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STEVE BROOKS, ARTIST EXTRAORDINAIRE!

PAUL HECKMANN — Sat, 10 Jul 2021 23:17:29 +0000

Interview by Paul Heckmann
Edited by Tex Collins & Paul Heckmann

Paul Heckmann: How you doing, man?

Steve Brooks: Oh, they’re tearing up our street, replacing all the gas lines. I had to go out there and see what the damage was.

Paul: Oh man, that’s not good. Is that the result of the snow and everything?

Steve: No, it’s something they’ve been planning. It’s part of – they’re replacing all the old gas lines. They’ll probably get to your neighborhood soon.

Paul: Yeah. Well, that’s an interesting neighborhood over there, man. How close are you to Kessler Parkway?

Steve: Less than three blocks.

Paul: All right, okay. Did you know that John Wayne used to stay at a house there?

Steve: Rumor had it, yeah.

Paul: I’ve got photos of it.

Steve: Oh, really?

Paul: A fella named Benny Bickers lived there. He was with Warren Diamond and those guys at the turn of the century – early 1900s – and, the Three Bennies, Bennie Bickers, Benny Binion, and there’s one Ben Whitaker

Warren Diamond had some cancer and killed himself, and he had everything set up, and basically, these three guys took over part of the numbers scene in Dallas – not all of it, but no matter what Benny Binion says he did – he was full of it. And, Bennie Bickers was also a big boxer. He had part of his arm shot off when he was a kid, and he couldn’t go into pro boxing, but he became a promoter and fight-fixer and stuff like that, so I got pictures with him and Bugsy Siegel and people like that.

Later on, he bought a place there in Kessler Parkway. Well, Benny also ran the club on top of the Santa Fe Building – the University Club – and in that club, they had everybody from John Wayne to Bing Crosby to Alice Faye, you name it – all these people come through there. John Wayne would come up and stay at Bennie Bickers’s house there when he was shooting The Alamo, that was there at Kessler Parkway.

Steve: That’s great. That’s a good story. I don’t have any of my older relatives around anymore that grew up over here. They’ve passed on.

Paul: Let’s get to Steve Brooks.

Steve: If you want to.

Paul: Ha! Of course. You are a legend around Dallas. Folks may not recognize your full name as you signed S Brooks, but most everyone knows your work.

Steve: Yeah, they just have “S. Brooks.”

Paul: I love the fact you’ve got a collection up there at UNT. Let’s talk Steve Brooks there. Were you born in Dallas?

Steve: Right down the street in Methodist.

Paul: So, where’d you go to elementary school?

Steve: It was called George Peabody over on Westmoreland and Jefferson, kind of far west Oak Cliff.

Steve: It’s less than a half a mile east of Cockrell Hill.

Paul: Oh, wow. So, that’s a pretty good little drive for you.

Steve: Right away, the area was called Beverly Hills because it was – up the street from us was Sivils Drive-In. You heard of Sivils Drive-In?

Paul: You bet. Okay, where’d you go to junior high school at?

Steve: Stockard.

Steve: It was off of – it was between Hampton and Westmoreland, just north of Illinois.

Paul: So, you still had to drive. None of these were in your neighborhood.

Steve: I had to walk or take the bus. Back then, I had a bus card, so I would take the bus.

Paul: So, then you went to Sunset, right? When did you graduate from there?

Steve: That would have been in 1967.

Paul: Ouch! Vietnam! That short period for HS grads when you’re trying to figure out what to do next, huh? “Man, if I can figure out how to go to college, maybe I don’t get drafted.”

Steve: That’s exactly what it was. I had a low draft number. Well, my brother – he had a low draft number, and he went ahead and enlisted. He never saw any action.

Paul: Yeah. A lot of people did that – they signed up and got to either stay in the States, or – my roommate went to Saigon, but he never saw any action other than grenades going off outside his building.

Steve: Do you also have memories of the Dallas/Fort Worth music scene?

Paul: Some. I grew up in Waco but came up here for concerts. Moved here in late 76.

We started Memories of Texas Music. So, you’re gonna be our first one, really, for that page because yours really ties into the music scene quite a bit.

You graduated from Sunset. Did you decide to go to UNT at that time?

Steve: No, I went to Texas Tech. I thought I wanted to be an architect. My dad was pretty…well, not terribly well-known Dallas architect, but he did a lot of recognizable buildings in Dallas. I thought I wanted to be an architect, and I was pretty good at it in high school, but luckily, at Tech, there was a degree program called dual course requirement – you could do commercial art and architecture combined. I realized the architecture part was just a little too much for me.

Paul: Too much math?

Steve: The math and whatever that involved. So, I ended up transferring to Dallas Baptist College and went in the art program there and became the art student of the year in ’68. I loved it. It was really nice.

Paul: It didn’t hurt that you were good at it. A lot of people love art, and they’re not good at it.

Steve: It was okay. I just liked producing art.

Paul: So, how did you go from Dallas Baptist up to North Texas?

Steve: My professors at Dallas Baptist said, “You should try a bigger school,” and I actually was interested in North Texas because I knew they had a great art department, so I said, “Yeah, that’s what I’m gonna do, I’m definitely gonna go there.” So, I commuted there for two years.

Paul: You were at North Texas when you started working for The Iconoclast?

Steve: Well, I met Stoney Burns in ’69 while I was at North Texas.

Paul: Oh, really? What was he doing there?

Steve: Well, Stoney had Dallas Notes from the Underground.

Paul: I remember that, yeah.

Steve: A little three-story house over on Live Oak. Wow, what a hippie crash pad that was.

Paul: So, you knew Jesus Carrillo, and Stoney, and all those guys. So, you knew Kirby Warnock too, then.

Steve: Good friends with Kirby, yeah. We still do some things together.

Paul: I’ve known Kirby for a long time. We keep crossing paths. Did an interview with him last year.

Steve: I read that. It was a good one.

Paul: Thanks. Let’s get back.

Steve: In ’70…I started hanging out at the original Gas Pipe at 3910 Maple. Jerry Shults was the original owner. I started doing little cartoons and ads, flyers and stuff for him, and then, I think you might have read it in the blurb about people from Treehouse Productions were in there, and they saw some of my stuff, and they wanted me to do a concert handbill for them for a Delaney and Bonnie show at the state fair band shell. That was early ‘70s.

Paul: So, was that Delaney and Bonnie and Friends?

Steve: Exactly – with Clapton and Allman

Paul: Duane Allman. Wow.

Steve: Duane Allman and…the saxophone player from Lubbock – I forgot his name.

Paul: I can’t remember that right now, but I knew those three are the ones I could think of because they did Derek and the Dominoes right after that.

Steve: Exactly, Derek and the Dominoes.

Paul: What another great tie-in. I love it! Wow. So, you were doing Delaney and Bonnie, and that started your concert production, didn’t it – at that point?

Steve: Okay, so, I did that handbill, probably didn’t charge much. Now, Frank – actually, what they followed – I did a poster called the Lee Park Massacre. There were very few of them printed. The owners of a head shop on Henderson called Through the Looking Glass called me.

They were in the Gas Pipe and they saw my stuff. You know the Lee Park Massacre, which was April of ’70. And, Cliff Sugarman, and he started an agency and started promoting concerts.

And, we did Sly and the Family Stone, I did a handbill – they said, “Come work for us.” I said, “Sure, okay…freelance.” So, we did Sly and the Family Stone and riot and some other concerts, and then, they finally just started forming an agency and said, “Come be our art director.” I was still in school. I said, “Okay, I want to still go to school. Can I come in two days a week?” They said, “Yeah.”

Paul: So, you’ve already started your career in your chosen field while you’re still studying for your career.

Steve: Still a college student. Well, I did one more semester at North Texas, and I said, “I’ve got a good thing going for me, I’m just gonna go ahead and drop out.” So, anyway, for several months there, we were doing really good, doing a lot of shows. We did Ten Years After, we did Three Dog Night – a lot of Three Dog Night shows, quite a few – and then, Concerts West – I’m sure you’re familiar with them.

Paul: I’ve seen – I’ve had their posters on the page there.

Steve: They were big. They were really big. Concerts West was run by…I wish I could remember his name. He was a big-time promoter and film producer. I can’t remember his name. Anyway, we started jobbing work after them, so I was designing handbills for Concerts West. Then, our agency kind of folded, and Concerts West just did freelancing for us – we started designing stuff for them a whole lot from 1970 through ’75 or so.

Paul: Okay. So, were you – now, you said something about they saw your work at Gas Pipe. Had you started drawing for Gas Pipe then, or was that through Iconoclast that they saw?

Steve: Yeah, I was still doing the Gas Pipe advertising.

Paul: What year did you start with them?

Steve: Well, that would have been the Lubbock Peace Festival, which was in April of 1970. But, everything was freelance. None of them paid a salary.

Paul: “Yeah, we’ll work out a trade, don’t worry about. We got our new bongs in this week, Steve!” I remember those days pretty well.

Steve: Well anyway, yeah, Jerry Shults up at the Gas Pipe – fantastic friend of mine, and still is.

Paul: All right. So, you are doing posters – let’s see here. So, you’re about ’75 now. Now, which came first, the tennis shoes for Whiskey River or the Willie posters?

Steve: So, I ran into a promoter named Gene McLaughlin. There was another shifty character. And, he actually booked talent at The Western Place. So, Gene was also freelancing for Iconoclast, which was a stepson of Notes from the Underground. That’s how Iconoclast came along.

Steve: I’ve still got a few old Iconoclasts.

Paul: Do you really? I remember when I saw your stuff in Buddy magazine, I’m like, “I know this look, I know this artwork. Where do I know this artwork? Oh yeah, now I know.” Tell me more about Willie.

Steve: Buddy came after Iconoclast. So, Gene McLaughlin had seen my work in Iconoclast, and he says, “I’ve got a concert coming up in Abbott, Texas. It’s Abbott Homecoming, and it’s got Willie, Waylon, a bunch of people – good people.” So, I designed that particular advertising – handbills, posters.

Paul: Was that the original Farm Aid?

Steve: No, no. It was all for profit. So, that’s how I ended up designing the logo for Willie with these spurs on them, and Willie really liked it. I actually went to Willie myself and sold it to him. I met him down at his place in Austin.

Paul: What year would that have been, ’73?

Steve: Yeah, that was fall of ’73.

Paul: Okay. So, you’d done this poster for Willie, and you’ve got a tie-in to him because he likes your stuff, so what happens after that?

Steve: I just started doing a lot of stuff for him, not right away, but beginning around ’76. I did a lot of stuff for him on and off going ’73 up until ’76, and then, around ’76, they got their in-house promotion called Me and Paul Productions.

Paul: Yeah, I saw that one up there at UNT. Now, you must have done Whiskey River in ’75, though.

Steve: Well, yeah, those crooks… [Laughs] I didn’t get paid for them to use the logo because it was already Willie’s and Willie was a so-called silent partner in that operation, so they just borrowed the logo for Whiskey River. Willie had paid for the logo. It was not copyrighted for anything. It could be used for anything.

Paul: Yeah. Well, we’re still gonna make this your logo from Whiskey River. You know that, right? We will give you credit, even if they didn’t.

Steve: Well, it’s true, and I did do a couple of designs for them, and I don’t know if I got paid for them or not.

Paul: Well, it was really interesting because Willie, of course, although he was a third owner, he didn’t actually play there until Phil talked him into doing a three-night set, and the first night he was there, they had to pull him offstage because he threw his guitar at his sister, who was playing piano. I asked Phil about it, I says, “Why’d he do that?” He says, “Because we’d just done some PCP, whatever makes you angry? He said, “We’d just done that before we went onstage.” I said, “Phil, what the hell were you thinking?” He laughed and says ‘It was the 70s”

Steve: Yeah, at that time, there was quite a bit of that going on.

Paul: There was a lot of craziness, yeah. I got you, man. So, at this point, you’re probably just about to start working on Buddy magazine, right?

Steve: Well, Buddy started in ’75 if I’m remembering correctly.

Paul: So, you knew – obviously, you already talked about Kirby. You knew Ron McKeown over there too?

Steve: Ron’s a good friend.

Paul: Yeah, we’ve worked together on a couple little things. And, you became an editor there too, huh?

Steve: I was a senior editor, right.

Paul: Oh, wow. Well, that’s something very different from artwork.

Steve: Well, all I did was edit my own artwork.

Paul: Oh, okay. So, you were the art editor, not the interview editor or anything like that.

Steve: No, Paul. This is basically a title to get on the masthead. Somebody might write an article and say, “Well, why don’t you read this and tell us what you think?”

Paul: Yeah, make sure there’s not anything misspelled in it or anything like that. That’s actually an art, and I don’t have it. That’s why I send mine out to – we’ve got about four people that edit my stuff because I’m so bad at it.

Steve: Me too.

Paul: So, this was about ’76 or ’77. So, you’re doing a ton of posters, and concerts, and handbills, and matchbooks, and all sorts of stuff.

Steve: I’ve got it on a hard drive – a portable hard drive. I could burn you CDs. (FYI – we got all 600 plus of his projects)

Paul: You have so much visual items, that might be really interesting to do.

Steve: I suppose you’ve heard about the Wittliff Collection down at Texas State University.

Paul: Uh-huh.

Steve: Well, I interviewed with them a few years back. The guy came up here – drove up – and he was really interested because he saw all the stuff that I’d done for Willie, and without bragging too much, it’s substantial. But, all he did was wanna talk about himself.

He was in some band out of San Antonio. Well, anyway, I didn’t hear back from him, and I went, “Well, I guess he just forgot.” So, I knew that at University of North Texas, there was a library that did collections. I don’t know how I came across it, but I just called them, and they said, “Yeah, we’d like to see what you have.” I brought everything up there, and they just – “Wow. We want this now.” He understood exactly what was there.

Paul: There’s two places to go. One is UNT – well, actually, three. The other is DeGolyer at SMU, and also UTA. Those are the three places. But, DeGolyer or UNT are the two places, and you chose one very well.

Steve: Yeah, being an alumni, I really wanted to go with UNT. I thought about SMU. I’ve seen some of their stuff, and they’ve got a great collection.

Paul: I wish that UNT would put more of your stuff online.

Steve: Well, that was gonna… Because there’s so much of it, to digitize it and put it out there where you can actually see the digital catalog…

Paul: It’d be overwhelming.

Steve: It took so much time for them to do all that. I’ve already got it all, and I gave them the CDs.

Paul: I will try to see if we can figure out a way to show this online for you.

Steve: They’ve offered to actually do a showing. We talked about putting something together, then the pandemic happened. We haven’t really spoke about it since then.

Paul: So, let’s go back to your movie career. Honeysuckle Rose – tell me about that.

Steve: Okay, now we’re gonna jump out up to ’79. Well, the Me and Paul Productions – that’s the key factor here – I was doing it from ’76 up until this point of ’79. Paul English – great guy. Loved him to death. Well, I did some of the artwork for the ’75 picnic in Liberty Hill. So, Paul gave me permission to do Willie Nelson’s T-shirts. I didn’t print up enough. I only printed up 300. I said, “What do you want for this, Paul?” He said, “I’ll give you a dollar a shirt.” Next day, I went to the hotel and gave him $300.00 cash, and we remained really good friends. Then, Willie had me come up to Colorado – actually, had me paint a tepee for him at his place.

Steve: It was actually on the Barbara Walters special with Willie. If you look in the background, you’ll see a tepee. So, I was there painting the tepee. Then, we did the picnic in ’79. Willie had just bought the country club down there – Pedernales Country Club. So, we did that picnic – well, it was right after the picnic. So then, he wanted me to come up to Colorado to his house. He’d bought another tepee that he wanted me to paint. This thing was huge. It was in Life magazine. You should see that.

Paul: Willie’s tepee, okay. I’ve gotta look these up. This sounds interesting.

Steve: Yeah, the Life magazine it came out in was a couple years later. So, I painted that tepee. Then, after I finished that tepee, I was finishing up, and he said, “Steve, we want you to come down to Austin. We’re getting ready to start a movie. I want you to hear these two songs.” So, he played me “On the Road Again” and “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground.” He’d just recorded these.

Paul: Oh, God – and they hadn’t been released yet?

Steve: They hadn’t been because they were gonna be in the movie. When I heard “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground,” I just started crying. “God, Willie, that is a beautiful song.”

Paul: Both of them. I love them both, man.

Steve: He said, “Well, you gotta go on to Austin, we’re starting a movie and they need your artwork.” “Sure, I’ll do it. I’m out of here.” He gave me a wad of hundred-dollar bills – $1,600.00. I remember that well. He just reached in his pocket and started peeling them off.

Paul: Oh my God, man.

Steve: So then, I started in. “Okay, here we go – the movie, Honeysuckle Rose.” They wanted me to do this artwork and switch all the rope lettering that said “Willie” to read “Buck Bonham.” That was the character in the movie – Willie. He was Buck Bonham. So, I started doing all that work and turning in the invoices to Paul. I was freelancing for Me and Paul Productions still. And, the first invoice I gave to Paul, he said, “That’s not enough. Double it.”

Paul: Oh, my God.

Steve: They were paying Paul back for what he was doing them for. Rock and roll business – don’t you love it?

Paul: When it’s good, it’s good. When it’s not good – ugh.

Steve: When I started freelancing in the ‘70s and particular artists would say, “Can you do some artwork for me?”, I’d say, “Well, I’ll tell you what. Normally, everyone else, I want 50%, but since you’re a musician, that’ll be 100%.” I’ve been burned by far too many musicians. And, I can give you some really popular names.

