school like A&M, that authority was not questioned by subordinates. "He was strict, enforcing iron discipline," LeUnes said. "At the time, a coach could get away with pretty much anything. You wouldn't find something like that today."

LeUnes is correct. The sport will never again see the likes of Bear Bryant.. The lawyers will see to that. Legend has it that of the 114 players who went to Junction in August of 1954, by the end of the two week camp, the roster had melted away in the West Texas desert sun to only 27. The hand full of survivors became the legendary “Junction Boys.”

Four busses took the squad to Junction. Only one was needed to transport those left back to College Station. Those who did persevere through the two weeks of pure torture at Junction, two years later, formed the core of A&M’s only national championship football team.

It was a time when the legendary football coach, especially in the South, was a symbol of unquestioning and unbending discipline. He was often larger than life. His word was the law. This strong jawed, no nonsense coach was often viewed as unapproachable by parents, players, boosters, and in extreme cases, even the college president. The 1950’s were the peak decade for the limitless power of coaches like the Bear. As the nation rode the wave of the radical 60’s into the “me generation” of the 70’s and 80’s, the likes of these giants disappeared from the college and high school football landscape, many, like Bryant, riding off into legendary status.

It is surprising that Junction’s local chamber of commerce has not attempted to cash in on the famous events of over 50 years ago that occurred in their back yard. The civic boosters of Junction are not exactly working with the Garden of Eden when attempting to convince outsiders to spend their tourists’ dollars in this barren land. Yet, the county tourism web site does not even mention the Junction Boys. It does promote the area’s hunting, fishing, canoeing and other outdoor activities; and plugs the area museums that depict early life in the west Texas desert; but not a hint of the Bear and his legendary two weeks spent in Junction. There is not even a small marker at the site to recognize what took place here.

 Texas A&M 

In 1979, the survivors of this football style death camp held a 25 year reunion. Bryant was invited back as a special guest of honor. Some of these men - his boys- Bryant had not seen since his coaching days at A&M. He was not sure as to what kind of reception he would receive. He need not have worried. The reaction of the players to their demanding old coach was one of, if not love, then of genuine respect. A ring had been minted for each of the players and Bryant. It was a memento that linked these men and their coach together in a special bond. As a group, they had endured a living hell that would forever bind them as one. No matter  how great the life accomplishments of these just over two dozen men, they would forever and foremost known as a legendary Junction Boy.

Bryant went on to win three national championships. Yet when he died in 1983, his wishes were that the only piece of jewelry commemorating his great career that he would wear into the here-after was his Junction Boys ring.

After asking directions, I locate what I am confident is the site of the camp. A few out buildings still stand, a former mess hut and several barracks are upright, but crumbling. The open area is over grown with weeds and littered with trash. It takes some liberal use of my imagination to picture in my mind how this neglected piece of desert could possibly have been the setting for the legendary events of the summer of 1954.

The sun is setting, the dry desert wind from the south beginning to pick up. If I close my eyes and use my imagination, I can hear a shrill whistle from 60 plus years ago, blown by a no nonsense and focused coach determined to build champions under a relentless West Texas desert sun, no matter what the cost; calling a dwindling group of exhausted but determined non-quitters to the next descending level of a football hell.

Its Just Different in Texas

 Coach Koetting

I have spent the last few days in Dallas, TX attending the state high school football championships. In Class 3, my favorite team, the Canadian Wildcats, took to the ATT Cowboy Stadium field in search of their third state title in five years. It was a great game, but the Wildcats fell to a talented flock of Eagles from the east Texas town of Newton, 21-16.

There's high school football, and then there's Texas high school football. I attend as many Texas football events as a 600 mile round trip will oblige for. To appreciate the feeling of this carnival of town pride and dreams come true, you have to experience the atmosphere. The state championship weekend oozes with feel good moments. For me, it is a retreat to restore hope, to rejuvenate my spirit and to check my approaching old age cynicism.

Football is an American sport in a serious downward spiral, especially at the high school level. In terms of participants, attendance and community status; the numbers are a reality slap that the sport is sliding into second page news, but, not in Texas. Here, the sport is, always has been, and always will be a cultural gem of almost religious proportions.

 AT&T Stadium  Dallas

The rest of America’s football fans are envious of Texas. But, the image set in the glitter of the affluent suburbs of Dallas and Houston, renowned for their gridiron excess of 6 million dollar high school stadiums that seat 40,000, is not true Texas High School football.  

The player talent in these urban areas is for sure five-star, but the community grit is lacking. No, football in the Lone Star state belongs to the small burbs of the Panhandle, the Hill Country and the West Pecos, isolated lands with the magic Wild West feel of a Larry McMurtry novel. For three hours on game night the locals fall into a time warp where all that matters now is all that has mattered any fall Friday night over the last 75 years - get that damn ball into the other guy’s end zone. The predictability is comforting.  

 Canadian Stout Defense

The victors are enshrined in town lore, the losers move on. The legacy of Texas high school football is as much about the mass legions of losers as the few who become legends. Rural Texas has always been a hard life, bound and determined by a boom or bust attitude, endured in towns as gritty as the sand that kicks up in the wind. Life here is physical, seasonal and cyclical. To survive requires both a stoic view and a bounce back spirit – and the ability to problem solve. Those are the gridiron lessons that support so well the independent spirit of Texas.

Weather and oil dominate the local economy and both are a fickle mistress. The “bust” years are always looming, the “boom” years, fleeting. The Old Coach used to say, life is just like football: “Boys, you got to learn from your errors and move ahead. When you're down is when you've got to get up even faster.” Those words of wisdom are timeless advice- have been spoken to five generations of young Texas men by first a depression era cigarette smoking coach capped in a fedora to today’s coach, poured into body tight under-armor attire. The message never wavers.

