The 1979 state championship was a jewel of pride for the town I grew up in. We heard the stories often and dreamed we could be the next class to taste that kind of success for HD (that’s what we affectionately called Hull-Daisetta High School).
Georgie Westbrook was one of the stars of that championship team. Stories were passed down about his kick return skills. Apparently they were legendary. I remember seeing Georgie around town. A small, skinny man, always with a cigarette hanging from his lip. He was a regular at Doris’, the only gas station in Hull as I was growing up. You couldn’t go inside Doris’ without seeing Georgie scratching a lotto ticket. You also couldn’t go into Doris’ without coming out smelling like fried chicken.
My dad used to have me pump gas while he ran in to pay by check. I’d watch the gallon count and the dollar amount “race.” The dollar amount always barely won. Hard to believe that the price of gas was just over $1 per gallon then.
Dad would stop and shoot the breeze with Georgie. They were classmates. Mom was a cheerleader for that state championship team. Dad didn’t play, but he remembered all the games well. My Dad got hired on by Mobil Oil shortly after high school. It was one of the best jobs in town, and he knew we were blessed that he worked there—following in his Dad’s footsteps. That job provided, and it gave my brother and me opportunities that others in Hull or Daisetta didn’t have.
When I was a teenager, Mom and Dad would send me to Doris’ in the evenings to get bread or milk for the next day. Sometimes they’d send me for a late-night ice cream run. I’d regularly see Georgie. He’d always speak to me and ask me how this year’s team was looking. He knew I played football, and our class had a lot of promise.
We gained a reputation for being a promising group of athletes as kids. First in basketball. We put the Bobcats on the map in the local LYBA league (Liberty Youth Basketball Association). This countywide league was where I first tasted Bobcat pride. Though we were the smallest town represented in the league, we dominated every year, eventually winning the Little Dribblers national championship in 1997. I was in fourth grade. Thirty-one points in the championship game put me and my teammates on the town’s radar. The local paper, the Vindicator, wrote articles about us. We had a parade. The school put us on the marquee for locals to see as they drove by.
I remember feeling like a champion for HD. Wondering if people would tell stories about me one day like they did Georgie.
Could we be someone who lifted HD to notoriety? Someone who helped others feel pride in their place? That was what my friends and I wanted our high school years to become.
I’d always tell Georgie that Coach Barbay was working us hard. But he already knew that. He would watch our afternoon practices from a picnic table under a shade tree just outside the fence of our practice field. Still a cigarette hanging from his lip.
Georgie never seemed to move on from that 1979 championship. I don’t know if that is true; it’s just what I thought as a kid.
My class ended up becoming a winning class. We won our district in multiple sports, including football. My senior year, we made a deep playoff run, but an injury cut it short. We didn’t bring HD a state championship, but we still had plenty to be proud of.
I moved on. I left for college. I didn’t think too much about Hull, Doris’, high school, or people like Georgie for my first two decades of adult life. But a recent announcement that the HD Bobcats had to cancel their varsity football season due to injuries and not enough players hit me in a weird way. A sadness. A once-championship team, a legacy that captured the hopes and dreams of kids like me — could we be the next great Bobcats? — is now fading.
Mrs. Doris sold her store and retired. Word was that the ‘outsiders’ who bought it ruined it. Today it’s abandoned—a giant Fuel Max came in down the street. After my grandmother’s funeral a few years ago, I stopped in there to get gas. The dollar amount lapped the gallon count by 3 times. I went in for a drink. I didn’t see Georgie, and I didn’t smell like fried chicken when I left. Mobil Oil, where my Dad worked, is still in Hull, but now it’s ExxonMobil, and it’s mostly automated. I am not sure where Georgie is. I hope he is doing well. I wonder what he thinks about the state of Bobcat football. It’s almost certain that the state championship banner that he and his teammates hung will be the last one.
I guess that’s a fact of life. Things end.
Time moves on.
Dreams change; some die.
Towns strike oil, then they go dry.
But the places that shape you never die.
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