ACTV, probably more hands on
On Campus with your host, ACU
vice president and dean of campus life,
Dr. Gary McCaleb.
Here's Gary. On campus today,
we're pleased to welcome Bob St. John.
The author and well-known writer in
throughout Texas has
just recently had two books
come out, one entitled While the Music
Last. The other texts
the story of the man who built the Dallas
Cowboys, Tex Schramm.
We'll be visiting about both of those
books, which are only two of eight
books that Bob St. John
has written. Thank you for being with us
today. Oh, I'm very happy you had me
here. The the book,
while the music lasts, let's talk about
it first. We'll come back to Texas and
Dallas Cowboys a little later.
But, um, there's something
about this book. In fact, if you don't
mind, I'd like to just read something
from the cover of this book because
I think it sets the tone.
It says.
Well, actually, it's written by Bill
Moyers and says, While I'm feeling
blue about being so far away from home,
I go down to lower Manhattan to the Lone
Star Cafe over and over again.
I hear Bob St. John's name mentioned.
And one day I even saw one longtime
exile dolefully alone in the corner,
reading a stack of columns his
mama had sent him from Dallas.
They were all by Bob St. John.
I think somewhere along the line,
Bob St. John has captured
something about Texas and Texans
and people and.
Life.
That causes people to really identify
and appreciate what you have to, right?
Um, what have you done?
Well, I've been around long enough,
so I should be able to identify with
at least the people, everything I.
I think what I write a column, I try to
find something, some common denominators
about the human condition or human
nature, something with which
people could relate.
You know, I think we all have a common
bond somewhere.
Sometimes it's in the simplest of
stories, but they become more
complex when you think about them.
But if somebody says, well, oh, that's me
or I did this or I thought this or
I see myself doing this and it makes me
feel very good.
And when I try to show
in vignettes or something like the
way we are, I'm this way.
And maybe you're this way or maybe
without preaching, maybe show the
scenes and let people draw their own
conclusions.
That is when I write well, you don't
always write well, but if you do it
right, that's the way I try to do it.
But even as you describe that, it
immediately brought to my mind several
different things through this book.
While the music last,
an incident when you talk about
Christmas, an incident when you talk
about coaching your son for three or four
years in baseball, and he is becoming
tired of it, incidents
about growing up years
and different experiences.
And
does it mean that you have become
willing to really open
up your own, your personal experiences
to a point of vulnerability in order to
allow people to identify with these?
I've thought for some time and I
taught creative writing for one year.
And the thing you see so many people
who they sit and they talk and they can
tell things, they tell very funny
stories, very personal stories about
their lives.
But they have a problem putting it down.
And I don't I don't think you can really
be a writer if you're afraid of this.
You have to show yourself.
You have to laugh. You have to cry
because everybody is going through so
much of the same things.
And I'm not sure you can be a writer if
you're afraid to do this,
but people do have the trouble because of
the permanency to it.
I mean, it's on paper. My gosh, it's not
like talk and it's really out there.
And it's it's never really bothered me.
I'm sure it's probably embarrassing my
family or children at times.
But so what
what did you have in mind and what you
pulled together in while the music lasts?
It's once again, it's the second
collection I had one that came out about
1990 called Sketches.
And it was more than yeah, it's probably
than this, although there are a number in
here, I tried to just pick
scenes, different scenes from life,
different stages of life and things that
people go through, a lot
of it reflecting people on you or with
whom I'd come in contact, and also myself
and our relationship with my children
and
among others that have been quoted
on the back.
I found it interesting that
James Michener was
referring to that earlier
book of your collections
of columns entitled Sketches,
and says that apparently
was this at the time that he was here in
Texas and he was working
on.
He was in Austin at the time.
I'd met him there.
And he had ticked up a copy of your
book. Yeah, he had a couple of copies.
He had the book I'd written called On
Down the Road A Sociological
Study of the rodeo cowboy culture.
And he also had sketches.
And I was quite flattered.
That was one of the letters I kept.
And in this particular comment,
he says he found that it was a
particularly lovely book and has been
dipping into it from time to time for the
feel of local color.
So apparently he also found this
gave him a feel of what?
Do you in some way, do you feel like you
have become something
of a spokesman for what Texas and
Texans and people of the
South and Southwest are like?
Of I'm not sure, you know, I'm not
exactly sure where I would fit in the
spectrum there when I was
when sketches came out, I was going
around the state a lot and doing a state
column.
