Heisman Trophy Winner Billy Cannon Dead At 80...

CajunCrimson said:

The first LSU hero. No counterfeits allowed

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I see what you did there.

For your listening pleasure. This is what fans heard on Billy's famous Halloween night run against Ole Mess. If you weren't there, as GrayTide said, listening on an AM radio was all you had.
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FitToBeTide said:

A great Tigah who was quite the overcomer. If you've got a few minutes, read some of the highlights of his career/life in this Wiki link. CLICK

Really talented athlete. RIP, Billy.

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This is also a good write up on his life, fall from grace, and redemption - from ESPiN: http://www.espn.com/espn/eticket/story?page=091030BillyCannon

Cannon's famous Halloween-night run against Old Mrs. is probably a bigger "deal" for LSu fans than Stabler's "run in the mud" is for us - particularly since they have so few truly great moments to compete with it........

TIDE-HSV said:

I didn't realize you were at that game, Marvin. I didn't know at first what was happening. Someone near me, probably someone more familiar with the stadium, said that the north end zone was collapsing...

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Well since I was from Mobile, games there were too tempting to miss. Go home, visit friends, put my feet under the family dining table, and since it was only a bit over a mile from the folks house to Ladd Stadium, I didn't even have to fight traffic, just 20 minute walk. I don't believe I missed a Mobile game while I was in school.

TIDE-HSV said:

You've been here so long, I forgot you weren't from here originally...

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Too true, moved to Huntsville in August of 1963. Should be nearly enough to qualify as an honorary local I'd think......

Actually, the first time I came through Huntsville was in the Summer of 1955, seems to me that Huntsville had a population of about 18,000 then. While at the University, I was in Madison County fairly frequently, that was in the late 1950's. The Parkway was a bypass around town back then, with the only traffic light being at the Bob Wallace intersection. Miracle City and Wards were pretty much the only commercial concerns on the Parkway back then. Drake, west of the Parkway was a gravel road if memory serves....

bama61 said:

Too true, moved to Huntsville in August of 1963. Should be nearly enough to qualify as an honorary local I'd think......

Actually, the first time I came through Huntsville was in the Summer of 1955, seems to me that Huntsville had a population of about 18,000 then. While at the University, I was in Madison County fairly frequently, that was in the late 1950's. The Parkway was a bypass around town back then, with the only traffic light being at the Bob Wallace intersection. Miracle City and Wards were pretty much the only commercial concerns on the Parkway back then. Drake, west of the Parkway was a gravel road if memory serves....

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I grew up just north of HSV and recall my late uncle who lived in west Huntsville near Drake and Triana Blvd. talking about quail hunting in the area which is Drake Ave. west now. I worked in high school around Jones Valley and West Huntsville but do struggle to locate the landmarks of the 50's and 60's. Construction of I-565 altered many landmarks but there are areas that are basically unchanged over the period and I feel a sense of home when I have an opportunity to do business downtown and the immediate surrounding communities.

I paid all of $6.00 for my Wilson Ted Williams glove at Wards.... memories!

GrayTide said:

Those of you who were not around in the late 1950's will surely find this far fetched. Billy Cannon at 6'1" and 210 pounds was a huge RB in those days. He was a avid weight lifter who just happened to run a 9.4 second 100 yard dash. All of this was unheard of in those days, plus he played both ways, returned kicks and was the team's punter. As a matter of fact he made a TD saving tackle in that Ole Miss game, which of course was overshadowed by his 89 yard TD run. IMO, he was a white, 1950's version of Herschel Walker although college football was so much different then than it was when Walker played. I remember listening to the LSU--Ole Miss game on WWL in New Orleans.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_Sugar_Bowl

Many people don't know that LSU and Ole Miss played again in a rematch in the Sugar Bowl that year.

Ole Miss blanked them 21-0.

Its On A Slab said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_Sugar_Bowl

Many people don't know that LSU and Ole Miss played again in a rematch in the Sugar Bowl that year.

Ole Miss blanked them 21-0.

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Wow! TWICE in their history!
Post season rematch games against SEC rivals they narrowly beat in the Regular season - And blanked 21-0 BOTH TIMES?!?!?!

OUCH!!!

