In Texas: The Only Game in Town

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Two hundred and fifty million years ago (is this not the way James Michener would begin?), a depression that would come to be known as the Permian Basin developed in what would come to be known as West Texas. Then, to make a long story short (the demands here are somewhat more telescopic than those Big Jim labors under), there would be dinosaurs and much later there would be fossil fuels. Cow towns called Midland and Odessa would be established, their commercial cornerstones eventually to shift from cattle to the petroleum that lay beneath the desert pocked by what the Spanish speakers called playas and the English speakers called buffalo wallows. This would be known as the oil business, pronounced locally "thawlbidness."

For some reason, the oil companies set their headquarters in Midland, giving the town a white-collar image, while the field hands clung to Odessa, lending it a blue-collar air. When high school football came along (to continue our ton of history in a thimble), it meant that every Thanks-giving the bosses' sons played the sons of the laborers. Through the years things changed--both towns now sport enough alabaster shirts to have a lot of ring around the collar in the summertime--but the deep and abiding rivalry over high school football remained white hot.

In the old days it was Odessa High vs. Midland High. But as the towns grew they added new schools. Odessa opened Odessa Permian in 1959. Midland opened Midland Robert E. Lee in 1961. The new schools stole the thunder from the old schools. An alumnus of old Odessa High said the other day, "Nobody wants to hear about our merit scholars or that our chorus went to Wales last year. All they talk about is Permian football." Today Odessa-Midland football means the Permian Panthers and the Midland Lee Rebels.

When the annual competition commenced one beautiful night last month--the Thanksgiving play date was the old schools' schedule--the local NBC television affiliate pre-empted the National League baseball playoffs to carry the action live, so great was the area's interest. To boot, the station paid $4,500 to each school for the broadcasting rights. It was believed to be the first live telecast of a regular-season high school football game in Texas, and where it lacked polish (an assistant coach: "One thing we'd like to do is get that sucker in the end zone"), it made up in enthusiasm (the play-by-play announcer: "That'll make it third and a country mile!"). During the broadcast, you could have fired a cannon down the main streets of either town and not hit a living soul.

"This deal was sold out before the season started," Gil Bartosh, athletic director for the Midland Independent School District, was explaining the day before the game. Outside, fat drops of rain fell in sheets that turned the streets to rivers and flooded the stadium just beyond Bartosh's window. Just then a dripping grounds keeper came in to fetch a slicker. "It's gone," he said of the field. "I been out there. I got water plumb out." Bartosh canceled the junior varsity game that had been scheduled for that night, saying, "We don't want to tear up the field for junior varsity."

"We'll be all right," he went on. "We've got a lot of sand here. The water sinks. It's not like a gumbo deal."