Road Trip

I remember the Hazard Bulldogs football team in the Fall of 1946. I was a student manager on the team coached by Pop Collins. We had Jack Steele at Quarterback, Bobby McGuire at End and Bill Ross was the Half Back. There was Charles Davis, I. G. Manus and Bobby Cisco in the line. The toughest game of the season was at Pikeville. We loaded up the old school bus and left early Saturday morning. It was a long tiresome trip through the mountains but it was a night game and we had plenty of time.

It was a rough game. McGuire finally scored on a long pass from Steele. But the great play of the game came when Bill Ross scored a touchdown on the kickoff to start off the second half. During the season, Ross did that several times. He was a remarkable open field runner. We played as well as we could but Pikeville eventually won the contest.

After the game we loaded up all the equipment in the back of the bus and I climbed up on the pile and found a nice level place to sleep. About three o'clock in the morning I woke up with a bang. I didn't know what was going on. We had some kind of wreck and I was tossed all over the back. During the melee I banged my head on something hard and got a big knot over my left eye. Everybody else was OK, though. I guess the brakes failed on the old bus on top of the mountain and the driver drove into the ditch on the side of the road to stop us before we went to the downhill. After they got it all sorted out I climbed back into my bed and finished the trip back home. It was several days before my black eye cleared up and I was fine.