Remembering great men who were great role models

My phone rang last week and the caller ID read Jim Love. There’s only one Jim Love in this area, Coach Jim Love.

He was the best thing about ninth-grade football, which proved to be my swan song in the sport. He was one of the best things about Portales High School. All the students and teachers loved Jim Love. He had a way of calling you out if you were out of line that got the message across quickly without him becoming the bad guy, unlike some of the other coaches.

We had talked briefly about Coach Love at our last poker game; we were seven guys that went to Portales High, wondering how he was doing, did he still live in Portales.

I said I was pretty sure he lived in town still, but I hadn’t seen him in a good while, then I reminded everyone that I bought Coach Love’s yellow 1956 Chevrolet pickup that he used when he was house painting in the summers.

The pickup was pale yellow with a straight six that ran like a watch but leaked oil like crazy. The bed was a rainbow of colors that matched every house he had ever painted with some of the boards missing. Inside it still had the floor starter button and a broken steering wheel that was taped back together.

I didn’t do a thing to it but put mag wheels on it and drive it — until the transmission went out between Portales and Roswell late one night. That pickup reached its fastest speed since I’d owned it that night. Not before the tranny blew -- afterward as my dad pulled me home behind his pickup. At one point the drive line came loose from where we had tied up outside the transmission and it hit the ground with a terrible racket and a shower of sparks from the back end.

We went to the wrecking yard and found a used transmission and I drove the thing until I got ready to get married. I got back every penny I had invested in it when I sold it and that $800 helped me afford the ring. Not that I ever regretted getting married, but later I really regretted not hanging on to that pickup.

When the call came in, I asked if this was really the Coach Love I knew, and he assured me it was. “I’m the guy who sold you that yellow pickup,” he said.

We talked for a bit and I gave him the phone number he was seeking. What amazed me is that he managed to find my phone number. No, on second thought that’s really not that amazing.

The week previous, I stopped by my high school shop teacher Glenn Fields’ home to help him celebrate his 90th birthday. I showed him all my fingers and thumbs and told him I still had them all thanks to his scaring the tar out of us in his safety trainings.

I’m not sure I made either educator overly proud of me — I didn’t go on to play varsity or even JV football and while I did turn a wrench around a newspaper pressroom for a number of years, I quit woodworking and metal fabrication as soon as I got out of shop class my freshman year.

Both were great men and great role models.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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