Beneath the Sands of Monahans by Charles Alcorn

Author:Charles Alcorn
Format: epub

GOLDEN TORS TO THE RESCUE

LAMESA, TEXAS

SEPTEMBER 11, 2015

“Friday Night Lights, baby!”

The excitable Archie Weesatche yelled into the windshield of the Cougar Red Cadillac as he wheeled into the bustling parking lot of Lamesa’s Tornado Stadium. There was still plenty of daylight savings time left as he locked the door and adjusted his pretty new UH ball cap. Archie sniffed a wee nip in the air and, perhaps, the promise of more football-like weather.

The stadium scoreboard read twenty-eight minutes to kickoff. Archie joined a multi-generational throng of Lamesans—youngsters, graduates, and good citizens—ambling to the gate. He stepped up to the ticket table where a grumpy lady with a face and hairdo from the fifties stared at him blankly.

“What’s the UH stand for?”

“University of Houston,” he said, cheerfully handing her a twenty.

“Never heard of it,” said the cashier. “Don’t you have nothin’ smaller?”

“No ma’am,” he answered, as she pulled bills from her metal box. “Guess you’re not a fan. You look like a Cougar.”

“That’s a funny thing to say,” she declared, frowning prodigiously. The woman adjusted her visor, licked her finger, then counted out fifteen singles.

The Anti-Cougar slapped the stack of one-dollar bills in one hand while Archie gave her the three-finger UH sign with the other.

“Thank you,” he said, with an oversized grin. “Go Coogs!”

“Next!”

Upon closer inspection, Archie wished he’d traded with the other cashier—clearly a recent graduate—wearing a smallish Lamesa Chicken Fried Steak Festival T-shirt. Archie made a mental note to look up the festival date.

As he walked through the peppy hometown crowd, covered in shade by the towering erector set bleachers, Archie was proud to be participating in this much-revered small-town ritual. It was true, the Lamesa Golden Tors hadn’t won many games of late, but that didn’t stop the natives from swarming into their sixties-era stadium.

While waiting in the concession line, Archie pulled up a Texas Monthly article on his phone about Governor Perry (from nearby Paint Creek) signing a Texas Legislature Proclamation recognizing Lamesa as the official home of Chicken Fried Steak, invented and first served by a Lamesa short-order cook in 1915.

When he stepped to the counter, he was thinking corndog, then ordered his go-to: Frito Pie and a Dr. Pepper. “Unless y’all got a chicken fried steak hiding back there.”

“No sir, but you should come back for the festival,” said a spirit-teamer manning the chili pot.

“When is it?”

“In the spring sometime,” she said, ladling Wolf Brand into a side-split bag of Fritos.

“Last week in April!” confirmed a nacho assembler with a towering blond beehive.

Archie scooped up his Friday night dinner and left the chili ladler five dollars.

“Thanks, Mister!” gushed the girl, folding the bill into her apron. “Go Tors!”

“Go Tors!”

Archie climbed the aluminum bleachers to the top and knocked on the press box window. Okinawa was pecking away at his computer. He always wrote his lead and first draft before the game, so when the score went final, all he had to do was fill in the stats, re-cap the game’s stars and big plays, and email it to the Herald Sports Desk.

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