Paul: I know a few myself. I’m with you. But, boy, if you do them wrong on a gig, holy cow. It’s kind of like the whole scene is screwed up.

Steve: Plus, Willie’s group – they were all packing heat back then. You did not mess with them.

Paul: Wow, guns?

Steve: Yep.

Paul: So, this is about 1979. So, you’re still working on the movie. Did you work on the movie while it was being filmed, too?

Steve: Yeah, I got to be an extra in a couple of scenes, but mostly, I was doing a lot of – I could tell you about all the things that I did in the movie.

Paul: So, you did some set work.

Steve: Yeah, we – one huge set work for Slim Pickens that was called Garland’s Day. I did the big banner in front of the stage for the last scene of the movie. I rented an apartment in Austin and painted it in the room overhead.

Paul: Wow. I’ll see if I can find that.

Steve: It’s at the very end. It’s Garland’s Day. It’s in green, and it’s a picture of Slim Pickens. He was Garland. When I met Garland – well, Slim Pickens – accused me of breaking his nose again, and that’s another story. We had a big laugh about that – I had an old press photo of him that I used. Nice guy.

Paul: That’s what Burton said, man. He said he had the best time doing Blazing Saddles.

Steve: Sure, that’s right. Yeah, they did work together.

Paul: So, what happens after ’79?

Steve: Well, gosh. Still doing stuff for Willie, but kind of winding down. I did his personal logo for stationery, just the flying tennis shoe – you’ve seen that with Willie.

Paul: At this time, were you still working with Alice Cooper in Chicago and all those guys?

Steve: No, no, not so much. Concert handbills, still doing – mostly just doing stuff for Buddy and the Gas Pipe. The Gas Pipe then started doing a lot of advertising.

Paul: I saw that. You’ve been doing their calendar since about day one, right?

Steve: Well, I think the first calendar came out in ’73. Yeah, that’s my calendar – it’s almost 50 years of calendars coming up soon.

Paul: That’s amazing. One artist doing it, all but – so, I saw there was one year you didn’t do it.

Steve: One year I didn’t do it, right.

Paul: Were they pissed off at you or something that year?

Steve: We never talked about that.

Paul: Ah, okay. We won’t bring that up, then.

Steve: They came to me and said, “We need you to do them from now on.” But, I did move to Taos, New Mexico in ’83. I was gonna take my shot at being a so-called Western artist, quote unquote. I started painting a lot, and man, did I start painting. I painted and painted every morning I got up and I was painting.

Paul: So, you’ve embarked on your second career that usually doesn’t pay a lot of money after your first one, logos, which usually doesn’t pay too many people a lot of money. You decided to become a painter in Taos, which nobody gets paid for.

Steve: I was okay. You know why? I had a gallery that – I produced a poster for the Willie Lewis guys, and it benefited the Taos Pueblo, so I wanted to just go ahead, move to Taos, paint, and sell my paintings to a gallery who’d represent me, and I was doing okay. I was eking out a living, paying bills. That’s what it is, it’s struggling artists. I could still be there, but some circumstances came up, and I had to come back to Dallas.

Steve: Well, that would have been mid-‘80s. Mostly, that’s off of something – the Gas Pipe took off. They really took off, started opening up a lot more locations. They expanded to Austin, and I went down there and painted a couple murals on their stores down there. They opened two locations in Albuquerque, so I went up there, did some murals for those locations. All in all, just – they were the main client.

Paul: So, are you working other kinds of jobs at this point to make a living?

Steve: Not until around…let’s see, around 1995. I can’t remember what year. I went to work with George Toomer. He was probably one of the best commercial graphics artists in Dallas at the time. He did all of Razzoo’s, Dick’s Last Resort.

Paul: Oh, yeah.

Steve: He almost – I tell you, Dick’s Last Resort was – basically, the visual was his creation, and all their menus… I spent four years with George.

Paul: So, you had a regular paycheck.

Steve: Oh, it was a regular paycheck. I made so much money I had to pay quarterly taxes for the first time ever.

Paul: All right, so you got a little Social Security coming in.

Steve: I do, yeah! That $500.00-a-month check – wow!

Paul: So, you worked for George there until about, what, late ‘90s?

Steve: Four years. I can’t remember the exact years, but it seems about right.

Paul: Okay. So, you get more or less to the year 2000. What goes on after that?

Steve: I’m still banging out Gas Pipe.

Paul: Okay. You have some nice connections, I would imagine, from the retail industry there with Razzoo’s and other things like that. Were you doing anything like menus or anything like that for anybody else?

Steve: No, those are the only accounts, Razzoo’s and Dick’s.

Paul: Okay. Were you doing any business advertising in these days or anything like that?

Steve: Yeah, a few things here and there, little jobs.

Paul: Sure, gotcha. So, let me ask you this. You’re in the 2000s there, and you’re kind of looking toward do I wanna retire, does an artist ever get to retire, that kind of – I imagine it’s going on in your head. So, you’re still getting a little bit of income coming from Mr. Shults and the Gas Pipe. Is that what’s going on today with you?

Steve: I’m pretty much laid back now. I lost sight in my right eye.

Paul: Oh, you’re blind.

Steve: Not totally blind. I had several operations, and they couldn’t fix it, so all I’ve got is my left eye. So, I would say from 2010 up until now, eBay. I’ve sold a lot of my extra handbills, posters, stuff I’ve collected over the years, and the supplemental income is really good.

Paul: Well, what I’ll do is – do you have your own store there on eBay?

Steve: I list as Cosmic Cow Pie.

Paul: Cosmic Cow Pie. Before the story goes – I’m gonna send it out to transcription, then it goes to my editor, so it’s still a couple of weeks away, maybe three weeks away, and then I’ll get all that information from you before we finish it up. But, let me ask you this: If you had your favorite, top five Steve Brooks artworks, what would they be?

Steve: Oh gosh, I really couldn’t say.

Paul: What was your favorite? What’s the one that you just keep – “Man, I can’t believe I did that”?

Steve: That I’ve produced? Well, gee. Nothing really that I could… You’ve probably never seen it; I’ve probably never shown it to anybody. Does it really exist? I am fond of the Willie Blue Skies lithograph, the thing that brought me to Taos.

Paul: Willie Blue Skies?

Steve: It’s a big lithograph. I’ll give you one. Yes, I will.

Paul: We will put that – whenever we open up our office, whenever we get this thing set up with the Meadows Foundation, we’ll make sure it’s there. How big is it?

Steve: Oh, I’d be happy for you to own one. Willie Nelson himself bound me to do so much work for him, and to meet the people in his circle – still friends with roadies and band members all these years. God, what wonderful, great people they are. Nobody can put down Willie Nelson’s family, not while I’m around.

Paul: And, they’re tight, too, I’ll bet.

Steve: They are.

Paul: Nobody gets in unless it goes through the whole family, I would imagine.

Steve: Well, back then – it was years ago. Nowadays, we’ve lost so many members.

Paul: Oh, yeah. Well, Willie must be, what, in the late 70s, something like that.

Steve: He’ll be 88 in May.

Paul: Eighty-eight? Holy cow. I didn’t realize he was that old.

Steve: When I was doing that tepee for him in Irving, he had me call Jerry Jeff Walker. “Who?” “Jerry Jeff Walker.” “What?”

Paul: I was a huge fan of his, man.

Steve: No, seriously, I did some artwork for Jerry Jeff. Susan, his wife, is a wonderful lady. (Jerry Jeff passed away in late 2020) Anyway, Jerry Shults has the Ridglea Theater in Fort Worth.

Paul: Oh, Jerry Shults does.

Steve: Yeah.

Paul: Ridglea Theater – I’ve heard of that.

Steve: It’s a prime – in fact, the venue for Fort Worth besides Billy Bob’s. It’s where you’d wanna book a show. Anyway, he’ll tell you more about it.

Steve: The Dallas people like Larry Hagman, he was a good guy. I remember being around him. Do you remember Wendy Moss? She was the party planner in Dallas. She had a big party one night, and Larry was there, and he was going around with a little portable fan. If you were smoking, he’d put this fan at you.

I did some work for the Walker, Texas Ranger people, and for Rob Edelson, one of the major set designers.

Paul: Did you do the logo for them?

Steve: No, no, I just did a few things for some background scenes, just a couple episodes.

Paul: Thanks so much for your time Steve. I’ve give you a call to set up a time to pick up those CD.

Steve: Thanks for doing this.

Paul: You are fondly remembered Steve, even though folks may not know your name!

All Photos in this interview are courtesy of Steve Brooks and his fabulous art collection!

The Video starts about 1 minute in with over 600 examples of his various works including calendars, handbills, hand and line drawings and posters

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LOUIS FITE, PARADE ALL AMERICAN

PAUL HECKMANN — Sat, 13 Mar 2021 21:43:15 +0000

Louis: Hello?

Paul: Good. Paul Heckmann here, sir.

So, let’s get right to it. So I undertand you’re a SoCal kid, born in Compton, California?

Louis: Yes sir, I was born in Compton, California.

Paul: Wow, okay, all right. I know exactly where it’s at. I used to work in San Pedro on the ships down there.

Louis: Oh, yes sir, I know exactly where that’s at.

Paul: A little bit different place, you know?

Louis: Oh, my God, it was rough. Fights and worse happening all the time.

Paul:` How old were you when you moved to Waco

Louis: I didn’t move to Waco till I was 12.

Paul: Did your parents send you to Waco?

Louis: Well, my auntie sent me to Waco. I was living with my auntie. My mother, my father had left me with her, it was hard. She was doing the drugs and everything.

Paul: Oh no.

Louis: Yes, yes. I was homeless at that – like at age of 9 years old, on the street.

Paul: Oh my God. Oh, in Compton, too. Ooh, boy.

Louis: Yes, sir.

Paul: So, how did you survive there?

Louis: Just really just like trying to go to school every day, eat breakfast and lunch. I wasn’t really going to eat dinner, you know? I just – what I got out of school, you know, reality kicked in and I had nowhere to go. So, I just really went to convenience stores and they helped a lot. They give me something to eat, and after that I find me some homeless people and follow the trail with them.

Paul: Yes. Were you digging into trash cans?

Louis: Yes sir. I did all that.

Paul: Now, you said your auntie sent you to Waco.

Louis: Yes sir.

Paul: And now who was here in Waco that you knew?

Louis: Well, my mother was in Marshall, Texas, and my grandmother passed away. My mother’s mother passed away and left her house in Waco, so they moved to Waco and they got my auntie and told her we finally got a house. So, she sent me to Waco.

Paul: Okay. What part of town were you all in in Waco?

Louis: East Waco.

Paul: I see you all were over at Wiley, were you?

Louis: Yes, I was living by Wiley, but I went to Lake Air.

Paul: Oh, wow, that’s a drive.

Louis: That’s a drive, yes. It was crazy because like all the Waco kids, they were at Wiley and all the East Waco kids, we all went to Lake Air.

Paul: You know something? That happened when I was at Richfield, which of course became your HS, Waco High.

Louis: But my brother went to school at Richfield.

Paul: What was his name?

Louis: Dwayne. Dwayne Low. He was like ’82, ’83.

Paul: Yes, a little bit after me.

Louis: Yes sir.

Paul: So, you’re down at – you went to Lake Air Jr High. Did you play ball when you were at Lake Air?

Louis: Yes, I played some ball. They was like, it’s like when they – like after the sixth game of the season and the seventh game, the people said that I couldn’t even touch the ball no more because I was – like I scored every time I touched the ball, you know? So, they were like, you can’t touch the ball no more. I was like, really, coach? He’s like, yes, you gotta wait till next year to touch the football. You were bad, some people.

Paul: I guess you were going there with Curtis Jones, is that correct?

Louis: Yes, Curtis. I was to there – yes sir.

Paul: And then Waco HS. Coach Tusa just loved me to death, man. You could tell, his voice just lit up when he was talking about you, so did Coach Harms. Yes, I talked to Coach Harms, too.

Louis: Oh, I loved those guys.

Paul: Coach Harms was my offensive coordinator when I want to Texas A&I so we reminisced a bit.

Louis: That’s crazy. Coach Harms was a good man.

Paul: We both followed the same path, just different times, you know?

Louis: Right. You got that right.

Paul: I’ll talk about him in a minute. I gotta talk about Coach Tusa.

Louis: Okay.

Paul: Now, you were there with Coach Tusa and Coach Grimes and some people like that.

Louis: Yes sir. Coach Grimes, Coach Love, Coach Bishop.

Paul: Now, tell me a little bit about in high school. Now, you come up from Lake Air. Now, I heard in one interview you did that you were homeless for a while while you were in high school, is that correct?

Louis: Yes, I was homeless my whole high school years.

Paul: No kidding.

Louis: Yes, I was homeless from the ninth grade to the twelfth grade.

Paul: So, what happened to the house over in East Waco?

Louis: It just – I mean, I don’t know. It’s like me, me and my father, we just couldn’t see eye to eye on – like a lot of stuff because I wasn’t used to somebody beating on my mom, you know?

Paul: Oh, no,

Louis: I wasn’t used to that. So, I used to always get into it with him, and my mom would tell me no. Next day he’d do the same thing. You know? So, I was like, he just told me to leave this house, get away from his house. I’m like, okay, I’ll just leave because I don’t want to see anything like that, you know?

Paul: Oh, man, that’s horrible.

Louis: So, yes, yes.

Paul: That’s horrible.

Louis: And so I just – you know, I had it in – I had it in for like a lot of people. A lot of people went to my mom and dad house and they had fun, and they say, you know, “Why you don’t be there?” I’m like, “Y’all don’t see the inside. Y’all see the outside. The inside is deeper, you know?”

Paul: Right. They put on a good front once they were outside.

Louis: They put on a good – yes, yes, yes.

Paul: That’s horrible for your mom, man. It’s absolutely horrible.

Louis: Yes. I don’t understand either. I don’t. You know, I feel like I raised myself. I did it by a lot of people mistakes that I seen them do, I’m not gonna do that. So, that’s how I raised myself on right from wrong.

Paul: Seems like you did one heck of a job, everybody – all of the coaches and everybody that I talked to always talked about your character.

Louis: Yes sir.

Paul: And there’s a whole lot – what you’re telling me right now, that’s character. I love that, man.

So, let me talk about – let’s talk about being a student.

Louis: Yes sir.

Paul: Was that tough for you?

Louis: It was. It was tough because you know like when a kid got like a homework assignment, and he can go home and do it, and you got time, you got people that’s gonna help you out, you know?

Paul: Right.

Louis: I’ve never had that. Like anything, homework, anything, I just – I didn’t have time to do it because I had to go get me something to eat, I had to go make sure that I could probably go spend the night over some kid house, you know? And I probably gotta wait till 10:00, 11:00 just to ask his mom and dad because it was hard because I never had a stable place to do a homework. I never had a stable place to study. Because when I got to school, it was class class class, football. Class class class, football. And when I went home, I didn’t have a home.

Paul: Right.

Louis: I didn’t have nowhere to go. I was living in like North Waco Park. I was living sometime in East Waco Park. Sometimes somebody let me spend a night in their den or something like, but I never had a home.

Paul: Little Lions Park, too I bet.

Louis: Yes, yes, yes, Lions Park, you know? So, I never – it was hard for me. I never had a chance to relax and really do what I could do. That’s why people say “Aw, Louis Fite was dumb.” I never had a chance.

Paul: Yes, yes.

Louis: I flunked the SAT test when I was getting put out on the streets. I didn’t know anything. All I knew is I had to survive, go to school, be right. You know, saying get your work done, make sure everything is done before you leave because you can’t take that home. You got nowhere to go, you know?

So, I never – that’s why I never – you know, people say you should blame Coach Tusa, you shoulda had somebody. But we didn’t have no time. He didn’t know what I was going through. I didn’t come through like that. Every now and then I did, but he never knew until my last yearr– until like to the game we played against Copperas Cove. I had like 285, like almost 300 yards in the first half. Coach Tusa was like, “Hey, you know, we gonna get you out.” And I was like, “Coach, I can’t get out to the game.” He was like, “What’s going on?” I said, “Coach, I have my school shit.” I was like, “I want to go back and eat.” He’s like, “Then score.” That’s the only way people get me some, you know?

So, he was like, “What?” I’m like, “Coach, I gotta score. I know I got that many yards, but I need to score. I need to score.”

Paul: So you earned food by scoring?

Louis: Yes.

Paul: Oh, wow, that’s something.

So, did you graduate from Waco High eventually?

Louis: Yes sir, yes sir. I graduated in ’91.

Paul: Okay, all right. Well, let me go backwards just a little bit there. Now, tell me about breaking the rushing record against Temple as a senior.

Louis: When I play football, I just play football. I play with all my guys, I have fun. But that night right there, I didn’t know anything about it until Coach Tusa, he kinda let it slip out, he was like, hey because we was driving up, and it was like 99 degrees, and the field was soaking wet. Soaking. So, we about to get out the bus, Coach Tusa say, he was talking to Coach Love, he say, “Oh, they gonna wimp out on the field.” He’s saying, “I guess they don’t want to try to break this record tonight.” I said, “What record, Coach?” He talking about the rushing record.

He’s like, “You need like 175 yards away.” I say, okay, well, let’s go get it, you know? I wanted to do it for the team, I wanted to do it for all the players that played with me, you know? Some of the kids had died. Some of my friends that I feel like if they would’ve been living, they really would’ve hit up the football team because they was kids that got caught up in bad situations. But I wanted to do it for the whole Waco, you know?

So, that game was kinda pressured because now I got something to do now. It’s just not a football game no more. It’s like I gotta do this, you know?

