Walter & Me

by Eddie Payton

  I guess you could say I was pretty damn naïve back then, because I just went right on along with what I was told and didn’t think nothing of it. Ray and I were called from our last class on the day before national signing day and taken to Mr. McLaurin’s office. I say “taken,” but we went willingly. We were told to just sit there in the principal’s office to wait for Coach Hill, and Mr. McLaurin said he’d let our parents know where we were. When Coach Hill got there, he took us to his purple Impala, and we shuffled on in for the ride to Jackson. On the way, there wasn’t much conversation between Coach Hill, Ray, and me. Just small talk about how Ray and I were going to be featured backs in the Jackson State offense. Sounded good to us, I guess. What did we know? It was kind of like all that “be all you can be in the Army” stuff. Speaking of which, when we arrived at Jackson State, we were ushered into a military-style barracks on campus with about 15 other guys we didn’t know. Seemed the principals of their high schools had apparently cut the same deal with Coach Hill. We were all a little uneasy about the whole situation and didn’t really say much. Coach Hill and others then took us to what was the Penguin Restaurant at the time to feed us hot dogs and hamburgers, and then returned us to the barracks for the night, where we slept on fold-out cots lined up in a row. The next morning we all signed a letter of intent in the coach’s office, and that was that. I’d like to say I was offered a bunch of money to sign, but the fact is I signed for the hot dog special at the Penguin Restaurant.

  Hot dog special or not, I was officially a college football player, and I was ready to go for Jackson State. Other colleges had their chance, but I was at a place that wanted me. Along with Alcorn, Mississippi Valley State was a historically black college and should’ve been an option for me. But being all black wasn’t the only thing they had in common with Alcorn. Like Alcorn, they thought I was just too small for their program. The Mississippi Valley State coach, “Redskin” Weathersby, was sure I couldn’t produce there given my size. He’d come to regret his decision. I wouldn’t come to regret mine.

  The offense at Jackson State fit me perfectly. We ran a lot of traps, a lot of quick pitches, and a lot of screens. I ran those really well, because we had huge offensive linemen, and the opposing defense could never find me. Turns out I was so good, precisely because I was so small. Go figure. Once I got out in the open, I just brought the funk, as they say, and was gone. During my sophomore season at Jackson State, I scored five touchdowns against Coach Weathersby and Mississippi Valley State. It was just one of those days, you know? I was in the zone, and I got it in my head to let Coach Weathersby know all about it. After I scored my third touchdown, I ran across the field and up to Coach Weathersby and said, “Coach, am I big enough yet?” He frowned. I smiled. But that wasn’t the end of it.

  When I scored my fourth touchdown, I went back down the Mississippi Valley State sideline and asked Coach Weathersby the same question. I thought I was pretty good and pretty funny all at the same time. On my fifth touchdown, I scored on the same end as the Mississippi Valley State bench, and I was all set to give Coach Weathersby some more grief about it. I was really going to rub it in this time, too. I mean, five touchdowns from a guy too small to play on their team? Come on, now, I just had to have some fun with that. But as I ran down the sideline, Coach Weathersby was nowhere to be found. He didn’t want to hear it again and was hiding from me. I later heard from other players that he was pretty pissed off about my taunting. Scoring five touchdowns was good and all, but hearing that was even better.

  Jackson State fans loved it, of course, but I became a bit of a legend around Mississippi Valley State, too. They all talked about the little guy they could’ve had but turned away. The guy they said was too small and then scored five touchdowns on them! The tiny dude with a huge shadow. I thought I was on my way. Everyone in the area knew my name. I was flirtin’ with football stardom and wasn’t going to stop until I got there. But I had no idea what football stardom was. I couldn’t yet see what I and the rest of the world were getting ready to witness. During my glory days there at Jackson State, I had no idea that the true legend was forming back home in my shadow.

