PICAYUNE, Miss., March 6, 2010 — Nat Lovell wrote and published a small, 120-page booklet in April 1984, entitled “The Way It Was, Memories of Picayune.” There is probably a copy of it at the local library. I actually purchased a copy of it when he published it. I loaned it to a friend in Poplarville and recently, almost 20 years later, the friend’s son returned it to me, saying he had gone through his dad’s stuff and found it with a note attached to it, saying, “Return this to David A. Farrell.”
Lovell writes that he came to Picayune in 1907 at the age of five with his mother. So he was born in 1902, probably at Millard. He never names his mother or dad during the book, which is understandable. He admits at the front of his book that he is not a trained historian and would probably leave a lot out.
His dad was working at Millard in 1907 for the Batson Lumber Co., and what he termed a “gale,” what we call today a hurricane, blew through in September (September gales, they were called) and his dad was somehow killed in the hurricane. He does not say how his father died. Lovell was to remain in Picayune until 1924 when he took a job with the railroad in Hattiesburg.
He says that his family lived close to the Batson mill at Millard in the winter, and during the Spring and Summer, moved out to a farm three miles west of Millard. I guess they moved out to the farm at that time of year to raise a garden and farm. Writing in 1984, he said the farm was still called “The Old Lovell Place.” He said he had seven sisters, and one, when they moved to Picayune, had just married what he called “a railroad man.” He does not name his sisters.
When they came to Picayune, they moved into an old house at the corner of East Second Street and North Curran Avenue. His mother turned it into a boarding house, serving three meals a day for regular boarders. His mother rented the house. He does not say who owned it. The house is still there. It is raised way off the ground and is located right next to what used to be the “Picayune Item,” before the “Item” moved to its new address at 17 Richardson-Ozona Road. S.G. Thigpen, Sr., when he came to Picayune later lived in the house, and S.G. Thigpen, Jr., told me onetime that he had been born in the house. It is one of the most historic old homes in Picayune. It currently is used as a doctor’s office.
In addition to feeding her own boarders, Nat’s mother also fed businessmen and railroad men meals, operating sort of like a restaurant during the day. Lovell said his mother was a good cook and had a lot of customers who ate at her home. Lovell finally mentions a name. He said that his oldest sister also lived at the house, with her husband, Henry Moon. Moon worked for the railroad, riding a train that went to Hattiesburg each day and returned to Picayune the next. He doesn’t say whether it was a passenger or freight train. He called it a “local.”
He said that one of his sisters was the first telephone operator in Picayune and that later two more of his sisters went to work for the telephone company. I read somewhere that the first telephone exchange was located on the second floor of the old Bank of Picayune at the corner of East Canal and Harvey Avenue. The bank was founded in 1904 and probably the building was constructed around that time, so Lovell’s memory is probably correct on this one.
Lovell says that during the 17 years he was here he and his mother moved about 10 times. Each time she was able to rent a bigger home so she could increase the number of boarders in order to also increase her income. He says that finally they bought in 1920 a home on Second Street, located between Gray and Steel streets, from S.G. “Grandpa” Thigpen, Sr. It was the first they occupied to have indoor plumbing, and Lovell said he was overjoyed that he did not have to make the trip to an outhouse on cold nights. His mother later sold the home to a Mr. Knight, who came to Picayune to work for the Pearl River Valley Railroad, a short line owned by the Crosbys.
The Formation of Picayune’s First Football Team
It was 1921. Remember the name Vernon Jordan. History takes some funny twists and turns, and it was Jordan who sparked an idea in an educator’s head that eventually led to a football team in Picayune. There were about 600 students grades 1 through 12 attending the Picayune school system, which consisted of a block building where the old Bertie Rouse school is now located at the corner of 5th Street and North Haugh Avenue. “Prof.” S.L. Stringer, the superintendent, was wracking his brain, wondering how he could attract back to school all the teen-aged boys who quit school to go to work. If a teen-aged boy could land a job back then, he much preferred to work and make some money rather than go to school, and, of course, his parents encouraged him to generate some income. Dobie Holden told me one time that the reason he returned to school in 1922 was to play foothall. He had quit school and was working in his father, Gideon Holden’s, meat market.
