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DUSTI SCOVEL |
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Homecoming 1968 Published October 2004, Highland Lake Newspapers
The year was 1968…eons ago actually. It was homecoming weekend and our tiny Texas town was alive with team spirit. Never mind that we hadn’t won a single football game all year and the team we were slated to play was undefeated.
Blue and gold streamers flew from every telephone pole, car antenna and bicycle in town. Former students made their way home for the festivities, many arriving early enough to visit their alma mater, talking with favorite teachers and watching the football team practice.
It was early when fans began to file onto the football field, toting folding chairs for extra seating because they knew the one set of rickety bleachers would already be full. Grandparents stayed up late, anxious not to miss seeing out-of-town friends they hadn’t seen since last homecoming. It was, in its own way, a holiday.
I was a cheerleader . . . don’t be too impressed though. There were only five girls in our graduating class and four of us were cheerleaders along with two juniors. I look back on the experience now and am amazed at how important that was to me. We had no special skills; there were no cheerleading schools or trainers back then – just the PE teacher’s encouragement and genuine team spirit.
Some of the mothers and grandmothers made our cheerleader “outfits” and they were carefully measured and hemmed to come to the middle of our knees. The yards of material used for our six outfits then would be enough for a whole drill team today.
I was also one of the nominees for homecoming queen. But, Ginger Hooks was also nominated and Ginger Hooks got everything. That’s just the way it was and the way it had always been. I was so flattered to be nominated that actually getting the title never realistically crossed my mind. Ginger dated the football captain, for crying out loud.
The single most important benefit to being nominated was that I automatically got a homecoming corsage. Not just an ordinary corsage either. I’m talking a huge, white mum (a live one, I might add) with lots and lots of blue and gold streamers and a big blue pipe cleaner M situated smack dab in the middle of the flower. Oh yeah, it was a monster lovely thing.
We wore our corsages to school on game day and yes, they got in the way. Sitting at a desk with a plumage of ribbon spilling over everywhere takes grace, something this country girl didn’t necessarily have, but I did manage to pull it off. Teachers even wore corsages that day, including the cranky old maid algebra teacher, who proudly wore a small dainty one.
The stands were full and buzzing with chatter and they literally boomed with cheers for our boys that night. They lost miserably but that didn’t dampen the spirits of the crowd. They cheered them to the end and followed them off the field after the game, telling them repeatedly how well they played and how proud they were of them.
And guess what. Ginger Hooks didn’t get everything that year. Her football captain boyfriend and his co-captain gave me the homecoming crown that night. I never really had the guts to say it then and it really doesn’t matter much now, but I need to get it off my chest. Ginger Hooks…eat your heart out!
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