There are things that can only be talked or written about until after a decent passage of time – activities in times of war, for instance. Members of my family who were involved in certain goings-on in World War Two signed agreements to not reveal things until after 75 years had passed. Their agreements with Uncle Sam outlived them. The Kennedy assassination? Hey forget about it – or at least until the last files can be legally unsealed, in 2017. U.S. Senator and former Warren Commission staffer Arlen Specter will still be standing by his single bullet theory.

For some things, no government mandates are necessary; ironclad custom will suffice, especially in Texas. Only the passage of decades will allow them to be spoken of, or at least whispered. I am talking about small-town high school football.

Back when Midlothian was a decent company town without anti-smoking ordinances and greying yuppies and when students could be legally beaten with boards by those in authority in public school, we took high school football seriously. We didn’t need professional-quality football stadiums, fake grass or private suites, and we actually won a few games.

We had community standards. Every town had some unwritten rule about how it handled its Friday night religion; we had ours. Small-town tribal customs varied, but I suspect that in the former Cement Capital of Texas (now self-promoted at taxpayer expense to DFW’s Southern Star), the head high school football coach – and by default, athletic director – had to be German.

We had a superintendent of German descent, but I don’t know how he really made hiring decisions. It didn’t matter to me at the time. Though primarily of Scotch-Irish and Cherokee descent, I liked the man. He has gone on now, and I still like him. At the time the community scuttlebutt was that he did what he wanted and the school board saluted – a system that according to my hazy recollection worked pretty well, at least most of the time. Generally, it was a pretty tight, smooth-sailing ship. This story is about a temporary leak and a bad wind gust.

The year a full-time assistant football coach and part-time history teacher finally talked me into trading my well-worn Tony Lama cowboy boots for football cleats, our German-descent superintendent decided to trade our German-descent high school football coach off for another one. At least I still remember it that way over the rickety bridge of time. I think the chronology is close. If it’s not, it’s because inhaled cement particulate is still affecting my brain.

Anyway, about the time one coach had talked me through a little spring training, the head coach was dismissed, causing – my memory is a little fuzzy here – his whole coaching staff to commit ritual suicide or some such. Maybe they just took other jobs.

I do remember we had some kind of student protest. I think someone suggested throwing the homecoming queen on the bonfire by the light of a full moon, but I digress. The demonstration was all very polite but there was a megaphone involved. Television, the social turmoil of the sixties and seventies and that lefty T-sip Walter Cronkite had intruded into the minds of the students of MHS.

Now, I generally preferred dove hunting, riding horses and working after school to football. Yes, back in those days you only had to have a kiddy version of a hunting license to be a juvenile hunter in Texas. Funny, we often locked our guns in our vehicles in the parking lot of the high school. No one was ever shot.

We had our share of fights, but we would have thought pulling a weapon as unmanly. Perhaps we should all reflect on the times, our values and, more importantly, our excuse-making for how some of our kids behave.

However, hunting and working after school were almost considered evidence of juvenile delinquency during football season, especially in a town that had been too long without a district championship. Somehow up to my junior year, I skirted my small-town responsibilities for employment, a comfortable saddle and wild-game suppers.

I remember two-a-days. I still think of it as that grinding ritual designed to toughen us up enough to endure the lifelong pain of knee sprains and neck and back injuries that were inevitable for most. My lifelong damage was caused by the volatile combination of a large heifer, a rope and a good horse. A yarn for another time. For football toughening, we showed up for strenuous physical activity while being yelled at by brand-new coaches who hadn’t earned their spurs or for the most part, their maturity.

About the time the Houston Veer had been pounded into my mind and body, our brand-new wannabe Wehrmacht commander found a new physical torture for us to endure. He sold us shoes. Yes, that’s right: Our own football shoes were not good enough. We had to buy the coach’s. He claimed we shouldn’t take the field in mismatched shoes. It was not good for the team nor beneficial for Coach.

Never mind that we all had matching shoes. They were uniformly black. No one but Joe Namath, Billy "White Shoes" Johnson or a Yankee seditionist would have worn anything else. However, our new coach informed us that unless we forked over our money for his shoes, we would look like what every small-town high school student feared most: losers.

I remember those shoes. Like so many things today, they were form over substance. The exterior was the ritual blue and white, the team colors. I think they had stars or panthers or perhaps some ancient Celtic talismans etched on the outside. As I said before, the memory dims. But they looked so twerpy, Joe Namath might have worn them if he had been a Midlothian Panther, but if that hippie had been quarterback, we might have beaten Wylie.

The inside and sole of the shoe was insidious. I still remember no arch support or cushion – just plastic to which the outside of the shoe was stitched. It could have been wired. I think the soles were stripped from railroad cars or barrels or something. Those shoes could have been used to force confessions.

Benefiting from forcing or coercing folks to buy things while in a position of authority, especially government authority, falls within the big tent definition of what is called rent-seeking behavior by thinking economists. It’s a practice devoid of concern for those you are fleecing. Anyway, that is what I learned when I escaped Midlothian High School for Baylor University.

I know after wearing those shoes for a few weeks that I wished I could wear my other pair. Even my Tony Lamas beckoned. I would have played better in them. My brand-name black football cleats I had previously purchased with my own money didn’t cause my arches to ache or my ankles to sprain.

There was a mini-scandal when some parents became suspicious that our coach was benefiting from our new shoe purchase. While in college I remember reading that my former high commander quit coaching after a few more seasons. He went into wholesaling sporting goods. It was a better fit....

I waited until after two-a-days were over and returned to my after-school job, my boots and my old and somewhat worn Browning semi-auto, just in time for dove season.