School of Eagle Fame

Somewhere in the mid-20th century, there stands a cultural watershed, a technological Continental Divide, beyond which people in general, but young people specifically, started moving indoors for their entertainment.

I wouldn’t be so bold as to say it was that Friday night in Abilene when “Blackboard Jungle” and “Rock Around the Clock” came to the Paramount Theater, but I would think that event was somewhere in the vicinity, because it was totally non-local. The main physical feature of the Divide is the ability to separate oneself from locality, and the galvanizing force of “Rock Around the Clock” made it an arrow pointing young people down the yellow brick road of media toward radio, and then television, and then the Internet, whose arrival in the 1990s really sealed the deal. Many young people today spend far more time in the Internet distance than they do in their locality, a troubling social reality that has become the subject of books.

I may be a year off about this, but I believe that television arrived in Abilene the same year Chuck Moser did: 1953. Both had an immediate effect, but I am sure that Abilenians between the ages of 10 and 20, who today are in their 60s and 70s, when they think about the ‘50s, remember more about Moser and the Abilene Eagles than they do television. Famous people on television were, and are, a dime a dozen. Famous people locally are, well, REALLY famous.

By Christmas of 1954, Moser and the Eagles were not only famous locally, but they were putting Abilene on the map, and it’s hard to generate much more community appeal than that. The Eagles created not only a football, but a social, dynasty. Pete Shotwell, a legendary coach whose retirement after the 1952 Eagle season brought about Moser’s hiring, was given a new job in the Abilene schools. From my book, “Warbirds:”

“Abilene had experienced significant growth during and after World War II, and there were more elementary schools and two junior highs with a third planned to open in 1955, plus a black elementary school and a black high school, Woodson High. But there was no centralized physical education system. To Abilene school administrators, Shotwell, or ‘Shot,’ as he was affectionately known, made a proposal to create a new administrative position that would oversee physical education and health education in the growing Abilene schools system.

“It would give him official authority over a program he had already helped create, elementary school football. Football, in uniform, was played as a strictly recreational program in all the city schools. By 1950, boys as young as fourth grade in Abilene could start playing organized football, in city school leagues, that played to championships and awarded championship trophies and jacket patches.”

I was in 6th grade when Abilene won the 1954 state championship. I was also a second-year player on the feared Central Elementary Wildcats. In seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, I played for the South Junior High Coyotes. By ninth grade, we played road games as far away as San Angelo, and we had cheerleaders, bands and pep rallies. The three Abilene junior highs played to a city championship, which South – ahem – won my ninth grade year. We beat the North Junior Broncos, 27-15, after trailing, 15-0, at Fair Park Stadium – same place the Eagles played – before a crowd of 4,000 people.

This was youth – and community – involvement that I am not sure the 2009 social network can support. Someone in Abilene would have to write that story. One thing: fame has not changed much, except to become more influential in young lives. One hears horrifying stories of six-year-old girls talking their parents into spending $2,000 for Hannah Montana concert tickets. Kids still are whelmed by fame up-close. Abilene kids this week are seeing quite a fuss over the team playing for a state championship in San Antonio on Saturday. It’s totally possible that Eagle football in 2009 can still pry kids away from cyberspace for a little while.

It’s the same, and it’s different. In the 1950s, fans would send telegrams to the Eagle teams, wherever the championship was being played, for the players to read before the game. This afternoon, on Facebook, I discovered the “Abilene Eagles 2009 Support Group,” to “show a collective support for the Warbirds to be victorious over Katy High School.” When I found the group, two hours ago, the membership was 1,401. Just now, it was 1,749. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.