On Oct. 1, 1954, the Abilene High School Eagles lost a football game to the Breckenridge Buckaroos, 35-13, at Fair Park Stadium in Abilene, Texas.

I was in the sixth grade at the time.

I was in the ninth grade the next time Abilene High lost a football game, to Dallas Highland Park, in the semifinals of the 1957 state playoffs.

In the interim, the Eagles won 49 straight games and three straight state championships, in 1954-55-56, in the Texas large school Class AAAA division.

In 1999, at the end of the century, the media in Texas, as elsewhere, busied itself compiling lists of “bests of the 20th century.” Duly noting the role of high school football in the Texas culture, The Dallas Morning News selected a “Team of the Century” in Texas high school football.

That team was the Abilene High School Eagles, 1954-57.

The streak was a terrific achievement, and “Team of the Century” quite an honor.

But by the end of the century, even in Abilene, people only remembered five or six details about the streak.

So I wrote a book. I am a journalist, and a sportswriter in my soul, and a graduate of Abilene High, where I played football. The book was a natural thing to do.

Its title is “Warbirds – How They Played the Game,” and its purpose, as I began the research and writing, was to restore the details of the 49 games in the streak. The effort quickly became not only a restoration of the streak but of the time and place in which the streak occurred. I wanted the reader to feel as if he or she was in that time and place, and interested in football only as a part of the larger history.

I self-published the book this summer, and it has met with nice response in Abilene and in West Texas, and lately it is showing some strength across a wider expanse of Texas. I think it has movie potential, but I am biased. To have a look, go to www.lonestarsundries.com.