Kickoffs and Kegs “Small College Days”

By Jeff Brooks

The story takes place in the year 1967 and the football season at Augusteum College, a small liberal arts school in Western Pennsylvania. It concentrates on a few contrasting young men who form the team’s offensive line, each with his own issues and baggage. Only two of them arrive at football camp with starting positions in hand and the rest must start from scratch. On the surface, all of the players appear to have different degrees of talent and ability and, in at least one case, enthusiasm.
These were the days just prior to the antiwar fever and bedlam that took over many colleges and universities, beginning in places like Berkley and Columbia, and finally working its way down to backwaters like Augusteum College. In the meantime, it was the beginning of the twilight of the fraternity and sorority systems. An inordinate amount of time was spent partying and drinking; beer was king.
Social mores had begun to change and romance was beginning to take a much more torrid form. The book introduces us to a number of female characters who, in most cases, more than hold their own with our heroes!
The football season plays out against eight schools which, like Augusteum, are composites of existing small colleges in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. In a couple of cases, opposing players will be familiar to football fans, as these “characters” are based on real life NFL stars and provide serious problems for Augusteum’s Norsemen when their schools finally clash late in the season.
The book does not spend much time on causes and crusades, although the elephant in the room at that time, Vietnam, is spoken of largely in the way it affected the lives of two players. One of them is returning from that odious place and another is looking unhappily at this being his almost guaranteed destination after graduation.
We also touch on the racial aspect of the day, when one of our players realizes the ramifications of being one of but a handful of black students surrounded by a thousand kids from “hard hat” Ohio and Pennsylvania suburban white suburbs. He is helped through his uncertain first semester by an unlikely best friend.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brighton Publishing LLC
• Release date: Nov 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9781621831754

Jeff Brooks

Jeff Brooks was born and raised in Erie, PA and graduated from Thiel College located in Greenville, PA in 1966 with a BA degree in History. He is a third generation veteran, having served in the U.S. Army from 1966-1968. A year after he was discharged, he relocated to Buffalo, New York, where he met and married his wife, Barb. He has been self-employed in the printing industry for over twenty years. He is an avid reader of all types of literature and is a huge Pittsburgh Penguins fan. He has two sons and two grandchildren.With his wife and cat, Max, he retired and relocated to Winston-Salem, NC to be closer to his two grandchildren. Jeff then decided that the time had come to fulfill his lifelong dream to write a novel. His first novel Life During a Nation’s Death was published in 2012, and is available at bookstores and online.Jeff can be reached at [e-mail].

Book preview

Chapter One

The Run Up to Camp

One of the few exceptions to the Wallace family’s unbridled success was twenty-two-year-old Terrance Mycroft Wallace who, in early 1967, had been shown the door at yet another college. His third. He carried a cumulative grade point somewhere between zero and oblivion. He had probably made it through high school only because he attended the Monongahela Braddock School—essentially funded by Wallace cash. Tall and rangy, Terrance affected tweed jackets and pipes which, in the words of his uncle, Baron Wallace III, made him look even more like a boob.

The Wallace family, of which Terrance was a scion, had been heavy hitters in the Pittsburgh area for generations and were synonymous with ritzy neighborhoods like Sewickley Heights. The family had come to the U.S. from England a century ago with pockets full of cash and heads full of extraordinary business sense. They were ahead of the curve in all aspects of American life, making fortunes in such American traditions as railroads and steel, then cashing out when the time was ripe.

From that wellspring of success came Terrance, who would be heading to Augusteum College in the fall. He would play football—one of the few things he enjoyed doing. He never really had a chance to prove he was any good because the competition level he played against while at Money-Brad, as the private, uptown Monongahela Braddock was known to its well-heeled alumni, was marginal at best. When he started his college career at Columbia, whose acceptance of Terrance would be questioned forever, he was on probation and couldn’t play. He was looking for a new school by Christmas.

