Just Thinkin’ -
A Radio and A Chunk of Cheese - by Hal McBride
On a recent Saturday evening I watched LSU football. Memories stirred. In the late 1940s I’d stretch out on my bed, radio within reach and listen to LSU football. Night games were new to college football, but it seemed I could rely on LSU. The announcers painted a picture of Tiger Stadium with its bright lights and vivid green grass. Their words could create a purple and gold Bayou Bengal that a boy could embrace.
They would never replace Bud Wilkinson’s Oklahoma Sooners in my heart and mind. In the Street and Smith preseason football magazine the Sooners were declared the scourge of the Great Plains, kings of the Big Six, and among the nation’s finest. Radio. A boy could stretch out in the dim light of a reading lamp and listen to a radio sports announcer create a vision that turned a decaying stadium into a palace. The young men were all perfect specimens lifted directly from the games of ancient Greece or the Coliseum in Rome. Gladiator’s clad in purple and gold or crimson and cream.
Evening AM radio reception was consistently inconsistent. Static wavered in and out. My brother James would join me. We talked about football. We idolized Gene Keith, Bobby Beene and Jimmy Curtis, Stigler Panthers all. Red jerseys, khaki twill pants and black leather helmets.
But as I said, Oklahoma University football ruled the plains. Come a fall Saturday afternoon you could move from store to store in downtown Stigler and never miss a play. That is every store except Hays and Buchanan. My grandfather believed a radio was an undesirable distraction. However, he understood the male need for a periodic update of the Sooner football score.
Harvey Pogue’s grocery store was next door to the north of Hays and Buchanan. The Pogue’s I remember was laid out in a fashion consistent with most grocery stores of the pre-supermarket era. The front of the store was shelves with canned goods, breads if you wanted Holsum or some other bread hauled in from Muskogee or Ft. Smith. My personal preference was the fresh baked bread from Mr. Gulley’s Stigler Bakery. There were few sounds in early morning downtown Stigler but there were the unforgettable aromas that made their way from the Stigler Bakery.
In a concession to employee interest in the Sooners, I was assigned a late lunch. At 2 p.m. I went next door to Pogue’s Grocery. I would ask Mr. Pogue for a bologna and cheese sandwich. He would place two slices of Stigler Bakery white bread on a sheet of butcher paper and, taking a knife from an open jar of Mircle Whip, he would slather both slices. He would then take a tube of bologna from the meat case and cut a generous slice. Replacing the meat tube he withdrew a tube of American Cheese and cut an equally substantial slice.
Sandwich and an icecold coke secured, I sat down on a wood chair near the radio and we listened to Sooner football.
My 30-minute lunch expired. I returned to the store and provided a Sooner update to the men. God bless football – and radios.
I love sports. Whenever I can, I watch the Detroit Tigers on the radio – Gerald R. Ford.
