Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream Read Online Free PDF Page B

across the front in pearly thread. From one of the coaches came
the shrill blow of a whistle, followed by the gleeful cry of "Let's
go, men!" There was the smell of furniture polish; the dust and
dirt of the past season were forever wiped away.
    About an hour later the players arrived. It was time to get
under way.
    "Welcome, guys" were the words Coach Gary Gaines used to
begin the 1988 season, and fifty-five boys dressed in identical
gray shirts and gray shorts, sitting on identical wooden benches, stared into his eyes. They listened, or at least tried to. Winning
a state championship. Making All-State and gaining a place on
the Permian Wall of Fame. Going off after the season to Nebraska, or Arkansas, or Texas. Whatever they fantasized about,
it all seemed possible that day.

    Gaines's quiet words washed over the room, and in hundreds
of other Texas towns celebrating the start of football practice
that August day there were similar sounds of intimacy and welcome, to the eastern edge of the state in Marshall, to the northern edge in Wichita Falls, to the southern edge in McAllen, to
the western edge in El Paso. They were Gaines's words, but they
could have come from any high school coach renewing the
ritual of sport, the ritual of high school football.
    "There's twelve hundred boys in Permian High School. You divide that
by three and there's four hundred in every class. You guys are a very
special breed. There are guys back there that are every bit as good as
you are. But they were not able to stick it out for whatever reason. Football'S not for everybody. But you guys are special.
    "We want you all to carry the torch in the eight-eight season. It's
got to mean somethin' really special to you. You guys have dreamt about
this /or many years, to be a part of this team, some of you since you were
knee-high. Work hard, guys, and pay the price. Be proud you're a part
of this program. Keep up the tradition that was started many years ago.
    That tradition was enshrined on a wall of the field house,
where virtually every player who had made All-State during the
past twenty-nine years was carefully immortalized within the
dimensions of a four-by-six-inch picture frame. It was enshrined in the proclamation from the city council that hung on
a bulletin board, honoring one of Permian's state championship
teams. It was enshrined in the black carpet, and the black-andwhite cabinets, and the black rug in the shape of a panther. It
was enshrined in the county library, where the 235-page history
that had been written about Permian football was more detailed
than any of the histories about the town itself.
    Of all the legends of Odessa, that of high school football was the most enduring. It had a deep and abiding sense of place
and history, so unlike the town, where not even the origin of
the name itself could be vouched for with any confidence.

    Odessa ...
    There had been no reason for its original existence. It owed
its beginnings to a fine blend of Yankee ingenuity and hucksterism, its selling the first primordial example of the Home
Shopping Network.
    It was invented in the 1880s by a group of men from Zanesville, Ohio, who saw a great opportunity to make money if only
they could figure out some way to get people there, to somehow
induce them into thinking that the land bore bountiful secrets,
this gaping land that filled the heart with far more sorrow than
it ever did encouragement, stretching without a curve except
for the undulating trough off the caprock where the once-great
herds of buffalo had grazed for water. What Odessa lacked,
and one look informed the most charitable eve that it lacked a
fantastic amount, the speculators from Ohio would make up
for on the strength of their own imagination. With fourteen
thousand arid acres to sell, truth in advertising was not something to dwell over.
    The Zanesville syndicate looked at all the best natural qualities of the country and decided to