After two more tank jobs, the family finally decided to incarcerate him at Augusteum, a school close to home where they could, as cousin Lauren Wallace Nelson put it, keep tabs on him and try to keep him out of his own way. Augusteum’s head football coach, Perry Thaner, promised to take Terrance under his wing at the behest of a Wallace cousin. As a result of that largesse, the football program would benefit from an anonymous Augusteum alum who laid some serious, sorely needed money on the football program.

Terrance fully appreciated the ramifications of his personal history. In the old days it was called letting down the side, and he had certainly done that. If it had been drugs, booze, or something equally exotic, people probably would have understood and felt sorry for him, but he simply didn’t give a damn about anything or nearly anyone. Eventually his grandparents would pass away and he would have all the money he’d ever need via his trust fund. What would he do then? The answer was simple: he didn’t know because he didn’t care.

Terrance wandered upstairs to his bedroom, where he had laid out his suitcases and a list of items to take to football camp. The suitcases had remained empty since he had them pulled out of storage several days before. He shook his head and headed back downstairs to snarkle about in the fridge. He pulled out a beer, saw that there was no food already prepared, and, not wishing to bother stirring something up, flopped down next to the phone. He dialed his long-time girlfriend, Sally Fowler, of the Fox Chapel Fowlers.

Hi, Terrance. Sally was breathing heavily, not because she had been rendered hot and bothered by her boyfriend’s voice, but simply because she was overweight and had to walk more than ten feet to pick up the phone. The sad fact was that Sally Fowler was one of the half-dozen people on the planet who had less on the ball than Terrance.

They talked for a while, decided there was nothing more to say, and signed off with their customary passionless, I love you, Sally, and I love you too, Terrance. Terrance ambled back up to his room and stared at his suitcases. What the heck, he thought, here I go again.

His gaze wandered to the framed photograph of the Monongahela Braddock School football team, all eighteen of them, with a caption that read, 1962 League Champs. They had played in a league with four other hoity-toity prep schools and somehow took the league championship after winning only two games. It didn’t take an Einstein to figure out that all five teams must have had the same 2–2 record.

Every year they played an exhibition game against the nearby rural high school, which had fewer than two hundred kids. The school actually had fewer boys than Monongahela Braddock; yet in Terrance’s senior year, Money-Brad still managed to surrender forty-six points. It was still the best overall performance that Money-Brad had ever mustered against that school because they managed to score twenty-seven points, largely through the play of one Terrance Wallace. For once in his life, he had pummeled his opponents—a personal achievement that had never happened before or since.

His eyes narrowed and brow furrowed as he considered the picture. How the hell did that happen, and why couldn’t he manage to do it again? He remembered the looks of astonishment on the faces of his family members: they were simply dumbfounded. Danforth Ellington, a cloying little weasel of the first order, actually looked at him and said, Who are you, and what have you done with Terrance? No one had laughed. If anything, they had glared at Danforth for raining on poor Terrance’s one-and-probably-only parade.

Terrance chuckled a bit at the memory and then immediately grew somber when he recalled that, in Money-Brad’s first regular season game the following week—a 47–12 pasting at the hands of arch rival St. Alphonse School—he had been pushed all over the field by some piss-pot freshman. With that, he gave the suitcases one more cursory glance and headed downstairs, where he hoped to get Moms to make him a sandwich. In the meantime, he would browse through the Augusteum catalog and accompanying introductory materials, which he had thus far scrupulously ignored. Barring any major scrutiny, he could at least figure out how to get there and where to find Rinderle Gymnasium. That was where the new players were supposed to meet.

***

Augusteum College could be found in the town of Gaston, Pennsylvania, which had a population of about nine thousand but had been shrinking year by year. Gaston was the furthest north of the mini-Pittsburghs that dotted the landscape along what became Interstate 79. Each town’s main industry was steel-related manufacturing. The empty remains of many of those plants are there to this day, a reminder of a country that was changing in 1967.

The college, named after the splendiferous home of Martin Luther, stands west of town on high ground that overlooks the ambitiously named Little Thistle River. Coed from the start, Augusteum was founded by German evangelists in the years immediately following the Civil War. They were subsequently lured to Gaston by the town’s decision to build and then gift to the school a classic Old Main which would actually house the school. The venerable old building remains part of the greater landscape to the present day. Just prior to World War I a second stately edifice was erected, and together they comprised the campus proper.