TIDE-HSV said:

I came back in June, 1963 and then took off for NYC for a year and grad law school. I remember everything you mentioned except Drake being graveled...

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By 1963 Drake had been paved, but when I was first doing field work in north Alabama in the late '50's, around 1958 I think, as I remember it Drake was still a gravel road. Of course there wasn't much south of Drake then, and what there was was along Whitesburg. Along the Parkway north of Oakwood Avenue was mostly cotton fields if I remember correctly. All that was just before Huntsville really took off growth-wise of course.

TIDE-HSV said:

The first game Coach Bryant coached was at Ladd Stadium against LSU with Cannon. We actually led 3-0 at halftime, because we couldn't score a TD from their 5, against Dietzel's Chinese Bandit 3rd string. In the second half, Cannon was inexorable. The final was 13-3 (they missed a PAT), but the game wasn't much in doubt. The main oddity in the game was the north end zone bleachers collapsed with about 1500 people on them. The first we suspected was swarms of ambulances arriving and converging on that area. It was a wonder that no one was killed and only a couple dozen or so injured badly enough to go to the ER...

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Should have sat with my Dad in the regular stands, but some of my high school teammates were sitting in the end zone bleachers so I wanted to sit with them, dumb! I had to go to the ER, but my dad took me the next day when my ankle looked like a Black & Blue Softball. We thought it was a bad sprain, turned out to be broken. So much for my Sophomore year of football...
Hey Earle, did you remember seeing some LSU fans wearing those purple headbands with Chinese characters on them? I thought they looked sort of weird...

TIDE-HSV said:

Even in 1963, Drake was still unpaved about five blocks or so west of the Parkway. When we bought on lower Jones Valley Drive in 1964, the southernmost grocery store in HSV was the Fannings' IGA in the triangle of Whitesburg and California...

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I'd forgotten about the IGA, and it was one of my wife's favored stops, along with the Green Street Market and Star Market. We lived on William's Street downtown for a while then moved to Blossomwood about 1966.

BamaBuc said:

Should have sat with my Dad in the regular stands, but some of my high school teammates were sitting in the end zone bleachers so I wanted to sit with them, dumb! I had to go to the ER, but my dad took me the next day when my ankle looked like a Black & Blue Softball. We thought it was a bad sprain, turned out to be broken. So much for my Sophomore year of football...
Hey Earle, did you remember seeing some LSU fans wearing those purple headbands with Chinese characters on them? I thought they looked sort of weird...

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Ah yes, that would have been for the their defensive specialists, Dietzel had nicknamed them the Chinese Bandits because, according to him, there was nothing meaner or tougher than a Chinese Bandit. At the first of the season no one knew about them other than LSU fans, but by the end of the 1958 season their reputation was well established. Those were limited substitution days, I knew one of the players on that unit and he told me that they had only four offense plays which they practiced in case they were trapped on the field by the substitution rules. The substitution rules were pretty esoteric back then and LSU three units, the White team which were the starters and played both ways, the Gold team (sometimes called the Go team) that pretty much played offense only, and the Chinese Bandits that played defense only. The Bandits included walk-ons and the like and played with a lot of esprit de corp. I knew a guy that played on the Bandit unit and he had been a student manager prior to walking on. A great gimmick that worked really well for LSU until the substitution rules were liberalized. Anyhow the fans were really caught up in it and wore Chinese Bandit head scarfs, t-shirts, and coulee hats.

Chinese Bandits

TIDE-HSV said:

I'm sure she shopped Big Brother's also. The Fannings, owners of the IGA, were a great couple and clients of mine. After retirement, they took their big safe home. Mr. Fanning very quickly had a stroke which left him paralyzed for ten years. She left to run next door to her SIL's for a cup of flour and thieves had been watching. They blew the safe and emptied it, including his will. I managed to probate the unsigned carbon copy by showing he was incapable physically of revoking it. (This is all a matter of public record.)

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You're right as usual, although for whatever reason she did seem to prefer IGA to Big Brothers. She did favor Big Brother's for seafood thoughand they would tell her when something had just come in. I was less trusting, as having grown up along the gulf coast I firmly believed that "if it didn't spent the night in the gulf, it ain't fresh". I was unaware of the situation with the Fannings, that's just tragic all around. Neat maneuvering on your part on the probating issue.