Harold Keith Quotes

Jeff smiled to himself and went on eating. He had heard his father discuss the issues so often that he knew them forward and backward. But he saw no need for injecting himself into the conversation here. Besides, he was too busy with his supper. The food was good, and there was lots of it. In bed that night in the barracks, Jeff turned on his stomach and sighed with satisfaction. At last he was in the Army.

Never change your tactics when winning. Likewise, if you are losing try something new even though it may be foreign to your usual style of play.

There are many reasons for the popularity of the sport. It is not only a good game for boys of all ages, but it is a sport a boy can play until he is seventy. Even dubs who never played it before get fun out of it. Volleyball is not expensive, for a ball and net compromise the only equipment needed. It is a year 'round game and can be played either indoors or outdoors. Since there is no personal contact, it offers very little chance for bodily injury. Not only can it be played on a small court surface, but since the ball is not allowed to touch the floor, the surface of the court doesn't need to be especially prepared. In fact, the game is played on the beach in the mild climates of Southern California and Brazil.

Some of Norman's old-timers still remember what the interior of Risinger's little shop looked like in early September, when the sun fried the Oklahoma prairie, meadowlarks sat around gasping with their bills open and cicadas chirred maddeningly in the dog-day heat. On the east wall swung a one-by-twelve-foot mirror where customers startledly beheld themselves emerging from furry anonymity into pale recognizability. On the west wall dangled an arresting picture of a barber innocently about to lop off a customer's ear with his shears while watching a dog fight across the street. There were three red plush chairs, a gallery of ornate shaving mugs for the town's more progressive merchants, and a large, white queensware bowl on a shelf. Only cold water shaves were purveyed. It was too hot to heat the precious water Risinger obtained for five cents a bucket from the softwater cistern back of what is now the City National bank. It was in this tiny crucible in September, 1895, that long-haired Jack Harts first proposed, "Let's get up a football team," and football at Norman was born.

Jeff rode north up the military road. It was a cloudy morning in June, 1865. The war was over, and they were going home. It was hard to get used to being out of the army. He had traveled so widely, learned so much, and had so many things happen to him that it seemed he had been gone fifteen years instead of nearly four. He wanted very much to see his family. And he wanted very much to see Kansas, now that peace had finally come.

In the old days, an announcement by a boy that he wanted to try out for a distance event on his school track team brought a gasp of horror from his parents and his friends. But Tom Jones, veteran cross-country coach at the University of Wisconsin, recently announced that only one man had died of the ninety-two Wisconsin runners who had lettered at the four-to-five mile distance since 1905, and that one was killed in an automobile accident! In 1910 an old-fashioned doctor advised Clarence DeMar, the marathon runner, that he would die from heart trouble if he kept on running. Two years later the doctor himself died from a heart attack and today DeMar, over fifty years of age, is still alive and healthy and running marathons. So any normal boy can expect to improve his health by running. It is important, however, to undergo at first a careful physical examination, and then not to overstrain after he has started running.

The starting players are the ones the fans and sportswriters talk about. Nobody pays any attention to a sub.

Remember this, Benjamin, and it will keep you on an even keel. In this life the world changes. The good times always give way to the bad. But the bad times move again into the good. Learn to expect change, and to ride with it. When good times come, don't get too proud because good times won't stay around forever. And when the bad times come, don't get the mullygrubs, like you've got them now, because things will soon get better. So fight hard. Don't feel sorry for yourself. Stay brave. Jesus stayed brave with danger all around him.

Later, while I was picking up wet towels, Red Rafferty came busting out of the shower, naked as a jaybird and wet as a hell-diver. His freckles glistened in the eerie glow of the gymnasium lights. The first thing he did, even before he toweled himself, was reach inside his locker for that big hat and jam it on his head.

The town had been named for Abner Ernest Norman, a Kentuckian. Norman, a government engineer, in 1871 had headed a surveying party north from Red river. They always camped, when they could, near a spring that bubbled up invitingly from a shady spot about a quarter of a mile south of where the city water tower now stands at the intersection of the railroad and Lindsey street. This spot became known as Camp Norman but was later called Bishop's Springs, after a settler who homesteaded it. The surveyors carved the name Camp Norman on several large cottonwood trees growing near by, so they could locate the pleasant spot during future visits. After the railroad came through sixteen years later, a box car was set out near the Santa Fe section house now stands and the words "Norman Switch" were painted on the car. The name stuck.