Most of the construction growth, however, was in the 1950s and ’60s; several dorms and learning centers attest to the un-nostalgic, functional architecture of the times. Although numerous elms, oaks, scenic paths, and romantic walkways gave it a small-college quaintness, there was nothing particularly noteworthy to differentiate Augusteum from the dozen or so similar schools that blanketed western Pennsylvania. The student body, almost entirely white, was divided nearly equally between male and female.

The athletic programs were mediocre at best. There were exceptions; the football program was probably one of them. In the twenty years prior to 1967, they had ten winning seasons, broke even three times, and were on the short end seven times. The problem was that, in 1967, they hadn’t put together a winning record since 1960. Even though athletics had never appeared high on the list of importance at Augusteum, some of the natives were growing restless.

***

It was nearly game time when Tommy Marshal joined the rest of Hosack’s men’s softball team for their pregame cocktails. The team wanted to be totally relaxed later when they continued their pursuit of softball futility in a two-and-eight season. Once the season was over, the other guys could lay their athletic endeavors to rest for the year, but not so with Tommy. In ten days, he was scheduled to report for football practice at Augusteum College and continued athletic ineptitude.

As usual, Tommy was the first guy into the bar since he was the only member of the team who wasn’t working full time. He took a chair at their table and ordered himself a Koehler from the owner, Fred Lederer.

Are you assholes goin’ to pull one out tonight or what? Lederer groused, slamming the beer on the table. I didn’t put up all that cash for nothin’. My name’s on them shirts.

Tommy grimaced. Lederer had put up virtually nothing for league fees and whatnot, which forced all the guys to pony up a share. This led to the usual crabbing by the newer guys about why the hell they even bothered to patronize the bar.

Lederer stormed away, leaving Tommy Marshal to his thoughts. He had a lot of them. This would be his last year at Augusteum and, since he wasn’t going into teaching or some other deferrable major, he would be getting no deferment. The meat grinder in Nam was beginning to run full force. He would probably be wearing a green uniform by the fall of ’68 instead of the blue and gold of the Augusteum Norsemen.

Tommy’s mother, Linda, was the director of nursing at a small hospital in Erie. A couple of her doctor friends had said they’d be willing to give Tommy a medical deferment, and Linda—who was by and large a screaming rightwing hawk—was receptive, proving that even the most ideological people could be persuaded to see the handwriting on the wall when it was in their best interests. Tommy’s dad, Wendell, never had much in the way of opinions.

The problem was that Tommy would have to move on the offer now, and then football would be out. The doctors could do nothing for him once he passed his physical at Augusteum and played ball all season. That was the rub; he got absolutely nothing as far as financial aid, and he certainly wasn’t going to turn pro playing guard at only 187 pounds for a school like Augusteum.

He didn’t have many friends on the team. The stupid quotient was high, especially among the Epsilon Phi Alpha brothers who made up more than half of the team. It was by and large their crass behavior that precluded the girls from leaping out of their panties at the first sight of an Augusteum football player.

The decision to quit the team should have been a no brainer—a quick call to Coach Thaner about an injury. The one inescapable fact, however, was that Tommy liked playing football. He hung around with a couple of guys on the team, but the brotherhood of his own gridiron wasn’t the draw. He actually had grown quite close to another Erie kid named Randy Helfer who played defensive tackle for Cleveland Catholic University. Despite the fact that Helfer hadn’t played ball in high school, the coach at Catholic liked what he saw and talked him into playing.

Tommy had slapped him around pretty good that first year, but as the kid learned the game, he became more of a handful. Not only that, he outweighed Tommy by about thirty-five pounds. Coach Thaner was always on Tommy’s case about putting on some more tonnage. How the hell are you going to handle those big guys with those bird wings of yours? he’d bark during practice. You look like somebody’s little brother out there.

