A Rainy Night

By Jim Joanos

This is a story of my first out of town trip to see an FSU football game. It was 1948, I was fourteen and a ninth grader. It was the second season of FSU’s renewal of college football.

After a winless 0-5 1947 season, FSU had brought in a new head coach, three assistant coaches, and a trainer and gotten pretty serious about football. Don Veller, a former star running back and later assistant coach at the University of Indiana was the new head man. His three assistants were all former Indiana football players. One of whom, Bob Harbison would become a legend at FSU, but that is another story.

Playing a small college schedule, FSU had won 5 of the season’s first 6 games. The lone blemish had been a 6-14 loss at Erskine College in Anderson, South Carolina. FSU had beaten Cumberland, Millsaps, Stetson, Mississippi College and Livingston State. Next on the schedule was Troy State in a game to be played in Dothan, Alabama. Troy had beaten FSU the year before in Tallahassee, 36-6.

My older brother was a sophomore at FSU. He and a friend of his whose name I do not remember so I will call him “Joe” had decided to make the trip to Dothan for the game. They met at my family’s home on the day of the game to go. I happened to be there so they invited me to go with them. We loaded into my brother’s car. They were in the front seats and I was in the back and off we went onto an adventure.

The trip up was most interesting. Joe, like so many of the male students at FSU at the time was a World War II veteran. The GI Bill enabled him to go to college. He had served as a sailor aboard one of the country’s battleships. He had some pretty good stories that made the two hour trip to Dothan speed by. The funniest one was about a sailor on his ship from Tennessee with a knowledge about making moon shine. Joe said that they managed to acquire some materials and a barrel of corn and with his help build their own still aboard the ship.

Consequently, his group was well supplied with moonshine during their time on the ship.

When we got to Dothan’s Wiregrass Stadium, it had been raining all day so that the field was a sloppy mess with lots of pools of standing water. Finally, the rain stopped and the players warmed up. After which they went to their locker rooms as is customary. Then some folks went out on the field with some large containers of a liquid which I believe was kerosene and poured it on a number of the larger puddles and set fires. In all of the seventy-five years that I have been attending FSU football, it was the only time that I ever saw a playing field “burned off” before a game. I have often wondered what it was like for the players to have played on a muddy-messy field that had been burned off.

The game included lots of busted plays and back and forth stuff. FSU scored first on a short run by halfback Ken MacLean in the first quarter but missed the extra point. Troy scored in the second quarter and made the point after so the Trojans led at half time 7-6.

Both teams scored touchdowns in the third quarter, FSU on a run by wingback Wyatt “Red” Parrish (my favorite player at the time. FSU made its extra point but Troy did not so that at the end of three quarters, the teams were tied at 13.

FSU did the only scoring in the fourth quarter when quarterback Walter Foy passed 24 yards to end Norman Eubanks for a touchdown. FSU’s John Filchock made the kick after, FSU held on, and won the game, 20-13.

We stayed around for a short while after the game to visit with a few of the small group of FSU fans who had made the trip. There were not many fans for either team that had made it to the game because of the weather conditions. I later saw a stat that claimed that 1,500 had attended. I doubt that there was that many.

I do not remember much about the trip home to Tallahassee after the game, My brother and Joe in the car up front talked about college things while I slept on the back seat. Thus ended my first ever out of town FSU football trip. There would be many more after that. But there would never be another where I saw the playing field “burned off” before the game.

About the author:

Jim Joanos

Memories of Garnet and Gold

Jim Joanos and his wife Betty Lou have deep roots at Florida State University. Avid sports fans, they have literally seen, and done, it all. Fortunately for us, Jim loves telling first-hand accounts dating back to FSU’s first football game, a 1947 clash with the Stetson Hatters on Centennial Field, where Cascades Park is today.

The Osceola will run a series of these colorful stories written by the former Tallahassee lawyer and judge, which we feel our readers will find enlightening and/or nostalgic.

Jim and Betty Lou, who was Associate Director of the FSU Alumni Association (1991-2003), have been married 65 years and are each listed as one of FSU’s 100 Distinguished Graduates. The couple were enshrined in the FSU Hall of Fame in 2015 as Moore-Stone Award Recipients. Ironically, both Deans Moore and Stone were instrumental in the Joanoses career development.

“Both Jim and Betty Lou Joanos have been exemplary fans and supporters of Florida State University, both academically and athletically,” said Andy Miller, retired President and CEO of Seminole Boosters, Inc. “You can’t go to an athletic event of any kind that you don’t see both Jim and Betty Lou Joanos together. They love their university as much as they love each other.”