Ashes Kuhn

Ashes Kuhn
       For some inexplicable reason, the coaching staff at Tulane University felt I was a likely candidate to make their football squad. Upon graduation from high school, they presented me with an athletic scholarship to that august institution. Unfortunately, it was an era when every player had to play both offense and defense along with covering the punts and kickoffs, all without the benefit of substitution or a facemask to ease the pain. Tulane had given up physical education several years before I got there, and we were forced to play with people who could actually read and write. At least, a little bit.        Our head coach was Anton “Andy” Pilney, whose only claim to fame was in 1925, as a Notre Dame third string halfback, he staggered off of the bench in South Bend to drunkenly score the winning points against rival Ohio State. The Greater New Orleans sports crowd lionized this man as though he were a pre-depression Emmett Smith. Pilney once told his team, “Never trust nobody. If you yaz wanna loin somthin', go to yaz teammate.” Pilney never learned the more dulcet tones of the Southern dialect and choose to speak, either in parables, which no one understood, or by crying throughout every sentence. It was particularly true if he was giving one of his stirring half time speeches to an exhausted and outmanned team, already crushed by the loyal opposition.
     We had other coaches whose nicknames will stay with me forever. Ironhead, Motormouth, Burpie, Little Ray, Stanley-Watch out-for-them-collier(sic)-dogs, and Legs were only a few of the many who were recycled through our system, always looking for greener pastures where they could hang up their coaching jockstraps.
     Our trainer was also a rare piece of work. Earl “Bubba” Porche was a mental wreck. I never heard him speak to anyone in a normal tone. In fact, he rarely spoke to anyone. When he did, it was in the surliest, most disrespectful manner. He walked around with his head down, never looked anyone in the eyes, and never had an encouraging word for any player. He was married to a distant cousin of mine, who I always called “Cuz,” particularly around him. For some reason this really pissed him off. I guess he didn’t want anyone to know his wife was related to such a horrible athlete.
     But the piece de resistance was the team doctor, “Ashes” Kuhn. I never learned the man’s first name, since “Ashes” was the absolute perfect moniker for him. I never saw Ashes without a cigarette in his mouth throughout the five years I labored at the school. Yes, five years; I was red-shirted. Plus, I was a very slow learner. Ashes never took a cigarette out from his mouth like other smokers did. He let it dangle from his lips, dragging on it until the ashes formed this parabolic curve from the end of the cigarette to the butt part in his mouth. Most times the ashes would fall off and cascade all down the front of the man. Occasionally the ashes would be shaken off prematurely by one of his coughing fits, during which the cigarette remained glued to his lower lip. In either case, by days end he looked like a fireman exiting a burning building with ashes covering him from his neck to his shoes.
     One spring, when all other students were sunning themselves at the lakefront or drinking gin and tonics at a local college bar, the jocks were having a party of their own called Spring Training. It was a time when the coaches were able to thin out the fall squad by running off all the less talented athletes. They put them through a rigor of bone-crushing exercises that forced most of them to pack up their meager belongings and head for the door. The ones they wanted to keep were also put through hell, but our hell was designed to make us better players, not run us off. It did neither. I never figured out why I was not included in the first group that was run off, because throughout my career as a jock; bitty-ball, grammar school, high school, and college, I never made one tackle. I once concluded, with all the practices (about 2000) and games (about 150) never to have made one tackle while playing defense and covering all those kicks is mind boggling. Surely, someone must have tripped over me. But it never happened.
     At any rate, this particular spring training session, we were having an intrasquad scrimmage and the offensive team was running a play around my end. As usual, the pulling guard knocked me down to the ground and the trailing halfback inadvertently stepped onto the back of my leg on his way to the goal line. In those days, we wore plastic cleats screwed onto our shoes to gain better traction. One of the cleats had fallen off the halfback’s shoe, leaving only a metal post, which opened a large gash in the back of my leg when he stepped on me. I really didn’t mind so much, because it meant I would be out for most of the remainder of the spring training practices and could join my fellow students tanning at the lakefront or preferably, in the college bar slugging down those gin and tonics.
     As they dragged me into the locker room and threw me up onto a table, I saw Ashes approach, hacking and coughing his way into this makeshift operating theater. “This won’t hurt, son,” was the prophetic words Dr. Kuhn always uttered, no matter what the injury. Dislocated or broken arms, knees with meniscus tears, mashed toes, or separated shoulders always brought forth Ashes’ fearless prognostication, “This won’t hurt, son.”
     In my case, Ashes looked a lot like Betsy Ross, as he had already whipped out his sewing kit and had begun to sew up this great hole in my calf. I turned my head around, as best I could, and saw Ashes was about three-quarters through with his smoke. I know a lot of you readers think I’m joking, but you would be dead wrong. Ashes couldn’t wear a surgical mask because he would have to cut a hole in it for his cigarette, so he stitched au natural.
     When I turned my head around a second time, the ashes were all the way up to his lips and were teetering on the brink. In order to see better, Ashes bent over as close to the wound as possible, which made me think he was trying to cauterize it before sewing it up. However, I just think he forgot his bifocals again and wanted to make sure he sewed the right two things together. Once more Ashes coughed and the falling residue went straight into the gaping hole in my calf. Not to be deterred by this, Ashes spit out the little butt remaining in his mouth, and began blowing on the ashes in the hopes of extricating them from the unsewn portion of my gash.
     Presumably, some of them were blown out, but to this date, I have a salt and pepper scar on the back of my calf; a present from the great Doctor “Ashes” Kuhn.