And so when I broke it, it was like this is for everybody. And Coach Tusa asked, you know, you need to prove it. I said, “Coach, anything I get, you leave it at Waco High because I did it for Waco High. I didn’t do it for the individual thing. It was all team for me.”

I promise you, I promise to God, the only time I knew about a college is when I was a junior – because I didn’t know that you play football in high school and you go to college. I didn’t know that. I just played football to give me something to eat. I didn’t know anything about college. I didn’t know.

I knew about Baylor. I didn’t know how to get to Baylor, but I knew about Baylor because I used to go to the games when I was young, but I didn’t know how to get to Baylor.

Paul: Right.

Louis: Because I didn’t know that you could play high school football and go to Baylor. I didn’t know that. So –

Paul: You had to achieve certain things to get into Baylor, too.

Louis: Right, and I didn’t know anything. I was just playing football. But the first time I noticed about colleges is Keifer Chatham. I don’t know if you knew Keifer Chatham, he was a defensive end for us. He was like a top 20, a top 30 ranked. He was a senior when I was a junior. And I came out the locker room, when I came out the locker room I was running, and I did a flip. I ran and did a flip, woo! And I was almost like a double. I got lead and I kept running. I guess all of the scouts was out there. They was like, “Who is that?” Because he was like, “That’s Louis Fite. He is gonna be the best.”

And I got talked to by a lot of colleges, but I didn’t know what they was talking about.

They like, “You know, we would love to recruit you,” and stuff. I’m like, “You gotta talk to Coach Tusa about that. You gotta talk to Coach Tusa.” I don’t know what to talk about, you know? And that’s the first time I knew about college.

Paul: Because when you go to college, you get fed.

Louis: You get fed. I’m like, “Okay, I can go get fed again.” I was like, “Oh yeah, my senior life, I’m gonna kill it,” and that’s the reason why. That’s the reason why because I seen it. I seen the stats. I seen Keifer set to go to – you know, so I’m like, “Okay, I can do this. I can do this.”

Paul: Oh, man.

Louis: People didn’t – like I didn’t know anything about no college. I was just playing football.

Paul: Well, you were a Super Centex running back, too.

Dave Campbell, I saw the picture of you and Dave Campbell.

Louis: Yes sir. I love him to death, man.

Paul: He did more for football in Texas. You know, one thing, when you finally made that Texas football magazine, that’s when you know you’re good.

Louis: “Team Ball.” That’s when you know you’re good. There used to be a million kids looking for this Texas high school book, Texas Football Magazine. I mean, I’m like – yes. We wanted to see who was in there, what was – yes, that was the day, that was the day. And for him to vote me on the parade, All American, I was like, thank you for everything, you know?

I mean, he had told me plenty of times, he’s like, “Louis, I’ve seen running backs all my life. I’ve been in this game. I’ve never seen a running back like you.” He said, “You is the best I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some of the best.” He said, “You the best high school running back I’ve ever seen in my life.”

That was amazing to me.

Paul: Oh, wow, wow, that’s – and big, big words from that man. Big words.

Louis: Big words.

Paul: Oh, man. So, were you in track also when you were at Waco High?

Louis: Yes. I ran a 21.5 in the 200. I was fast. I was fast. One thing I could do was run.

Paul: Yes. Tell me about the accident with your cousin, James. I know it’s a sad story, but it is part of your story.

Louis: Yes sir.

Paul: Tell me a little bit about what happened with your cousin.

Louis: It was just – he was a good guy. He was a good – he was a person that kept me focused, you know?

Paul: Yes sir.

Louis: But he always said, yes – you know – and it was just, it was one night we was walked to a store. We should’ve drove the car. But we had no gas in the car, so we said hey, let’s walk down to the store and get those old jungle juices.

Paul: Yes, yes, yes.

Louis: Those old jungle juices, you know? So, we walked down there to the store. It was me and his sister. So, we walked down there and we turned back around.

Paul: Yes, I know exactly where it’s at.

Louis: And so we walking, and first I was on the outside, you know? And I said, so when we got across the street, it’s a little school called, I forgot, an elementary school. And so I got on the bar. It was like a little bar that you could walk all the way. It’s like a little balancing bar. So, we was walking, I was walking on the balancing bar, and next thing I heard was “Rrrrrrr.” And I looked, and it was boom.

So, when he hit James, like it slowed down. I think, you know, James probably would’ve lived. He probably would’ve had a broken back or something like that, but he still would’ve lived.

Paul: Yes, yes, yes.

Louis: But the man stopped hard. When he stopped hard, James flipped over his head. His head hit the hood, and James took off about 20 yards. He was high and he was like traveling. When he fell, I’m looking at this like it’s a motion picture. I’m seeing this in slow motion, you know?

Paul: And you can still see it till today.

Louis: Right now. I can see it right now.

Paul: Just like it happened.

Louis: I can see it right now. And it’s like when he landed, I’m looking at him, and his sister ran to him. So, when she grabbed him, she grabbed him by like his chest and his hips, and she pulled him up, and his head rocked back. And when his head rocked back, his whole brains came down.

Paul: Oh, no. Oh, man.

Louis: And I was –

Paul: So, his skull had been cracked open.

Louis: Yes. It was cracked wide open.

Paul: Oh, my God.

Louis: And so I said, “Christine, Christine,” I said, “hey, leave him alone. Come on, come on, come on, come on.” So, she wouldn’t leave him alone. She was just grabbing him. And so she finally just stood up and said, “What are we gonna do?”

This man is a passenger. He gets out the car. He gets out of the car and walked right past James. He looked at me first and said, “Man, I don’t got nothing to do with this.” So, he walked off.

So, the driver, the driver came out and said, “How much money I can give you? How much I can give you?” And I said, “You don’t have to give me no money.” I said, “You gonna come down here to this store and we’re gonna call the paramedics.” And he was like, “Nah.” I said, I said “No.” I grabbed him. I said, “Man, I’m for real. You’re coming down here with me. You’re gonna leave this car, you’re gonna come down here with me.”

So, we walked like two blocks that road, and about that time people already called. You know, called the police, called 911 because they seen it. And I was just sitting at the store and like, “What the – what just happened? I was just talking to him.” You know, just it was bad. That hurt me to today, yes.

Paul: Oh, my God. Oh. And then he passed away right then and there, huh?

Louis: Yes, he passed away that day. To the night.

Paul: Oh, wow. Oh my God. Now, he was going to Tarleton State at the time?

Louis: Yes, yes.

Paul: Okay.

Louis: He was running like 47, 46 in the quarters.

Paul: Oh, wow.

Louis: He could roll.

Paul: Wow, wow.

Louis: Yes, he could roll.

Paul: What was his last name?

Louis: Yes, Silmon. James Silmon.

Paul: Man, I’m so sorry for your loss, man. I know it’s one of these things that just sticks in your head, and you know that movie, Forever and Ever.

Louis: Yes sir.

Paul: But it’s part of your story.

But you were able to move on in a positive manner.

I loved coaching Louis. He was unbelievable. Tremendous talent, had a tremendous work ethic, he was a gamer, he thrived on competition, hard to tackle, had the quickest feet you’ve ever seen, and balance, when he got the ball, people (in the stands) started standing up early. He could make a 2 or 3 yard run into something special.

Dave Campbell used to come watch him, they couldn’t believe what he could do.

It was phenomanly challenging for the other team to tackle him, he could cut on a dime and give you nine cent’s change!

He came from some pretty humble beginnings and life was tough for him, but you would never know it by his attitude, he came to school with a smile on his face.

He was our punter too, I remember telling him to punt the ball but he would tell me the rush was coming too fast. We both smiled. We knew that he wanted to keep the ball in his hands. He always wanted the ball!

I saw him one night against Georgetown, play was designed to go to the right, he took a pitchout and went left. They had two guys shoulder to shoulder in front of him, somehow he split them, spun out and they ran into each other and he ran for about a 60yd TD and there was a block made for him.

Those kinda things have nothing to do with coaching, some kids are just born with that kind of ability. We had several kids over the years like that but as far as being elusive, he was unmatched
I loved coaching Louis. He was unbelievable. Tremendous talent, had a tremendous work ethic, he was a gamer, he thrived on competition, hard to tackle, had the quickest feet you’ve ever seen, and balance, when he got the ball, people (in the stands) started standing up early. He could make a 2 or 3 yard run into something special.

Dave Campbell used to come watch him, they couldn’t believe what he could do.

It was phenomanly challenging for the other team to tackle him, he could cut on a dime and give you nine cent’s change!

He came from some pretty humble beginnings and life was tough for him, but you would never know it by his attitude, he came to school with a smile on his face.

Those kinda things have nothing to do with coaching, some kids are just born with that kind of ability. We had several kids over the years like that but as far as being elusive, he was unmatched.

Coach Johnny Tusa, longtime coach at Richfield, Jefferson-Moore and the renamed Waco High School. His teams went 181-87-2, made 19 playoff appearances, and guided the Lions to the Class 4A Division II state championship game in 2006 and the Class 5A Division II state semifinals in 1991. Tusa spent 4 years working with Grant Teaff at the American Football Coaches Association before rejoining Waco ISD as athletic director. He retired and returned to work with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

Paul: Now let’s get back to your football story. You originally signed with Baylor, or did you sign with Colorado?

Louis: I signed with Baylor.

Paul: Was Colorado in the picture at all?

Louis: Yes sir. Yes sir. Yes.

Paul: Okay.

Louis: Colorado, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State. That’s where I shoulda went. This is one thing about my father, you know, I gotta say, we went through a lot, but one thing about my father, when he met the scout for Oklahoma State, he told me, said, “That’s where you need to be.” And to this day, like if I’da went to Oklahoma State and Prop 48, and had three years at Oklahoma State, I woulda broke all sorts of records, easy.

Paul: Oh, man, Prop 48, I forgot about that.

Louis: Yes. I coulda Prop 48, but I didn’t know anything, and nobody tell me nothing. I was just – I was out there on a limb. I didn’t – every school I went to, they lured some bull, you know, and I was like, I just didn’t know what to do. I mean, I didn’t have nobody.

Paul: Yes. It’s not like today, where you have all the people advising you.

Louis: Yes, it’s not like today. I was just by myself. And to be the number one running back in the nation, and I don’t know anything – I was like, oh, man. It was crazy.

Paul: Oh, yes, man. So, you signed with Baylor. Grant Teaff would’ve been the coach, right?

Louis: Yes sir.

Paul: And who would’ve been your position coach there? Do you remember?

Louis: I don’t know. I don’t know. I would just – the reason I signed I signed with Baylor is because of Grant Teaff and Pete Fredenburg.

Paul: Okay. Oh, that’s right. Yes. I remember them, yes.

Louis: Yes. Two good men. But grades got me.

Paul: So when I talked to Coach Harms, he said that Don Pittman started talking to you.

Louis: Don Pittman. But first I went to Navarro JC. I rushed for 2,788 yards that season. I was coming out of junior college, like ranked number one, you know? So I mean, Texas A&M, Florida, Georgia Tech, they used to come down there, watch me run the 40. I ran a 4.29 on grass.

Paul: Holy cow.

Louis: So, I tell them “Man, I gotta go back to Baylor.” So, all of a sudden I get a phone call from somebody I didn’t know. I had to go up there to the coach’s office. I got a phone call, they say, “You gotta to go” – I had to go to Kansas. It wasn’t in the city. Fort Scott. I gotta go to Fort Scott, Kansas. I’m like, “What? For what?”

Paul: Yes, Coffeeville, yes.

Louis: Yes, yes. I went to – so, I was like, why – I just did two years at Navarro. Why do I gotta go to Kansas? So, to make a long story short, I went to Kansas, and I’m doing good up there, I was practicing with their football team, but I was just, I was getting ready to come back to Baylor. So, all of a sudden, all of the coaches at this school, they quit. They left in one night.

Paul: Wow.

Louis: Yes. It was me, and I don’t know if you remember this guy named Mario Bailey.

Paul: Yes, yes, yes.

Louis: Yes. It was me and Mario Bailey, we were the only two that was from out of state, so we had to live off campus. So, they was paying anything for us. But when the coaches left, they kicked us out the apartment.

Paul: Oh, my God.

Louis: I couldn’t go back to school. I was trying to call Baylor. I don’t know what’s going on. But no phone calls being answered. So, when I got back to Waco, I seen a guy named Keith Pittman that used to play with me at Waco High. And he was like, “Why ain’t you going to school, boy? You should go to Baylor, eat it up.”

I’m like, “Naw, man, I don’t know what’s going on.” I said, “I just gotta be careful.” I said, “Man, I don’t even know if I’m eligible to go anywhere.” And he was like, “You go to Baylor.” I said, “Man, Baylor ain’t answering my phone calls.” I said, “I don’t really want to go over there because I’m not disrespectful like that.” I said, “I don’t know what’s going on.” He’s like, “I’m gonna get you on the phone.”

He got me on the phone with Coach Pittman that night because Pittman came to pick me up. I was on the streets again. He came and picked me up from North Waco in the park. All I had was my jeans, my shoes, my jeans, and my shirt. He say, “Do we need to go somewhere and get something else?” I said, “Coach, this is all I got.”

Paul: Oh, man.

Louis: “It’s all I got, Coach.” I say, “You gone take me up there and feed me, I go to school, Coach, that’s all I want to do.” I just wanted to play. I just wanted to play football. So, I gotta go find me a place to lay down. I didn’t want to go back this hood and do nothing crazy for my life. So, I’m like, “If you crank this car up, Coach, I’m riding with you.” He came and got me the next day. He sure did.

Paul: And then you went right down to Kingsville.

Louis: I went right down to Kingsville. He had an apartment set up for me and everything, and I was like, I’m cool. Yes sir.

Paul: And Coach Harms loved that.

Louis: It like, it was so crazy, but like when I was sitting there talking to Coach Harms, Coach Harms saying – if I ask him, I say “Coach, if I make this team, I will do” – he say, “Do you know who you are?” I say, “What?” He say, “You’re Louis Fite.” Say, “Man.” He say, “Louis, it’s a blessing for me for you to even sit up in my office.”

Paul: Wow.

Louis: He say, “You’re good, Louis Fite.” He say, “I know what you can do. Just go into your apartment, everything is cool. You’re with this football team. We want you here.”

Paul: Okay.

Louis: I say, “Okay, Coach, okay.” Because I didn’t know if he wanted me there or not. Because I never took my talent as being thinking that I’m better than anybody, probably because I was homeless. I never had a team to just really clutch onto it, that I’m popular, I got a lot – I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that.

Paul: You didn’t know you were Louis Fite.

Louis: I did not know. I didn’t, you know? I’m just a regular person. I just play football, you know?

Paul: And that speaks also to your character.

Louis: Yes sir.

Paul: You know, that you don’t have a super big ego that a lot of people get. I mean, to be a parade All American and things that you got there just in high school, a lot of people would have a big ego.

Louis: Oh my God. Yes sir, yes sir.

Paul: You know, we all have a little bit of ego in us, but man, that character, man, that comes out.

Louis: Yes sir.

Paul: That’s a great story. Coach Harms just loved you to death, just like Coach Tusa. He was so thankful that you came down to Kingsville to play for Texas A&I.

Louis: Yes sir.

Paul: Or was it Texas A&M Kingsville by then?

Louis: A&M Kingsville, yes sir.

Paul: Okay, all right. We lost our identity a little bit when that happened.

Louis: We sure did, yes. Yes.

Louis: Yes sir. I mean, it was some athletes down there. Oh my God.

It really is. So, let’s move on back to Texas A&I. Or, I’m sorry, Texas A&M Kingsville. Okay. So, he said to ask you about Portland State.

Louis: Portland State.

Paul: That was the NCAA Game of the Year, when Louis scored a touchdown, he said we’re doing a flip over the defensive back and landing on his feet in the end zone.

Louis: Oh, yes, yes, yes. I remember that. I remember that. It was like a pinch out. Like I come around the corner and I seen this guy coming. He was coming full speed, and I just charged right over him and land on my feet. I was up for the infield war.

Paul: And then he says, to follow that up, he says, the next week you tried it and you got penalized.

Louis: I sure did. I sure did. Against Northern Alabama. Yes. I flipped over a guy. But that was a crazy one. I flipped over this guy, landed on my feet, and kept running to the end zone, and the linebacker grabbed me like, “What did you just do, man?” He’s like, “I ain’t never seen” –

And they threw my whole – like, he say now, “You can’t do that.” I say, “I can’t flip over nobody?”

And so the referees was like out there like, “Can he do that?”

Paul: What did they penalize you for? What did they finally do?

Louis: I don’t know what they did. I think they gave me the touchdown, but I think they said it was like a celebration. Which I didn’t do no celebration.

Paul: No, you just – you just avoided the tackle. Yes.

Louis: Yes. I just avoided the tackle, you know? I don’t want to get hit in the stomach. He was coming at my stomach, so I flipped over his head and kept going.

Paul: Oh my God. Oh my God.

Louis: Yes sir. Because only what I – because I was in the game, he say, “What do you be thinking about out there?” I say, “I don’t know.” I say, “I just want to score a touchdown, Coach.”

Paul: Sounds like all that pounding might have taken a toll on your knees. Did you ever have them worked on?

Louis: I had three knee surgeries.

I just heal so fast. I don’t know. I remember the doctor telling me, like I came in after ACL surgery. In like three months, I came in. He was moving my leg. He was like, “You know, I don’t feel no movement in the ACL. You almost healed.” I said, “Well,” I said, “I been out there playing for basketball.” He said, “You been playing basket?” “Yeah,” I said. “I been playing basketball, running a little bit.” I say, “Making a little moves.”