Tommy had never developed the scowling jock persona because he played up his sheepish, clean-cut appearance, especially with the coeds. They loved it when he went all Beach Boy in a Madras shirt and no socks with his penny loafers. Here he was, a big football player and all, yet he managed to come off looking cuddly. Being cuddly probably wasn’t the best marketing tool for an offensive guard, but he made it work.

Coach Thaner didn’t find him cuddly—not for a second. He even busted Tommy’s balls about what he wore. By the late ’60s, all the linemen were wearing those new birdcage face masks. Everyone but Tommy. You’ve got to get yourself one of those new face masks and get rid of that Sears Roebuck two-bar thing you’re wearing. At least look like a player, goddamn it, coach would say.

Tommy would just shrug and grin as coach stalked away.

The fact was that Tommy was pretty good. In fact, he had missed being Second Team All Conference the previous year by a small margin and had to settle for honorable mention. That slight could only be attributed to his lousy face mask. Although he was the smallest of the offensive linemen, he knew how to play the game. He had come to school with some recognition back in Erie and had learned in the crucible of Augusteum’s practice sessions.

The Norsemen didn’t have much in the way of talent in Tommy’s freshman year, but they did have it right in the center of the defensive line. Scott Stemkowski and Grover Patterson, the two tackles, were monsters, big and mean, and Tommy had to block them his first two years. It got even worse when it became apparent that Tommy wasn’t going to pledge EPA. Since Patterson and Stemkowski were the face of their frat, they considered it their moral obligation to lead the charge against any and all disbelievers in its glory. A few kids even left the team rather than put up with the fraternity related crap, and a couple of them probably would have been pretty good players.

Coach Thaner never seemed to care one way or the other about who came or went and seemed to simply be going through the motions. He was a classic example of someone staying too long at the fair—yet another reason it would be easy for Tommy to blow off the season.

Stemkowski and Patterson were gone now—gone for good. An AK-47 took out Stemkowski in some fetid swamp in Viet Nam while he was earning a Silver Star. Patterson, more in character, had tried his luck at giving a ration of drunken crap to a bunch of bikers. Ah, the memories, Tommy thought—but this wasn’t bringing him any closer to a decision.

More players began to drift in, and Tommy was obliged to put his thoughts on the back burner. He would have to make a football decision quick, within ten days, but for now it was going to be softball. Actually, it was going to be softball and, with any luck, a certain little green-eyed redhead who had started coming to the games.

***

The young sergeant sitting by himself near the window of an airport bar in O’Hare seemed much alone with his thoughts. A half-eaten burger sat in front of him, and he absently toyed with a warming glass of Bud. He had been there for a while, and he’d be there for a while longer; his next flight was an hour away. Steve Weiss, twenty-three years old and feeling alone and unappreciated, was on his way home from war.

You would have thought anyone getting out of the Army and heading home ought to be happy; Sergeant Weiss was not. When he told his wife he was going to go to college, she had told him she’d have to go home and think about it. Can you believe it? All he wanted to do was better himself by going to school on the GI Bill.

Look, she’d said, her dark eyes flashing, I waited for three years for you to ‘find yourself’ in the damn Army, most of which we spent in that shithole, Fort Riley! She definitely was not pleased when he told her he wasn’t going to work in his dad’s insurance agency; when he told her he wanted to play football, she went off the Richter Scale.

Steve had mustered out of the Army after a draining year with the Big Red One in Nam. He once had toyed with the idea of making the military a career; there were things about it that he really liked. When the Army learned he was going to leave, they really pushed him to stay on, offering him officer school or a guaranteed platoon sergeant’s position. What bothered him was that nothing was said about alternative schooling that would enable him to eighty-six the infantry. He had proven to be a good soldier with glowing reviews, and the Army needed good soldiers to keep the war going.

So he packed his duffle and beat feet. He remembered how happy Sandy was when he said he was getting out. She had it all planned out, but it all came down like a house of cards when he laid the news on her that he had been accepted at Augusteum College and he was going to play football.

