ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, August 29, 1996 TAG: 9608290031
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: DUBLIN
TYPE: HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS
SOURCE: RAY COX STAFF WRITER
To get to the bottom of the Hudson Chevrolet/Pulaski County High Touchdown Classic, one must board the Titanic.
Elsewhere this week, folks were endeavoring to raise the famous ship whose unfortunate encounter with an iceberg sent it to a watery parking spot at the bottom of the North Atlantic.
At Pulaski County High this past Saturday, folks were doing all they could to get a seat on the Titanic. The rush was on because to have a seat meant having something tasty to eat.
But these seats and the good eats are hard to come by. Only coaches and the volunteers who have helped this preseason jamboree reach its 13th season are eligible to visit this mobile culinary palace that Ed and Bobbie Lafon have taken to calling the Titanic. To most everybody else, the Titanic is nothing more than a big old truck with curiously delicious smells coming from its open back door.
The Lafons have been preparing tasty vittles for the Classic since it started. The tradition continued Saturday as the host Cougars, Christiansburg, Salem, Franklin County, Cave Spring, Stafford, Martinsville and Richlands squared off in a series of exhibition scrimmages as a gallery of several thousand egged them on.
"When we started, all we had were shelled peanuts and drinks, and we'd sit around and eat those peanuts and talk football,'' said Ed Lafon, a gasoline pump mechanic who is branching out into the restaurant business after buying that Pulaski institution - Jim's Steak House.
It seemed like no time before the Lafon spread became more complicated. Said prep didn't get any easier until they bought Jim's and all that did was cut down the time it took to get all the food ready from four days to two.
"We did it all ourselves,'' Ed Lafon said. "I'd come home from work and we'd cook until past midnight for four days. It was a lot of work.''
Still is, only now they have the professional grade equipment at the restaurant to use. All the better to prepare the 80 pounds of fried chicken, or the gallons of chicken soup (Ed's own recipe, thick and guaranteed to stick to any rib), or the pounds of potato salad, or the surplus of Dreamsicle cake (Bobbie's creation, tangy yet creamy, just like its namesake), or the multiple brown sugar pies (a delicacy so prized that former William Fleming coach Sherley Stuart calls ahead to reserve one to take home to Roanoke).
"I guarantee you that Ed's fed every coach in the Roanoke Valley District,'' said Breeze Callahan, like Lafon, a member of the Pulaski County Touchdown Club.
Callahan, who has a food business of his own, had done his share by providing bag lunches for the players from the eight teams that made up this year's field. Each bag contained a couple of sandwiches, some chips, and a fruit pie. You could wash them down with a soft drink deposited in a glacier of crushed ice on the back of a pickup truck stationed strategically outside the field house.
Talk about strategic stationing, that's what those shrewd businessmen at Hudson's did with some of the fancy wheels they usually keep on the lot back at the store. These cars, trucks and vans were scattered around the outside of the field on the asphalt runway. This marketing wasn't without its perils, though. One vehicle was nearly bonked on several occasions by balls booted during the field-goal kicking contest.
Speaking of the field-goal kicking contest, the hero of the day was Pulaski County's own Bryan Myers, the author of a 55-yard field goal that won the competition. Myers then lined up for a 60-yarder for show. The boot was straight down the middle, but about a foot short.
``It's good from 59,'' Myers said. ``I should have had something to eat beforehand.''
By winning the contest, Myers outshone his predecessor as the Cougars' place kicker, the highly acclaimed Shayne Graham. The bomb-footed Graham was the best kicker in the state last year and signed a letter of intent to play football for Virginia Tech. But he never won the Classic's kicking contest.
Myers, a senior, has had a long wait. ``A lot of people think that would have been bad because you don't get to play much, but I didn't look at it that way,'' Myers said. ``Shayne was a great teacher. I learned a lot from him.''
One thing many learned was that football teams from Salem and Richlands could meet between the lines without a major eruption of hostilities. You may recall that ill will developed between the schools when Salem accused Richlands of using illegal cleats during a soggy playoff game a few years back.
The encounter this time was peaceful. The football, on the other hand, was not. The two teams, as the saying goes, got after it pretty good. The Spartans beat the Blue Tornado in the two-quarter scrimmage 7-6. Afterward, all lined up to shake hands including the two coaches, Salem's Willis White and Richlands' Dennis Vaught, who smiled and exchanged a pleasantry.
``Ya'll feel good about the Blue Tornado now?'' Vaught later exhorted his team, beaming broadly.
``You'd have thought he'd won,'' one observer grumped.
Actually, everybody won here, especially those who gained a berth on the Titanic.
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON/Staff. Pulaski County's Bryan Myers, bootedby CNBa 55-yard field goal to win the Touchdown Classic field-goal kicking
competition. color.