Lovell says he thinks the idea of a football team struck Stringer when a guy named Vernon Jordan, a ninth grader, told Stringer that he was leaving the Picayune system to go to Poplarville to enroll at the Agricultural High School, later Pearl River Jr. College, so he could play football. Pearl River, or at that time Poplarville High, had had a team for a number of years and was well into the sport. Basketball was the only sport that Picayune participated in at the time, says Lovell, and that conversation with Jordan set Stringer’s wheels to rolling. Lovell says Stringer told the boys old enough to play the sport that in 1922 he was going to hire a coach and organize a football team and set up a schedule.
However, everyone was so eager that a group formed and began practice on their own in the Spring and Summer of 1922 on a big green spot where the Chamber of Commerce building is now located across from the then Tate Hotel at the corner of Second and Harvey. Norman Stevens, whose family had moved to Picayune several years earlier and whose dad worked for Crosby at the mill, helped teach the greenhorns the game. Stevens was attending a private school and was home for the summer and he had actively participated in the sport at the private school he was attending. Stevens would later become a star athlete at LSU, lettering in baseball, track, football and basketball while playing for the Tigers. Stevens would also be instrumental in guiding Thomas Dobie Holden and Louis D. Megehee, two 1925 all-state first team members, to LSU. Lovell comments on two things: how round the ball was, more like a basketball than the later pointed version, and that a forward pass was called “chunking” the ball. Knute Rockne of Notre Dame had just recently invented the forward pass when he couldn’t move the ball on the ground against an opponent; he decided to “chunk” the ball to a receiver. Football was just catching on nationally at this time, and had caught everyone’s imagination, including the teen-aged boys roaming Picayune. Stevens would kick the ball to the prospective players, and they would run the ball back to Stevens. “We really had no idea what we were doing,” said Lovell. “But it was fun, expended a lot of our pent up energy, and gave us something to do.”
Stringer Hires the First Coach, Bill Denson, and Eyes the First Game, Gulfport
Lovell says that Stringer hired in 1922 the first coach, Bill Denson, and Denson arrived four weeks before the team’s first game ever against Gulfport. He tells nothing about where Denson came from or how he got the job. Nothing else is known about Denson. However, Lovell says that Denson never played the game and had never coached before he came to Picayune. He shows up at Picayune, coaches the Picayune Cubs, as they were called, for the 1922, 1923 and 1924 seasons and then disappears into the mysts of history. However, he evidently did a good job of laying a great foundation because the next year, 1925, under new head coach Augustus (Gus) Jackson, Picayune won the state championship and fielded what was later to be called one of the greatest teams ever to win a state championship. But that was three years away, and as life would have it, Lovell would not play on that 1925 state championship team. In 1924 he went to Hattiesburg to fill a job on the railroad. He would not return to Picayune until 1968 when he retired and moved back here from Chicago. I interviewed Lovell in 1968 after he returned to Picayune, he said, “I just never got Picayune out of my blood. The best years of my life were spent here, and I just always considered this, and called Picayune, home.” After returning here in 1968, he settled in, married Edna Russ, widow of Denny Russ, and spent the rest of his retirement happily in Picayune, writing two books before he died, I believe in the late 1980s or early 1990s. I met and talked to Lovell many times. He was outgoing, talkative, and never met a stranger. He had a good disposition, was always joking and probing you with questions and telling you old-time stories. His story of how he wound up in Chicago is a classic, and we will tell it later on in this story.
When Denson arrived, the team members began practice in their street clothes because the uniforms and shoes had not yet arrived. They had just recently been ordered after enough funds were donated by Picayune businesses. “The first thing he taught us was how to fall on a loose ball. To show you how dumb I was I wondered why he called it a loose ball when if he just aired it up, it would be a tight ball,” wrote Lovell. The new football “suits,” as Lovell called them, did not come in until one week before the Gulfport clash and there was only twelve suits, enough to dress out the first team 11 members and one left over for a second team man.