  5. Can’t Buy Me Sweetness

  Columbia is way down south in Marion County, Mississippi. I mean, way the hell down there. If someone up north asked me for directions, I’d be right to say, “Just keep goin’.” Do that, and eventually you’ll run into lots of heat and some good people. That’s when you’ll know you’re in my hometown. Nowadays, people say the name Payton put that place on the map, but in the 1930s, the name to know around there was Bascom. I’ve heard we had a couple of cowboys back then who bore that last name. Folks called them Earl and Weldon, I think. Those two cowboys made Columbia the historic “Home of Mississippi Rodeo.” That was our claim to fame for a little while. The Bascom boys brought with them many a wild ride for the folks of Columbia. They just had no idea that it’d all pale in comparison to what was coming up behind them. Columbia hadn’t ever seen nothing like the wild ride my little brother was going to take it on. Walter wasn’t no cowboy like the Bascom boys, but what he’d do would make him a Bear one day.

  Walter didn’t start playing organized football until I left high school, but his recruitment to play on the high school team actually began during my senior year. As you know, in order to play in high school, most of us kids had to first be noticed on the playground. That might seem like a crude way to recruit kids for high school football, but in a segregated small town at a small all-black school with a small amount of resources, that’s how it was done. Like I said earlier, we black kids didn’t have a feeder program like junior high football or even organized youth leagues. You had to show you could run with the wild horses in the playground before you’d get your shot at taming them in the arena. Welcome to our rodeo.

  Coach Boston would go out to the playground after school, or he’d sometimes watch the kids play football at recess during school. He was always on the lookout for boys who stood out from the crowd. One day, he got more than he bargained for. Walter was a “little husky kid,” as Coach remembers. I was already playing for Coach when he spotted Walter on the playground, so Coach pretty much knew the Payton name. It helped that I was having a great high school career, too, if I do say so myself. I guess you could say Coach was a bit predisposed to thinking Walter would be good based on what he had already seen in me. Still, Walter took it to a whole new level and did his own impressing. He didn’t need to ride my coattails when he was out there dragging his own through the dirt just fine. But it wasn’t Walter’s speed that impressed Coach the most. Coach often recalled the time he saw young Walter, not out there making fools of the other boys, but just sitting on the side, holding his arm and crying as he watched the other boys make fools of themselves.

  Coach walked over and asked why he was crying, and Walter told him he’d hurt his shoulder. Walter wanted to get back out there, pain and all, but Coach made him sit tight. After checking his shoulder out in an untrained poke-it-and-say-if-it-hurt sort of way, Coach thought it seemed bad enough to require professional attention. He helped Walter away from the playground and used his van as a temporary ambulance to take Walter to the Marion County Hospital. After the drive, Walter’s shoulder wasn’t the only thing hurting. From what I’ve been told, Coach’s head was hurting, too, on account of all of Walter’s “drumming” on the way there.

  Before he took the name “Sweetness” in college, Walter was known around school as “The Little Drummer Boy.” He became world famous for beating linebackers to the hole, but he could also beat a drum with the best of them. Before he mastered the art of running up the middle, Walter was perfecting his double paradiddle. Before he made the Pro Bowl, he was practicing his slow roll. All right, enough of that. Point is, he was an excellent drummer. It’s just that he didn’t play drums on only the drums. He’d play on just about anything he could get his hands on. Coach drove Walter to the hospital, and I th
ink Walter drove Coach a little crazy. Coach says he was beating on everything in the van. He rat-tat-tat-tat-tatted on the roof, the windows, books, the dashboard, whatever was in reach and would make a sound. It was the same way in school. The teachers were always getting on him for beating on his desk during class. The thing is, I don’t even think he could’ve helped it. No one could stop Walter when he was running with a football, but even Walter himself was helpless to stop the tune that was always running through his head. It was just there and had to come out, even in a van on a drive to the hospital to get his bum shoulder checked out.

