What Will You Do When You Wake Up in Hickory? (Parts I, II, and III)

 Good week to all! Note that Parts I and II of our series are below THIS WEEK'S PART III.

I have enjoyed reminiscing about teaching for the last several weeks, but this little series is more than a slightly humorous classroom recreation. I mean, we all are going to have those phases of life when we wake up and find ourselves in a difficult place in life--in other words, in Hickory. When we do, we'll have a choice to make. So, before that time comes, perhaps you can consider this question as you read on: What will you do when you wake up in your own Hickory? But there's a huge caveat: Don't try to do it alone. It is true, as Philippians says, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Keep that in the back of your mind regardless of where you wake up tomorrow or in some future tomorrows. God bless all this week. I hope you enjoy Part 2 of ...

What Are You Going to Do When You Wake Up in Hickory?

(Part III)

Christianity isn’t something that you live inside a church building—maybe in a basketball gymnasium or out on a muddy football field, but not at church. The real living begins when you walk out of those Sunday-morning doors. I think every story I've ever told or written reminds us of that. The apostle reminds us of it, too, just in a little different way: “If we live in the Spirit," he says, "let us also walk in the Spirit," which, translated, means we can’t just claim to be a Christian, we have to show it or at least try our dead level best to show it every day. It takes walking in the Spirit.

That is not an easy thing, no, not even a little bit. And it gets especially hard when you wake up in a little town like Hickory, Indiana. Or, Robinson, Texas.

Welcome to Robinson, Texas, 1992.

As it turned out, it wouldn’t exactly be the welcome I expected, that I can tell you.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if I hadn’t learned it before, I learned it in ’92,” I said one day when my students and I came to what we called “Creek Book” time. “If you’re going to get through it all in one piece, you’d better buckle your chinstrap, dig in your heels, set your jaw, fix your mind, focus on the goal ahead, and “GTW.”

“GTW?” they said.

“Go To Work, ladies and gentlemen. Go to work just like Coach Dale did in 1952, and a little like your own favorite teacher and coach did back in 1992.”

I looked to see whether the young men and women approved, and I saw a smile or two, which I interpreted as absolute, unmitigated approval. That, alone, was a small victory. They merely sat back and listened contentedly to Story Number 1101, or so it seemed to them. Regardless, they wouldn't be allowed to doze a little, no sir. I always could—and would!—find a pivotal moment in the story where I could slap one of my favorites (or sleepiest) students’ desks and holler “Boom!” loud enough to shake the rafters and jar the slumberers like they were Jonah himself. They all liked the "Boom," except the slumberers.

With the stage set better than a Shakespearean drama, the story began …

Forty years after Coach Dale’s true story, in 1992, my family and I left the first and best job

I ever had in both English teaching and basketball coaching at North Shore High School in Houston. We worked side by side with my good friend, head coach Randy Weisinger. But, alas, as we all understand, an assistant coach thinks he needs to be a head coach. So, when the job offer arrived on eagles’ wings from Robinson, Texas, we immediately picked up everything, bid a somber “Auld Lang Syne” to friends and loved ones, and were off to central Texas on a team of white horses to save the world and make our mark. So much for "best laid plans of mice and men ..."

“Ah, that little school won’t know what hit it when we roll into town,” I said to my captivated students. 

And it was true, somebody didn’t know what hit him, that’s for sure, but it wasn't who I thought it was going to be.

Football was king over at our new school. Before we could pull the basketballs out, except for one day a week with the off-season players, we had to make it through football season. It was one of the first blizzards that flew in the face of the young coach, stinging like thousands of little bees. In the group of football coaches was a twenty-something youngster, a big fella who was as confident and cocky as Walker Texas Ranger. Not a bad guy, just a victim of being twenty-something and surrounded by a clique that was not as receptive of this new basketball coach who thought he was Don Quixote setting out to save the world.

“Sometimes the coach standing before you lived in a land where inns were castles and windmills were giants,” I said.

It is easy, all right, to pose the question of the day in a newspaper column, but what are you actually going to do when you wake up in Hickory, Indiana—or in this case, Robinson, Texas? I had to answer that question long before we put the pen to paper and tell the story.

It was a long, hard three months to get to the first jump ball. I had to endure my first year of coaching eighth-grade football, which was actually quite a success because, as I learned, “coaching is coaching”—and the varsity team went deep into the playoffs into November. One of our best players was a future Dallas Cowboy named Jason Tucker, who was also the star of our basketball team. We had to cancel game after game as we waited patiently for football to end, but we did play our junior high schedule. My eighth-grade junior high coach was my friend and nemesis Kevin Hoffman.

