(This ran originally in The Times and The News-Star Sunday, February 10, 2019.)

He was such a rough and tumble kid that Anthony McFarland’s mother, Miss Nancy, started calling him “Booger” when he was still a toddler.

No surprise, it stuck. Boogers will do that.

When he left Winnsboro High for LSU to play football, he wanted to leave the name behind, somewhere within the gravitational pull of the Princess Theatre and the Winnsboro water tower. But moments after he’d made his first tackle in Death Valley, he heard Tiger Stadium public announcer Dan Borne say this:

“On the tackle for LSU, No. 94, Booger McFarland.”

He turned his head and, through his face mask, looked toward the press box. “You gotta be kiddin’ me?” he said to himself. “I guess it’s gonna always be Booger.”

And that’s not a bad thing.

The All-America defensive tackle, first round NFL draft pick and two-time Super Bowl champ — first with Tampa Bay and then with the Indianapolis Colts — was the featured guest Tuesday night at the West Monroe High Foundation banquet, and event that, only seven-ish years old, has featured Jerry Stovall, Archie Manning, Bobby Bowden, Andrew “Big Whit” Whitworth, and now McFarland, today in broadcasting for ESPN and on the announcing crew for ABC’s Monday Night Football.

I’d never met Booger and didn’t know what to expect, but I’m glad I didn’t miss it because Booger had a good, good word for Rebel fans who came to support the school and to meet one of the best football players and well-rounded student-athletes to ever compete in northeast Louisiana.

Miss Nancy would have been proud. Her little boy shared a good word.

At its heart was that a rowdy little kid turned into a graduate and standout ballplayer and responsible adult because of what other people did for him. When they offered a hand — to work, to learn, to seek out a possible opportunity — Booger said yes and put his hand to the plow.

“A young person needs someone to believe in them just a little bit,” he said. “It takes someone investing time in you. It takes time, people willing enough to give you some of their time.

“That,” McFarland said, “made all the difference for me.”

One day Charles Murphy, retired football coach and owner of a Winnsboro woodyard not far from the school, saw a 13-year-old good-sized boy in his front yard and asked if he’d help him stack wood that afternoon since his help had called in sick. Miss Nancy said OK.

“Hardest $10 I made that day,” McFarland said. “But that helped me start learning the value of work.”

Coach Murphy worked Booger all the way through high school, and did the same for some other boys in town.

Coach Murphy has passed away, but Ken Blackson and James Remedies, who each coached Booger in high school, were at his table Tuesday night. No telling how much they’ve invested in students through the years. No telling how many of those kids were in their homes during the banquet, helping their children with homework, getting ready for work the next day, contributing, all because some adult shared their time and encouragement.

Once after a game, Remedies drove a Honda Civic through the night to Knoxville while Booger stretched out as best he could for 10 hours on the backseat. The next day the two were at a Tennessee Volunteers football game, and after the game Vols coach Philip Fulmer asked McFarland to bend over and then visualize freshman quarterback Peyton Manning’s hands on his butt, calling for a snap next fall.

“I didn’t like anything about that,” McFarland said. “Plus he wanted me to play center. I wanted to hit people.”

So thanks to Remedies, Tennessee was marked off the list. So was Arkansas when coach Danny Ford put his boots up on Miss Nancy’s coffee table.

“Knew right then I’d go to LSU,” Booger said.

And he did. And then to the NFL and then to a couple of Super Bowls and then to studios and sidelines. He’s been to all those places.

But he didn’t get there, or anywhere outside of Winnsboro, all by himself.

-30-

(Pictured are two mating weevils on a brown wooden stick, which is nice work if you can get it. We just didn’t want to put up a picture of a cockroach. One, we could not find one high-resolution enough — try getting a cockroach to stand still for a photo! — and two, they freak us out. The point of this column remains the same.)

Once upon a June night dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over ESPN, teary, from an Orioles losing score —

Channel surfing, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As if someone gently rapping, rapping on my hardwood floor.

“’Tis my cat or child,” I thought, “tiptoeing on my hardwood floor.

Only this and nothing more.”

 

Ah, distinctly I remember it was three months ’til September,

And already we’d surrendered to the Yanks and Sox and more.

Eagerly I wished an ending to a season just beginning

Hopes continued ever thinning as the Mets won three of four –

When again I sensed a walking, something moving,

something stalking

“’Tis my dog or child sleepwalking, walking on my hardwood floor.

Only this and nothing more.”

 

And although to still the beating of my heart,

I kept repeating

“It’s my cat or child entreating,” my eye saw

’twas something more

Some late visitor retreating his way o’r my

hardwood floor.

Some intruder in the darkness crawling by my front porch door

 

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there

Wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;

In my heart I knew he stood there in the darkness

of the June air

Then the lamp, the light, a cold stare

We exchanged — while on the floor

Sat the cockroach.

Evermore.

 

“It is hot outside,” he spake then, “this is heat

A bug could bake in.”

And he made himself at home then sitting on my hardwood floor.

Quietly joined them by some others, cockroach uncles, sisters, brothers,

Insect wings he bravely fluttered as he cooled off on my floor — and then asked me,

“What’s the score?”

 

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,

(‘You think,’ thought I, ‘you’ll walk in and watch TV on my floor?

My mood is less than happy and a roach cocksure and yappy

Might just be the thing to help me

Cure my blues ’bout Baltimore.’)

To his insect face I said then, “Make yourself at home

In my den.”

While against my side I rolled a magazine I’d read before.

With antennae he implored me, from the floor he eyed and scored me.

“It’s just stuff,” said I “to read while you are sitting

on my floor.

Just rolled up paper, nothing more.”

 

Now … the cockroach, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting,

On the hardwood floor of my house as he did that night of yore.

But he’s flatter than a table, and no longer is he able

To scoot about as playful as he did so much before.

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,

cause the blow I dealt had meaning — He will bug me

Nevermore.

-30-