 4th Qt. TD 21-16

Every Friday night across the vast landscape of Texas high school football, one half will drag bruised bodies and egos back to a quiet locker room where they strip off bloodied jerseys vowing redemption come next Friday night – until that day there are no more Friday nights, no more childhood. Next man up.

The Golden Rule

It really is not that hard but we sure have managed to screw it up. At a time when both sides of the political spectrum attempt to use the bible to justify repression and hate directed at whatever group they feel is a threat to their slice of “America,” we ignore a simple verse of biblical wisdom: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” In a world full of Takers, Givers are like finding a Coupe deVille hiding in the bottom of a Cracker Jack box – rare.

 Steve and Kay McConnell

Mrs. Kay McConnell’s late husband, Steve, had a longtime love affinity for the McCook, Nebraska High School football team, the Bison. The retired Red Willow County Sheriff’s deputy, his wife said, “seldom missed a Bison football game.”  Both of their grandsons are MHS football alum, but their allegiance to the red jersey clad team, says Mrs. McConnell, runs deeper than blood. “We know the boys’ parents; we know their grandparents and in some cases even their great-grandparents. Steve was so proud of not only the players on the team, but the whole town. Here, we do what’s right and we might squabble some amongst ourselves, but (if) one of us is in trouble, watch how fast we are there to help.”

In this picturesque High Plains hamlet of 8,000, as Red Willow County Prosecuting Attorney Paul Wood once told me, “Up here, we still got the bad guys outnumbered.”

So, it was totally unexpected when one October Tuesday morning, three years ago, her husband said, “We (Bison) play at Scottsbluff Friday night - that is a long way – I hate that drive. Let’s go down to Canadian (Texas) and watch them play.”

 America's 50 Yard Line

In 2011, I spent the fall up and down US Highway 83 observing three towns with outstanding long time high school football teams; Linton, ND, McCook, NE and Canadian, TX. I wrote about my experience in the book Prairie Blitz: “A season of high school football on America’s 50 yard line.”          (www.davealmany.com) The McConnell’s, like most in McCook, had bought a copy of the book. “Steve loved that book and I guess he just wanted to see one of the other towns,” his widow said.

The directions for a road trip from McCook, NE to Canadian, TX are not complex: go up to Pizza Hut and hang a right on to highway 83. You will travel south through a series of small towns, all resemble the last; a clutter of small stores that have somehow found a 21^st century Walmart proof niche of survival. You will be slowed by a diabolical stop-light system that funnels traffic in intermittent jerks, but, in reality is a blessing. (If you are in a hurry, get back on the interstate and bypass all of the Highway 83 Main Streets. You will get there faster, non-burdened having seen nothing). Wildcat stadium will be the 31^st football field you pass on your right, about 300 miles- five and one half-hours if you can draft off an empty semi not afraid to push the pace.

 Highway 83, Canadian, TX

With a sister in nearby Dumas, TX, the trip to the Texas Panhandle, although unexpected, was not a hard-sell to Kay. “Thursday morning we headed south and it was a beautiful drive,” Mrs. McConnell recalled. “We got there (Canadian) Thursday afternoon. We spent that evening and Friday morning, you know, just looking around with nothing to rush us. It was very enjoyable. We had lunch downtown (Friday).  Beautiful town, it was just like we pictured it would be from the book.”

Early Friday afternoon the McConnell’s went to the stadium. “We were walking around the empty parking lot (the stadium is located six blocks from the high school). A man came out of the (field house) building and asked if we needed any help.”

After Mr. McConnell informed the helpful stranger of the purpose of their trip, he introduced himself as Chris Koetting, head football coach of the Canadian Wildcats.

Koetting was headed back to the high school for the last period game day Pep Rally and insisted the McConnell’s accompany him as his guests. “The pep rally was just really fun,” said Mrs. McConnell, “the spirit was everywhere.”

The couple from a Nebraska town that most in Canadian would recognize as “one of the other towns in the book” were treated like foreign royalty. “We know how busy the coach must have been, but he even took time after the pep rally to have us into his office to talk about football and our town. He was just so gracious, when he had no reason to be, it just made us feel so good. My husband even got him to sign our copy of the book.”

 Highway 83, McCook, NB

With her sister and brother-in-law in tow and seated in “Bison” stadium chairs, the word spread quickly through the festive pre-game stadium that this was the couple from “that town from Nebraska in the book.” Many locals stopped by to introduce themselves, to offer a big Texas style welcome to the pair.

A diagnosis of cancer last May was followed by Mr. McConnell’s rapid decline and quick passing only three months later. It was a punch in the collective gut of the close knit McCook community. “He wanted so bad to make it to the first home (football) game this year,” his wife remembers. “He knew we were going to have a good team, but he just wasn’t up to it. He passed away a couple of days later.”

“Up until the day he died, Steve loved to talk about his visit to Canadian. I am so glad we made that trip. It is a very good memory we shared,” Mrs. McConnell says.

 Chris Koetting and
the Canadian Wildcats

Tomorrow, Chris Koetting, with a ghoulish like head coaching record at Canadian of 115 wins and 11 loses, will lead the Wildcats on to the million dollar turf of Jerry Jones’ gluttonous AT&T Cowboy Stadium. Twice the number of residents from the dusty Panhandle town will be there to support a coach and his team in pursuit of a third Texas State Championship in the last five years.

But, the final score is already in. You see, Canadian, TX is another of those special places full of Givers, where “we still got the bad guys outnumbered.”