6-Man Football

"You had just three men in the line and three men in the backfield, and that was the size of it. Flat has a lot of rocks, and we didn't have a football field. Man, it was tough, there's a lot of skinning up going on. We played Jarrell one time, and they played in a cotton patch,. The cotton had been cleared off, but it was an old cotton field, and you'd hit the ground in that old red dirt, and, man, talk about skinning you up! We didn't have too many pads then... We played somebody one time, and they knocked me plumb out. They drug me off to the side. We had an old coach and he come over there and shook me, got me up. Says, 'Where we at?' I told him. He says, 'Well who we playing?' I told him. He says, 'What the hell you doing out here? Get back in there!" ~ William Ake Powell

Harder than Hardscrabble

Oral Recollections of the Farming Life from the Edge of the Texas Hill Country

edited by Thad Sitton

University of Texas Press, 2004