At Coach Hoffman’s first game, I sat nearby and watched him coach. In the first half, our opponent ran a little 2-3 zone defense that stifled his young team and frustrated Coach. One thing about Hoffman, though: He was highly competitive, regardless of the sport. At halftime, I made my way to the old dusty dressing room and listened as he gave a pep talk to his dismayed team. After a minute, I asked Coach for the piece of chalk, and we drew up a simple play to answer the zone-defense problem he was facing. His team went out in the second half and forged a great comeback. At the final buzzer, I slipped out, looking back over my shoulder with a little satisfaction as Hoffman and his team celebrated. 

Coach and I did not talk the next few days as we were immediately back to varsity football.

That Friday night, our football team went down to Coldspring, Texas and fought a losing battle in a muddy deluge, kind of the way Don Quixote is battered when he decides to fight that windmill. In the locker room after the game, I sat dejectedly with those bloodied, muddied soldiers. There are no words that will help in a time like that, so you sit together quietly as the sad stillness falls over the locker room.

Coffman came over, too, and sat beside me, surprising me. For once, it was as though we were a team, joined together by bitter defeat. After a few moments, he said, “Coach, do you think you can win in basketball here?”

I didn’t hesitate.

“Sure, Coach,” I said, exuding the same confidence Kevin had, “we have all the pieces.

Yes, I’m sure we can win.”

Nothing more. He thought it through for a few moments, then he shocked me.

“Well, Coach, if anybody can do it, I believe you can.”

It has been thirty-four years since that stormy Coldspring night, but in my mind, I often sit with our bloodied warriors and beside my newfound coaching friend and think of all we learned.

I haven’t talked to Coach Kevin Hoffman in three decades, but I’ve followed his career from afar. He has gone on to win three state championships as a head football coach in Texas and also won the Texas Coach of the Year once.

“But, ladies and gentlemen,” I said, “still, I’ve wondered. How many times during some hard years has he woken up in Hickory himself? Plenty, I’m sure. I sure hope on those dark mornings he thought back to his Robinson days and to that young basketball coach who fought tooth and toenails for two hard years and drew some perspective that helped him along the way, too.”

I paused to let it sink in, then added wistfully.

“I hope so, anyway.”

Another pause, and a sigh, followed by the usual.

“Hands, please.”

March 16, 2026

What Will You Do When You Wake Up in Hickory?

 (Part I)

Buckle up. Today is quite a ride. Our minds, hearts, and words have several stops to make, some abrupt and unexpected, some bumpy, too.

First stop: the book of Psalms. Begin there each day, and you’ll soon discover it will lead to many probing questions and thoughts, followed possibly—should you write next—by inspiring words that fit into a hundred sentences like the pieces of a puzzle into a perfect frame.

Words, when infused with inspiration, assisted (some think) by the planets that happen to line up across the night sky as they did on February 28 for the last time until 2040—have a way to write themselves.

Those handpicked nouns and verbs, along with their little friends, form sentences—simple or complex, clear and unmistakable or ambiguous and poetic—all together serve to lead your mind where it needs to go, or your mind leads those words (I am still not sure which). They lead to worlds that, at the outset, are unknown, but not for long. They become mind-changing and perhaps life-changing by the time you nail the very last line like an Olympic gymnast on a landing. Without a flinch.

Today we are word travelers—journeying to Psalms, to a gospel masterpiece of music, then to a poem about an optimistic little boy read in a classroom that could be any of ten thousand, then to the greatest sports movie of all time, and, finally, to a young coach in central Texas almost four decades ago who learned a lesson for the ages. 

Word Travel 101!

When the odyssey takes us not to Disneyland or to Wonderland but to Hoosierland, we'll have to ask the question we asked those thousands of young men and women, "What are you going to do when you wake up in Hickory?”

The answer will not come for years, perhaps decades, but it will come. “Trust me on this,”

I’d say.

Our first stop is with the psalmist:

Psalm 42—

“Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again—my Savior and my God! … I will remember you—even from distant Mount Hermon, the source of the Jordan, from the land of Mount Mizar I hear the tumult of the raging seas as your waves and surging tides sweep over me. But each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me, and through each night I sing his songs, praying … ‘O God my rock … why have you forgotten me? Their taunts break my bones. They scoff, Where is this God of yours?’ … I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again—my Savior and my God!” (vs. 5-11 NLT).

Ah, what poetry! I will remember you, Lord. I remember you from ten-thousand-foot Mount Hermon, where You would be transfigured before three disciples, all the way to the surging, rolling Jordan River.

The words go beyond poetry. No, they rehearse and foreshadow difficult scenes not merely from the life of the psalmist but from the plight of our Lord, the King of kings and the Lily of the valley, He who endures more mocking and criticism than any man. Because of His omniscience, He is privy to far more of the evil thoughts of men than you or I could ever be. It must’ve been a burden like no other.