I would go to all the areas, you know, go
to the small towns and various places and
do a column. And since
then, since about 1982, I've been doing a
Metroplex column.
And so, you know, I'm not
sure it's Texas as much.
I like to think a lot
of the things about people are more of a
universal type thing.
I you know, I'll get mail when they
serve, I think The L.A.
Times printed some of the columns and
I'll get some letters from L.A.
about the family vacation.
Oh, that's that's we did that to
you know, we did that. We took the dog
and had all the same problems,
both funny and sad.
You mentioned teaching creative writing
at one time. If we could talk just for a
minute about the creative process,
because that's really what what this is
all about. Um, how
do you initiate the process?
In other words, if you begin with
the need for a column?
Is it possible to
to describe a process
with very so much when you when
you when you write a column, three, four
columns a week or something, they become
so varied.
The process, a lot of times you'll
have a thought or you'll see something
and it'll be and be in your mind back
here.
Like, for instance, the woman whose
husband died, I don't know if you read
that column yet, but.
Everybody that will come to the funeral.
Oh, I'll always be there for you.
You know, I'll be we're going to keep in
touch.
And I didn't know you as well as I knew
your husband, but I'll I'll be there and
you can always call me.
And then three weeks later, they're gone.
Uh.
And if that had happened to my sister and
I had this in the back of my mind and I'd
I'd noticed it, I guess, happening, you
know, throughout my life.
And I thought, you know, that's that's a
that's a human nature type thing.
Everybody's very sincere when they say
it, but then they get back into their
lives.
And so I think I you know, maybe I do
pop psychology fairly
well, your
column in The Dallas
Morning News is so widely
read by so many different people and is
in a paper that, of course, is
distributed at practically
all over the state and beyond.
And so it gives you a kind of exposure
or opportunity for people to become
acquainted with you. Do you find that
people, uh,
feel they have come to know you've never
even met you before because of reading
your columns?
Oh, actually, I do.
I think the nicer the nicer
letters I get, people say they feel
like they know me.
And I think that's because maybe I'm not
afraid to show myself.
I get letters from, you know, from
people that say, oh, I had this this
problem and the dark
side of the moon of that is that people
will call you to discuss their problems
with you, because I think you have some
answers that you don't have.
A good friend of mine was.
Dr. Mike, this he had been head of the
psychology department of this same you, I
was talking to him once about this.
You know, why do they call me?
I get the gist.
All, you know, every type person
he said is he thinks it's the way I
write, you know, because I certainly
don't have the answers.
I just try to show show what happens,
let people draw their own conclusions.
What did he mean about the way
you write? Is it is it a style
or is it?
I think so. It's it's it's
sometimes I'll do a conversational style.
I don't always do it all. Vary the
styles. I'll use rhythm sometimes.
Sometimes a conversational style a.
He was his theory, and I'm not sure it's
true. Think that was what he thought, he
said if people felt they could
talk to me, by the way
I write.
And that's flattering and but
you don't have time to talk to a lot of
people like that.
Have you consciously developed a style
that in other words, did you
go into a process saying, I want
to come out with something else that
distinctively that
is distinctively my style and
people can identify with me or.
I had a professor at the University of
North Texas, the issue for he had been
the poet laureate of Texas, and I was
very fortunate to have him
as a teacher.
And he had told me once, he said, you
read a lot.
And he says consciously and
subconsciously, you pick up a little here
and a little there, and then you end
up with your own style.
In other words, you pick up a writing
style or just a little things.
Yes. By reading and also by writing
a lot.
So I'm not sure consciously I.
I always felt if I could write something
simply.
That it could also be complex because you
could write between the lines and you
could lead lead people in certain places
and you would get perhaps two audiences,
he would get the people who read the
words as they saw them, and you would get
the people that you could make think
and perhaps the people who read between
the lines.
So I think if if I when
I do sometimes write oil.
Which is not too often at times, but I
think maybe maybe I do that sometimes
you've said several times.
Right, well, I don't always write well,
how do you what is apparently you have
your own standard of of
looking at something that you've written
and knowing whether it was written
well or not, is there a way you can
describe what
it's it's very difficult.
You know, I've written things that I've
hated and people have liked.
And I've also written things I've liked
that really had no reaction from
people, so I don't know, it's hard.
But if I do, if I like it, you know,
I'll feel very good when I'm finished,
I'll say I've taken the short space
in a column, which is, of course
different from the book.