He had hoped the football end of it would help defray the thought of living in another shithole town and giving up a lucrative and prestigious position hawking insurance for his dad. After all, football was where they met—she was a bubbly cheerleader and he the hot-shot all-county center and honorable mention linebacker. The problem with Sandy was that she was limited in her view of life, which pretty much consisted of being a big fish in the small pond of Edinboro, Pa. When they moved to Kansas, they may just as well have been relocating to the moon. Anyway, he knew things were going to be tough at home when he got there.

Steve picked up the brochure from Augusteum and browsed through it for the umpteenth time. He had chosen Augusteum for a couple of reasons: first, because it was close to home; second, because it was the alma mater of 2nd Lt. Doug Cantoni, USA. Doug had been his first platoon leader in Nam and had graduated from and played football for Augusteum College. Steve and Doug had hit it off from the start.

Doug Cantoni had spent a lot of time with Steve, talking in detail about college and what it was like playing football for Augusteum. Doug had played on the offensive line for the team and was a three-year starter. According to Doug, the coach was sort of a yutz and at times seemed to be going through the motions. The line coach was a pretty good guy, though part-time and underpaid. Doug had covered it all, including the internecine strife between the EPA fraternity, the campus jocks who felt the football program was their own, and the rest of the guys who, for some reason, disdained from joining that august group.

Doug had promised Steve that, when he got back from Nam on leave, he’d swing by Augusteum and catch a game; it looked like the time frame would be perfect. He might even critique Steve’s style—you know, make sure he wasn’t embarrassing the Big Red One. Then, with only weeks remaining in his tour, Doug had been killed instantly by a Viet Cong booby trap. Steve lost a good friend and mentor, whose death clinched his desire to part company with the All New Action Army. Doug had worn number 57 at Augusteum, so Steve resolved to see if he could get the same number.

Steve’s airport musings were interrupted by an elderly gentleman who approached his table and, with a gentle smile, asked, May I buy you a beer, sergeant? It was perfect timing. Steve had finally drained his class and was starting to feel melancholy.

You sure can, sir. Steve straightened in his chair as a sign of respect. He knew without a doubt this old-timer had traded unpleasantries with some hard-ass Germans circa 1917.

The fellow merely nodded and went to the bar. After a short while the barmaid strolled over to deliver Steve’s beer. She was a saucy black gal and, Steve suspected, a hardened veteran of the airport drunk wars.

This one’s on the fellow goin’ out the door, she said. He left me a bunch of cash and said to keep buyin’ as long as you’re drinkin’.

Steve turned toward the door and saw the old timer, hunched over and drained by the years, slowly walking out into the concourse. The barmaid, leading with her substantial cleavage, leaned over the table and grinned broadly. And if that money runs out, sergeant, they’re on me!

Steve’s gaze followed her swaying butt as she strolled like the Queen of the Hop back to her duty station. He knocked back a nice swig, wiped the foam from his lips. Smiling smugly to himself, he thought, Who needs a son of a bitching tickertape parade?

Chapter Two

The two coaches sat on opposite sides of the desk, feet up, slurping coffee. They had kicked off the season thusly for many years. The traditional extra-large pot of joe sat on a nearby credenza, along with a box of fresh doughnuts. Two packs of Winstons lay on the desk next to an ashtray. The two participants in this day-long gab fest were Augusteum’s head football coach, Perry Thaner, and his assistant head coach and close friend, Ken Kolchak. This was kick-off day, so each coach had a bulging folder full of reports, notes, and references.

Coach Thaner was the larger of the two. A former University of Pittsburgh great, he’d had a look-see in the NFL—an extremely short look-see, but one nonetheless. The muscular frame of those bygone days had softened into something more like the Pillsbury Doughboy. Rumor had it they’d had trouble finding a helmet to fit his enormous squash at Pitt; now, with his large body, he looked proportional. He’d been a two-way lineman at Pitt but, in his coaching persona, he liked to work with the money boys as he called them: the backs and wide receivers.