In a race, the ambitious contestant will want to stay fairly close to the leaders. He should be careful not to kill himself off at the start. He should let somebody else lead if the course is wet or the wind is blowing against him, and should watch the ground for good footing and keep a wary eye on his opponents to prevent being spiked or boxed. However, if the pace is too slow, he will want to take the lead. When fatigue strikes, the runner will want to call upon all his pluck. He must forget weariness by thinking of form and concentrating upon running as effortlessly and relaxed as possible. When the pace whips up at the start of the last half-mile, he remembers that he can always go a little farther and faster than he thinks he can. Mental fatigue comes before physical fatigue; in fact more races are lost through inability to resist mental fatigue than for any other reason. How many times have you heard a defeated runner ruefully exclaim after a race; "I could have run faster. I just didn't put out. I didn't know I had so much strength left."

Just behind the school there was a one-hundred-and-sixty acre blue grass pasture, and Will and Charley and some of the other boys conceived the brilliant plan of leaving the gate of this pasture open, so that the strange cattle that ran at large might drift in to feet on the grass there. When they had lured the cattle into the pasture they would close the gate and ride and rope to their heart's content. This was an exciting game and they might have gone on with it indefinitely, but one day at round-up time, "Doc" Frazier missed some of his cattle. After looking all over the country for them, he found them at last in the pasture being ridden and roped by a crowd of shouting boys. "Doc" Frazier was furious at first and threatened to take the boys' ropes from them. Will, realizing how serious this would be, decided to try to save the day by diplomacy. "Aw, Doc," he said with a disarming grin, "we didn't mean any harm. Anyhow you ought to be proud of them cows now. We've got 'em all gentled and broke to ride!" The boys kept their ropes but they had to abandon the school pasture as a roping place.

It is wise to know the course thoroughly before running it. If possible, go over it in an automobile or walk it the day before the race, studying it carefully. Try to keep a map of it in the head and have the short cuts figured out. Always run in as straight a line as possible and you will save as high as 40 or 50 years in a single race. If you are to race on a foreign course, adapt your training to it. If it is a hilly course, do a lot of hill running in your own country. If there are no hills there, run up and down your stadium. The same thing applies to flat running, or to races held on grass or asphalt. You should practice running on the flat the week before the race.

But Pop just shook his head in his kindly way. "Today, he played only offense," he said. "You've never seen him on defense. No little guy can guard a big kid, or take a rebound away from him. We'll work with him; let's see how he comes along. But right now it would be suicide to throw him in there against a good team- like Bancroft." Bancroft! Slim winced. He always winces when somebody mentions Bancroft. We've never beaten them. Bancroft is the biggest junior high school in the state. It sprawls all over one side of a hill in Sun City, where the state university is located.

Several years ago Ty Cobb, the veteran manager of the Detroit American League baseball team, put on his gray uniform and walked on the field at Yankee Stadium, New York City, an hour before a scheduled game between Detroit and New York. He was alert, aggressive and keen-eyed, nearing forty years of age. He had to walk past the New York dugout where the World's Champion Yankees were sitting. "Howdy, gentlemen," said Cobb. "Howdy yourself," retorted the Yankees. Then Urban shocker, Yankee pitcher, decided to have a little fun. "Isn't it time to take that uniform off, old man, and quit kidding the public?" he razzed. Cobb laughed tolerantly at this sally and went to the plate for hitting practice. "Hit one into left field," one of the Yankees shouted, and thereupon innocently precipitated an exhibition of baseball place-hitting that old-timers still talk about.
"All right!" said Cobb. He promptly faced the hitting practice pitcher and drove a terrific liner into the left field stands. "Now one to center!" the Yankees yelled. "O.K.," replied Cobb, and timing the pitch beautifully, shot a grass-burner over second base. "Let's see you hit the next one to the right!" the New Yorkers dared and quick as lightning the Georgia Peach whipped a fast ball to the desired locality. "Now foul one into your dugout," the New York players called, jokingly. With a grim smile, Cobb fouled the next delivery, not into the Tiger dugout, but straight among the Yankees themselves, who tumbled over one another to avoid being hit by the ball. "Is that all for today, gentlemen?" Cobb asked.