Freddogg Off The Chain

Let’s call it nervous full service. A Friday night in 1965, friends of John Conklin were riding around in his Father’s forest green Cadillac convertible. We had no gas and no money except for the pooled pockets that generated seven cents.
Conklin was the most nervous stutterer in the history of the pla-pla-planet. His father was a big time successful something for Ballantine beer and we all had mechanical pencils with a beer bottle inside coking oil and three little rings that we could try to hook around the neck of the bottle. We played with our pencils in math class which is certainly an odd thing to confess to the court of history. Conklin couldn’t hang with his successful dad and when he tried to brag that his dad was Vice President of Ballantine it usually began “Ah, ba ba ba ba” and we would pick up the rest “Ba ba ba ba barbara ann Oh barbara ann, take my hand Barbara ann” and we would be rocking and they don’t write them like that anymore.
The Caddy convertible pulled up to the pump. The attendant walked up to Coklin. Sa-sa-sa-Seven cents “John said in sincere stutteration ‘and we all just went nuts because it was so funny we thought.
Later in 1974 I was head football coach at a private school for emotionally disturbed adolescents. I am such an idiot that for the first game I choose a chronic stutterer as game captain. Some people stammer but one who stutters has problems taking off with the sentence. The coin was tossed and big Jim the designated coin called simply pointed and spit into the air. Luckily my other captain who suffered from impulsive dyslexic disorder with short term memory lapses was there to save the day. “Quarter,” he yelled!
The referees were black and threw themselves onto the turf in laughter. It was a magic moment-so different and so new.
You can't even imagine the full contact games?

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