Thaner and Kolchak had been tight forever, anchoring a great high school offensive line and, in the process, giving the bookish Kolchak some credence as a line coach. Actually he was quite good at it. He had been an unpaid volunteer coach at Augusteum for years until the college finally broke down and gave him a stipend. That happened when he received an offer to coach at archrival Crawfordville College, and the big spenders at Augusteum decided he was worth a few extra bucks.

The three other coaches had met with Coach Thaner the previous day and had given him their unimportant input, by Thaner’s standards. Now it was time for Thaner and Kolchak to wrap it up, usually superseding most of what the other three coaches wanted, including cracking down a little more this year. It had long been the opinion that the coaching staff let certain older members of the team get away with murder. Thaner had eyeballed the young coach who’d had the temerity to say that and told him in no uncertain terms that there were guys on the team who had paid their dues and deserved a break.

The younger coach had replied, Does that mean letting them regularly blow off practice or mosey onto the field at eleven o’clock?

With a glare formerly focused on Villanova and Syracuse linemen just before they were summarily bowled over, Thaner had said, Gentlemen, let me repeat myself for the last time. There are certain traditions on this team and, by God, as long as I’m in charge, they’re damn well gonna stay! Do I hear any questions? The other coach had slunk off, knowing there had always been a considerable amount of turnover in the Augusteum staff, which had long been considered one of the problems with the program.

Today’s meeting was getting off to a slow start. You know, boss, Kolchak said, using the term he had used to refer to Thaner since their high school days, this kid Weiss sounds intriguing. He’s only five foot ten. The big schools don’t want to screw around—they have their preconceived standards. I’m thinking center, ’cause we want a leader there with some smarts. I think this guy probably has ’em.

So what about George Reichel? Didn’t we promise him the center job for this season? Coach Thaner punctuated this question by cramming a jelly-filled donut into his mouth, leaving a considerable amount of jelly hovering at the corner of his lips.

George Reichel isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. Kolchak gestured to Thaner to police up his mouth. He can’t remember the plays—or doesn’t want to, which is worse. How many times did he run the wrong way on the power sweep and plow into Marshal or the back carrying the ball? Toward the end of the season, we had to run everything to the right so he wouldn’t screw it up. Kolchak’s comments were meant to correct Coach Thaner’s implication that both of them had committed to Reichel. The player also was president of EPA, to which Coach Thaner was advisor.

Thaner mumbled something through another mouthful of doughnut, shrugged, and nodded to Kolchak as if to say, It’s all yours. He leaned back in his chair, linked his fingers behind his head, and stared off in contemplation. I think the offensive line is going to be our problem.

Agreed, said Kolchak, drumming his fingers on the arms of the chair. They had graduated two starters, with only guards Tommy Marshal and George Reichel returning. The right tackle spot had been a Chinese fire drill all season, with players coming and going. No one grabbed the spot as his own. We can stick Reichel at one of the tackle spots where he doesn’t have to spend too much time using his noggin.

Thaner’s face lit up and he nodded his approval, simultaneously reaching for a gigantic glazed which, being the only survivor of the decimated herd, was trying to lurk unseen in a corner of the box. The boss caught Kolchak’s glance and deflected it. So I’m fat—move on!

Kolchak reached into his portfolio, rummaged around briefly, and pulled out the team roster. I’m thinking we’ll probably pencil in Reichel at right tackle, Marshal at right guard, the Army guy at center, and then you and me on the left side. They both chuckled at the thought, but then sobered up when reality crept in. We got nobody here. So it’s got to come from the freshmen.

You’ve had a chance to look over some of the freshmen that are coming in, Thaner said, and I think there are some guys in there that might be able to step in. He grew quiet and looked like something was brewing up inside him that was threatening to come out the wrong way—and leave a foul odor when it did. There is another possibility, coach. The transfer.

Kolchak cocked an eyebrow, knowing full well there was a bill of goods coming with his name on it. He could read Thaner like a clock. You don’t mean that kid that played for the day school in Pittsburgh, or whatever the hell it was? He immediately thought to himself, Of course it is. It wouldn’t be the first time his long-time friend and boss had pulled a big-time foist job on him.

Yup, was all Thaner would say.

