Somehow Brag Havatake, a local kid from Dubuque Hempstead High School, and a kid from the Milwalkee suburb of Kenosha named Easy Edge Faster (a running back on UD's lowly football team), and myself , all started hanging out together and together we all started going to the dog track. I came out ahead every time I went. I could take ten bucks, pay for hot dogs and pop, and leave with 20 bucks. It was easy money. I would just read the program, check out the times from the dogs in their previous races, and make my wager, usually "boxing" dogs together for tri-fectas etc... Easy Edge and Havatake were mystified at my success, and they started betting my bets. We were winning all the time. I didn't understand how they couldn't read the program and predict the winners, it all stood out clear as day for me. It was all good until I went to the track with a kid named Rundy during the summer while working the UD basketball camp when I realized I had been reading the programs upside down. I never won again after that. I tried to use my old system but after realizing my mistake things never stood out clearly like they had before. That summer Havatake and Edge and I tried pulling off a caper that got out of control. It involved a credit card and a sports wear store. It was all going good until Havatake started pulling leather 8-ball jackets off the rack. Edge claimed to be a four corner hustler, which was a street gang from the Milwalkee area. He was known for telling long tales, and he did have a lot of hard to believe stories, too many actually. After our failed caper Havatake and I didn't hang with Edge to often. It wasn't anything personal. He graduated and moved on and I forgot about him for the most part.
Around that same period Havatake and I started hanging out with these two chicks that played on the women's UD basketball team. They lived practically across the street from the campus with a roommate from Chi. that Spike used to mess with. There were many a barbeque and afternoon drinking sessions with those girls, and there were some very interesting things that happened between those girls and us. I better not go into details, at least not in this version of the story, but I will say Havatake and I were accused by Darby from Gary Indiana of having some type of two man game, working the ladies in tandem, kicking babes to each other after we had our fill. We did have something going but it wasn't like we ever discussed strategy or anything. When I think back and try to remember all the girls that Havatake and I probably shared, I come up with at least five, and in some cases the girls dated and then dumped one of us for the other one, so we were getting played as much as we were playing. The stories of these women and of other encounters are interesting to say the least, but I better save it for another time or maybe I should just keep it all to myself. If I did tell these tales it would be for the purpose of sharing wisdom. I'm not bragging about the women, in fact I am somewhat ashamed of my youthful stupidity, but I want to tell the story as it actually was. Girls were a big part of the attraction for me to being a basketball player at the college level. I funneled my frustrations involving women (or usually the lack of) into basketball. That started as far back as grade school for me and grew more and more through high school. During good or bad times the thoughts of women would fuel a fire inside me that made me want to create an artistic like moment in time, an expression of self, of my pain, of my happiness, in movement and in sport. Most of those times were by myself late at night in a park or at a school somewhere shooting baskets or putting on a dunk show for the crickets, bats and the stars in the sky. I couldn't muster energy from thoughts about women when I was playing in a real college game though. I was always too concerned about the game and how I would perform, so basketball was also a big escape for me, a place where I could forget about everything else in the world, women, school, money, war, death etc...
Havatake was a hell of a ball player. He was a great long range shooter and a big time high flier. In one JV game he drove baseline as I screened off a couple defenders and jumping off one foot he dunked it, head rim high, arm extended straight out. It was a sweet dunk. I saw the bottom of his shoe as I held back the two defenders. That was a game in Cedar Rapids against Mt. Mercy. My mom and two of my little bros. were at that game. I scored about 32 points, Havatake had about 40 or 50. I actually had more field goals that game, as was usually the case, but Havatake shot and made a lot of three pointers, sometimes pulling up from 25 feet or so. I always thought Havatake had more hops than myself, and he could jump off the stride or off of two feet, but he didn't dunk with the same power or authority (or reckless abandon) like I did. He scoffed at that criticism. I gained my dunking style from growing up and playing on the streets of the ICE, always against older kids, where if you went to the rack you had to go hard. I had blood blisters, calasses, and scars on my fingers and wrists during the summers of my high school youth from playing jam ball at the many outdoor courts in the city.
