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Against my will, I was sports editor of The Formerly Interesting Newspaper in the early 1970′s and Tony Newhall, as he liked to call himself, was publisher then. Tony had an accounting practice of charging the sports staff with something called “negative mileage.” That’s where the reporter pays the publisher 22 cents a mile for stories he is out covering. Needless to say, it was a great incentive to stay in the office and partake of the liberal powdered soup entrees.

(Photo caption: One of the greatest games in local history was in 1991 when the plucky future mayor, Laurene Weste, started the first lingerie tackle football league while a student at Bowman. That year, the continuation school played lingerie teams from Rutgers, Quartz Hill, the NAACP, Notre Dame, the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power, Hooters Valencia and Gorman Continuation High. Total scores from the first and only season was 316. The reason for not printing individual scores was a new politically correct edict from the district downplaying competition.)

Actually, Mr. Newhall didn’t charge us mileage to cover sports, but, 40 years later, what’s the guy going to do? Write a letter to the web editor?

Dear West Wanch Beacon:

I take digits to keybode to pwotest your unfayoh pow-twayal of my management style of The Signal When It Wuz Intwesting.

We nevoh chawged our wee-porturs to cover football games. Well. Much.

And pwease stop editing my wettoe as if I talk wike Elmo Fudd. Dis is beneath even a bwog site.

Huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh…

Vewy twooly yose,

Elmo “Tony” Fuddnewhall

Thank you, Tony.

And a “Huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh…” white back at u.”

Point of all this is that the 600 year period where I was an indentured slave/sports editor, I could afford to attend many of the Greatest Football Games In SCV History. I certainly didn’t go to too many football games in the Antelope Valley primarily because such trips just eat a large chunk out of your life that you’ll never, ever get back.

For years, I thought the Antelope Valley High mascot was the Monkeylope.

Half monkey.

Half cantelope.

I also didn’t like driving on Highway 14 past Acton because of all the nuclear radiation.

Nuclear radiation is not completely a bad thing. With the right ingredients indigenous to the Antelope Valley (hay, grain, chum, ostrich jerkey, breast milk), radiation can grow high school football players more than 11 feet tall and weighing millions of ounces.

The problem with having such a pigskin squad is that they tend to come at you like a wrestler in a bad Mexican movie, arms up in the air and growling. This makes them exceptionally vulnerable to the Statue of Liberty play, which Newhall Elementary ran against them in 1956 a total of 317 times in a row.

Now forget the Hart-AV war of Whatever as the greatest game ever played.

When those brave little Eagles of Newhall Elm in 1938 trounced the combined AV High & Jr. College squad 3,014-minus-2, now THAT was a great game.

I don’t mean to disparage the Monkeylopes. They had a good squad that year and beat Lake Los Angeles, 88-0. What made that particular contest interesting was that AV scored all the points off of 44 safeties.

I wasn’t there (remember, in my days as Psychologically Complicated Sports Editor, I didn’t actually go to games), but I heard there was a really great confrontation between the Catholic squad Alemany High and the monastery up in Pearblossom in 1983.

It was pre-season.

I mean, like, obviously, because it’s next to impossible to get a bunch of friars sanctioned for CIF league play.

RE: “Friars,” if I may steal Professor Fate’s classic line from “The Great Race,” “You mean, the Great Leslie ran off with a CHICKEN!?!?”

Anyway.

Alemany and San Anselmo, I’m told, played to a 0-0 tie. The two teams just couldn’t seem to break from the pre-game prayer and knowing Catholics, they can stretch out a rosary for days.

For sheer spectacle, you can’t beat the Canyon-CalArts game of 1971. Canyon was a real powerhouse and Harry Welch, heir to the Welch’s Grape Juice Fortune, was quarterback then. Harry was also middle linebacker for the Cowboys, along with being both offensive and defensive lines, special teams and the kicker.

I say this with all due respect because Harry’s my good friend, but the guy has control issues.

The Canyon-CalArts game ended as a double forfeit because most of the Cowboy squad ended up going over to the other side to become trust fund hippies.

Who could ever forget the first-ever Saugus-Valencia game?

I ask that more as a rhetorical question, but I did attend that one because, in “negative expense mileage,”  it only cost me something like 49 cents to cover it.

Ah, high school gridiron nostalgia.

Who could ever forget that epic West Ranch vs. Newman’s Own in the Salad Dressing Bowl of 2003? Or when Golden Valley defeated Seymour Butts AT Seymour Butts?

Hey.

You.

The reader.

Come close to the page.

Real close.

Know what?

There really isn’t a Seymour Butts High School.

I just like to say “Seymour Butts”  because it’s extremely liberating.

John Boston has earned 119 major awards for writing stuff. Besides The Mighty West Ranch Beacon, his work appears in the prestigious thebostonreport.net just about every darn day. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon. Read Boston’s daily blog, his Daily English Muffins, the Adventures of Job Hunter and more of John Boston’s award-winning commentary on thebostonreport.net