Pat Culpepper's Terrror at Soumds in the Night

Pat Culpepper’s agonizing nightmare comes to an end

 

            Now that it’s over maybe Pat Culpepper can get a decent night’s sleep.

            Unless you were there, you can’t imagine the agony endured during those long weeks of anguished anxiety. It was enough to drive a church goin’ man to drink,  and if he were a drinking man, to church.

            In fact, now he can look back on it and laugh-just don’t  say “boo” while he’s  laughing –maybe he’ll write a book about the experience. And who know, it might be bought by the movies.

You’ve heard of the Amityville Horror. This was worse. It wasn’t a figment of someone’s imagination. It was for real,  It made that other business, the accusations of UIL rules violations, seem a welcome relief. …well, maybe that’s stretching a point, but at least the UIL wouldn’t come in the middle of the night and clutch its victim out of his cot and whisk him off to the graveyard.
            It all came to light,  pardon  the pun, one night when a sportswriter passed Memorial

Stadium Field house around 1 a.m. and noticed that it was lit up like downtown Las Vegas. The immediate reaction was , “Geez, don’t these people know  there’ an energy crisis, going off and leaving all those light on.”

            What the writer didn’t know was that for Midland High’s new football coach, Pat Culpepper, it was serving as a temporary home.

            “The wife and children are back in Galesburg., Ill., selling the old house and I’m living here (in the field house) while looking for a new house,” Pat explained.

            He added in a whisper, “It’s scary. I didn’t know a place could have so many noises at night.

            Pat heard so many strange sounds in the night, he might have suspected the ghosts of Wahoo, Johnny Branson, Bill Worley, Tom Brahaney,  Aycock,  Knox Nunnally, Larry Cooper, Ross Montgomery, Mark Lyons, Phillip Ward, James Zachary, and other long gone Bulldogs of the past….except ain’t none of could qualify for their ghostmanships yet, since they are still among the rest of us mortals.

            “They didn’t tell me about all the noises,” Pat related with a noticeable shiver. “”They told me that all the fans in the building were shut off for the winter. So how come, huh, that they all went on at once in the middle of the night?”

            Luckily, the track was handy and midnight isn’t a bad time to do your jogging, if you are wide awake.

            “And then there’s Doc Dodson’s ice machine. Every so often , when it’s absolutely dark, it drops a load It sounds like a body falling.”

            But it’s over now. The Culpeppers have been reunited in Midland and Pat can think about writing that book on long winter nights. Just, one thing, it’s a good bet he’s gonna do it in the living room …tv on and the family watching…and maybe some company over to bury those sounds in the night; a church going man to drink and if he was a drinking man to church.

            But it’s past history now and th  tense,suspenseful wait for  the other shoe to drop is over.