my last couple years of high school the school went to had a soccer club,it wasn't a varsity sport but they did represent the school,the year after i graduated it became a school sanctioned sport.
i never played soccer,this was texas and the only people who played soccer were foreigners,mexicans,and er',people from up north,but i started playing pick-up games with the high school team and a friend from the mobile home park we lived at who was a grade behind me played on the high school team.
this was a big mobile home park,with adult and family sections,i'm guessing that the outside perimeter was about was about 1 mile around,i might be off a little bit but not by much,and it was full of us middle and late baby boomers and we were always playing football,basketball or some game at the swimming pool.
i went to work for a public warhouse and my running buddy worked for the local newspaper getting the articles and photographs sized right for the pages and then they would shoot it on to a plate to be put on the press.
the people who owned that paper owned a couple of others and they would run those papers on their press.my friend became acquainted with the people at some of the other newspapers and sometimes would hang out with them.
after about a year the warhouse sponsored a slow pitch softball team and being about twenty i had lots of energy so i played on it,not long after people started quiting the team so i got my buddy to play.the next year the warehouse decided not to sponsor the team so we had a good core group of players so we sponsored ourselves and eventually picked up a sponsor and played dallas city leagues for a couple of years before moving to a suburban city league.
my buddy found out that one of the other company newspapers was starting a softball team and so we started playing for it,so two nights a week we played the games usually practicing on saturdays on one team and during the week on the other.part of the fun of playing softball was the beer drinking afterward,and we did plenty of that.
around this same time i moved out of my parents house,one of my sisters worked as a agent for the largest apartment locater service,i asked her to find me one and she did,it was in an area where it was almost all single people and that was what the area was known for,i didn't know it at the time but it didn't bother me any
.
soon the newspaper started sponsoring a soccer team, and yep we started playing soccer,the coach was an english guy and my knowledge of the game picked up,i don't know where the energy came from,i guess it was just youth,between work and running back and forth all over the area i put many miles on my plymouth duster.
well as i stated earlier most of the people who played soccer were new arrivals,we had an iranian,a greek guy,heck me and my buddy were about the only ones from texas besides a guy from houston named guy marble.alot of these folks were professional people,one was a banker,guy marble was an ad agency guy who met the man who ran the soccer team as a result of his contacts at the newspaper.most of these people were former college guys who played sports in college that were trying to stay in shape because they had desk jobs or were salesman of some sort.
my buddy kevin and i were the only lowly laborers,and after soccer games it was the same as after softball games,beer drink and bull sessions.one of the men on our team was a college sprinter,i think he ran a 9.4 hundred yard dash,i don't know how that would translate to a hundred meter time but it's pretty darn fast.
after practice we would run sprints against this guy to see how we faired,we didn't do so good,but guy marble and my buddy kevin were usually neck and neck and not to far behind the aging 30 something sprinter.just before the end of our practice session guy marble would ask a friend of his on the team to make an excuse for him if his wife called his house to find out if he was on his way home because he needed to take care of some business,it wasn't important to me but it did seem to come up regularly at practice,my friend kevin noticed it but i didn't pay it much mind,we figured maybe he was cheating on his wife,he had a young daughter and his wife was attractive.
there had been local news stories on t.v. about a rapist that was hitting the apartment area i was in and some others closer to downtown,i didn't pay much attention to it but they had tagged this guy with the handle "the friendly rapist",can't remember all the details,think it was because he didn't terrorize them any more than he had too
the police or a apartment resident had almost nabbed him a couple of times but they said he was fleet afoot and they couldn't catch him,he also wore a hooded sweatshirt and they couldn't get a good discription,it was always at night.
since my buddy kevin lived across town and we both worked and had other interests about the only time i talked to him was at games or practice,so one night he called me and asked me if i had saw the news,i said no so he told me to watch the 10 o'clock editon,that they had caught "the friendly rapist" and that it was our soccer teammate guy marble jr.
that's when we put two and two together concerning him wanting his friend to make excuses for him if his wife called,his friend didn't know what was going on he was just unknowingly providing cover.yep,we would have never guessed it,you just never know.
he was sentenced to death,that was the late 70's maybe early 80's.last i saw anything about him was a news story,believe he's been the editor of the prison newspaper for many years,don't think he will be executed because he's had his date set but nothing happened.
