With leather helmets and scant padding they stand,
White-and-black team photographs through the years.
Rugged miners in Franklin’s mineral land,
With pickaxe or football they had no peers.
Battered head gear symbol of life’s hard way,
Rough mud-soaked muscle-bound appendages,
Whether blasting rocks or tackling prey,
Franklin miners’ lives fill history pages.
In this age, men were boys and boys were men,
Life’s challenges were determinedly won,
Whether cave-in sirens calling again,
Or referee whistling the game’s done.
Miners legacy: minerals and pigskin,
Each to another Franklin’s dependent twin.
George Kibildis
Sparta