Then, next comes a song. Another stop. Elvis sings it, reinforcing in its lyrics the psalmist’s sentiments, especially in the resounding chorus—“My Jesus knows just what I need, O, yes, He knows just what I need. He satisfies, and every need supplies, yes, He knows just what I need.”

The songwriter, the famous Mosie Lister, understands that the power of the lyrics lies there in the middle of the chorus—“He satisfies, and every need supplies”! 

When the greatest singer of a generation comes to that part, and music takes him to the highest crescendo, like Mount Hermon itself, the distant scale is too high even for the Memphis singer to tiptoe to reach, so he relies instead on the brilliant backup lady singers to shake the crystal chandeliers.

“Oh yes,” we say, “oh, yes—He knows just what I need.”

And then, flipping the channel once again, our word-travel morning takes us from the greatest of spiritual poetry and most powerful gospel lyrics, somehow, to a classroom filled with students. A million of them have strolled through the doors, and the mind locks in on just a single group. It could be any of them, but it really is all of them.

I knew something they did not: Along the way in their lives, they would face unfair odds and challenges.

This. Is. Inevitable.

They have no idea, for the dreams of sixteen and seventeen-year-olds do not wander into far-reaching galaxies where the many glitches of life reside. That’s a good thing.

But they still need to fold a thought up and tuck it away safely for the day when they will need it. Thus, a poem always found its way onto their desks and into their lives. The story is of a boy playing left field; he and his team find themselves on the short end of a 42-0 score in the first inning.

The volunteer reader of the day reads the thirty-second text, and almost before the final words “I’ll side ain’t been to bat” have echoed off of the four well-inspired walls, comes the decades-long rhetorical question,

“Ladies and Gentleman” (that was always their cue that a long-held lesson was tittering on the horizon, a life-changing one if you are to believe the old fella who is in that exact moment utilizing one of a million dramatic pauses) … “Ladies and gentleman, tell me: what are you going to do when you look up at the scoreboard and see that you’re down 42-0?”

A pause.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll find out tomorrow.”

A more dramatic pause than before.

“Hands together,” I said for the thousandth time, bringing the thought to its climatic conclusion; and, in unison—well-rehearsed and in sync—thirty pairs of hands come together.

March 2, 2026

What Will You Do When You Wake Up in Hickory?

Part II

“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds …” Hebrews 10:24

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your eyes,” I said, twirling a thought in my mind that I knew would be as life-changing to these high school students as … well … as meeting the boy or girl of their dreams, or just this side of it.

The students looked up. They had not read Julius Caesar yet, so they did not know it is ears, not eyes. But I knew something they didn’t know. A teacher—despite all their superpowers—cannot measure the degree to which teenage ears are activated. But the eyes, with those, you have a chance.

The daily pleadings for these future scholars to “lend me their eyes” come in many forms. Sometimes it is, “Let me see your eyes,” and sometimes—to be as dramatic as a Shakespearean actor playing Caesar himself—I’d raise my voice over the clamor, call out “Ladies and gentlemen,” raise my arms like Marc Anthony who made the "Friends, Romans, countrymen" speech, and gaze up into the sky. All of those motions in sync usually get me at least a glance, which would be all the encouragement I needed to continue:

“So, friends, Romans, countrymen, tell me, what are you goin’ to do when you wake up in Hickory?”

“Hickory?” they asked in unison.

“Yes, Hickory. Have I not told you about “Hoosiers,” the greatest sports movie of all time, where Coach Norman Dale rides into the one-horse town of Hickory, Indiana, to take over the basketball team way back in 1952, and when he gets there, everybody is against him?”

There is no response except a few shakes of the head.

“So, why are they all against him? Thanks for asking," I said. "Well, because it’s a little-bitty town, you see, and in a hick town, there are ways to do things and ways not to do them. I mean, they’ve been done the same way since before I was born in 1856, and no city slicker is goin’ to ride into town on his white horse and change the way things are done.”

“They have their conventions,” I guess, answered Clint, a young man who always has an answer or a question even if nobody else does. You can always count on Clintwood, as I called him.

“Yes sir,” I said, “you see, Coach Dale just has a funny way of doing things. He wants to practice at times without a ball, and in a game, he makes the team pass the ball five times before they shoot. That sure didn’t work, not at first anyway. So, the town gets a posse together one night and forms a lynchin’ mob that gathers in the church—of all places—and everybody in the whole town meets to vote on firin’ Coach Dale.”

“Who wins the vote?” asked Clintwood.

“Oh, it is practically unanimous against Coach,” I continued, “I mean, he really woke up in a bad place when he woke up in Hickory. It was a thousand to one against him.”

