I had an interesting eight-grade year. I’ll start with the football season. Our school had lost something like 2,658 straight games in football. Our school was so small that we had to combine with another school 20 miles away just to field an 8-man football team. The way it worked is we had the junior high football practices and games in Mullinville and the high school was in Haviland. Since the high school was no longer using their uniforms, we used them for our junior high games. The only problem is that the high school’s colors were maroon and white while our junior highs colors were black and orange. Haviland’s school colors were blue and gold. So at game time, the team was playing in maroon and white while the cheerleaders were wearing black, orange, blue and gold. We were Joan Rivers worst nightmare. In our first game, we played Minneola. In the first half, I was blocking a kid when I fell to the ground and he stepped on my hand. The doctor called it a chipped bone on my right thumb, but when you smell the goal line… they’re only words. They didn’t put a cast on it; instead they only taped it up and made me wear an extra pad on my hand. We got a jet-black pad. It kinda had a Darth Vader quality to it. It was so cool. I still have people from other teams and teammates talk about how cool the black pad was. Yeah, I was cool. We lost again. But, this is the only loss we had that season. And every one of us believed if we played them again at the end of the season, we would have killed them. Our next game was against Bucklin, and I won’t go into a lot of the details out of respect for Cage, but we were up by 3 touchdowns and we had only taken one snap on offense. Sure we celebrated, when you haven’t won a game in 330 some odd years, you’re gonna celebrate. Later in the season I broke a kid from Pawnee Heights arm and gave a kid on our team a concussion. Yeah, I bad. We only lost one game in basketball, but it was in the semi-finals of the league tourney and it was to our football buddies from Haviland. I wasn’t really into track. I mostly went to watch the girls from the other schools. The girls at Protection always had a big following of adolescent boys. I usually led the pack to see them. In Kansas at that time, you could get a restricted drivers license at the age of 14. Since my birthday is in February, I got to drive to school some in the spring. When no one else can drive to school, a ’79 Olds Cutlass is the coolest car in the parking lot. I was also in band and had a trumpet solo at league festival. I don’t know how, but I got a “I” rating. I repeated a part I wasn’t supposed to, and didn’t play another part at all, but was still rated as one of the best. I’m just going to say right here and now that the judge was a horrible music reviewer. I mean, I completely messed up; he’d never make the high standards of vanmarsalis.com. The worst part is I had to play at eighth grade graduation since I had received a “I.” Now there were only 14 kids in my class, so it wasn’t a big crowd, but it still made me nervous. I repeated a part I wasn’t supposed to and completely forgot another part, but I guess that’s how it’s supposed to be done. Mom and dad also took me to church every Sunday morning. So it’s been established that I have an eighth grade education and I’ve got a good Christian raising. So to all of you readers that have wrote, e-mailed, telegraphed, telephoned and sent smoke signals about how bad my reviews are, I have only one thing to say to you. “I’ve got a good Christian raisin’ and an eighth grade education, ain’t no need in y’all treating me this way.” Thanks Billy Joe.
This was recorded on August of ’84, before I had earned my eighth grade education. I guess I hadn’t ever noticed it before, but in the DVD version, Billy Joe kinda looks like a younger Kris Kristopherson. At least I think he does. But his music is uniquely Shaver. The great part about his music is that it only gets better with time. This CD/DVD has 15 BJS classics that will never grow old. It’s hard for me to name a favorite, or even a handful of favorites, because you’ll inevitably leave off a great tune if you only name a handful of his songs. That being said, Love You Till The Cows Come Home, I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal, Oklahoma Wind, You Can’t Beat Jesus Christ and Old Five and Dimers Like Me are some of my favorites. Not only is he a great singer/songwriter, he’s a great person. BJS states that You Can’t Beat Jesus Christ is about his hero and the greatest songwriter of all time. It’s half praise song, half confessional. But I doubt you’ll hear it in your Sunday morning praise service. You don’t see many artists that speak up for their faith the way that Billy Joe does. He also talks about how he came up with the song Oklahoma Wind. A must song for every Okie to listen to. If you’re a farm kid and looking for a love song, try Love You Till The Cows Come Home. Take it from me, an old farm kid, this one is great. Of course there are just the highlights, but like the Miss America pageant, even last place is pretty darn good. If you’re a fan of Texas music, it is mandatory that you own some BJS. You can never go wrong with some of his music in your collection.
The Devil made me do it the first time
The second time I did it on my own
So what have we learned today:
- I’ve got a good Christian raisin’
- I was one bad dude when I was 13/14
- I’ve got a eighth grade education
- The old SPAA/Iroquois band solo judge wasn’t to bright
- And there’s no need in y’all treatin’ me this way
I’ll give this CD/DVD 4 and a half out of 5 broken bones.