“everything we did was outdoors …”

I played every sport in high school. I didn’t have to work out, because I was in shape.  Like they do now?  We didn’t work out.  I was hard as nails, ’cause … we worked all the time.

I played baseball.  I played football.  I played basketball.  I did a little boxing.  … I played all the sports, but we worked that in.  I’d play baseball and then walk home from school.  There ain’t no way to get home; we walked home.  Ain’t no bus to take us nowhere.

When we played football, we didn’t have no money to buy uniforms.  The school didn’t buy no uniforms. We had, I think it was five helmets and we didn’t have no shoulderpads.  We used sweatshirts.  We put on about three or four sweatshirts.  They knew – ’cause the backfield had helmets and one or two on the line – they knew what plays we were going to make because we’d have to switch our helmets around. And the football field at the end of the game – it looked like a rag field, because they’d grab you  and you’d lose your sweatshirts.

We did have baseball suits though.  I don’t think we bought our uniforms.  …  But basketball we played – we didn’t have no gyms … we played on the dirt.  We played outside.  That’s why we played in the spring of the year.  I mean, it was dirt courts.  We played tennis too.  Tennis … [the school] didn’t have no sport of tennis; [but] you could play tennis.  I used to like to play tennis.

I don’t know why they didn’t build any gyms, but we played outdoors and everything we did was outdoors, so I guess they thought that’s where we were supposed to [play].

From an interview with Bev Fletcher, spring 2010.