I gave all a second to think before resuming: “Oh, it wasn’t all bad. Prior to the vote, this lady teacher named Mira stands up to speak. She has been giving Coach down the country ever since he rode into town …”

“ …. on his white horse?” said one of my witty students with a smile.

“Oh yeah,” I said without hesitation, “but her problem was that her mother, with whom she lived, took a liking to Coach, to her chagrin. She walks up to the podium with a letter to read that would seal the coach’s fate. The article from 10 years earlier reported that Coach had hit one of his players. She had researched and dug up the dirt on him, and he didn’t stand a chance.”

“Does she read it?”

“Oh, she stands up to read it, her voice crackin’, but, you know, something comes over her, and she folds it up, puts it in her pocket, and says, ‘To be fair, I think it would be a big mistake to let Coach Dale go.’ And then she pauses, and says, ‘Give him a chance.’

“Man, her voice cracked again, almost like she was in love with the Coach (Could it be?), and you can see that Coach is winnin’ her over. Don’t forget that point, now. Sometimes you have to win people over. Write that down in your notebook.

“Coach Dale smiles at that, and Shooter does, too. Shooter is the town drunk who knows basketball like the back of his hand. He is pretty much the only one in the whole town who likes Coach, except for Mira’s mama and one of the players’ fathers, who, on the first day of practice, drug his son back up to practice after he had walked out.

“But Shooter is his biggest supporter. Ah, man, it’s not saying much having the laughed-at town drunk on your side. So, even after Mira’s vote of confidence, it is still like 100 – 3 against our man. Mira sits down and, oh, does her mama just grin like a possum to see her turn the corner! And when the town votes and passes the ballots up like you guys do your homework, the ex-coach Coach fired on the first day stands up with a grin as wide as the Pacific and announces with glee that Coach is outvoted like fifty to two, because Shooter didn’t even get a vote.”

“So, he’s done, Coach?” said Billy Ray, one of our own school’s best ballplayers.

“Well, he would’ve been had what happened next not happened,” I said, smiling. I noticed all the students' eyes that at first had looked glazed over like a donut were as bright as ocean water.

“What happened, Coach?” said Jacobian from way back in the far corner of the room.

“Well, Jimmy walked in?”

“Jimmy?”

“Oh, yes, Jimmy is one of the best players to ever come out of Indiana. And he won’t play for anybody after the old coach had died. One day, Coach Dale catches him outside shootin’ baskets and basically says, ‘If your heart’s not in it, I don’t care if you play or not.’ He rebounds one of Jimmy’s shots as he says that, then rubs the ball contemplatively, and passes it back to him and walks away. Coach does a lot of walkin’ away in the movie. Don’t forget that, either, we’ll talk about “walkin’ away.

“So, Jimmy Butler walks into that town meeting. He’s carryin’ that same ‘ol black leather ball under his arm, and when the Hickory folks see him, they grow quiet as that little mouse at Christmas. Jimmy uses his own dramatic pause, then says one of only two things he says in the whole movie, 

‘I think it’s about time I play ball,’ he says quietly but emphatically.

“Ah, man,” I said with added enthusiasm, “you wouldn’t believe how the room carries on. You’d think they’d just won the state championship, which basically might be true. Everybody had been hopin’ all season that Jimmy would play, because, you see, basketball is as big of a thing in Hickory, Indiana, as peaches are down in Georgia, where I hail from.

“When Jimmy says that, the ex-coach hollers out, ‘I told ya, we jus’ had to get rid of him!’ But Jimmy ignores that, and says, ‘One more thing. I play, Coach stays. Coach goes, I go.’”

The whole room stirred at that, and Clintwood snapped, “Coach, what happened next?”

“You mean after the ex-coach’s teeth fell out and rolled out on the floor,” I said, chuckling, bringing a few smiles across the faces looking back at me. “Well, Mira’s mama jumps up and says, ‘I think we need to vote again, and whatever teeth the ex-coach had left fall out again and roll on the floor with the rest of ‘em, and they revoted. This time the dad who brought his son back to practice stands up with a smile as big as Dallas and says, ‘Coach stays!’

“Which brings me back to my original question, ladies and gentlemen.” Dramatic pause, then, “Friends, Romans, countrymen, tell me, what are YOU goin’ to do when you wake up in Hickory?”

I let it sink in, scanned the class like a secret service man, and closed out the way we always closed out a day’s story.

“Hands please!”

The students obliged, as always. But, then, I had to add over the noise of shuffling books,

“Oh, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, tomorrow I’ll tell you what I did … when I woke up in Hickory back in 1992.”

Swish, I thought with satisfaction.

Nothin’ but net.

March 9, 2026

(Part 2 next week)