  Now, I can only imagine what was running through Dr. Fortenberry’s head when he saw yet another Payton boy with yet another broken bone. That’s right, Walter’s “hurt shoulder” turned out to be a broken collarbone. And that, my friends, is what impressed Coach Boston on that day. Though Walter had been crying when Coach walked up, Coach could tell he wanted to get back out there on the playground. He saw a toughness in Walter that he couldn’t help but like. Had Coach not come around that day and said something, Walter probably would never have said anything about his collarbone. He’d have just gotten back in there. He’d have played hurt, and Coach had no choice but to respect that. Also, I think Coach knew that, hurt or not, Walter would’ve still made a fool of those other boys out there.

  So, why did it take Walter until his junior year in high school to join the football team? Why was he wasting all that fool-makin’ talent out there on the playground? Well, you know what I think about that, and Coach Boston agrees. “My theory as to why Walter didn’t come out for football earlier is, he didn’t want to compete with Eddie,” Coach says. “So, he waited until Eddie graduated, and that’s when he came out for the team, his junior year.”

  I was older than Walter, of course, and I was an established star athlete at the high school. I may’ve been smaller than Walter, but I was definitely still casting a shadow on him. Maybe he had to bend down a little to get in it, but he was there nonetheless. Looking back, I think bending down is exactly what he was doing. Seems to me that he stepped into my shadow by choice. As his older brother, he looked up to me and respected me. He was content to let the light shine on me. The thing is, high school is only four years long. That meant it had to end for me eventually, and I was going to have to leave for Jackson State at some point. Well, “some point” came like a flash, and I’m no Peter Pan. I’m just Eddie Payton, so my shadow sticks with me. It goes where I go. When I left high school, Walter no longer had a choice. He couldn’t stay in my shadow, because my shadow was no longer there. It was following me to Jackson, and Columbia was all his. With no older brother’s shadow to step into anymore, the only stepping he could do was onto the football field. All he needed was a little coaxing from Coach.

  Twisting his arm just a tad (don’t worry, his collarbone had healed by then), Coach Boston convinced Walter to join the high school football team during his junior year. And Walter took to it like a shark takes to eating. You know how a shark is born in the water, don’t you? A baby shark just comes out along with a puff of blood in the water, and the next thing you know, that shark is swimming and feeding on its own. It doesn’t need other sharks to show it what to do. It just does what it does. Well, Walter was like that shark. He just popped out onto the high school football field, and before long, Coach Boston had a maneater on his hands. When they tossed him the pigskin, Walter’s arms chomped down on it like Jaws, and his legs took over from there. He didn’t just make people miss, either. I could do that, but Walter could do a little more. He’d juke ’em left and right, of course, but he’d also plow right over them if he had to. He could leave them in the dust or return them to the dust, depending on whether they decided to get in his way. Can you hear that eerie Jaws theme song playing in the background yet? It’s getting closer….

  Walter’s first game as a high school player is the stuff of legend. It’s the kind of stuff that will make folks forget about an older brother’s shadow in a heartbeat. Walter stepped onto the field for the first time, and just like that, my shadow was replaced with his spotlight. He was the starting running back, and the offense had taken the field. The ball was snapped, and they handed it off to Walter. That was all they had to do. Walter took his very first official carry in an organized game, and he ripped off a 65-yard touchdown. The boys on that high school field trying to stop him looked no different than those poor kids back on the playground. When it comes to God-given talent like my brother had, it just didn’t matter who he was up against it. They all looked like fools.

  With that first run to the end zone, a bright and shining star was born. As a junior in the fall of 1969, Walter came out of nowhere as the clear leader of the Jefferson High School football team. He was a young, talented black kid just picking his victims at will in the waters of the all-black Tideland Conference. But a tidal wave of change was coming. In 1970, mandatory integration was instituted for the schools in Mississippi. “All black” and “all white” was turning into just plain “all.” That’s how it was supposed to look on paper, anyway. Coach Boston led his group of 20 excellent black football players over to Columbia High in January of 1970, where they were to merge with 16 white players who were already there. White or black didn’t really matter to Walter and his teammates, though. Individual talent would rise to the top, and Walter’s individual talent was undeniable.