Kolchak peered at the bio of Terrance Mycroft Wallace, rolled his eyes, and stuffed his roster back into the portfolio. Are we done here, boss? he asked, hopeful.

Thaner craned his neck and took an inventory of the doughnuts. Surprisingly, there weren’t any doughnuts left. The big man stood up, stretched, and said, Come on, Ken, let’s go to the club and have a couple. I’m buying.

They walked to their cars, and Thaner looped his arm over his good friend’s shoulder. He told himself that spending a few bucks of the house money on beers for Ken was the least he could do for sticking him with perhaps the biggest stiff to ever wear the blue and gold, and that would be one Terrance Wallace from Pittsburgh.

***

One of the most nerve-racking jobs handed to any fraternity chapter president was to meet with the traveling secretary from the national headquarters when he made his annual visit. Grand Alpha George Reichel was no exception. In 1967, pledge hazing in most fraternities was a still a bestial affair and, on Augusteum’s campus, the Epsilon Phi Alphas were the worst. Weren’t they the jocks, the tough guys after all?

Things were changing in the fraternity world, but moving slowly. Most frats believed that, by putting their new members through something that would make a senior corporal in the Foreign Legion blanch, a stronger bond among the brotherhood would be created. The national headquarters of the fraternities were urging, and in some cases demanding, that their chapters both cease and desist all the way—or at least tone down the brutality.

The EPA national traveling secretary had said unequivocally that the house’s reputation on campus was a major concern for national and that the chapter had best get its act together and start towing the company line. The secretary, with a look of grave concern, had told George and the other officers that it was clear that everyone else on campus, including the other three fraternities, roundly hated the EPAs—and that was a heck of way to further Greek unity.

One huge problem that wasn’t covered in his meeting with the traveling secretary was that, because EPA was more or less the campus version of a biker gang, the five sororities pretty much kept their distance. Freshman girls got the impression that dating an EPA was tantamount to ending up face down beside a country road. That was patently false because George himself, who was commonly referred to as one of the biggest assholes in a houseful of assholes, had an unblemished record in his relationships with Augusteum coeds. Of course, his relationships with women were limited at best, not only because of his unendearing personality, but also because he wasn’t nicknamed Yeti for nothing.

George tried to put forth a favorable and agreeable demeanor so the rep from national would get the hell out and give them a favorable review. The night before the traveling secretary was scheduled to leave, some of the younger guys came home dead drunk and decided to pants him and toss him out on his ass. The five rednecks actually thought that it would be a real gas and that the traveling secretary would probably get a good laugh out of it himself. The secretary, however, was from some Ivy League college, and visiting a place like Augusteum must have been akin to spending a couple of days at an encampment of Don Cossacks. He was scared to death they were going to kill him, and finally George and several of the other guys got involved and shooed the offenders away. The secretary couldn’t get out of town fast enough. Since he was probably doomed to repeat his visit the following year, he didn’t mention the incident in his review.

That was all last spring, and here George was, getting ready to start his senior year. The football program at Augusteum was pretty much low rent, but you had to play the hand you were dealt. He hadn’t been good enough to get any kind of football scholarship; SAT-wise, he was an academic liability. It seemed all of his life he had been dealt a pair of threes in a high-stakes game.

George remembered with crystal clarity the first day he arrived in camp. They had the new guys and transfers come in a couple of days early for an orientation, a physical, and some routine see-what-you-got drills. There had been seventeen new fish then, and most of them were long gone. Academics wasn’t the problem; the ball players all had a schedule that would guarantee they’d stick around if they chose to, so it was a matter of attrition.

A number of decent players transferred out when it became apparent that, if you wanted to play regularly, you had to pledge EPA. That first year he had bunked with Tommy Marshal during football camp; Tommy was a big help in keeping him on an even keel. Even though George never really approved of Tommy’s lifestyle, they became pretty good friends over the years. The only disappointment George had, particularly early on, was that Tommy never pledged EPA.

