Jerry James had, and his eyes sparkled with delight.
What the two boys had heard was the unmistakable thud of a foot meeting pigskin!
“Boy!” Sandy said. “I can hardly wait for school to open. Sounds funny, I know, but if the fall means school, it means football, too!”
“You bet, Sandy. The only thing I missed on the Great Lakes was not having a chance to practice.”
“Oh, we’ll be all right. At least, we stayed in shape.”
They had. They were as hard as the decks of the James Kennedy and their bodies were burned the color of walnut.
“Well, here we are,” Sandy said, as Old Faithful swung into his street. Jerry nodded. In another instant, he had mechanically lifted his foot from the gas pedal, as he always did when he approached Sandy’s house, and the jalopy had begun to slow down. Grasping his jam-packed suitcase in one hand, Sandy Steele vaulted lightly to the pavement. “See you tonight at the drugstore, Jerry,” he called, and then he turned and ran into the house.
“Mom!” Sandy Steele called as the screen door slammed shut behind him. “Mom! It’s me. Sandy. I’m home!”
The whole crowd from Valley View High had gathered at the James drugstore that night, and, of course, most of the talk was about how the school’s football team would fare in the league competition that season, and especially how its heroes stacked up against those from the arch rivals in Poplar City.
As usual, Quiz Taylor was the center of a crowd as he spieled off the weight, height and past season’s record of nearly all the boys who would be playing for Poplar City in the coming fall.