He was like, he told me, saying “Son, you’re abnormal. I’ve never seen that.” I said, “Doctor, because my mom is – my grandmother was a full-blown Indian.”

Paul: Oh boy. She was – what kind of Indian was she?

Louis: She was Blackfoot.

Paul: Blackfoot. So, that’s like in the Dakotas, isn’t it?

Louis: The Dakotas, yes sir.

Paul: Oh wow. Wow.

Louis: Yes, yes.

Paul: Well, maybe they’ll give you some money for being the Indian casino.

Louis: I always – I see the guy that – I see the guy from scholarships because my mama told me, I’m like, “If you would’ve told me, I could’ve got some scholarships from just from my Indian heritage.”

Paul: Oklahoma.

Louis: Yes.

Paul: Oklahoma does, I know for sure. But anyway.

Louis: Yes sir.

Paul: You live and you learn, man, I’m telling you.

Louis: You live and you learn.

Paul: Life passes you by, but then it catches up with you.

Louis: It catches right back up with you.

Paul: So, going back to Texas A&M Kingsville, Coach Harms just loved you to death.

Louis: Yes sir. He was a great coach.

Paul: He said “Louis was a good guy, had excellent character, and did a nice job. It was a pleasure to have him.”

Louis: Yes sir.

Paul: So, you get through with your Texas A&I career. How did – now, you graduated from TAMU-K?

Louis: No, I didn’t. I left in ’94. I should have, but I didn’t. I left in ’94.

Paul: You were there two years?

Louis: I was there two, but I had three years.

Louis: Anyway, they coulda gave me $100, I woulda lived. Because that cafeteria was a dream to me.

Paul: Oh, yes.

Louis: Man, I could go to see Miss Martinez!

Paul: Oh, yes.

Louis: Oh, my God. Man, Miss Martinez in the back, she used to be like, “Oh.”

Paul: “Here comes Louis. Okay, here’s the good stuff.”

Louis: “Here comes Louis.” Yes. You know, because she know I’m sit there eat, and they really took care of me down there. Like I say.

I remember Louis signed with Baylor out of High School but for some reason didnt get in. Then if you remember Don Pittman, my assistant coach, found Louis and signed him at A&I. So Louis ends up at A&I which was a good thing for us as Louis was a very good player.

I remember him particularly in a game against Portland State, which was one heck of a game, I think it was ‘NCAA Game of The Year’ all divisions because we dropped way behind and then made a huge comeback.

I remember Louis scoring a TD by doing a complete forward flip over a defender and landing his feet in the end zone. And then he tried again the next week and got penalized!

Louis was a great player for us and had great character. It was a pleasure to have him on the team.

College Hall of Fame Coach Ron Harms. Harms served on Gil Steinke’s staff at Texas A&I in 1974 and 1975 before becoming an assistant to Grant Teaff at Baylor for three years. Harms returned to Texas A&I in 1979. In his first season, he guided the Javelinas to a NAIA national championship. With Harms at the helm, the Javelinas captured ten Lone Star Conference Championships. All in all, he compiled a coaching record of 219–112–4.

Paul: So, let me go back here just a second here. So, who were some of your other teammates down there at Texas A&M Kingsville? Some of the best players.

Louis: Best players. Let me see. I’d say Kevin Doggins.

Paul: Oh, yes. Played for the Bucs and the Bears, oh, yes, he was good.

Louis: But the best, what I can say, I think Doggins and Jermaine Mayberry.

Paul: Oh yes, yes, yes. I remember him. 1^st rounder, played for Philly for a long time. I think the Saints after that.

Louis: Yes. But I’m gonna tell you right now, and this is serious talk, the best offensive lineman on that team was Jamie Martinez.

Paul: Oh, I remember him.

Louis: Man, Jamie could block, he could pull. He was an athlete, man. He was the best. And he never got a chance to go to the league, but I’m like, why Hymie didn’t go? You know what I’m saying? Like, Jamie was the best. He was skilled. He was like a technician. I always ran behind him.

Paul: Oh, man.

Louis: I ran behind him.

Paul: You guys had a great offensive line, I remember that.

Louis: Oh my God, we had a great one. You looked at it, it was three of them that played for Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They started.

Paul: I remember pictures.

Louis: George Floyd The guy that died when the police was standing on his head, he went to school with us.

Paul: I remember hearing that

Louis: Yes. His cousin name was Jeff Green.

Paul: Oh, really?

Louis: Yes. His cousin, Jeff Green. He was always at my apartment. Always. Because when I seen his face, I said, “Man, I know him.” And I would say to people like even before he came up that he woulda take that in Kings – I’d say, “Man, you went to Kingsville, man.”

Paul: Yes, he was.

Louis: I say, “He did.” I’d say, “I’m telling you, he was in my apartment.” They say when it came out, people came, all apologize me. I say, “I told you.”

Paul: Yes.

Louis: “I knew that guy.” Yes. I knew George Floyd.

Paul: Yes, he kinda went downhill a little bit after he left, didn’t he?

Louis: He did. Yes, he did. He started messing around with the rapper guys and stuff like that.

Paul: Yes. Some people you hang around with, man, they influence you way too much if you don’t have great strong character, you know?

Louis: Right.

Paul: That’s why I love to hear these coaches telling the same thing, always the same thing. “Louis had great character. Great character.”

Louis: Yes sir. Yes sir.

Paul: I mean, that, to me, I just knew I was gonna love talking to you.

Louis: Yes sir. Thank you, I appreciate it. Yes sir.

Paul: So, let’s talk about after Texas A&M Kingsville. You went to Chicago Bears.

Louis: I went there. Like they brought me up there, like I go through that. They brought me up there, but I never did touch the football field because got a bad attitude and impossible, you know? So, they never did let me really touch the football field too much.

Yes, yes. I was there with the old Cowboy Coach, Dave Weinstadt.

Paul: Yes.

Louis: So, this agent was there, and me and him start talking. He was like, “Man, I got some connections in the CFL.” So, I’m like, “Sir, all I want to do is play football, you know?” He’s like, “Well, they’re not gonna let you on the field.” He said, “They about to close out training camp. You’re probably gonna get cut.” He say, “What you want to do?” I say, “Whatever you want me to do, I’m gonna do.”

So, he sent me to Baltimore Stallions. They was like on their tenth game of the season, and so like I was out there with like 80 guys they was flying out. And like we was right there by the football team. The football team was practicing, we was at the end zone, you know? We was running 40s.

So, after I ran the 40, the coach was like, “Hey, take a minute and go get the jersey.” So, I was out there with a jersey on with my shoulder pads on, rapping with the offense, and them guys were still down there training. They were still down there training. They was still down there trying out for the team. I ran one 40. One 40, they said go get him dressed. I was like, thank you, thank you, I ain’t going home.

Paul: Thank you, God. Thank you, God.

Louis: I’m gonna get a paycheck. That’s what I need, was a paycheck.

Paul: Well, I would think the CFL was perfect for you with your speed, you know?

Louis: It was. It was. It was.

Paul: Wider fields and all that stuff, yes.

Louis: Yes sir. I had fun. I had fun in CFL. Yes sir.

After we won the Grey Cup, we won the Grey Cup again, we moved to Montreal the next year. Yes, and I played for Montreal the last two years.

Paul: Okay. That’s the Alouettes?

Louis: Yes, Montreal Alouettes.

Paul: Okay. So, why did you leave there?

Louis: I was just – I did three years, and I just – like before my last year, I was at the high school. You know, like I say, I know football, but I didn’t know the insides of it, of the coach’s office. So, when I went to the coach’s office and I heard some coaches say, “Well, I don’t too much care about this kid. No, man, speed up. Speed up your workouts.” Some of the kids don’t know what they’re doing, man. Just pass them by. That kinda got to me, you know?

I left it off with them, but it got to me because I was like, is this how they do it? Like, if the kid’s not good enough, they don’t care? They not even gonna try to train the kid to get better? Because you got some guy that just don’t know, but if I figure it out, I’m better than the guy in front of me. I just don’t know what’s going on, but I like getting the chance.

So, to me, those underachiever guys, those guys who’s willing to work and don’t want to be flashy, those the guys that’s – I don’t know too much, but if you teach me, Coach –

But it’s like everybody wanted to go to these All-American kids and leave these mediocre kids out. So, what I seen that, and I went to another school, I wanted to see. I know some guys, I go talk to them. “Come to the football field, and I go see.” And I seen them doing the same thing. They would not help out the kids that just wasn’t good enough, you know? That right there told me right there, I need to start training. I need to start training kids.

Because every guy that’s second and third string behind me, I made sure what I know, you know.

Paul: Right, right, right. Yes. So they can chip right in, your back.

Louis: Yes. So, if I get hurt, here you go, you’re stepping in, there’s no mistakes. So, I wasn’t scared to show people what I know. I wasn’t scared about that. But a lot of athletes like that, you know, they’re not gonna teach them everything. So, I mean, especially I’m just checking the second stream – those the guys that are looking for your job. But to me, it was a family, you know? If I know it, you know it. If I know the play, you know it. I show you how to read a play, I show you how to cut, I show you what the D’s are just setting up. Stuff like that.

Paul: Right, right, right. How to get that elbow at a certain point.

Louis: Right. How to do things right. So, after I seen that, I just said I’m gonna play one more season. My calling is really to help out these kids, and that’s what I been doing.

Paul: Right. So, was the pay pretty good in CFL?

Louis: It’s pretty good. My first year was $50,000. I think my third year – no, my second year was $75. I came out of it, my last contract was $109,000.

Paul: Yes. Nothing to sneeze at, yes.

Louis: For a guy like me, that’s generous. Nothing to sneeze at.

Paul: That bought a couple of burgers.

Louis: So, yes, like I say – yes. I could get cheese on it now, you know? So, I was just happy. I saved it, every one of my paychecks. I just did it right.

Paul: So, let me ask you something real quick here. Now, you were talking about your girlfriend at Texas A&M Kingsville.

Louis: Yes sir.

Paul: Is that your wife today?

Louis: No. She passed away.

Paul: Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.

Louis: Yes, she passed. She passed away off of a car wreck.

Yes, we was together all the way through CFL and everything. So, in 1999, she had a car wreck.

Paul: Oh my God.

Louis: Yes.

Paul: You had a lot of tragedy in your life.

Louis: Yes, yes, yes. That’s why I live one day at a time. I make sure I live the whole day because you’re not guaranteed that tomorrow.

Paul: Right, right. So, how did you meet your wife that you have today?

Louis: Well, I met her when I came to Fort Worth because I was throwing a football camp, and she’s a bigtime – she’s a technician, you know? She teach kids how to long jump, triple jump, kind of the same thing –

And she’s a heck of a volleyball coach. She’s like the winningest volleyball coach in Texas history, you know? So, she was out there at the football camps, you know? She seen me helping out the kids, and we just started talking and talking and talking. And she was like, “I don’t believe a man like with your stature, you’re out here, you’re not even taking no money from the kids.” I’m like, “No. I don’t do this to be rich. This don’t pay my bills.” I say, “I’m doing this so I can really help out these kids, you know?”

Paul: And that was your introduction.

Louis: And that was my introduction. Right there. We just clicked on without the – after that, we been together for 10 years now.

Paul: Wow. Well, congratulations.

Louis: Yes. Yes sir.

Paul: Wow. That’s incredible.

Louis: I think she would say 20 because I’m a little rough…

Paul: Well, you’re from Compton.

Louis: Right, right, right. I’m not really rough, she just tell me “You need to start charging. You need to charge these people more money.” And I look at her. And like ever since she be with me, she have seen so many kids come to the house and live. You know, homeless, because I take care of a lot of homeless kids, too.

Paul: Oh, wow.

Louis: So, she see a lot of homeless kids. Because she wasn’t used to that. She from San Saba, so she’s not used to that. And for me to bring in people and take care of them and give them stuff, she seen me stop and I take my shoes off where the kid walking down the street. I ask, “Hey, what size you wear?” “I wear size 10.” “Hey, I got some. Let me get you some.” And I give some brand new – you know, just anything I got on my foot.

I’m just – because that was me back in the day. I needed that, you know? I needed somebody to do that. I used to go – I couldn’t even tell you what kind of shoes I wore now because I never had a first day school clothes. I never seen a Christmas. I never had an average Thanksgiving. I never had that.

So, I do it for these kids now.

Paul: Right, right. So, how are you making a living these days?

Louis: Well, I do football camps right now, and I was coaching at Bishop Dunne High School, and they said I was doing too much. I was helping out the kids too much. So, I’m talking about the coaches were saying that. They was like – because you know, the kids fell in love with me. They Googled me up, they seen my background, they can see what kind of person I am. The coaches got kinda nervous that I’m coming for your job, but I just want to work. I just want to come and help out kids. I don’t care about no head coach job. To me, that’s just a label.

Paul: Yes.

Louis: A head coach is a guy that go out there and show his love for these kids and make sure these kids are getting scholarships because that’s gonna better their lives. That’s what we’re coaches for. We’re coaches to get these kids –

Paul: Well, they need a guide.

Louis: Right.

Paul: They need a guide. Somebody who can guide them through the things you had to learn by yourself.

Louis: Yes sir. Yes sir. And they got kinda nervous about it, so, you know, we – but this one school said I was gonna be the head coach, but I didn’t because I don’t have my education. I could’ve been a head coach last year for Bishop Dunne, but I just don’t got my education because of what Coach done did. And so it’s like, you know, like I’m not coaching no more, but I train kids, and I’m blessed to have a wife that’s willing to be there for me and pick up the pieces where I don’t have. So, like what I don’t got, she has.

Paul: If you’re lost, she kind of smooths you out.

Louis: Right, right. If I don’t got this, if I don’t got the money for this football camp, she’s gonna do it, you know?

Paul: That’s incredible.

Louis: Yes. Just like she been helping me out for so much. That’s why she’s telling me, like –

Paul: It’s a passion. You have a passion.

Louis: Yes, okay. Yes. And she’s like, okay, this year right now, you got 22 kids with Division 1 scholarships. And these were the kids that they gave up on. These were the kids that they say they can’t even play on my football team. I took over one year, trained them, and then made number one – I got the number one linebacker in the nation. I got the number one quarterback, I got the number one private school quarterback in the state of Texas, the number one inside wide receiver. It’s gonna go to – I mean, these kids was ganging up on – and I taught them from bottom to top, from bottom to top. And right now they’re some of the best kids in the state of Texas right there playing football.

Paul: That’s incredible.

Louis: So, that’s why she like, “Hey, now it’s time to charge.”

Paul: Yes, yes. But you gotta have a passion. That’s one thing I’ve heard from every coach, is he had the passion.

Louis: Yes sir.

Paul: Besides character, they said he worked his butt off, you know?

Louis: Yes sir, yes sir.

Paul: It’s a lot like what I do. I mean, these Memories of Texas Football, it’s all part of Memories Incorporated. It’s a nonprofit.

Louis: Right, right.

Paul: What we do is we simply talk to people like you and get the stories.

Louis: Yes sir.

Paul: I want your words. I’m not gonna reinterpret this interview. I’m gonna put down there almost word for word.

Louis: Yes sir.

Paul: You know, I’ll clean up any – we didn’t really have any bad language in here, but I will!

Louis: Oh no sir, no sir.

Paul: You probably know the guys like me, the hanger ons.

Louis: Yes. I’m telling you, I love them guys, man. I was always out front. I’m telling you, I didn’t care who it was. You went in the start or not a starter. If you knew me, we were out front.

Paul: Oh yes.

Louis: I never jazz it, at all.

Paul: Okay because you’ll be able to see this thing forever. It’s like your bio.

Louis: I appreciate it. Thank you.

Paul: John Fitzgerald Booty was our first one that was for the Football page.

Louis: You know, that’s my uncle.

Paul: Oh, he is? No way.

Louis: That’s my uncle.

Paul: Now, have you read my interview with him?

Louis: Yes, I been seeing those. I been seeing those. Yes. That’s my uncle. That’s my uncle.

Paul: I love John. He’s just such a positive guy, man.

Louis: Yes.

Paul: John. That’s the guy.

Louis: Robin, you know Robert Newhouse is my uncle.

Paul: No way!

Louis: Yes sir, yes sir. That’s my mom’s brother.

Paul: Oh, wow. Because we used to call him The Thigh.

Louis: The Thigh, yep.

Paul: The Thigh because he had the biggest thighs –

Louis: The biggest thighs.

Paul: I think I’ve ever seen on a human being, his thighs.

Louis: Yes, my legs is big, too.

Paul: Oh, really?

Louis: Mm-hm. I got some big thighs.

Paul: You played about 190, didn’t you?

Louis: More like 196, 185.

Paul: Okay. All right, man. Now, how tall are you?

Louis: 5-8.

Paul: 5-8, okay. So, you’re kinda stocky.

Louis: Yes, yes, yes.

Paul: Okay. Well, are you still 196?

Louis: Yes sir. Everybody say I still look the same way I did in high school.

Paul: Oh my God, man. I wish I did. I wish I did. I look at these old pictures when I was lifting heavy, man. Of course I had the massive chest and everything like that. But I think I had a 32 waist.

Louis: Oh, that’s – yes, yes.

Paul: Now it’s more like a 42.

Louis: Just a couple of pounds, that’ll be all right.

Paul: Oh my God, oh my God.

Louis: That would be all right.

Paul: Yes, man. Well, listen, Louis. thanks so much for your time. But before we go, I want to make sure folks that need training know how to get hold of you. Go to https://www.facebook.com/Louis-Fite-Building-Field-Leaders-972451592796106/ on Facebook or give him a call at 817-877-7052.