And I've done the subject and I've made a
point without preaching.
And maybe I've made people think
and it makes me feel very good.
But then I've had some that I thought
were just total failures that received
a lot of mail about.
So I don't know, you know, maybe you
don't always know.
It still has more of an art than a
science.
Yeah, right, right.
From the standpoint of
looking at your writing now
to your writing, at some point
you might want to choose earlier on,
would you say there has been much of a
change in that in the writing and
the content and the style
of Bob St
John or or has it been pretty much
constant?
I'm sure there's been some changes you
pick up.
Different things that you do.
And I think the knowledge factor
is probably made it somewhat different,
I think through the through the age
process and I think I've found out what I
didn't know.
And so I can deal with subjects perhaps
better than I used to at one time,
because then you think, oh, I know this
or I know that now I'm more aware
of what I don't know than what I do know.
The other book that I referred to earlier
is a book about Tex Schramm,
the general manager of the Dallas
Cowboys.
We're going to take a break. And when we
come back, I'd like to talk about this
book and about your insights,
because you've also written a book on Tom
Landry. Right.
Your insights on the Dallas Cowboys
and the and the people involved in that
program. We're visiting today with Bob
St. John.
I'm Bob Edwards.
I'm Barbara Haltered.
This is NPR's Morning Edition.
This is Noah Adams. And I'm Susan
Stamberg. Every day on All Things
Considered, we bring you the human
stories behind the headlines and we take
you into the minds of thoughtful people.
Well, look who's coming
through that door.
I think we met somewhere before,
this is American Public
Radio.
We're back on campus and continuing to
visit with Bob St. John, author
of the book While The Music Last,
but also author of the book Text
The Man Who Built the Dallas Cowboys,
Tex Schramm and Tom
Landry are probably the two
continuing figures in the
history of the Dallas Cowboys.
And you've written a book about both of
those men, about each
of those men and.
From that standpoint, you may have
some insights into the Dallas Cowboy
organization and why it
is or has been and
will be the kind of hopefully will the
right.
Tex Schramm is
something of a fascinating person in this
article, in your book that you
referred to a quote by Bob
Oates, a, I
believe, Los Angeles Times sportswriter,
one of the dean of the sportswriters who
said that Tex Ryan might be
the single most
are maybe his number one
ranked front office person
in sports.
That puts him in a pretty
lofty position.
Right. It's unlike
Landry, I guess, with Tom Landry, the
his life. It's God, family and football.
I think with SRAM, it's football,
football and then family, if there's any
time left.
He's a person who's devoted his life to
the game, to the betterment of the game.
He studied it most of his life and then
he became involved in it.
And he's been a he's been a great
innovator, he
he's probably been more personally
involved in rule changes in the game that
you see on the field today than anyone.
And I think he's he's very outspoken.
You see you see so many owners and
officials that they stay in the
background, but he's he loves
the publicity. He loves to be in front.
He's very opinionated.
He'll have an opinion on anything.
Even if he doesn't know anything about
it, he'll have an opinion on it.
I know we had a.
The first draft of the book, we
continually got the arguments there
in the book, which is all right, I mean,
we're still friends.
But he was saying, well, this
and this, and I was saying this and this
and he was saying this, this,
you don't know how to write a book.
And I was saying, you're telling me how
to write a book. And here's a man has
only read two books in his life
to this one came out. He's read this one
five times.
So actually read seven
from the standpoint of I think
I think the question
at this time is from the standpoint
of the Dallas Cowboys,
how do you explain what has
happened to the Dallas Cowboys when
the same two men who have been given
credit for building the Dallas Cowboy
organization, Tex Ram and Tom Landry, are
still in those same positions.
And yet we've just completed a season in
which they have the worst record in pro
football, which, incidentally, was a
great time to release a book on the
Dallas Cowboys.
The timing was incredibly bad.
I think it's what happens the.
That won 20 straight seasons, which is
unprecedented in pro football, I think
when the Redskins lost the season
that they were second with seven winning
seasons and the whole league
and the structure of the league, that's
it's predicated on parity.
The worst teams draft highest,
they have the weaker schedules, and yet
Dallas had been on top for 20 years.
I think when that happens, you reach
a point. I think we have to Dallas in the
early 80s, you become very complacent.
Don't fix it if it's not wrong.
But actually, there were some cracks in
the armor.
I know they had the SRAM and introduced
the computer, the football and the.
