As my car sputtered to a stop at 5 a.m. July 20, I knew that I had endured a lousy stretch of luck, capped only by my personal stupidity.

I knew the car was nearly out of gas, but it was so late, and I was so tired. So I decided to tempt fate and head for home — just south of Wimberley. An hour or two of sleep would make all the difference in the world. After all, I had to be back to work in just a few hours.

I confess, I no longer handle the long hours that come with newspaper work the way I could when I was younger. The last couple of weeks has made that truth crystal clear to me.

My reporter and right hand, Devin Monk, had gone on a much-deserved vacation to see many of the most interesting games in the World Cup in South Africa. While the first three weeks went OK, by time he had returned, I had less in the tank than Johnny Unitis did when he took those last sad snaps, looking so “other-worldly” in the classic powder blue uniforms of the San Diego Chargers.

There was a time when I could burn the candle at both ends and pop right back up the next day, good as new — just like Johnny U could in his glory days with the Baltimore Colts. But just like Unitis, time catches up to everyone, and it is catching up to me in a big way.

Years ago when I was working as a cub reporter at the Marshall News Messenger,  I was fortunate to meet one of Johnny U’s contemporaries and a great quarterback in his own right, Y.A. Tittle. Tittle was a native of the area who returned home after his career to the aptly-named hamlet, Uncertain, Texas.

I only got to shake his hand, but I don’t think I washed it for a week afterward.

For me, there is no more iconic football photograph than the one of Tittle in the waning days of his career with the New York Giants on his knees bleeding from a head wound. The most amazing aspect of the photograph wasn’t its physical appearance, but rather its etherial presence. Just one look at the photo and you know that guy had left everything he had on the field and was just simply out of gas.

And let me tell you, in recent days, I have really been able to relate to that picture. In the end, rather than walk, I called my wife. After an hour of sleep, I was headed straight back to work, and I was running on fumes — literally.

My lousy luck only got worse after I had a fender bender just over 24 hours later. It was all down hill from there.

Then I walked into the office only to realize I had made numerous errors in the paper, including putting the wrong picture with the wrong article on the business page. By the end of the week, I could barely walk, my car was smashed, I had been blamed for single-handedly ruining AquaPalooza for the entire community, and now I had added one more bone-headed mistake to my long rap sheet.

Next week, I will spend two weeks with two of my grandchildren. I have never taken two weeks in a row off for vacation in my entire life — until now. And I am going into it really feeling my age — past my prime — an old man in a young man’s game.

That empty-tank feeling reminded me of another athlete — Hall of Fame defensive tackle Bob Lilly.  At the time I met him, he lived in Graham, Texas. I was the editor there… of course.

If you haven’t ever met Bob Lilly, he’s not what you might think… Bob is a long, lanky  genuinely nice guy. And while all of you may think of him as a Hall of Fame defensive tackle — the cornerstone of the Doomsday Defense — I tend to think of him as a photographer — and a good one at that.

I barely knew him. I’d see Bob at the local photography store, but I’d leave him be. I had started my career covering celebrities and having seen how so many never get a moment’s break from the “adoring public,” I have made it a policy to simply leave them be when I see one, unless it’s an assignment. Bluntly, I despise the TMZ mentality.

But one day we were talking about how to best “push” black and white film shot in low light during the development process. In those days, part of being a reporter meant also being a darkroom technician.

I started thumbing through a book of photography that was on the counter that Bob published covering his years as a player, as well as some of his outstanding landscape shots.

Then I took a long look at him — he seemed so  young — so healthy. He looked like he could suit up and play that very week. So I blurted out the insipid question that I had been holding back for months.

“How old were you when you retired?”

“I was 34 years old,” Bob replied.

“Wow, I’m 34! You were a young man!” I said in a bit of amazement.

He looked at me and smiled.

“I sure didn’t feel like a young man…”

So when I woke up last Sunday, I thought of Bob, and in my own way, I understood what he was really saying. I always thought of Bob as being “reluctantly public.” Sure, there were the obvious physical strains he had endured, but I can’t help but wonder if the issues of being a celebrity in a day when athletes were far more accessible to the public took more of a toll on him than a regular guy can understand.

I know I am not a particularly gifted writer. I am only an average photographer and I’m a downright terrible copy editor. At best, I am a songwriter subsidizing my habit with a job in journalism. That’s my personal assessment of myself.

But I am also a guy who overcame a learning disability to do a job no one ever dreamed I could ever do. Later, I lived when I was supposed to die. Yet it isn’t as if I have ever had to face anything as terrible as war; however, I kinda believe I have some tiny inkling of what it is to consistently put my integrity to the test — and living that way always comes at a price.

Five decades into my life and three decades into my career, quitting is not yet an option for me. Retirement is many years away — if I am ever able retire. As much as I hate to admit it, I like to work. Always have. Like the psalmist said, there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven.

So just when I didn’t know if I could go on looking at my own mistakes, I remembered that photo of Y.A. Tittle. That was not the last game he ever played, despite the fact he had suffered both a concussion and cracked sternum on the play.

Sure, he was past his prime, but his integrity was intact and he went on to finish the season…