Louis: Thank you. Thank you so much

Paul: This is gonna be a great interview. You went through so much and still found the right path. I love it. Thank you, sir.

Louis was a gamer, really flashy. There were a lot of great backs in my time but only two others come to mind, Terry Upshaw from Lubbock Estacado and the great Johnny Bailey from Houston Yates.

5’8, 180 – 190, Fites was sculpted and totally fearless. He wouldn’t back down from a matchup on or off the field and wanted to walk, talk and look the part even now, he was impossible to outwork

He led quietly by example, had a great work ethic. Seems like a good character type guy, Fire ate slept and drank the part

He was on a Lubbock team and a few other I was on including the Corpus Christi Hammerheads and he was the talk of the league flipping over guys in the end zone.

Robert Watson, former TAMU-Kingsville and semi-pro player with Louis

I was privileged to be Louis teammate at A&I / A&M Kingsville in 93 & 94. We were a solid team not only winning the Lone Star Conference Championship, but we were NCAA Division ll National Championship contenders. (Lost both years to National champion North Alabama 27-25 in 93 in the semifinals & 16-10 in the Championship game).

Louis was the most electrifying player / athlete I had ever seen. His agility, speed, vision, and more importantly his work ethic was amazing. When Louis had the ball in his hands you knew something special could happen at any moment a cut here, a spin there, or even a 3 yard flip over a would be tackler into the end zone. That flip brought the school National prominence appearing on ESPN plays of the week, and sports caster Marv Albert played a clip of it on David Letterman on a bit of amazing sports clips from around the world. With all that being said the best thing about Louis was his humbleness and kind heart. Back in our time most studs were jerks and felt a sense of entitlement, not Louis he spoke and respected everyone, and was always ready to help and guide others. In my opinion Louis was a great player, but an even greater person.

David Lopez – Athletic Director- Head Football Coach of the Crystal City Javelinas – Crystal City Texas

The post LOUIS FITE, PARADE ALL AMERICAN first appeared on Memories Incorporated, a Texas 501c3.

The post LOUIS FITE, PARADE ALL AMERICAN appeared first on Memories Incorporated, a Texas 501c3.

CHARLIE WATERS & THE ALLIGATOR SHOES

meminc — Sun, 17 Jan 2021 23:37:00 +0000

Charlie Waters and the Alligator Shoes

Charlie Waters at Safety for the Dallas Cowboys, courtesy Clemson University and Charlie Waters

by Paul Heckmann

Executive Director, Memories Inc.

“If I had 45 players that tried as hard and cared as much as Charlie did, we would not lose a football game.”
Dallas Cowboys Coach Tom Landry

To preface a bit, Charlie was a veritable encyclopedia of football, the consummate NFL pro. Very smart, very articulate and needed absolutely no direction from me to tell his story! He jumped right in. I simply turned on the recorder and let him tell it the way he remembered.
—

Paul: After talking with you a bit before the interview, I will let you take your story the direction that you want to go. Go for it!

Charlie Waters: We were on the cutting edge in preparation.

Paul Heckmann: I was gonna go into this a little bit later on, but you worked with Bob Ward quite a bit didn’t you?

Charlie: Yes, I did. Bob taught me an awful lot about body control, self-control, and strength, and perfect practice makes perfect, not practice makes perfect. But his individual, one on one contact and what you look at is the key to everything. And so if you’re not real serious about it, that doesn’t mean a damn thing to you. But I was real serious about it because it meant a lot to me, to perform. And so, it was great. Bob was a great inspiration. There’s two or three things that he did that really helped me. He increased the strength of my grip. And nobody ever thinks about that, about being able to grab somebody and hold on.

Cowboy Strength and Conditioning coach Bob Ward with Bruce Lee training partner Dan Inosanto. Photo courtesy the internet included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.

Bob Ward taught us all that stuff. And he was so unique and modernized, Dan Inosanto was his teacher. Dan was taught by Bruce Lee.

I owe an awful lot to Bob, he’s very, very progressive in his thinking.

Paul: Did you know Paul Ward, his brother?

Charlie: No.

Paul: Paul was one of the coaches for the Olympic weight lifting team. I knew him from HTCA and a couple other places out there. He worked with Sammy Walker too, the big shotput guy from SMU. He was on the Olympic weightlifting team.

Charlie: You talk about some timing and coordination. That’s a Hell of a thing, spin around like that, and throw that sucker out. I don’t know how in the world you all did that.

Paul: Well, we used the old glide technique. And about when I was coming in was when we started doing that turn. And that was a mess, for me. I’m in Webster’s when it talks about the guy with two left feet.

Charlie: I’m glad we can laugh about it now.

Paul: Oh, my God.

You know, I think you and I might have met before. I was the maître d’ at the Playboy Club not long after it first opened. Y’all were upstairs, a couple floors above us, there at 6116 North Central. I was the maître d’ there for the first year, in the front. In the disco.

Charlie: Did you ever meet me?

Paul: I’m thinking we must’ve run across each other. Then I left for Papagayo and daVinci after that for the next three or four years. So, we must’ve crossed paths at least once or twice during that time period.

Charlie: I’m sure we did. The Greenville Ave bars.

Paul: Harvey and Too Tall were regulars at Papagayo. They kinda had that corner of that first bar to your right when you came up. That was their place. Everybody knew to stay away from that corner because they’d be coming in. And you hear this voice from around the corner, and you know instantly it’s Harvey. He had that deep Harvey voice.

Charlie: So, why are you doing with this interview?

Paul: We have just started a new Facebook Football page for Memories Inc called Memories of Texas Football. I interviewed John Fitzgerald Booty for our first football interviews. Carthage kid that played at Cisco and TCU before a 9 year NFL career. For the Memories of Dallas Facebook page and webpage, I interviewed Barry Corbin about a month and a half ago. The actor that did Northern Exposure, he played Uncle Bob in Urban Cowboy – the fellow got knocked out by lightning, you know, John Travolta’s uncle. Also just did one with Burton Gilliam, from Blazing Saddles and Papermoon.

Charlie: Burton’s a good friend of mine, too.

Paul: We had a blast. He’s one of these guys you can sit there and just talk to, and talk to, and talk to, and every moment it just seems like he got that big smile. I really had a great time talking to him.

Memories of Dallas and Memories of Texas Football are two things we’re looking at for your interview.

Our 501c3 Non-Profit, Memories Inc. has been around for a little over two years.

Do you know Angus Wynne by chance?

Charlie: I do. I know Angus quite well.

Paul: Yeah. Angus is on our Board of Directors (emeritus now)

Charlie: Angus Wynne is legitimate. He’s special. Tell him that I said hello and along with Rosie. He knows Rosie.

Paul: Will do!

So, let’s get back to Charlie Waters. Now you were born in Miami, how old were you when you moved to North Augusta?

Charlie: I was 10 years old. My dad was a crane operator. In other words, he was in the construction business. So, there’s some opportunities from the a nuclear power plant out there on the Savanna River, right after the second World War, in the ‘50s. So there was some opportunity for construction work. So that’s when we moved to South Carolina. My mom was from Maryland, and my dad was raised in Georgia. So, I had three older brothers. My oldest brother was a half-brother, but my two other brothers, one was three years older than me, and he was a really good athlete.

Paul: Was that Keith?

Charlie: Yes. You did your homework. That’s Keith. He was really, really a good baseball player, and basketball player. Not much of football. Really not that tough. I didn’t know I was as tough as I was back then. We were baseball players. We loved baseball.

So yeah, we moved there to North Augusta when I was 10 and started in baseball.

Paul: Gotcha. Now it looked to me – I was looking on the map there, in some of the photos. That looked like a great area for hunting and fishing and stuff like that. Is that something you guys did?

Charlie: No, I never got into that. We never could. We barely had enough money to put food on the table.

Paul: I see.

Charlie: My dad was, as I said, was a construction worker, and it was – I had one baseball glove the whole time I was growing up. Playing five years of baseball. And Keith, my brother, got a baseball scholarship to Clemson. Surprisingly, it was just about the time I signed as a quarterback for Clemson, my brother got a baseball scholarship to Clemson. Go figure.

He’s three years older that I was. And when I signed with Clemson, they gave him a scholarship.

Paul: Oh. I see.

Charlie: He earned it, but it didn’t happen until I signed with Clemson.

Paul: Was that supposed to be, maybe, an enticement? For you to sign?

Charlie: Yes. Those kind of things happen. If he didn’t deserve it, I

Charlie set to score for the Tigers. Per Clemson Sports

don’t think they would’ve done it, you know? But it just made things a little bit easier for me to sign with Clemson. Because they wanted me to play quarterback, and Alabama wanted me to play running back, or wide receiver, or defensive back, and Georgia wanted me to play running back. Tennessee wanted me to play wide receiver. So, Clemson said they thought I was a quarterback. In reality I really wasn’t a quarterback. Those other guys were right. And I eventually did move to wide receiver three quarters of the way through my second year as a starter. I broke my big toe and had to sit out a game. Then the guy who took my place had a Hell of a game. So, when I came back a couple weeks later, he got his shot out there every week. From then on, I started playing wide receiver. I caught 68 passes at Clemson, which was unheard of, considering they were three yards in a cloud of dust. The Frank Howard days.

Frank Howard, Clemson coach when Charlie was there. Courtesy Clemson Sports

Paul: Frank Howard. Absolutely.

Charlie: Frank Howard days were just a trip, man. You’re talking about a strange comparison between him and Tom Landry.

Paul: Well, tell me about Frank Howard.

“Boy, you believe in magic?”

That’s what he asked me one time when I was – after I’d moved to wide receiver, our quarterback got hurt, in the game.

Paul: (laughs) Well, I was sitting here trying to think of Tom Landry saying the same thing.

Charlie: Yeah. Just go to Tom Landry and then go to Frank Howard.

But he believed in me. He did. I remember one time, this is when I was still playing quarterback.

We were playing Alabama in Clemson. And we got within field goal range of them in the fourth quarter. Or early in the third quarter, we started coming back. And our kicker misses a kick. I was a holder. Our kicker misses a 37 yard chip shot. And that would’ve tied the game. And coach Howard met him 15 yards before he got to the sideline, and called him a gutless m*****r f*****r. I mean, I said ‘Coach, it doesn’t take guts to be a kicker’. What do you mean, gutless? And I said, we got the whole fourth quarter ahead. Don’t be doing that to our kicker. He met him on the field and chewed him out.

Another one he used to say to us was, some us got into fraternity life at Clemson, which was kinda fun to do that. But he said, “I don’t think you should be joining a fraternity. We got our own fraternity. Just call that Delta Phi.” Is that hilarious?

Texas Tech DB Denton Fox, West Texas State Duane Thomas, BC DL John Fitzgerald and Clemson WR Charlie Waters at the 1970 Coach’s All America game in Lubbock. All were Dallas draft picks, Thomas in the 1st, Waters and Fox in the 3rd and Fitzgerald in the 4th. Courtesy Don Williams Lubbockonline.com and USA Today

I mean, he was a comedian. And I went from that to Tom Landry, and I was going ‘Oh, my God.’ Thank God there is someone else going on out there in the world, this world of football. Such a trip. X-rated, and his son was very colorful too. Anyway, Frank Howard, as I said, we had some good coaches on our staff.

Anyway, I had an interesting time at Clemson, and sure enough, Georgia and Alabama and Tennessee, they were all right on – when I got out of there, I was a wide receiver, quarterback turned wide receiver.

And in the draft Green Bay said okay, we’re gonna pick you in the next round. So Green Bay tells me tells me I’m gonna be picked as a wide receiver and I’m saying, all right, all right. Bart Starr! this is great.

And then the next thing I know, I get a call from Gil Brandt. He says, Charlie, can you run backwards?

Paul: (Laughs) ‘What do you mean Gil?’

Charlie: Yeah, what do you mean? Well, we just picked you as a defensive back in the third round in the 1970 draft. We’re hoping you can run backwards.

I said, what about tackling? Don’t I have to know how to tackle? So anyway, it was the beginning.

Paul: That is wild.

Charlie: All of that, everything that’s happened to me during my career at different places in time with the Cowboys is all been, when you look at the grand scheme of things, I’m so thankful I’ve played these other positions. I knew so much more than everybody else.

Because you’re very narrow if you just stay in your one position your whole career. It’s hard for you to broaden your horizons. And you know, Coach Landry was a quarterback in college as well. And he saw something in me that a lot of people didn’t see and I really am thankful that he took me under his wing.

We had a pretty rough year, one year, my second year in the league. My first two years in the league, I just make the team as a backup. I was a backup doing safety and played on special teams. If you don’t mind me going through this.

Paul: Not at all. You’re covering point by point what I was gonna ask you. So, it’s perfect.

Charlie: Okay. So, my rookie year, I barely make the team but I make the team as a backup. And we had Richmond Flowers was the backup free safety, Cliff Harris makes it as a free agent and starts the first five games his rookie year. We have Cornell Green playing strong safety, and I was playing backup SS

Paul: A basketball player?

Charlie: A basketball player.

Gil Brandt at his induction into the NFL Hall of Fame. Courtesy NFL Hall of Fame

Paul: A basketball player and a quarterback turned defensive back.

Charlie: And Gil Brandt is the reason for all of that, without a doubt.

Paul: I know, crazy.

Charlie: Gil Brandt was a genius, and don’t tell him I said that, but he is pretty special.

Paul: We won’t… wink-wink.

Charlie: Oh, he’s a fascinating interview. You need to call him. Ask him to tell the story about alligator shoes.

Paul: Alligator shoes? Oh, my God. (We lost Mr. Brandt since this interview, before I could chat with him. May he rest in peace.)

Charlie: Yeah. I gotta tell you this one story. It’s just so funny.

Gil Brandt drafts me in the third round, and he comes out to South Carolina, and visits me at Clemson. Shows up in a really nice suit, and had a pair of brown alligator tassel shoes. And I had nothing growing up. I mean, we never celebrated a birthday at our house because we didn’t have any money to celebrate a birthday. It’s better to put potatoes on the dining room table than to have a birthday. So, I look at those alligator shoes, and Gil’s up there, and he came to visit me the first time, and I don’t know what he offered me but he didn’t offer what I thought was appropriate. I got some advice from a football player that played at Clemson and then in the NFL on contracts.

So Gil makes me this offer, but I don’t sign and I complimented him on his alligator shoes. Well, about 10 days later I received in the mail, special delivery to me a pair of alligator shoes. They are beautiful. I’m going, this is big time. I am in the big leagues. So, I go another two weeks, maybe three weeks and I don’t sign. But eventually I do sign. I think he gave me $17,000 signing bonus. And $15,000 salary.

Paul: Now, this is 1970, isn’t it?

Charlie: 1970. $15,000 my rookie year as a third round draft pick. So, I signed, and they sent the contract to me. And I signed the contract, and I sent it back to him. He sends me my bonus check, I think I made $3000 bonus. My first year salary was $15,000.

And four days later, after he’d sent me that money, he sent me an invoice in the mail for the alligator shoes!

Paul: (laughs) God dang it!

Charlie: Is that classic or what?

So, now I can talk about this stuff. And then the next thing I know that happens, that’s pretty monumental for me, is Cliff Harris comes in as a free agent, and they keep three rookies. They keep me, Cliff Harris, and Richmond Flowers. Richmond Flowers was an Olympic sprinter, or hurdler. You remember that name?

Paul: I remember that. He could fly!

Charlie: He could fly. But he was goofy. He wasn’t football smart at all. He would step up and tell you that. And he was the backup at free safety and I was a backup at strong safety. After five games, Cliff started all five of the first games and we were I think four and one at the time. Cliff’s National Guard unit got called up to active duty.

So, Richmond Flowers starts the first game, and he tripped a guy on the sideline when he had a chance to knock a guy out. He came in feet first instead of head first, and I remember looking at Coach Landry, he just rolled his eyes up in the air, like who is this guy? So, the next week I start as free safety. I’m 21 years old, I’ve never played defensive back in my life, playing a game against the Green Bay Packers I tackle Bart Starr on the sideline and I ask him for his autograph while I was laying on top of him. But anyway, I ended up leading the team in interceptions. I started six games and got five interceptions. I was the only rookie in the lineup, just like Cliff was the only rookie in the lineup before his callup.

Cliff had to go off to boot camp, but he could come home on the weekends, and he played on special teams. And he and I were best friends. I can’t imagine how uncomfortable that was for him. I mean, that just was horrible. But that was my first year, and it was fascinating to me. We went to the Super Bowl, and I was involved in the Super Bowl an awful lot, for sure. But we lost. And right at the end, Jim O’Brien kicked a field goal and beat us. Then the next year, I was competing with Cliff for free safety. And Cliff was a better free safety than I was, without a doubt, because he had a certain style of play that reminded you that football was a contact sport.

Charlie Waters and Cliff Harris

Paul: I heard him described as ‘a bag of knives’.

Charlie: Yep, he was called Captain Crash. And everybody referenced him as Captain Crash. And your collateral damage was also a factor. He’ll even hit people but he’d also hit us. Herb Adderley grabbed his jersey one day and said, ‘Cliff, quit hitting me! I’m on the same dang team as you are!’

So anyway, Cliff was gonna blow somebody up on every play, and that‘s what he did. He just reminded everybody that it’s a physical game. So, I had the experience of playing free safety for two years, but then the next year I was going back as a backup to Cornell. That same year when Cliff came back, I ended up being a backup at both free safety and strong safety but I never started any games. I played as a backup role and I played a nickel defense and specialty defense.