That was in the early 60s, and it did
really put Dallas way ahead, they were
finding the players such as Calvin
Hill from Yale, and they
were you know, they got
had a very good team because of this.
But then then when they got on top,
they would start picking the players, the
prototype of the perfect player,
like the linebackers, six, two or six,
three and two, 25 and runs
for seven forty, perhaps
he wasn't a good college football player
and the computer didn't look inside of
people.
And for a number of years there
they were looking at the guy who might be
a Super Bowl player, who might be a
superstar rather than the
hard of a team.
The guy, the young man from Baylor,
the Mike Singletary, is five, 10,
but he's a very fine linebacker, probably
the best.
And TECs realized that about three
years ago, he inaugurated some changes
in let's take the human element into
this. You know, I mean, this guy is a
good football player, so he doesn't fit
the computer.
And so and recently they're trying
to battle to have a balance, but I think
it caught up with them because
the players that they found, they got
older and.
Plus, they made you know, they made some
errors.
They deviated even from the computer for
a while.
Some years ago, I know they
have a list of like 100 players will take
them as they go and whoever's left on the
list, that's the next player we'll take.
Landry had deviated personally
from the list and took the Causby over
Joe Montana.
And then he took a Jim Jeffcoat over
Dan Marino, but
his thinking was, we have Danny White to
come in, replace Roger Staubach.
And so we don't have any problem at
quarterback.
I mean, this didn't work out.
Well, then you have this constant problem
now, which is which haunted him all
season.
Occasionally I hear people say that
that they are people
who.
We're effective in building an
organization in the time they built it,
but now.
There's a new era of pro football
and it's passed them by
any validity to that?
Do you read a lot? I know are some of the
sports columnist in Dallas.
They were saying Landry was senile, I
believe, this year.
He's a very stubborn person, but he's
changed a lot, a lot more than people now
and his dealings with people and also his
approach to football.
In fact, I think the season with the team
they had, I think he just really an
amazing job because other than maybe four
games, they played well every week
and yet you're playing for nothing.
And oftentimes a pro team
and unlike a college team, you know, they
just won't just come back and play well
when they have nothing to play for, when
there's no money out there, there's no
end of the rainbow.
And so I think to get them deployed
as well as they did so many games and
it's part of the record, I think it was a
tremendous job on his part.
I think it also showed a great change in
him this year because he got closer
to the players.
Before, he never was really that close.
There's a point in this book in
which I get the impression, well, in
fact, the setting the context is
that it's SRAM is
talking about how you can't afford
to get too close to the players.
Right. Because it affects your decision
making. Right.
About the players and so forth.
But then that that there have been
players is apparently
at least developed opinions about and
feelings about and so forth.
And as would naturally occur and
I get the impression from
this section that
Roger Staubach is at the top
of his list and Leroy Jordan is the
bottom at the bottom of the list, that
that's reasonably accurate.
He he was he like Don Meredith very
much.
They were friends, and I
think the point is when he leaves in Los
Angeles.
He became general manager in Los Angeles,
but Dan Reeves, not not
the Dan Rivers of Denver, but the guy who
took the first team to the coast, first
team of the coast was
his mentor then.
Yeah, Dan Rivers always wanted to be
around the players. They would be at his
house. They would be here.
They would be there. He was always with
the players, the Bob Waterfield
and the Norm Rocklands and
the players would suddenly become
disenchanted with the coach.
And so they would they would go to Dan
Reeves and say, hey, we can't play with
this guy. So consequently, he went
through seven coaches or something and
SRAM thought, this will never work.
If I ever get a team, this will not
happen.
We will have this is Landry's
side of the fence and this is mine.
And I don't want anybody going under
Landry to come to me because
it just doesn't work.
So they were clearly defined lines and
which, incidentally, is another reason I
think they've been able to work together
with such diversified personalities
from the standpoint setting the
personalities aside from it and looking
just at the positions
in in in a pro football organization,
the general manager and the head coach.
Is it is it strictly an on
balance, equal
responsibility for for a successful
formula for a football organization, or
is one of those positions more important
than the other?
From your perspective?
Well, usually the general manager will.
I mean, he'll bring in the head coach.
So he's responsible to that degree on.
I think on so many teams, there's a lot
of interference.
With the general manager will interfere
with the coach or insert
himself into what's actually happening on
the field and.
With when Clinton Merkerson on the team
once again, the SRAM insisted in Merks
and agree that there's clearly defined
lines.
So he may think, gosh, this is awful,
Landry did this or something, but the
lines are still there.
