Fifty-six years ago last month, November 16, 1968, Walker High School’s eighth grade football team played its final game of the season against the Lithonia Bulldogs. The game was played at the old Lithonia High School stadium, located at the end of Ida Street, just outside of downtown Lithonia. Truth be told, it wasn’t much of a stadium. The stands on the home side were built from granite quarried from either Little Stone Mountain or Stone Mountain itself. There were only about eight rows up and ran from about the twenty-yard line on one end to the goal line on the other. On the visitor’s side were wooden bleachers and two rickety old goal posts at each end of the field. I have no idea how old the stadium was at the time. The high school was built in 1920, and I would assume the stadium was built not long after that, if not then.
For us Junior Warhawks, this was a major road trip. We only played five games in a season but had had a good year, a three and one record going into the game against the Bulldogs. We had played Southwest DeKalb in Panthersville Stadium the first game of the year, Stone Mountain the second game at Memorial Stadium, which is located off Memorial Drive. Panthersville and Memorial were brand new stadiums, each shared by four different schools. Memorial Stadium was by far the biggest, with huge stands on each side of the field. I remember standing on the field as we were preparing to kick off, looking up at he vast amount of concrete surrounding us and thinking I was in Sanford Stadium. It is by far the biggest stadium I played in in my life.
The next game we played was against Avondale in Avondale Stadium, better known as Death Valley. It was called that because Avondale was a powerhouse program and their Junior Blue Devils upheld the legacy that day, handing us a 41-0 trouncing. We were off for three weeks, then played Gordon in Panthersville on a freezing and rainy Saturday morning. It was so cold the varsity let the B-Team and us use their big, warm parkas and heater on the sideline. We won the game and my friend David, who played at Gordon, said he remembers looking across the field at us in our parkas while they froze their butts off across the field in nothing but thermals and football gear.
The Lithonia game was the farthest we had traveled for a game. It was played on a mild, misty and overcast Saturday morning. Lithonia and Walker were two of the schools that shared Panthersville Stadium, so I can only guess that a game between two other teams was scheduled there so that was why we were playing in Lithonia Stadium. The field was newly planted winter rye, which had not been trimmed and was about ankle deep. It was pretty easy to get traction because the ground was soft, but not so easy to run because the grass was so high. Maybe that was the home field advantage. If so, it didn’t work because we won 17-0. One of the things that stands out in my mind about the game was tackling a kid and his feet were in my face in the pileup. He was wearing Batman tennis shoes. We scored two touchdowns and actually kicked a field goal, our first and only place kick of the year. Up until that point we had ran for extra points. It was a wobbly snap, a wobbly hold and a wobbly kick that barely cleared the crossbar. It was probably only about a fifteen-yard kick but hey, it counted three points. We won 17-0. By the time the game was over it was misting rain and we had a long and happy bus ride home.
Fifty years later I played a round of golf at Mystery Valley Golf Club in Lithonia. As I drove through town toward the golf course, I noticed Ida Street on the left-hand side of the road. Something came over me and I turned left and headed down Ida Street. The opening strains of Billy Joel’s The Stranger came over the radio. It was both eerie and apropos. I drove past the old granite school building to the left and at the bottom of the hill I stopped in front of the old Lithonia Stadium. The closing notes of The Stranger faded from the radio. I stopped the car, got out and gazed at the field. It was the first time I had seen it since 1968. The granite stands were still there, of course. They’ll be there until they’re blasted away for the sake of progress and town homes. Unbelievably, the old track still circled the field. The rickety old goalposts at the south end of the field, over which we kicked our wobbly field goal, still stood. The goalposts at the north end and the wooden bleachers across the field were long gone. The landing pit for the high jump was still behind the old goal posts on the south end.
I went down to old track and walked up it, past the granite stands to the north end of the field. The yard lines were still visible from where the hydrated lime had burned them into the ground. I stood in the north end zone and walked slowly down the field, stopping at the fifty-yard line. A flood of memories came over me and the haunting whistling notes of The Stranger rang in my head. I made my way over to the far sideline in front of where the old wooden bleachers had been and stared across the field. Had it really been fifty years? At that point it sure didn’t seem like it. I crossed the field back toward my car, but stopped at about the fifteen-yard line. I looked up at the rickety old goalposts and laughed. It looked like I could toss a football underhanded over it now, but back then it seemed like a mile away.
I got back in my car, started it up, turned around and headed toward the golf course. But before turning up the hill, I stopped and took another long look at the field. I thought about how great that it was still there, still in use by the old granite middle school at the top of the hill. It was relatively unchanged and the way I remembered it, rickety old goalposts and all.