Paul: 1972?

Charlie: 1971. 1970 was my first year, and 1971 was the year that I came back as a backup behind Cliff. ’70, I played the last six games and led the team interceptions. So, here the next year comes rolling around, and I’m supposed to be a safety. I’m supposed to be a backup safety behind Cornell Green, this is his 12th year in the league or something like that, 10th year in the league. And he was on top of his game. He was an all pro. He was a hell of a player. 6’4″, had the worst hands in the world for a basketball player, but really smart gentleman with hilarious personality. Great player. Really loved him to death as a friend.

Herb Adderley starts slowing down, not putting his face into tackles, which didn’t suit Gene Stallings and also Tom Landry too well. So they tried another corner, Mark Washington, who was in my class. He didn’t fare too well, and the next thing you know, I’m starting at corner.

Here I am now, I’ve played wide receiver, played quarterback, played wide receiver, and then played strong safety, then I played free safety, and now they move me to corner. And I’m the left corner spot and most quarterbacks in the league are right handed (most likely area of the field to attack). And Mel Renfro is the other corner. So, where are they gonna throw it?

And that’s where they threw it, they threw it at me. And so I learned all the techniques, and it was difficult for me, but I got beat one time, Harold Jackson (for the Rams) I think he scored three touchdowns in the game. They weren’t all my fault, but everybody thought they were all my fault. So we got the training room the next day, we were watching the films. Coach Landry got in there and said “Look, Charlie had a rough day yesterday, but I’ll tell you one thing,” and this is what Coach Landry said. And he got me for life when he said this…

“If I had 45 players that tried as hard and cared as much as Charlie did, we would not lose a football game.”

Tom Landry and Roger Staubach, courtesy Washington Times

That’s what he said in front of the team, when we went in to watch the films the next day after the game. And I mean, I just – it sends chills up my spine today to tell the story. I mean, what in the hell did he see? He saw something, and so I ended up playing pretty good. We won, but we missed the playoffs one year, it was the only year we missed the playoffs the whole time I played in the NFL. We made playoffs 11 out of my 12 years. And we missed one year when I was playing corner. I kinda took on the brunt of it, but here’s the blessing in disguise, silver coated lining, here. I learned all the techniques of free safety, I learned all of them because I played it for two years. And then I learned corner for three years, off and on. I was starting sometimes, sometimes backup but led the team in interceptions a couple years.

Gene Stallings, Charlie Waters and Cliff HarrisPhoto courtesy the internet included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.

But I learned every technique that Tom Landry was teaching. And every technique Gene Stallings was teaching from a hands on scenario, I mean, I played it. I knew it. I knew exactly what was happening. If anything, I understood how to play football. Especially since I played quarterback, wide receiver, and all the other positions. So after my fifth year in the league, Cornell Green retires. And the next year I make All Pro at Strong Safety. Coach Landry called me in, told me I was gonna start controlling the defense along with the middle linebacker, you know.

Landry’s Flex defense was so coordinated and so complicated. All I’m telling you, it’s complicated. I can’t even explain it to you now. I think I knew a good bit of the defensive back component of it, but I didn’t understand the frog stance that the defensive lineman used.

Randy White and Charlie Waters comparing abs

Paul: Randy White.

Charlie: Yeah. And so, you think nobody else in the league played the Flex defense. Well, duh. You know why? Nobody else understood it, except for Dick Nolan – and when Dick Nolan tried to play it, he ended up giving up on it. It’s just too hard to teach, and too complicated, but genius, it was all Tom Landry. So then I’m starting to think how in the world did this happen? Frank Howard, Tom Landry? So my first year we went to the Super Bowl, went to the Super Bowl five times in my career. We won two.

Paul: Isn’t it something? Some players, they play their whole career and never make a single Super Bowl.

Charlie: I know. We made the playoffs every year except one. And Landry was so incredibly intense, there was nothing left unturned. There wasn’t one stone still laying on the table. You picked it up, you look at it, you figure it out, it’s a stone, we’re gonna kick the s**t out of them when we do this. If you’re gonna make a mistake, if you’re gonna do something on your own or if you make a mistake, you damn sure better make the play. Because it’s all based on everybody being coordinated with each other. It is a coordinated defense. And every formation had its own defense design for that week. And guess who had to let everybody in the secondary know what was going on, and that was me.

Charlie Waters, circa 1972. It was the era of helmet hair. I had it too!

I played both free safety and strong safety, so I was ready to take that on. And I had a lot better hands than Cornell Green. Cornell should’ve had 50 interceptions. I had 50 interceptions in my career.

Paul: So I hear, there was a poll in 1975, ‘the most underrated, unsung, and all probability underpaid player in the NFL’, and they said that was Charlie Waters, 1975.

Charlie: Yeah, I won the Sports Illustrated unsung hero award two years in a row. Two years in a row, but you know, if you get unsung, if you get an unsung hero, don’t you get sung?

Paul: (Laughs)

Charlie: That ain’t right. So I mean, I played one year with a broken arm when I was playing corner.

I don’t know if you got the book that Cliff and I wrote. But I played the whole season with a rod in my arm. The humerus is the second largest bone on the body. And I had a rod in there. Now you know how stupid we were. Because if you don’t play, somebody’s gonna take your place. And if you don’t play well, somebody’s gonna take your place.

Paul: Oh, yeah.

Charlie: That’s just the way it is.

Paul: I crushed my elbow two years ago in a bicycle accident. And they had to rebuild my elbow, and I just had that bolt removed, probably the same bolt you had. They probably used it in my arm, too, and they just finally took it out after two years. So, I can feel for ya, it’s never the same. It doesn’t matter what they tell you, it doesn’t feel the same, tendons don’t feel the same, nothing feels the same.

Charlie: Nope. That’s right. My rod in my arm was 18 inches long. It was a titanium rod. And let me tell you something, every bone in my body would’ve broken before that bone broke.

Paul: We know the six million dollar man would not work.

Charlie: No, it wouldn’t work. But I really believe that if you can figure out a way to make the joints move a little smoother, guys that are 30 years old, their careers could be extended. Because that’s what you start understanding football is when you turn 30 years old.

Paul: So, let me ask you about – jumping back for a minute to 1971. Now you’ve got to another Super Bowl, you got a win over the Dolphins. And your dad had a near fatal heart attack in the stands.

Charlie: That’s correct. Near the end of the game, it was really a come from behind, it was dramatic, and of course Roger worked magic, miracles and stuff.

But yeah, (my dad) he keeled over in the stands. He was older, and he eventually died from a heart attack, but he recovered and I found out about it in the locker room. My dad was a strong man, had a second grade education. He said, I might be a ditch digger, but I’m gonna be the best ditch digger anybody ever needed. I will do it perfectly. So, he was a very special, tough man, wouldn’t give up. Four boys in his family.

Paul: He taught you something, didn’t he?

Charlie: Yeah he did.

Paul: That’s for sure. Sorry to hear hear of his passing.

My dad used to say, there’s a start and an end to every story. He died on a Friday the 13th. I think he did it on purpose, my dad. I swear to God, that man had a purpose for everything he did, and he dies on a Friday the 13th, like ‘I’m not gonna let you forget it, son.’

Charlie: Wow, that’s hilarious.

Paul: I think that’s what they call dark humor. It’s kinda like, how can you not grin, no matter if it’s your dad or not?

Getting back to football, you you played for 12 years?

Charlie: I sat out one year. So, I only got on the field 11 years but I got credit for 12 years. Because if you get hurt in the regular season or in the preseason, you get credit for that season. You get your money and you get credit. So, yeah.

Paul: So, who were the leaders of the team back when you first came in?

Charlie: Well, Lee Roy Jordan ran the defense, as middle linebacker. And Cornell Green would be in charge of the secondary. And Bob Lilly was a quiet, great performer. Offensive side of the ball was Roger, of course. And Dan Reeves was the coach, the player/coach for a while and then he ended up being a NFL head coach. I really wish that Dan would’ve taken over the offense. Coach Landry handled both sides of the ball. I mean, nobody does that. He was the only coach in the history of the NFL that handled both sides of the ball. He worked his tail off, and he had an idea for all of it.

He had me for life, and he was really a good person. A smart person.

Paul: Tell me about the bicycle built for two. For you and Cliff

Charlie: Is that goofy or what?

A bicycle built for two! Photo courtesy the internet included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.

Paul: I’m sitting there going, ‘I can just about guarantee these two boys there did not buy that bike!’

Charlie: (laughs) No, they did not! It was some kind of cover shot, they brought the bike.

Paul: That was pretty good, I like that one.

So also, you were an expert at one other thing, there. A lot of other people forget, and that’s holding for extra points.

Charlie: Yeah. Extra points field goals, yeah. I did it for 10 years.

Coach Landry, he just knew that I cared, and I was a perfectionist in everything. And I was so damn serious about the game, techniques, and detail stuff. And holding for extra points for field goals is an absolute thankless job and you only get attention when you drop it. I think I lost one of them in the 10 years that I held, and that was it. I think I missed just one fumble, and it was in a playoff game against Atlanta. And I thought the game was gonna be determined because of my drop the extra point. But it didn’t. It just affected the bettors. It was a three point line, and if we made the extra point, we covered the line, but it didn’t. So, I got hate letters in the mail.

Paul: Oh, no.

Charlie: Accusing me of throwing the game. It’s all your fault!

Coach Landry makes an announcement, because all the kickers at training camp when I’m with Tony Fritsch who’s our kicker from Germany. And he said, after about a week of practice some of the kickers like to have the ball placed in a certain way, other kickers another way. He says from now on, everybody holds the same way for each kicker. If we do it the same way every time for everybody, then it becomes a moot factor.

The next day after Coach Landry did that in front of the whole team, we get ready to do the field goal drill, we get ready to warm up around the back of 12 yard line. Tony comes up to the spot – I had my finger down on the ground, and he comes up to me, and he puts his foot there right by the spot, and he speaks through his helmet, ‘a little more angle’. Coach Landry is 12 feet behind us, and he’s hearing everything. Tony could barely speak English, and I’m going, what in the f*** am I gonna do, because I knew Tony was the best kicker we had. Landry watches me hold at Tony’s angle, so he understood, he didn’t say anything. I thought that was one of the funniest stories I’ve ever told.

I played two more years after my knee surgery, but let me tell you, I was playing with a handicap. It was difficult. I was playing with my brain alone. They didn’t know how to fix an anterior cruciate back then, and they sure didn’t fix mine very well because I was only able to play another two years.

+++End of Part One. We pick up the next morning +++

Charlie Waters, Cowboy Safety, 1975. Photo courtesy the internet included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.

Charlie: Hey, good morning, Paul.

Paul: Hey, Charlie. How are you doing, buddy?

Charlie: Doing all right. How about yourself?

Paul: Very good, thanks for asking.

I’m just going to kind of pick up where we were yesterday. Now I did have a question for you. I keep seeing this four blocked punts in a single game. Is that correct?

Charlie: No, not in a single game. Four blocked punts in two separate games. Back to back. Two in one game and then two, the next game.

Paul: Makes more sense. But still, darn incredible.

Charlie: So, I guess you could say I’m making up a stat, but that doesn’t fill the slots because I blocked two punts at the end of the season against the Los Angeles Rams, when we lost the game. I had an interception, 10 tackles, and two blocked punts. It was against Los Angeles in the playoff game. And then, the very first game, next year, preseason game, I blocked two punts, again. Now that doesn’t mean squat because you don’t get to count the preseason games. But to me, I mean, it is still the same feat, to have accomplished something that radical. But, anyway, it’s back-to-back games. Two and then two.

Paul: I was trying to figure out how in world a coach wouldn’t adjust to that with the up back or something.

Charlie: What are they doing? Don’t they want to block me? You’d think they’d try to block me.

Paul: I was sitting there thinking that special teams coach didn’t have a job the next day.

Charlie: That’s exactly right. The next year, there’s another coach.

Paul: I would have put the three upbacks on you. To heck with everybody else.

Charlie: (Laughs) Well you had Thomas Henderson on the inside. And man, those guys were ferocious, so they had to collapse down on them.

Coach Landry and Ed ‘Too Tall’ Jones… yep, Coach is smiling. Photo courtesy the internet included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.

Paul: Oh, you had Too Tall in the middle.

Charlie: Yeah.

Paul: That’s right, because, mean, he just stuck his paw up there and he blocked a couple of them.

Charlie: Yeah, he used to block field goals. He never block the punts. But Gene Stallings is the person that taught me how to block a punt.

Paul: Tell me!

Charlie: Gene Stallings, my defensive back coordinator, from Texas A&M. He was my position coach for 10 years, and I loved him to death. He was a great, great coach. And he even went on to be a head coach at St. Louis.

So, he taught me how to – We used to have a punt-blocking exercise, which is really coming for the punter. It’s really coming for the punter, because he is probably going to get hit a couple of times. But basically, the thought pattern that he wanted us to feel and try to accomplish was you don’t try to time up swinging at the ball. You just come in there and reach your hands out and keep them out straight. And it’s a simple little thing, but we practiced it and we practiced it. And I did it pretty good, when I blocked the punt, but I had such great timing on it. I was there, and I knew I was going to get it.

It’s the same way with trying to knock a pass down. He always used to tell us, “Just reach. Just reach. The ball is going to bounce off your hand, and it’s going to be incomplete. You don’t have to slap it down. And that takes timing to try to swing it.” So, I mean, all these little things were just fascinating to me. I love all those little techniques.

Paul: It’s a science.

Charlie: – Yeah, a science. Sure.

Ernie Stautner, one very intense coach. Courtesy EBay. Photo courtesy the internet included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.

Paul: So, tell me a little bit about Ernie Stautner.

Charlie: Ernie was a tough, tough guy, but I really had a lot of respect for him because he was almost crippled, about right at the end of my career. His knees were so bad, and he’d been beat up so much. His hands were just gnarly and everything. But he was really good at stopping the run. And Coach Landry is the one – Coach Landry designed the flex defense to stop the run. And Ernie Stautner, he just was an extension of Tom Landry about the little details.

And, of course, he was a stickler for all kind of details when it came to steps. I don’t know if you’ve seen any– if you’ve ever done any kind of studying of the flex defense, but the guy that’s in the crouch position that’s about two yards off the ball? He actually reads the offensive linemen, not the one blocking on him, but both of them, the one blocking on him and the one nearest. If he’s in the gap, he has to read them both.

And that changes what he does. If the guy tries to block down on him, then he’ll loop around him. And it had everybody baffled. And we always had a lineman free, it seemed. And then, all my job was, as strong safety position, was one, turn the play in. I had to get the fullback or guard. And regardless of if it’s a 100-pound difference in size I still had to turn the play in.

And then, – in some defenses, Thomas Henderson would turn the play in. Or my strong side linebacker would turn the play in and I’d be the one that was designated to be the tackle. So, we were actually playing an eight-man front mainly because of Cliff Harris. Coach Landry designed defenses that had Cliff responsible for a gap on the weak side, a free safety.

Having a gap on the weak side of the formation. Yeah it’s fascinating when he did it. And then, I would become the free safety from the strong safety position, so we can see that being different. The offensive team thinks that with the linebacker being outside, that I’m going to be the one plugging the gap between the tackle and the tight end, but it wouldn’t be me, it’d be the defensive end and Cliff would cover an extra hole on the other side open and it would be Cliff Harris at that gap. He weighed 186 pounds and he knocked the s*** out of me, I’m telling you. He killed me. Anyway, Landry was the first eight-man front. Nobody gives him credit for that but I do, I recognize it.

Thomas destroys the Denver offense in the Super Bowl. Photo courtesy the internet included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.

Paul: So, I talked to Thomas Henderson, told him I was going to be interviewing you, he said to remind you, “Charlie played off my hip. He once called me a gazelle.”

Charlie: Yeah, when he ran that kick-off back against Los Angeles, he looked like a gazelle. He looked more like an animal than he looked like a human being. He had such a great stride and his legs were so powerful. And he had such great rhythm. He knocked down a lot of balls. The other thing that really disturbed me about Thomas is he was such a better athlete than everybody else, or anyone who’s just a better football player than anybody else. He actually should have been playing the weak side linebacker position because the weak side linebacker rushes a lot more than the strong side linebacker does. And the weak side linebacker doesn’t have anybody over him.

Paul: No tight end

Charlie: Exactly. Where Thomas is at, he has to fight through the tight end. We did have some blitzes and anytime we used a blitz I ensure you I know that that ball is going to come out of the quarterback’s hand at a certain time because Thomas is going to be there. That’s why I got a lot of kicks. I just gambled, thinking that we were going to have pass rush. And we did.

I know this, I wasn’t sure that Thomas was going to know all the details, the schemes, because he was a little bit kooky during the week. I used to always reassure him what his job was, just before the ball was snapped and he’d nod his head. He never turned around and looked at me, couldn’t do that because they might snap it, but I would get close enough to him and let him know, okay, contain the outside, turn the play in, let’s rush the gap. Close up the tight end, and then we’ll run a trail technique on the tight end. Those kind of things.

Paul: Kind of reaffirm it.

Charlie: It didn’t bother him that I did that, I think it may give him a sense of security that he’s got a job to do and we all have a job to do and it’s all of us on defense or we don’t play. So, you must make the play if you do not do exactly what your job is.

Paul: Thomas really spoke highly of you. He really did.

Charlie: And I think a lot of him, I think he’s a really, really good person. He just was a little bit full of himself back in the day and I understand why.

He was bigger, faster, and stronger than everybody. He could jump, he could leap, that’s why he was more like a gazelle than a scat cat. I loved him, he had a great attitude and he didn’t give a crap about what the other people thought about him. He played his ass off on every play.