When the day came for the full team to gather, the EPAs all marched in as a group—all swagger and self-importance. They pretty much felt they ran the football program at Augusteum and, to a great extent, they did. The two undisputed leaders were a couple of defensive linemen named Scott Big Grunge Stemkowski and Grover Patterson. There were a few others who had a lot to say, but it was those two who really stirred the drink.

George was a kid from a small, mostly rural town who had never had the opportunity to belong to any kind of organization that even remotely resembled the EPAs. He was bowled over. Heck, there were almost as many guys in the house as there had been in his whole graduating class. He desperately wanted to be a member, so he began to embody what he felt was the EPA persona: a bullying bravado. He put his six-foot, three-inch frame and 220 pounds to good use.

The offensive line appeared to be pretty solid that year, so Tommy and George looked like depth chart candidates at best. That all ended on a night when several EPAs conducted a rampage through the other three houses, addressing some perceived insult, and laid hands on the wrong kid. The kid’s parents pressed charges. The school temporarily suspended the EPAs who were identified as the ring leaders.

The whole thing took on a surreal nature when the same group of EPAs revisited the kid and roughed him up again. That screwball gesture made the authorities’ decision easy, and two starting offensive lineman said adios, along with four other brothers. It took a personal visit from a bigwig from national and a sniveling apology from the chapter’s grand alpha to get the kid’s parents to drop the charges.

For a fleeting moment, George Reichel questioned what he was getting into. That all ended when a guy nicknamed The Grunge pulled him aside after some one-on-ones where he had danced on George more than usual. Grunge stuck his huge, sweaty face into George’s and snarled, We like you; make sure you come to our rush party.

***

A week before camp started, Coach Thaner threw a curve ball at Tommy: would he mind coming up on Saturday, August 12th? The veterans weren’t due to report until that Monday, but coach had a couple of upper classmen on hand to work with the new guys over the weekend and help get them oriented.

He usually used members of the EPA frat, but sometimes those fellows weren’t as level-headed as he’d like. Sometimes they actually were counterproductive. Once, when a couple of the guys started hazing the new recruits, one walked out, drove down the road, and provided a reliable two-year honorable mention all conference, four-year starter for the insufferable Crawfordville Wolves.

This year, coach asked Tommy to represent the offense, while he asked Horace Jones, one of the team’s two black players, to do the same for the defense. Horace was one hell of a ballplayer who was often as not on the field for every play. He also was a solid citizen and a pretty good guy, for a bookworm. Plus, there was a highly touted black player in the arriving freshmen group.

With the arrival of coach’s invitation via postcard, Tommy’s decision window was shortened by two days. It was pretty much all he thought about. Five days before his estimated time of arrival at camp, he was still reflecting while shoveling in mouthfuls of his mom’s far-out pot roast. That night, she started to press him about his future plans.

You know, Tom, the doctors are still waiting for an answer, and you need to give Coach Thaner the courtesy of some lead time as well. She was trying to stay as neutral as possible on this, but something had to be done. It has to be your call.

I know, Mom, Tommy said, looking concerned. I just don’t know. I’m not trying to be a jerk; I really don’t know.

Linda Marshal looked across the table at her husband, who was attacking a pile of mashed potatoes that, if it had been an iceberg floating in the North Sea, would have been deemed a hazard to navigation. She couldn’t understand how the man did it. He hadn’t gained more than two pounds since the day they were married. What do you think, Wendell? I mean, really. You haven’t said word one.

Wendell, who already had a mouthful of spuds, simply looked from Tommy to Linda and then back to Tommy. He sighed and plunged his fork once more into the white mound on his plate.

His father’s lack of interest was no surprise to Tommy. In the prior three years, Augusteum had played twenty-four games; Tommy had started twenty. His dad had seen maybe a half dozen, if that. When you coupled his dad’s attitude with his mother’s disinterest in sports, you had the perfect storm for parental noninvolvement.

Tommy felt that his father’s indifference stemmed from raising his own two younger brothers and treating them like sons. When Tommy and Brent came along, he probably saw them more like grandkids.

Linda raised her eyes to the ceiling and then looked questioningly back at Tommy. You’ve got to do this now.

"Yeah, Tom,