For practice, the team “dressed out” in a room at the school, the old Bertie Rouse school on North Haugh, and walked over to the field, which was actually located where Highland Community Hospital is now located on Goodyear Boulevard across from the school. There were no stands at the field, either, and when Picayune played its first home game, the fans just lined up along the sidelines and walked up and down the field, following the action. There were no showers or any type of facilities either, writes Lovell. “After practice we just wore our “togs” home, showered at home and washed out our suits and hung them up to dry for the next evening’s practice,” he wrote. Practice began everyday at 3 p.m.
For 1922, the first team ever fielded by Picayune, here is the line-up and their weights, the first string, that started the first game with Gulfport, which was played in Picayune: QB Alton Johnson 135, RHB Ovied Davis 130, LHB Bock Baham 130, FB Johnnie D’Antoni 170, C Bill Dyle 165, RG Donnie Mitchell 185, LG Frank White 150, RT Charlie D’Antoni 170, LT Jim Megehee 165, RE Dobie Holden and LE Nat Lovell. Substitutes were Guard Bill Anderson 175; Halfback Jack Read 130; and Guard Carl Megehee 170. Special substitute was Bruce “Blister” Breland. Lovell says Breland was used only for kick-0ffs. In addition, in a picture Lovell identifies Albert Cassanova, Ernest Blackwell and Ap Johnson as being on the team. Ap Johnson and Alton Johnson might be the same guy. (If you have more information on this please place a comment at the end of the story. Comments and input are welcome.)
Now there are several things that we must clarify here. Lovell gives no listing of the 1924 team. He only tells us, as best as we can determine, what the games and scores and lineups for the 1922 season and the 1923 season were. Why he leaves out the 1924 season is not clear. Of course, he left in 1924 to go to Hattiesburg for a railroad job, and he probably had to quit and leave before the season began. He said he took all of his information from newspaper clippings saved by his sister, so he might not have had any clippings for the 1924 season.
Also, notice that Holden was on the first team, playing right end, but by 1925 on the state championship team he had been moved to fullback by Jackson. There he performed flawlessly. Also, another player, Louis D. Megehee, who is not on the first team, by 1925 was playing end and was punting the ball, averaging almost 50 yards a punt. Exactly when Megehee joined the team is not clear. Lovell lists Louis as a sub on the 1923 team. His counsin was LT Jim Megehee and brother sub Carl Megehee on the 1922 team. Also, not on this first team was “Nub” Anderson, who evidently joined the team later, and was a stalwart at center by the time the 1925 state championship series of games rolled around. Holden and Louis D. Megehee also in 1925 were named to the state’s No. 1 offensive team because of their important play during that remarkable season. Both also, probably at the insistence of Norman Stevens, went on full scholarships to LSU after graduating from Picayune. Dobie remained there for four years and coached the Freshman LSU football team after graduating, and Megehee left LSU after his sophomore year and enrolled at Southern in Hattiesburg, known then as the State Teacher’s College (STC). Megehee just last year was voted into the USM Sports Hall of Fame. One time on Sept. 29, 1929, he punted the ball 85-yards against Mississippi College of Clinton, a fete reported by the Clarion-Ledger sportswriter Purser Hewitt in a dispatch right after the game. Megehee was called the kicker with an “educated toe” and was tall, lanky and strong just like all the Megehee boys of A.P. Megehee. In addition, notice that Jack Read is listed as a sub on this first team. He would later become the QB of the 1925 state champions and would be credited along with Holden and Megehee as probably the main reason Picayune fielded such a smart and powerful team in 1925. Sportswriters wrote that Holden had one of the best football minds in the game that year. And he proved that was so by his legendary record as a coach after his playing career was over.
