While downing a scrumptious chopped beef sandwich, a cold beer, a few jalapenos, and thinking about another cold beer on Saturday at Railhead on Montgomery, my buddy Evan Farrington turns to me and says, “Hey, I brought something for you.”
“It’s on loan. Only until I want it back,” he says while pulling something wrapped in bubble wrap out of a Ziploc sandwich bag.
It’s a pocket watch. But not just any pocket watch.
This watch was presented to his grandfather, coach Evan S. Farrington Sr., by his North Side High School football team in 1922. Everybody, it seems, went by their first initials in those days. So, that would be E.S. Farrington, the namesake of the historic Farrington Field, which has stood steadfast and enduring at the corner of University Drive and Lancaster for 86 years.
The inscription on the back of the watch reads:
“Presented by
N.S.H.S. Foot Ball Team
1922”
And the damn thing still works, too. Elgin, which went out of business in 1968, must have made a good watch. Eh, Timex?
E.S. Farrington went on to become the school district’s first athletic director.
Born in Lewisville, Farrington had lettered at Baylor in football, was a regular on the theater stage, and the senior class president of 1913. After graduation, he moved to Grapevine where he was principal and then superintendent of schools for the 1914-15 school year.
He left education briefly to work in private industry, but his calling, he discovered, was teaching and education. And his new home, in 1921, was the North Side of Fort Worth.
He was described by a Star-Telegram reporter as “a broad shouldered, stocky young man. He had a ready smile, a quiet air of efficiency.”
That description actually aptly fits his grandson, Evan Farrington III, too.
Farrington coached two seasons at North Side before moving into athletics administration and making history. Both were led by quarterback Herman Clark, who would one day go on to work for Farrington as a football coach at North Side.
Twice, though, under Farrington the Steers won the city championship. In 1921, they beat Masonic Home 38-14 to claim the title. In those two years, North Side also twice beat Central — now Paschal. In 1922, the victory over Central was for the city championship.
North Side’s 1922 team was in reality making a run for a state title until it was derailed by Cleburne through what I’ll just simply call the tactics of a sore loser.
The Steers had defeated Cleburne that season, but the Yellow Jackets coach, Fred Erney, filed a protest with the State Interscholastic League, alleging that Clark and a teammate Walter Holland had been paid to play baseball the summer before. (Cleburne, by the way, had been co-state champions two years before with Houston Heights after a championship game that ended in a 0-0 tie.)
“An effort is being made to prove Clark was paid for playing baseball with Gainesville last summer,” Farrington said at the time. It turned out that Cleburne had leveled the same allegations against another North Side player, Walter Holland, who had played baseball in Waco.
Both players, the coach said, indeed did play baseball and were paid, but only for their expenses, “which is legitimate.” In other words, legal, according to the rules of the State Interscholastic League.
The State Interscholastic League ultimately sustained Cleburne’s protest, taking away the Steers’ victory and allowing Cleburne to move on in the playoffs. The outcome was the only blemish on the Steers’ record that season.
Farrington remained steadfast in his defense of his players.
Farrington left for athletics administration. It was his vision to build the stadium on University for “my boys.”
"Think of this,” he told a newspaper reporter, “West Lancaster will run right by the stadium when the new bridge is built over the Trinity. TCU and south side traffic can move over Burleson Street [now University Drive], through Forest and Trinity Parks, directly to the stadium. North Side people can drive straight to the stadium from the north on Burleson Street. Arlington Heights folks have a straight shot down El Campo. Poly comes in over Lancaster and Riversiders use Belknap and West Seventh."
Farrington never saw the completion of his pet project. Farrington had a heart attack while watching an I.M. Terrell football game in 1937. He died later that same evening at his home on Waits Avenue. He was 46. In his honor, the school district named the stadium for him.
His legacy lives on, however, with that football stadium, which since 1939 has faithfully served students from all walks of life and every Fort Worth neighborhood for generations through good competition, fellowship and friendship, and the lifelong lessons of athletics.
As well as this pocket watch, which I am committed to being a good steward of during my time with it.
