Jimbo tries out for football

This is a story about my boyhood friend Jimbo Dillashaw. 

I reckon we were about 11 or twelve years old at the time. It was in late summer. On some of those days of summer Jimbo would visit and help me pick off peanuts. Daddy had just plowed up the peanut crop and we were picking them off the vines in the front yard underneath a big chinaberry tree. We would wash the peanuts later and bag them up for sale. Daddy would sell them at the cotton mill where he worked.  On this particular day it was in the late afternoon and Daddy was home from work when a new Oldsmobile drove up in the yard. Neither me nor Jimbo recognized the car. But Daddy did. 

It was Daddy’s overseer from the mill. He had a young fellow with him. Jimbo elbowed me in the ribs and said, “You know who that is?”

“Naw, I don’t,” I said.

“That there is Bradley Thompson. He’s the quarterback of the Greenwood Emeralds. They say he’s gonna go to Clemson next year!”

“Really? He’s a lot bigger than I thought he was.”

“Oh yeah! He’s a big boy. He can throw that football a long way to.”

“I’ll bet you couldn’t catch one of his passes!

“Oh yeah, I could catch anybody’s pass. I could even catch one of Johnny Unitas’ passes!”

Jimbo’s mouth sometimes promised things he couldn't deliver. And I thought I would have a little fun at my buddy’s expense. 

“Jimbo let’s see if he will throw a pass to you,” I said.

“Right-o!” Jimbo said.

We walked over to the young man with the flat top haircut dressed in a varsity jacket with the big green “E” on the front. We talked for a few minutes about football and then I made my request. 

“Brad, my friend, Jimbo, here wants to be a wide receiver in high school, if he gets there. He says he can catch a pass from anybody. I wonder if you would throw a pass for him to catch?”

“I’d be glad to,“ the high school football star said.

Jimbo handed the old scarred up old Wilson football to Brad with a big grin on his face. We must have been quite a site. Two dirty farm boys barefooted in bib overalls  looking up at the idol of local youth. 

Brad palmed the football in his big right hand, winked at me and told Jimbo to run. 

Jimbo was thin, but wiry, while I was somewhat rotund and slower than he. His bare feet kicked up dust as he ran across the red dirt empty peanut patch. Brad cocked his big right arm and delivered a perfect spiral in Jimbo’s direction.  Jimbo was fast, you know, he had once chased down a rabbit and caught it! The ball seemed to float over Jimbo’s right shoulder as ball caught his eye. We saw him dive forward and disappear in a cloud of red dust. As the dust settled we could see Jimbo dancing around holding the football high overhead in his left hand. Brad couldn't believe his eyes and took refuge in the big Oldsmobile. By the time I got to Jimbo I found that his dancing around had nothing to do with football at all! He had dived into a fire ant mound and they were biting furiously. 

One eye was swelling shut and his right arm was twice its normal size. 

The next day at school Jimbo was showing off the new muscle in his right arm. He said he was taking the Charles Atlas bodybuilding course he had seen advertised on the back of a comic book and he was only halfway through the course.  That boy could make the best of any situation. 

Jimbo did play football for the Greenwood High Emeralds though. He was All-state wide receiver. 

note: This is a work of fiction for the most part. A story in the upcoming book:"Stories from the Red Dirt Road...and then Some.