Here is the results of the first season in 1922:
Picayune 21 Gulfport 7 Home; Picayune 6 Bogalusa 0 There; Picayune 0 Purvis 18 Home; Picayune 19 Columbia 6 Home; Picayune 0 Gulfport 37 There; Picayune 3 Rugby of New Orleans 0 Home; Picayune 20 SS Campground 0 There; and Picayune 58 Sumrall 0 Home. I believe, although I am not sure that SS Campground was St. Stanislaus.
Lovell points out that before the first game with Gulfport, Denson realized that most of his team had never even seen a football game much less played in one. And they had only had about four weeks of organized practice before having to meet Gulfport at Picayune before hometown fans. It could wind up being very embarrassing, I am sure Denton thought. In contrast Gulfport had had a football program going for years. So Denson decided to take the team up to Poplarville to see an actual game, Lovell writes. Poplarville for a number of years had been playing the game. He doesn’t say what game they saw but Lovell writes the sight of the game, the sheer violence of this early brand of football, put the newly aspiring Picayune players into shock. They had no idea that the game was that violent. Although fearful, says Lovell, nobody quit or “backed out.” It was like the World War II bomber pilots: when briefed that only about half would come back from a mission and told that if anyone wanted to back out it was okay, one pilot said, “We were just too damned ashamed and had so much pride that we would rather face death than have our fellow pilots think we were chicken.” It was sort of like that for Picayune’s first players.
He says that in the particular game they saw Poplarville play, that a guy named Roscoe Lumpkin on Poplarville’s team got real mad and began “tearing up the line.” I don’t know what Lovell meant, other than that Lumpkin just became real violent and began, as Lovell writes, “just slinging people around.” He said Jim Megehee later did that on Picayune’s team.
Lovell writes that Denson was concerned about Gulfport’s big and rough team, so he got a guy named Bruce “Blister” Breland to come practice with the team, because Breland had played earlier at Poplarville and knew a lot about the game. He did that so Breland could, sort of, talk to the players and keep them calm. Picayune won its first game against Gulfport 21-7. Lovell does not tell about any of the game’s action.
However, he does tell a funny and interesting story about when Picayune met Gulfport again for their second confrontation of that first 1922 season. This time Gulfport beat Picayune in Gulfport 37-0, and Lovell maintains that it was because someone from Gulfport played a trick on them, and supplied them with a huge bunch of bananas on which the team gorged itself before the game began. Also, the field had deep ruts in it because of a circus that had played on the field the day before the game, and Picayune’s runners were always stumbling and failing into the ruts. Combined, the ruts and the bananas, took their toll.
Lovell gives no dates for the games or at what time they were played or on what day of the week. Most I think were played on Saturdays and had to be played during the daytime, because remember, this is the early 1920s and there is no outdoor lighting at this time.
In Picayune’s first game against Gulfport, Picayune won the toin toss and chose to receive the ball. Denson put Breland in on the kickoff reception team, but after the first play took him out, and never played him again, Lovell writes. Why he did not let Breland play, Lovell does not say. But he said Breland continued to encourage and talk to the team, which helped, Lovell writes.
Lovell describes events surrounding the second game with Gulfport this way: The team traveled in cars from Picayune to Gulfport. You have to believe this was really rough because all roads back then would have been dirt. Lovell says they had a couple of flat tires, and that one car blew a tire, ran off the road and flattened a fence while going through Pass Christian. With the mishaps they did not get to Gulfport until about 11 a.m. This is probably on a Saturday. Gulfport officials put them in a comfortable place to rest and relax before the pre-game meal. However, “some guy” with a basketfull of bananas comes by and everyone eats a bait of bananas. “Nub” Anderson ate six. After they ate the bananas, Gulfport officials come by and took them for their pre-game meal. Results: they were definitely bloated. Then there were the ruts. “That’s my excuse for getting beat by Gulfport in that second game: Too much to eat and too many ruts!” said Lovell. (Go to Part III)
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