Paul: What more can you ask?

Tell me a little bit about Roger Staubach, the man, the myth.

Charlie: It’s every bit of it is true. A myth is something that’s fantasy, but it’s not with him. I remember the first game that brought us from behind against San Francisco. It might have been 1973, I was still playing corner. We were three touchdowns behind, and Roger got hurt in preseason. So, he sat out every game. And then, Craig (Morton) had a bad game against San Francisco and Roger came in off the bench and scored three touchdowns in four minutes. I might be exaggerating a little bit but that was the beginning of it. And we all started believing.

Roger Staubach and Charlie Waters in charity ball game. Photo courtesy the internet included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.

From the defensive point of view, we used to say this in the huddle all the time, ‘get the fricking ball back to Roger. Just get it back. He will win it.’ We all believed it. I’m sure the offensive guys were excited like heck to play with him because he scrambled and saved so many plays. He had sometime make audibles on his own, so he was really smart at doing that. He could read defenses before the ball was snapped. Most quarterbacks look at the middle linebacker to figure out what the defense is, and the line, so the guard could get the call to the office lineman about what technique they’re going to use. But Roger did a good job of recognizing exactly what the other team’s intentions were. That’s why Coach Landry used to always tell us to disguise our intentions.

I used to give a lot of fake hand signals to my guys. It was just to throw the other team off in case they started getting them.

One of our defenses was a 40 defense, which means man-to-man, free safety, strong side rush, one-man rush with box force, which means Thomas Henderson would be box forcing it. When I played corner I could not see the backs.

We had defenses set up based on what the back field positions were. My strong safety, Cornell, he had plenty on his plate at that time, he didn’t need me to be bugging him.

But I couldn’t tell if it was a split formation from the Corner, we called it the Brown formation with the fullback in line, the quarterback, and back on the weak side. It would change based on my technique and the defense we were playing.

I used to turn to the corners and make sure they knew what the defense was. And we changed it up every once in a while just in case the offense started monitoring the calls.

Paul: I had no idea you would change defending on the fullback setup.

Now we all know how the Redskins were about picking that spy stuff.

Charlie: Yes, they were the Evil Empire. The worst thing they did was there was a hotel behind our practice field, a motel.

I think it was the Motel 6. We weren’t paranoid or anything, but the Cowboys used to rent all the rooms in that hotel for a week when we prepared for the Redskins. At the end of the week we would drive a bus down to the Cotton Bowl and practice at the Cotton Bowl for the last few days of the week.

Paul: There’s something I didn’t know. I will add that to our Cowboy timeline.

Charlie: We would do that against the Redskins because we knew they were caught many times trying to spy on us.

Paul: Sure. Like you said, the Evil Empire

Charlie: What, me worry? (Laughs)

Paul: Oh my God!

Okay, so tell me about the end of your career with the Cowboys. I know you were hurting like crazy back then.

Charlie: The 10th year in the league I was on my game. My best year in the league was the year before and I was really strong and played around – I was around 6′ 2″, 198. Now I’m 5′ 11″.

Lets you know how many head-on collisions I had.

My 10th year in the league in the preseason game against Seattle I stepped on a landmine out there on their artificial turf in a preseason game, that lets you know how hard I was going, even in a preseason game. I planted with my right foot and torqued my body to the left because I was chasing after a tight end and an explosion went off in my knee and I knew it, I tore my anterior cruciate (ACL) and I had to sit out the season and it almost killed me. I did the radio broadcast with Brad (Sham) several times.

Roger ‘Captain Comeback’ Staubach scalping the Redskin Defense. Photo courtesy the internet included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.

That was when the comeback that Roger made against the Redskins in Dallas. I was in the booth that game. Brad said, “Charlie, surely this game’s over.” I said, “Brad, Roger Staubach is our quarterback. Just get the ball back. You’ve got to believe. If you don’t believe you’re not going to make any of your dreams come true.” And sure enough, we get the ball back and he throws a touchdown pass to Tony Hill in the end zone. It was one second to go or something and that was his legacy.

He could win a game with his feet but he could also win a game with his moxie and his never say die.

Paul: Oh, he’s a guy you wanted on your team.

Charlie: We just felt so good with him in there. We had a rotation of Roger and Craig one year where they would go in and out on every play, and that was difficult for us on defense.

Paul: Were you there when Clint Longley did his famous ‘punch and run’?

Charlie: Yes, I witnessed it. Yeah, I saw it all.

Paul: From what I understand, he had everything packed up and ready to go after he sucker punched him.

Charlie: Yeah. I had lunch with him the day before and I was trying to calm him down because he and Roger got in a tussle on the practice field in the pre-practice warm-up and we had to go break it up.

Defensive guys had to go break it up. That lets you know what a competitor Roger was.

But Clint had some skills, he had a really nice way of looking one way and throwing the other. He was real good at that one position. But yeah, I had lunch with Clint the day before. He said, “You know, I figured out how to get traded.” I said, “How are you going to do it?” He said, “You’ll find out.”

Paul: Oh, no.

Charlie: He wouldn’t tell me. I was trying to pick his brain about how he was going to handle this because he got in the fight with Roger at the beginning of practice, I told you that. We knew there was bad blood there and Roger wasn’t going to back down.

Paul: Do you know what the fight was about? Was it just a fight because he was the backup?

Charlie: Clint didn’t feel like he was getting the respect. And Roger, he can step on a person and that’s it. That’s what Roger’s like. He goes for the throat. He was great at holding his position for all those years, even though he wasn’t the ‘consummate quarterback’ for pros because he ran so damn much. He had a separated shoulder that year when he came back from San Francisco. He tried to run over Marlin McKeever, linebacker for the Rams. And he just dislocated his right shoulder. He tried to run over him in the open field and I’m like, “You idiot.”

Paul: Oh, geez.

Clint Longley, The Mad Bomber. Photo courtesy the internet included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.

Charlie: Anyway, sure enough in the locker room, when Roger got on the scales to weigh and he was looking down at the scales, Clint sucker-punched him.

Paul: Oh, man.

Charlie: I went chasing him. He had already left. He already had his bags packed and everything.

Paul: Totally premeditated.

Charlie: Yes, exactly.

Paul: Of all the people to punch and then trying to get traded because of that. Did he actually get traded or did he get cut? Do you remember?

Charlie: We might’ve got some compensation for him. I don’t know what it was. That wouldn’t make it a trade, but if he got cut or released, then there would be no, I’m unsure of that.

(On August 30, 1976, after a training room incident in which Clint Longley sucker-punched Roger Staubach during the 1976 preseason, the team suspended and eventually traded him to the San Diego Chargers along with a first round draft pick (#24-Bob Rush), in exchange for a first (#14-Steve August) and second draft choice (#41-Terry Beeson). The Cowboys used those two picks and two other picks to eventually land the No. 2 overall pick in the 1977 draft, selecting Tony Dorsett. Courtesy Wiki)

Charlie: He had potential, he was really, really good against some defenses, as I told you. He could look me off and throw to the other side.

You know that one game that when Roger got knocked out.

Paul: He did great. Thanksgiving day 1974 against the Redskins. We were trailing in the second half, Roger went down, I think he threw a couple of TDs before he hit Drew Pearson with about half a minute left in the game for a 50-yard hail mary TD

Charlie: Oh my God. He could move the ball down the field. Those linebackers didn’t come at him because they didn’t see, they didn’t know where he was going to throw the ball. I mean, he wouldn’t look them off.

Paul: Sure.

Charlie: I understand that. Because I was a quarterback and also I understand it, because I used to stare right in quarterback eyes, try to guess what he’s doing.

Paul: Right. You couldn’t do that with Cliff.

Charlie: This guy had a special knack for intermediate to short pass and he also had a nice judgment of how fast everything went.

Charlie with Danny White, Tony Dorsett, Harvey Martin and Larry Cole on Family Feud taking on the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. Photo courtesy the internet included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.

Paul: Lets, talk a little bit about post football here. Well, first of all, I’m going to kind of go back in time a little bit. We haven’t touched on your better half, Rosie. Now Rosie has been just always a stunningly beautiful woman. So, tell me a little bit about how you guys met.

Rosie Holotik Playboy cover. Courtesy Playboy magazine.

Charlie: I helped pay for an advert for a motion picture. It was, in a horror movie. It was called “Don’t Look in the Basement”. You could still get it online. Rosie was starring in it. It was built by a company here in Dallas. She was nervous and it was a horror film. I owned a small piece of a restaurant called the Handle Bar restaurant.

So, we offered to have a party to push this new movie that was coming out at our spot. All Dallas, all people who texted us, all people started. It were from Texas. There were players that were in it. Some, a couple of guys where really big because they were, they wanted people being very dramatic. So, I met Rosie there and I fell in love with her. That moment, that day, that night, I don’t know what she thought about me. Who is this guy!

“Don’t Look in the Basement” movie poster. Photo courtesy the internet included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.

Paul: (Laughs) Who does he think he is?

Charlie: No, she didn’t know that I was a football player. I know that.

Paul: Really?

Charlie: Not at first she researched me, just like I researched her. I had been waiting a long time for someone like this to come into my life.

Paul: You where smitten.

Charlie: I was smitten. She could sing, dance, she was on Broadway. She performed on Broadway, she was all over, into their model magazine and she’s still very pretty.

Paul: Absolutely

Charlie appearing in an ad for Ken’s Menswear, 1982. Photo courtesy Charlie Waters

Charlie: Let me go back real quick and then remember where you are right in that highlight the interesting thing about me telling, if you’re in the collection, you’ve mentioned, we don’t do exactly what the defense wants. You damn sure better make the play.

Paul: Right, because you’re on an Island.

Charlie: Against Minnesota before the Hail Mary passed, I dodged it back. I went on the sidelines and asked Gene if I could dodge it back because we both knew what the play was going to be, because they had done the exact same. It was third and two before. This was third and one before and it’s, I guess, third and two. We just knew that he was successful the time before. So, we just knew that he was going to do the exact same play.

Paul: Exactly.

Charles: Just let me try to juke the fullback because they think I’m just going to stand up there and turn the play in like I always do. And he got first down last time they did that. When he does it, I think I can juke that guy, Gene. I don’t know if you can pay attention to early in the film, but Gene said – He looked me in the eyes and he looked at as all sober. He said, “Well, hell Charles, if you don’t make the play, we’re both going to get fired.”

Nobody remembers that. Nobody remembered that play. It’s just a typical unsung hero type of person that happens with me. Not very much credit.

Paul: I love that kind of stuff. And to me it’s so much more than the guy that makes the long touchdown or anything. It’s that unsung guy. The guys up front too, that make that play and they make that stop. And it’s maybe half a yard gain. And then, the next play it’s a half a yard short of a first down. It’s because of that play before, when he stopped him for half a yard gain. You know? So, all these things, they all add up. That’s why it takes 10 yards to get a first down. All these little plays all the – Sorry I’m preaching there.

Charles: Somebody had to jump on the grenade.

So, well, I was going to say the last two years of our career after I had that interior cruciate, I came back and Cliff retired. And so, my last two years, he played 10 years I played 12, so that’s where they used the thing they called Charlie’s Angels. Which had four rookies in the backfield, Everson Walls who was a free agent.

Paul: Oh yeah, Cubby.

Charles: Dennis Thurman. Yeah, Cubby. What a stud. Dennis Thurman was playing for me and a guy named Ron Fellows, we just called him Tweety Bird because he was so skinny. But I had all young kids back here, and here I was 11 or 12-year veteran. I played all the positions.

I knew exactly what they’re supposed to do. They depended on me and I loved it. I loved that responsibility. Maybe it’s a frustrated way of exercising my quarterback. We sure had a lot of responsibilities, but I took it on and I enjoyed it. I really did. And we had a great two years.

It ended with the catch at San Francisco –

Paul: Dwight Clark. Yikes!

Charles: Clay pellets poured out onto the field to soak up the mushy field that Candlestick had. Candlestick Park, it’s under the ground level of water.

So, it’s just always mushy, but really mushy this game. So, then they painted in green and you painted white on there.

Paul: Oh boy.

Charles: They had the whole field like that. And so, when I looked around and I saw the play, and Dwight Clark make the catch – It was not Everson’s fault by the way, it was somebody else’s fault.

I remember falling to my knees, and dropping down face first onto the field, because my career was over.

Paul: Oh, wow.

Charles: And I thought I was getting in my career and getting most valuable player at the Superbowl.

You got to think big, right?

Paul: Sure.

Charles: So, I ended my career with my face buried in green kitty litter. That’s a line for ya right there!

“So, I ended my career with my face buried in green kitty litter.”

Charlie Waters

Paul: Who was the free safety for you that last two years?

Charles: Michael Downs.

Paul: Oh yeah, that’s right.

Charles: Yeah. A kid from down here, right here in South Dallas or something like that. Everson was raised right here in Dallas.

Paul: Right. Hamilton Park.

Charles: Hamilton Park, yeah.

Paul: I know Cubby a little bit. So, did you know, you remember, Beasley Reece by chance?

Charles: Oh sure.

Paul: We were in Boy Scouts together in Waco.

Charles: What a good guy. He’s such a good guy.

Paul: Yeah. I know. I think, he’s in Philly now, if I remember correctly.

Charles: Is he coaching?

Paul: No, he was doing some sports casting or something up there.

Charles: Oh, that’s right. I remember that.

I hope he’s doing well and very successful. He deserves it.

With all these conversations Paul, you going to write a book? What are you going to do?

Paul: No, just one interview. If you’ve read any of the ones we’ve done, I like to find out more about the person and even football stuff.

Now, you auditioned for Channel 4, sportscaster at one point, didn’t you?

Charles: Yeah.

Paul: How’d that go?

Charles: It didn’t go very well. Let me just say about my time as a sportscaster, whatever it’s called. Did it for two years. Tom Brookshier was my play by play guy.

Paul: Solid announcer.

Charles: Tom Brookshier was a colorful character. He was in front of me under Pat Sommerall.

Paul: Yes.

Charles: They split them up and he became a play by play guy. And he was my play by play guy, and he was doing more color than I would do. And we were doing a game at Philadelphia on the road and they were talking about some corner, some black corner, and Tom said, “You know, he probably doesn’t have an IQ greater than a decimal point but he can damn sure play football.” And the telephone rang in our booth and they fired his butt on the spot.

Paul: Holy cow.

Charlie: And I didn’t have nothing to do with it.

Here’s the other thing I didn’t like about doing that stuff, they just threw you out there and if you did well, great. If you are not a natural, you’re gone.

So, what does a guy have to depend on to be successful in this game of football? It’s preparation. Study. Learn. Do it the right way. Take no prisoners.

Paul: Sure.

Charlie: You know? The credit belongs to the person that’s in the arena. It’s not the people that criticize them. So, if they would have just had a couple people giving him some, “Watch the film with me.” But they wouldn’t do it. They just gave it a shot and it didn’t take.

They knew I knew a lot about football and used to compliment me a lot off the air. He say, “You really know a lot about what’s going on.”

We might have been able to pull out of it but why they gave me a newbie, what do you call it? A newbie play by play guy. Why don’t they give me somebody that –

Tom was actually first year’s play by play guy and he went back to doing college. He was a very colorful person.

Tom Brookshier and Pat Summerall. Photo courtesy the internet included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.

Pat Summerall. They were great. If I had Pat Summerall, I would have done a little bit better. You think Tony Romo is doing good because he’s Tony Romo? He knows an awful lot about stuff and he has the gift of gab.

He’s just a colorful stuff, but he’s got the best play by play guy in the world.

Paul: Yeah.

Charlie: He’s got no excuses.

Paul: What do you think about Troy.

Charlie: No excuses. Yeah. I like Troy. Good announcer.

Paul: So, you went to Denver as a coach.

Charlie: Yeah. I remember in the 80s, the real estate market went to hell in a hand basket and I was in the real estate business at that time, and had a lot of success. A lot of success. And then, it went south. And Dan Reeves always told me, he said, “Look, any time you want to get into coaching…”

Coach Landry offered me a job right when I retired. He said, “But I want you to take this personality test.” And I went, “Excuse me?” I was kind of – I was a little bit taken aback by that because I played with him for 12 years. He knew my work habits and how much I would study. And he wants me to take a personality test to find out what kind of person I am? After 12 years? And my pride got in the way and I really, really made a mistake right there. I should have gone and coached because now, with that staff that we had, and just all the stability and all the winning and all the history and I didn’t do it. I was too prideful. And I regret that.

Steve Atwater listens to advice from Coach Charlie Waters during Broncos practice inside the bubble on May 16, 1989. Courtesy John Leyba, Denver Post file

So, when Dan Reeves told me, he pulled me aside and said, “Look, if you ever want to get into the coaching business again, or if you want to try to get into coaching, just give me a call. I’ll make a spot for you.” He did. I became a co-kicking team coach with Mike Nolan. Mike was at Denver for seven years. Loved him. Great guy.

Paul: And Mike was your coach at Dallas?

Charlie: His dad did. His dad, that’s where he got his IT.

Paul: That’s right, Dick Nolan.

Charlie: Dick Nolan. Mike has got the pedigree. He coached a lot of other places but I don’t think he came to Dallas ever.

And the only time I coached with him was at Denver. I coached seven years and then I got fired with Wade (Phillips) as head coach and I was defensive coordinator. Difficult times.

So, then I took a job at University of Oregon, I was the defensive coordinator. And I loved it. I really, really enjoyed working at the University kids because they’re they are young and eager. They knew I had pedigree and they knew that I knew what I was talking about and I made them better and they were good.