  Coach Boston explains that the integration actually came at a good time for his football team in general. It just so happened that he would’ve had a hard time putting together his full team that year. He had Walter and some other standouts, but he was short on linemen. When they got to Columbia High, he had but one tackle, a tight end, and maybe a guard or two. And Coach always said, as far as football teams go, “What’s up front is what counts. You got to have some linemen if you’re going to have success.” Columbia High provided a few more solid linemen, so Coach saw that as a good thing. And Columbia High eventually saw the good things that Coach Boston was bringing. Jefferson High had all the running backs. They had Walter, Edward “Sugarman” Moses, and Michael “Toby” Woodson. So, they were definitely set and still all black in the backfield. Coach Boston also provided Archie Ray Johnson, the young man who would be the starting quarterback.

  When the Jefferson High and Columbia High teams came together, there was all this nervous talk about how there would be all these fights and unrest and whatnot. But it never happened. Hell, Coach Boston even said there were more fights at Jefferson High before they integrated. The football team seemed to come together just fine, probably because each side filled in well the needs of the other. Columbia High’s linemen rose on up to the surface, and the running talent of Jefferson did the same. If only the same could be said about the coaching talent.

  Coach Boston wanted the head coaching position when he took his team over to Columbia High for the integration, and he should’ve gotten it. Of course, there are a lot of “should’ves” in this world that don’t happen, and I get that. All I’m saying is that Coach Boston getting the head coaching job at Columbia High was one of those should’ves. As Coach Boston said, “I felt I was qualified and had proven myself at Jefferson, but the school district named the Columbia High coach as the head man. He was white, and maybe the community just wasn’t ready for a black head football coach. I wasn’t happy about that, but I accepted it. I had to put Walter and those kids above myself. It wasn’t about me. It was about the team, and I just wanted Walter and my boys to shine.”

  That integrated Columbia High team sure looked like it was ready to shine. All the pieces were in place, from the top on down. Then suddenly, for whatever reason, the man appointed to be head coach stepped down. That’s when Coach Boston decided it might be his time to shine. He applied for the open position. Turned out, though, that the junior high head coach at Columbia applied, too. Coach Boston thought again they’d just pick the white guy. Well, that didn’t happen. But they didn�
�t pick Coach Boston either. Coach was called in and told that he wouldn’t be getting the job because two people from the same district applied for the job, so they were going to bring someone in from outside of the district. As Coach recalled, “That didn’t sound right to me; sounded like a lot of shuckin’ and jivin’.”

  Were they just trying to avoid the appearance of racism that would come from picking the less qualified white guy over the more qualified black guy? Again? Well, I suppose no one knows for sure. All I know is Coach said it right when he told them, “Look, all you need to do is pick the right person, just who you think is the best.” That didn’t happen when they didn’t pick Coach Boston, I can tell you that. Coach was disappointed, of course, but he’s not one to sit around and bellyache about things. He accepted it and moved on, yet again. The only thing was, he wasn’t sure exactly what he’d be moving on to. Would he have a job? Would he need to find a new line of work? Coach Boston was dealing with a lot of uncertainty, and then he met the new head coach of Columbia High.

  “It was strange,” Coach Boston said, “I saw this man on campus, and someone told me, ‘That’s going to be the football coach.’ I saw him coming toward me; he called my name and asked if we could talk. How’d he know my name? Did it even matter? I said, ‘Sure.’ He then said, ‘I’m Thomas Davis, and I’m going to be the head football coach, and I was wondering if you would work for me.’”

  Now, some of you might think Coach Boston should’ve told that guy to go screw himself, yada yada yada. Well, it’s easy to think that having not actually been there, but Coach Boston knew what he was doing given the situation he was in. He was supporting three kids at the time, and he knew they were the most important things, but he also didn’t want to just be walked on either. Coach said, “I had to feed them and get them through school; I knew I had to have a job. I said, ‘I will work for you, but I’m not going to be in the press box.’”