Memories of Fun and Games With Bill XIV

John Raster and Jack Higgs '55

When the announcement was made at evening meal over the PA system in King Hall identifying the goat keepers for the 1954 season, we, John Raster and Jack Higgs, had little idea what such a role might entail. We were familiar with the routines of goat keeping at the academy, leading the football teams on the fields, helping to organize pep rallies, and in general mobilizing the sporting spirit in the brigade, but we couldn’t quite imagine the experience of being strapped to a pesky goat sometimes leading us and sometimes following as we all made our way along the sidelines before tens of thousands of fans for an entire season.

With news of his appointment Jack called his parents in Anes Station, Tennessee, a railroad farming village of seven houses, store, church, school, and depot on the main line of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, announcing to them that he was one of two midshipmen chosen to keep the goat at football games. When Jack’s father answered, Jack eagerly announced his new honor which was followed by a prolonged silence on he other end. “Daddy? Are you there?” Jack asked and finally came these words, “Jack, I always thought you might have done a little better than that.”

Eventually, says Jack, his father came around to some acceptance of this aspect of Navy life. When neighbors would ask, “Mr. Bob, how’s Jack doing up at the Navy Place?” His father would reply, “I think he is doing all right. They got him keeping a goat and calling the hogs.”

It was common knowledge or a common myth anyway that a goat would eat just about anything, including, according to the funny papers, tin cans, but John Raster had heard that goats also liked to drink, specifically gin. Armed with that intelligence before the Navy –Notre Dame game of 1954 in Baltimore, John requisitioned a half pint that was smuggled into the stadium by a high school classmate from Toledo who with others had come to visit John and to watch the play of former teammate, Tom McHugh, fullback for Notre Dame. At half time, Bill with a couple of belts of said beverage under his harness provided a memorable scene, chasing down the Irish Leprechaun, forcing him into the stands to evade Bill’s horns. We lost the game 6-0 as the Navy halfback fumbled the ball on the goal line, but we definitely won the half time show!

After a wonderful season in 1954, Navy was selected to play Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl, 1955. On the eve of the game we were strolling down Bourbon St. in search of Sarsaparilla. During that quest we encountered a former plebe classmate who had transferred to Ole Miss. He wanted, we learned, to steal the Navy Goat and was willing to pay us $100.00 if we revealed Bill’s whereabouts. We thanked him for his generous offer (bribe!) but were not about to sell our souls. Actually we had no idea where Bill was hiding! Eventually we were told that Bill was kept in a New Orleans Zoo in a cage whose only entrance was gained through a Lion’s Den! In the bowels of Tulane Stadium Bill was waiting for us with a look on his face that seemed to say, “Where in the hell have you guys been and what have you got on you that’s any good?”

After a pre-game visit to the Navy locker room, Jack’s high school coach fashioned the following narrative which he shared often over the years. “I can’t believe how small that Navy team is. This could be the biggest mismatch ever. Ole Miss is champion of the Southeastern Conference. . . . Somehow, though, Jack and that other boy energized that goat. I mean he rolled his eyes and shook his head and started out that tunnel as fast and hard as he could go and dragging his keepers behind him and the Navy Team right after them and the Navy Band playing “Anchors Aweigh” as loud as it could and sailors all over the place cheering and yelling—New Orleans is a Navy Town you know—and I’m here to tell you Ole Miss never was really in the game. Probably Navy shouldn’t been on the same field with ‘em, but Navy didn’t know it and that goat sho nuff didn’t know it.”
Navy won 21-0. For Bill it may have been his finest hour. At every 10 yard line marker on the Navy side there was a large poinsettia plant and, as if in celebration, Bill chomped on as many as he could.

The Academy did not take Bill to every away game. Old Goats, though, did what they could to make do, displaying considerable ingenuity in the process as we see in John’s efforts for the Navy-Cal game at Berekely in 1957. “At the time I was stationed at Travis AFB north of San Francisco. After asking around, I found a farmer with an Angora goat that had won first place at the California state fair.” Renting the goat in exchange for 2-50 yard line tickets, John commandeered Larry Webster, a star tackle for “A Team Named Desire” and then stationed in Long Beach, as the other goat tender. With two Navy goat-keeper jackets on hand John bought two pairs of white pants so he and Webbie (Later admiral Webster) could look authentic. They had also contacted George Rasmussen asking him to provide a real blanket for the fill-in Bill. For transportation for “Rental Bill,” John pulled a 5 by 7 U-Haul trailer behind his Mercury convertible.

The morning of the game, while crossing the Oakland Bay Bridge, John and Webbie suddenly heard a honking that proved to be the horn of the Navy team bus with several of the coaches and players hanging out the windows cheering and laughing.

Since the bus had a motorcycle escort, John and Webbie fell in behind with their U Haul for a straight path to the stadium. Navy won 21-6 which provided a justification for celebration at the St. Francis hotel and elsewhere in town. During party time, the “goatmobile” had been parked in an underground garage at a hotel, but the keepers forgot which one! After a number of calls around town asking desk clerks to see if they possibly had a U-Haul parked in their underground garage, they found the trailer and returned victorious “Bill” in good shape to his owner.

Part of our goat keeping training manual insisted that we always keep Bill pointing in the direction of Navy’s offensive goal. In fact everyone on the Navy side was always facing the same direction and concentrating on activities on the field. Once in a while this had a deleterious effect on Bill Fallon, one of Navy’s trainers. Fallon was short and stocky and Bill XIV had shoulders three feet off the ground and horns with a three foot wingspan. Somehow there was a competitive spirit between the two Bills. Several times a game, Bill Fallon would yell “Ouch!” as Bill would sneak up to him and quickly flick his horns into Bill’s crotch. Coaches and players roared. Herein was our secret to keeping the Navy team and staff loose and relaxed on the sidelines –all except Bill Fallon!

Possibly any fame we have achieved as goat keepers we owe directly to Bill excepting in the case of John and his record interception and runback of 101 yards against Army in 1951. One evening in the late sixties a wife of Jack’s neighbor, a dairy farmer about a mile away, called Jack’s mother in Anes Station in an excited voice, proclaimed, “Miss Mary Lee, Jack is in the encyclopedia!” “What’s he doing in there?", his mother asked. “He’s with the Navy goat--he and another boy. They’re under the section called “Mascots!” Jokingly--we hope--she went on for a bit about how hard it was for her to distinguish between Jack and Bill. Finally the lady asked Jack’s mother if she would like to buy a set of Childcraft. “Oh, I guess not,” his mother said. “We know pretty well what Jack looks like.”

The goat may well be the most versatile of all metaphors, a symbol of tragedy and of comedy. It has long been claimed that from the front the goat with magnificent horns presents a royal visage, the other end less glorious. If the goat is not what we might call “good,” he is nevertheless “whole,” in some ways much like a mobius strip. When we look at a goat, we think of unity as opposed to separation. The goat reminds us of the human need for “turning well” from the prescribed, the mechanical, and the serious to the spontaneous, the natural, and the humorous. Whatever his number, Bill is old and gnarly and never been to school, brimming full not only of fight but of fun as well.

Baaa--Bam!