Number 2 in the nation, number 1 in Pac-10.

Cody and Charlie Waters, courtesy Charlie Waters and St. Marist

At then at the end of the season, before we were going to go to the bowl game, my son died in his sleep.

Paul: Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry.

Charlie: He was 18 years old. Two weeks before his 18th birthday. And I don’t know how I coached the game because the game was like seven days away or 10 days away. I obviously didn’t coach very good, we got killed.

It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with, ever. And I dealt with a lot of stuff as far as personal issues.

Beyond comparison. Yeah. You just don’t know. There’s a Chinese proverb, well actually a Chinese character, you know those little characters they draw?

Paul: Sure.

Charlie: And the symbol for perseverance is a dagger and a heart intertwined together and you spend the rest of your life, when you lose a child, you spend the rest of your life with a dagger lodged in your heart. I I think about it every day.

That’s what happened. We lost the Cotton Bowl and we moved back to Dallas.

My wife told me, she said, “Look, we got to get back to Texas.” Where all my family is. It was killing her.

And so, we came back here and I kind of straggled around trying to figure out what’s going on in the world.

Paul: So sorry for your loss. Sounds like a great kid.

Charlie: Cliff Harris was starting a new company with Kelsey Warren called Energy Transfer. So, they invited me to be part of it, which was great. Ray Davis, the guy that owns the Rangers. He and Kelsey offered me a job.

Ray was co-founder of Energy Transfer and of course Energy Transfer is very, very, very successful. So, I work with Cliff again. Crazy.

Paul: What a great friend. They’re rare. They really are.

Charlie: They’re rare.

Paul: Tell me about the Animal House.

Charlie: Ah, we called it the ‘Animal Farm’. Named after the book.

Paul: George Orwell!

Charlie: I had married my college sweetheart my rookie year. In a few years, I got a divorce and that’s when I bought the Animal Farm which was on Fair Oaks between Skillman and Abrams.

Paul: Oh, wow.

Charlie: And I drive by it every day.

It was an old house. Still there. Right there at one of the roads that cut through the ridge out there.

It was a great business deal because I knew a little bit about it, so. It was zoned for multi-family. It is still a single, three-bedroom home. Four of us lived there. Like Animal Farm. We had lots of animals – Mike Montgomery was one of my buddies that played with the Cowboys. He would come over an awful lot. Rex Kirby was an Animal Farm original. A girl named Fran lived with us too. And Phil Weir. And it was all crazy.

I just saw Phil this past week.

Paul: In Aspen?

Charlie: Yeah. In Glenwood Springs. Close to Aspen, yeah.

Phil’s genuinely a good person.

Paul: Yeah, I like Phil a lot man. Very helpful with a lot of things here.

Charlie: We used to play a game called Roofball where you get a volleyball and leave it on top of the roof. We had a single-family ranch house. So, a two-man team volleyball as it rolls off the roof. You can either hit it or let it bounce, get it, kind of like tennis. And we played our ass off. We had a gym, 10 station – I forgot what they called those gyms back then.

Paul: Like a universal gym?

Charlie: Universal gym. Exactly what it was.

Paul: Yeah.

Charlie: I was in shape. Unbelievable what I was doing. All the working out that I did. I really dedicated myself to becoming a professional. I knew that my time was coming to be strong safety someday soon, so I needed a lot more bulk. And I got. Bought my own damn gym.

Paul: Yeah. Well you know that Bob Ward’s brother, Frank – that was the guy that developed Universal Gym. All the stuff for Universal, that equipment; that was a Frank Ward product.

Charlie: Wow.

Paul: There you go. The Ward family helped you again.

Charlie: Bob Ward is a big reason why I had success. He changed the way I thought about stuff so he’s really special.

Paul: I met him three or four times when Frank was around there. Very innovative guy. I remember I think he was so much like that Tom House, I believe it was, for the Rangers. That had him throwing footballs instead of throwing the baseball. Odd things that weren’t quite the same motion. Crazy.

Charlie: Right. When I was coaching the defensive backs, I used to throw tennis balls at them. Because tennis balls bounce off your hands.

Paul: Sure.

Charlie: You have to give a little when you catch it.

Paul: Oh.

Charlie: Somebody taught that to me. I think my brother taught that to me. He’d toss them where he used to fire them at me as hard as he could, and I’d catch them. If they bounced off your hands, then you’re going to drop that football eventually.

It was quite the coaching technique.

Paul: Is there anything that you would like for me to add to this, that nobody’s asked? I can’t imagine too many questions haven’t been asked from you.

Charlie: This is pretty thorough based on how many times I’ve been interviewed. I guess this is the most thorough interview ever as a matter of fact. I’ve gone into personal stuff nobody every asked.

Paul: Well thank you, we like to get more of the story! Tell Rosie hello for me.

Charlie: Absolutely! I will say this about Rosie. The one thing was that she was very professional. She was always about her business. That helped me in my professionalism. She taught me a lot. I might have been a little lax, having lived at the Animal Farm.

Well, Paul. Thank you very much for your time.

Paul: Absolutely.

Charlie: And all your patience. Telling war stories.

Paul: Folks love to hear these, it was a great time to be a Cowboy but also to be a Cowboy fan.

Charlie: Okay, thank you.

Paul: If you ever need anything, holler at me.

Charlie: Okay. All right, Paul. Thank you very much, sir. That was fun.

Paul: All right, sir. Have a good day.

Charlie: Bye.

Charlie Waters, Courtesy Dallas Cowboys Weekly, 1983

“Yeah, it’s amazing,” says Charlie Waters, leaning back in his patio chair. “Even now I can be off in the backwoods somewhere and when somebody recognizes who I am they’ll say, ’Oh yeah. Charlie Waters. Yeah, I remember that Harold Jackson game.”
Charlie smiles his boyish smile. “Yeah, I guess I’ve had a pretty weird career. It’s never far from chicken salad to chicken s**t…”
courtesy DMagazine, December 1977

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CHARLIE WATERS & THE ALLIGATOR SHOES

PAUL HECKMANN — Sat, 10 Oct 2020 18:19:25 +0000

by Paul Heckmann

Executive Director, Memories Inc.

“If I had 45 players that tried as hard and cared as much as Charlie did, we would not lose a football game.”
Dallas Cowboys Coach Tom Landry

Charlie was a veritable encyclopedia of football, the consummate NFL pro. Very smart, very articulate and needed absolutely no direction from me to tell his story! He jumped right in. I simply turned on the recorder and let him tell it the way he remembered.
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Charlie Waters: We were on the cutting edge in preparation.

Paul Heckmann: I was gonna go into this a little bit later on, but you worked with Bob Ward quite a bit didn’t you?

Cowboy Strength and Conditioning coach Bob Ward with Bruce Lee training partner Dan Inosanto.

Bob Ward taught us all that stuff. And he was so unique and modernized, Dan Inosanto was his teacher. Dan was taught by Bruce Lee.

I owe an awful lot to Bob, he’s very, very progressive in his thinking.

Paul: Did you know Paul Ward, his brother?

Charlie: No.

Charlie: You talk about some timing and coordination. That’s a Hell of a thing, spin around like that, and throw that sucker out. I don’t know how in the world you all did that.

Charlie: I’m glad we can laugh about it.

Paul: Oh, my God.

Charlie: Did you ever meet me?

Charlie: I’m sure we did. The Greenville Ave bars.

Charlie: So, what are you doing with this interview?

Paul: We have just started a new Facebook Football page for Memories Inc called Memories of Texas Football. I interviewed John Fitzgerald Booty 1, 2 for our first football interviews. Carthage kid that played at Cisco and TCU before a 9 year NFL career. For the Memories of Dallas Facebook page and webpage, I interviewed Barry Corbin about a month and a half ago. The actor that did Northern Exposure, he played Uncle Bob in Urban Cowboy – the fellow got knocked out by lightning, you know, John Travolta’s uncle. Also just did one with Burton Gilliam, from Blazing Saddles and Papermoon.

Charlie: Burton’s a good friend of mine, too.

Memories of Dallas and Memories of Texas Football are two things we’re looking at for your interview.

Our 501c3 Non-Profit, Memories Inc. has been around for a little over two years.

Do you know Angus Wynne by chance?

Charlie: I do. I know Angus quite well.

Paul: Yeah. Angus is on our Board of Directors.

Charlie: Angus Wynne is legitimate. He’s special. Tell him that I said hello and along with Rosie. He knows Rosie.

Paul: Will do!

So, let’s get back to Charlie Waters. Now you were born in Miami, how old were you when you moved to North Augusta?

Paul: Was that Keith?

So yeah, we moved there to North Augusta when I was 10 and started in baseball.

Paul: Gotcha. Now it looked to me – I was looking on the map there, in some of the photos. That looked like a great area for hunting and fishing and stuff like that. Is that something you guys did?

Charlie: No, I never got into that. We never could. We barely had enough money to put food on the table.

Paul: I see.

Charlie: My dad was, as I said, was a construction worker, and it was – I had one baseball glove the whole time I was growing up. Playing five years of baseball. And Keith, by brother, got a baseball scholarship to Clemson. Surprisingly, it was just about the time I signed as a quarterback for Clemson, by brother got a baseball scholarship to Clemson. Go figure.

He’s three years older that I was, but he was on the baseball team. And when I signed with Clemson, they gave him a scholarship.

Paul: Oh. I see.

Charlie: He earned it, but it didn’t happen until I signed with Clemson.

Paul: Was that supposed to be, maybe, an enticement? For you to sign?

Charlie: Yes. Those kind of things happen. If he didn’t deserve it, I

Charlie set to score for the Tigers

Paul: Frank Howard. Absolutely.

Charlie: Frank Howard days were just a trip, man. You’re talking about a strange comparison between him and Tom Landry.

Paul: Well, tell me about Frank Howard.

Charlie: Well, he was tough. That’s one thing he did, made sure we all knew that you had to be tough to play football. But he was at the end of his career, and he was almost like a comedian. He used to say, boy, the things I remember… “Boy, you believe in magic?” That’s what he asked me one time when I was – after I’d moved to wide receiver, our quarterback got hurt, in the game. And we had out other backup quarterback Well then he gets hurt. So, Coach Howard calls a time out, brings the whole team around, then he reaches over and grabs me on the shoulder pad.

Frank Howard, legendary coach at Clemson from 1940 to 1969

He said “Charlie, you believe in magic?” I said, “Sure I do.” He said “Well, poof, you’re a frigging quarterback.” Those are the kind of things – he said. He said “Boy, you looking for sympathy? You can look it up in the dictionary. It’s between s**t and syphilis.” Those are the kind of things I remember about Frank Howard.

Paul: (laughs) Well, I was sitting here trying to think of Tom Landry saying the same thing.

Charlie: Yeah. Just go to Tom Landry and then go to Frank Howard.

But he believed in me. He did. I remember one time, this is when I was still playing quarterback.

And then the next thing I know, I get a call from Gil Brandt. He says, Charlie, can you run backwards?

Paul: (Laughs) ‘What do you mean Gil?’

Charlie: Yeah, what do you mean? Well, we just picked you as a defensive back in the third round in the 1970 draft. We’re hoping you can run backwards.

I said, what about tackling? Don’t I have to know how to tackle? So anyway, it was the beginning.

Paul: That is wild.

Paul: Not at all. You’re covering point by point what I was gonna ask you. So, it’s perfect.

Paul: A basketball player?

Charlie: A basketball player.

Gil Brandt at his induction into the NFL Hall of Fame

Paul: A basketball player and a quarterback turned defensive back.

Charlie: And Gil Brandt is the reason for all of that, without a doubt.

Paul: I know, crazy.

Charlie: Gil Brandt was a genius, and don’t tell him I said that, but he is pretty special.

Paul: We won’t… wink-wink

Charlie: Oh, he’s a fascinating interview. You need to call him. Ask him to tell the story about alligator shoes.

Paul: Alligator shoes? Oh, my God.

Charlie: Yeah. I gotta tell you this one story. It’s just so funny.

Paul: Now, this is 1970, isn’t it?

And four days later, after he’d sent me that money, he sent me an invoice in the mail for the alligator shoes.

Paul: (laughs) God dang it!

Charlie: Is that classic or what?

Paul: I remember that. He could fly!

Charlie Waters and Cliff Harris

Paul: I heard him described as ‘a bag of knives’.

Paul: 1972?

“If I had 45 players that tried as hard and cared as much as Charlie did, we would not lose a football game.”

Tom Landry, the first Dallas Cowboy Coach

Cowboy DBack Coach Gene Stallings, Charlie Waters and Cliff Harris

Randy White and Charlie Waters comparing abs

Paul: Randy White.

Paul: Isn’t it something? Some players, they play their whole career and never make a single Super Bowl.

Charlie Waters in 1975. It was all about the hair

Paul: So I hear, there was a poll in 1975, ‘the most underrated, unsung, and all probability underpaid player in the NFL’, and they said that was Charlie Waters, 1975.

Charlie: Yeah, I won the Sports Illustrated unsung hero award two years in a row. Two years in a row, but you know, if you get unsung, if you get an unsung hero, don’t you get sung?

Paul: (Laughs)

Charlie: That ain’t right. So I mean, I played one year with a broken arm when I was playing corner.

Paul: Oh, yeah.

Charlie: That’s just the way it is.

Charlie: Nope. That’s right. My rod in my arm was 18 inches long. It was a titanium rod. And let me tell you something, every bone in my body would’ve broken before that bone broke.

Paul: We know the six million dollar man would not work.

Paul: So, let me ask you about – going back to 1971. Now you’ve got to another Super Bowl, you got a win over the Dolphins. And your dad had a near fatal heart attack in the stands.

Charlie: That’s correct. Near the end of the game, it was really a come from behind, it was dramatic, and of course Roger worked magic, miracles and stuff.

Paul: He taught you something, didn’t he?

Charlie: Yeah he did.

Paul: That’s for sure. Sorry to hear hear of his passing, it’s something we can be sure of.

Charlie: Wow, that’s hilarious.

Paul: I think that’s what they call dark humor. It’s kinda like, how can you not grin, no matter if it’s your dad or not?

So you played for 12 years?

Paul: So, who were the leaders of the team back when you first came in?

Charlie: Well, Lee Roy Jordan ran the defense, as middle linebacker. And Cornell Green would be in charge of the secondary. And Bob Lilly was a quiet, great performer. Offensive side of the ball was Roger, of course. And Dan Reeves was the coach, the player/coach for a while and then he ended up being a coach. I really wish that Dan would’ve taken over the offense. Coach Landry handled both sides of the ball. I mean, nobody does that. He was the only coach in the history of the NFL that handled both sides of the ball. He worked his tail off, and he had an idea for all of it.

He had me for life, and he was really a good person. A smart person.

Paul: Tell me about the bicycle built for two. For you and Cliff

Charlie: Is that goofy or what?

A bicycle built for two!

Paul: I’m sitting there going, ‘I can just about guarantee these two boys there did not buy that bike!’

Charlie: (laughs) No, they did not! It was some kind of cover shot, they brought the bike.

Paul: That was pretty good, I like that one.

So also, you were an expert at one other thing, there. A lot of other people forget, and that’s holding for extra points.

Charlie: Yeah. Extra points field goals, yeah. I did it for 10 years.

Paul: Oh, no.

Charlie: Accusing me of throwing the game. It’s all your fault!

+++++++++++++End of Part One. We pick up the next day+++++++++++++++

Cowboys Pro Bowlers

Charlie: Hey, good morning, Paul.

Paul: Hey, Charlie. How are you doing, buddy?

Charlie: Doing all right. How about yourself?

Paul: Good, good, good. D

I’m just going to kind of pick up where we were yesterday. Now I did have a question for you. I keep seeing this four blocked punts in a single game. Is that correct?

Charlie: No, not in a single game. Four blocked punts in two separate games. Back to back. Two in one game and then two, the next game.

Paul: Makes more sense.

Paul: I was trying to figure out how in world a coach wouldn’t adjust to that with the up back or something.

Charlie: What are they doing? Don’t they want to block me? You’d think they’d try to block me.

Paul: I was sitting there thinking that special teams coach didn’t have a job the next day.

Charlie: That’s exactly right. The next year, there’s another coach.

Paul: I would have put the three upbacks on you. To heck with everybody else.

Charlie: (Laughs) Well you had Thomas Henderson on the inside. And man, those guys were ferocious, so they had to collapse down on them.

Coach Landry and Ed ‘Too Tall’ Jones… yep, Coach is smiling

Paul: Oh, you had Too Tall in the middle.

Charlie: Yeah.

Paul: That’s right, because, mean, he just stuck his paw up there and he blocked a couple of them.

Charlie: Yeah, he used to block field goals. He never block the punts. But Gene Stallings is the person that taught me how to block a punt.

Paul: Tell me!

Paul: It’s a science.

Charlie: – Yeah, a science. Sure.

Cowboy coach Ernie Stautner

Paul: So, tell me a little bit about Ernie Stautner.

Thomas Henderson against the Broncos in the Super Bowl win

Paul: So, I talked to Thomas Henderson, told him I was going to be interviewing you, he said to remind you, “Charlie played off my hip. He once called me a gazelle.”

Paul: No tight end

Paul: Kind of reaffirm it.

Paul: Thomas really spoke highly of you. He really did.

Charlie: And I think a lot of him, I think he’s a really, really good person. He just was a little bit full of himself back in the day and I understand why.

Paul: What more can you ask?

Tell me a little bit about Roger Staubach, the man, the myth.

Roger Staubach and Charlie Waters in charity ball game