makes you wonder about the people you cross paths with,you think their okay people,then you find out different,i remembered all this when i realized that some of my get up and go has got up and went and this memory came back.
i never played soccer,this was texas and the only people who played soccer were foreigners,mexicans,and er',people from up north,but i started playing pick-up games with the high school team and a friend from the mobile home park we lived at who was a grade behind me played on the high school team.
this was a big mobile home park,with adult and family sections,i'm guessing that the outside perimeter was about was about 1 mile around,i might be off a little bit but not by much,and it was full of us middle and late baby boomers and we were always playing football,basketball or some game at the swimming pool.
i went to work for a public warhouse and my running buddy worked for the local newspaper getting the articles and photographs sized right for the pages and then they would shoot it on to a plate to be put on the press.
the people who owned that paper owned a couple of others and they would run those papers on their press.my friend became acquainted with the people at some of the other newspapers and sometimes would hang out with them.
after about a year the warhouse sponsored a slow pitch softball team and being about twenty i had lots of energy so i played on it,not long after people started quiting the team so i got my buddy to play.the next year the warehouse decided not to sponsor the team so we had a good core group of players so we sponsored ourselves and eventually picked up a sponsor and played dallas city leagues for a couple of years before moving to a suburban city league.
my buddy found out that one of the other company newspapers was starting a softball team and so we started playing for it,so two nights a week we played the games usually practicing on saturdays on one team and during the week on the other.part of the fun of playing softball was the beer drinking afterward,and we did plenty of that.
around this same time i moved out of my parents house,one of my sisters worked as a agent for the largest apartment locater service,i asked her to find me one and she did,it was in an area where it was almost all single people and that was what the area was known for,i didn't know it at the time but it didn't bother me any
.soon the newspaper started sponsoring a soccer team, and yep we started playing soccer,the coach was an english guy and my knowledge of the game picked up,i don't know where the energy came from,i guess it was just youth,between work and running back and forth all over the area i put many miles on my plymouth duster.
well as i stated earlier most of the people who played soccer were new arrivals,we had an iranian,a greek guy,heck me and my buddy were about the only ones from texas besides a guy from houston named guy marble.alot of these folks were professional people,one was a banker,guy marble was an ad agency guy who met the man who ran the soccer team as a result of his contacts at the newspaper.most of these people were former college guys who played sports in college that were trying to stay in shape because they had desk jobs or were salesman of some sort.
my buddy kevin and i were the only lowly laborers
,and after soccer games it was the same as after softball games,beer drink and bull sessions.one of the men on our team was a college sprinter,i think he ran a 9.4 hundred yard dash,i don't know how that would translate to a hundred meter time but it's pretty darn fast.after practice we would run sprints against this guy to see how we faired,we didn't do so good,but guy marble and my buddy kevin were usually neck and neck and not to far behind the aging 30 something sprinter.just before the end of our practice session guy marble would ask a friend of his on the team to make an excuse for him if his wife called his house to find out if he was on his way home because he needed to take care of some business,it wasn't important to me but it did seem to come up regularly at practice,my friend kevin noticed it but i didn't pay it much mind,we figured maybe he was cheating on his wife,he had a young daughter and his wife was attractive.
there had been local news stories on t.v. about a rapist that was hitting the apartment area i was in and some others closer to downtown,i didn't pay much attention to it but they had tagged this guy with the handle "the friendly rapist",can't remember all the details,think it was because he didn't terrorize them any more than he had too
the police or a apartment resident had almost nabbed him a couple of times but they said he was fleet afoot and they couldn't catch him,he also wore a hooded sweatshirt and they couldn't get a good discription,it was always at night.since my buddy kevin lived across town and we both worked and had other interests about the only time i talked to him was at games or practice,so one night he called me and asked me if i had saw the news,i said no so he told me to watch the 10 o'clock editon,that they had caught "the friendly rapist" and that it was our soccer teammate guy marble jr.
that's when we put two and two together concerning him wanting his friend to make excuses for him if his wife called,his friend didn't know what was going on he was just unknowingly providing cover.yep,we would have never guessed it,you just never know.
he was sentenced to death,that was the late 70's maybe early 80's.last i saw anything about him was a news story,believe he's been the editor of the prison newspaper for many years,don't think he will be executed because he's had his date set but nothing happened.
makes you wonder about the people you cross paths with,you think their okay people,then you find out different,i remembered all this when i realized that some of my get up and go has got up and went and this memory came back.
