Funny how you can feel a connection to someone you’ve never met. Funnier still that a middle-aged woman can feel that kinship with a college football stud-UT quarterback Colt McCoy. Not because he plays football, although it is my favorite sport. Not because we’re both believers in Christ. And not because my brother is a season-ticket holder with the Longhorns. But because Colt McCoy is one of the few people in the world who knows where to find Buffalo Gap on the Texas map.
Colt McCoy lived near Buffalo Gap and attended Jim Ned High School in Tuscola, and both places have a claim on my family’s heart. My brothers and I grew up trekking through Buffalo Gap on trips to our grandfather’s farm, which was homesteaded by my great-great-grandfather. I’m told Colt’s family acreage wasn’t far from our Bluff Creek farm.
Most of the time, we took the route through Tuscola, where Colt McCoy led the 2A Jim Ned High School football team. The original Jim Ned Stadium is a football’s throw away from the cemetery where my great-grandparents are buried. Colt wasn’t even born yet when my brothers and I were just kids making the drive with our parents, but we share a common bond with Colt and that tiny West Texas dot on the map.
When I watch Colt take command on the football field, a flood of memories wash over me as I hear sports broadcasters poke fun at his West Texas roots. Warm breezes, an old farmhouse with a tin roof and an outhouse, mesquite trees, flat top mountains, arrowheads and flint rocks, cicadas, dove, rattlesnakes, armadillos, jack rabbits… and memories of our city-slicker beagle howling like crazy over the scent of rabbits, and shotgun-totin’ grade-schoolers (me and my brothers) exploring the 160 acres of our homestead heritage.
I like Colt McCoy because he’s a great football player. He’s fun to watch. But I especially like him because he put Buffalo Gap on the world’s map.
Adapted from an earlier article by Jayme Durant.