I think they're getting a little Grolier
in recent years, like Schram's probably
stepping across a little bit,
mentioning markets and brings up another
interesting thing about the role of techs
around, because at the time Merchiston
needed to sell the
Cowboys, it was stated that he
felt essentially he turned
the job over to SRAM to find the
proper owner for the Cowboys
is an interesting kind of responsibility
for the general manager, I suppose.
Right.
Are we back in that situation again?
Now we're hearing a lot of
rumors about selling the Cowboys
and a new buyer of
I think to a degree.
But Bonbright is different than
Clint Marcosson was.
You never heard from Merkerson
at all whether things were going well or
not, sometimes if things were going very
badly, that they would call and try
to cheer people up.
And I think bum bright, you know, he.
He's a little more vocal, although he's
stayed in the background mostly, but
then, you know, it's all business is
going down and he had
asked SRAM to hire a group to find the
proper owner.
How is the business being such as it is?
I think he's get a little anxious lately
and.
Consequently, you have people step
forward, like the Ed Smith from Houston,
who knows absolutely nothing about
football, but.
Somehow, in his mind, believes he
does, but so he says he's made a bed,
which I don't think I'll ever be
accepted.
We've got a lot of changes that have
occurred in pro football over the time
that Tex Schramm has been general
manager, one of the very
most pronounced would have to be, I
suppose, the the role
that drugs are now playing in
pro football as they are in contrast
to the role they played earlier.
And yet it seems from another section
of the book that SRAM is taking a very
I don't know if it'll be considered
controversial or not.
Is it I would call it a hard line
position where he's advocating
outside random drug testing.
He's and apparently terminating careers
of people who
are habitual violators
or something as he takes the hardest
stance.
That's one of the one of the many reasons
the people in the players association
dislike him.
I think it's unconstitutional, unfair to
have random testing.
And he says this is a very dangerous
thing to two people, two players died a
couple of years ago and he
says the only way to do it is random
testing because then
you're not going to have anybody getting
ready, you know, or staying
away from it and then
passing the test and then going back.
He just feels like it's becoming so
destructive in society that it just
you have to take a very hard line
in that you talked about his
his influence in making changes
in rules and so forth.
Are
are.
Are we at a point where that era is,
in other words, have major changes been
over or are we still in an area
where continual
changes could be expected
in the years ahead of
the biggest changes that I suppose came
in around the mid 60s?
They changed so much of the offensive
players, they felt the defense was
dominating the game and that people once
the offense.
So consequently you change, you kick off
in the 35 instead of the 40 and
they have the
defensive backs. Can't do certain things
to the receivers because they think the
receivers are skilled players.
People want to see them perform.
They're coming off the line of scrimmage
by knocking them over to three times.
And then you don't see those people
perform.
And they also felt like they were
everybody was headhunt in the
quarterbacks. Another skill position.
And so they want to become more
protective of the quarterback and
that particular thing is carried over,
in fact, they're still looking at certain
things because they're still getting
these skilled people hurt.
But I think the big changes, I don't
think there'll be another.
Massive change and offense
and defensive football,
at least in the 80s.
The Cowboys probably reached the height
of their popularity when they were
dubbed America's team and
there was some concern about whether that
was even even good for them because
it sort of put them on notice about every
other team and every other place.
And yet wherever they went, the teams
knew that if they were playing the
Cowboys, their ratings would be up, the
audience would be high on television
and everything like that.
That era is apparently over.
Is it realistic to think that the Cowboys
can be America's team again?
I tell you, I'm not sure they're Texas's
team anymore after this season.
They're still extremely popular.
I know I was touring
with a book promoting and everything, and
I thought, gosh, this is over, I don't
have to go anywhere now. I don't have to
go to Cleveland. And yet they put me on
four shows in Cleveland.
People were calling in and.
In the hotel lobby, it was full
of people waiting for the Cowboys and
this is, you know, one of the teams with
one of the worst records in the league.
So it's still there to an extent.
I'm sure it's wining some kind
of mystique.
Yeah, it really is. It's Texas.
You know, the Texas mystique is
still there.
I think people look at it maybe like
the oil business, oh, gosh, it's bad now,
but it'll come back tomorrow or tomorrow
or tomorrow.
Well, maybe you can come back again and
we can more.
We're out of time today.
And thank you very much for being.
Thank you. I enjoyed it.
Thank you for being with us on campus
with Bob St. John.