Many of my team mates at UD were from the inner city, as I have mentioned many times. A lot of them were brought up with gangs as part of life. Some of my teammates were gang members. Our coach instructed us to treat each other as though we were family, which trumped any rival gang affiliations (supposedly). Havatake and I started our own "club", with our own hand shakes and symbolic gestures. We called each other "G" or "G Money" all the time. Our dominate symbolic gesture and the start of our secret handshake was to hold our right hand up with three fingers up, and the other hand on our elbow. My favorite number was always the number three but I think Havatake liked it because he was a master three point shooter. I could hit threes too but I usually scored three the hard way by taking it to the hoop, getting fouled, and sinking one at the free throw line.
At the start of the second semester our JV squad picked up a kid from Parkville, a 6'5" transfer from UNI (University of Northern Iowa) named Mark Black. He helped our team but he was a bit soft for his big size. He only lasted that one semester and he and Period Baby ended up transferring to Iowa (to the big university in my hometown) and played on the Iowa practice squad (aka the gray squad). I ran into those guys and played with and against them in the IC a hundred times or more (stories told elsewhere).
Mike Singletary. New head coach for the NFL's San Francisco 49ers. I just heard a story on sports radio about Big Mike dropping his pants in front of his team during halftime of his first game as head coach. He also benched the starting QB, kicked a player off the field in the middle of the game, had a classic post game rant and apology during the post game press conference and as the radio broadcaster stated, he did all of that in his first game. What's he got left? Reminds me of Magic Johnson's first game as a player in the NBA and the advice and reaction of his teammate Kareem Abdul Jabar afterwards, "We got 81 more games to go young man, you better save some of that energy and emotion or you'll burn out" (not an exact quote by any means). Magic never lost his passion and the excitement he brought to the game of basketball. He did not make it as an NBA head coach. This brings up the question of whether or not great players can make great coaches. Larry Bird did pretty good in the NBA. Wayne Gretzky hasn't had much winning success in his NHL head coaching experience. Mike Singletary. A great dominant defensive player for the 85 Chicahgo Bears. Those eyes (NFL fans know exactly what I mean). Has there ever been a more intense player? I'm calling it right here. This could be the beginning of an NFL head coaching legend. In his presser he stated that he was from the "Old school," and that he would rather play with ten guys and get penalized the whole way then to play with a teammate who was all about himself and not playing for the team. I'm feeling ya' Big Mike. After my UD playing days and during my life as a part time student and University employee working for the U of I department of parking and transportation I developed the nickname, "Old School Matt" or sometimes just "Old Matt" (long stories about the nicknames evolution and Jess Settles, a Hawkeye baller at that time, who had the nickname of "Old Man"). I always liked old school hip hop, and still do, so the nick name fit. Mainly the name came about because I was an older college student still playing ball in intramurals and so forth mainly with and against a lot of younger players. And also because I had played for a few colleges and had stretched my career out for an unusually long time and accumulated a lot of basketball wisdom along the way. "Old School Matt!" So a shout out to the old school and to Mike Singletary. I have always disliked the San Francisco 49's, always. Until now. Good luck Mike!
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
My last story was about my one on one match versus Mick Glajoe at the"The Cage". I'll try to fill in some of the space in the story between those days and the first semester at UD. Like I mentioned previously, half way through that first semester Big B moved into the dorms and Big Swan and I moved into a pad above a bar called Murph's South End Tap. It was a rundown neighborhood pub located down on "the low end" right along the banks of the old Mississippi. One quick side story about renting the apartments we lived in from the rental agency. With Swan not having a job and us being evicted from the duplex on the hill, I had to pull a slick maneuver on the lady at the rental office. I gave her a friends phone number and a fake name and said it was the number to the RA at the dorms. I waited for the phone call and gave myself a great reference. I passed that trick on to some others and they used it on the same lady. From Murph's tap it was one hell of a long walk to class every day, the only good part about it was the uniqueness of the city being built on limestone cliffs that over looked the river valley. Dubuque has a really old feeling about it, with lots of brick houses and old limestone cliff side landscaping. Big Swan eventually landed a job at Wendy's where he made a few friends. One of those new friends was a kid named Mick Glajoe, who I actually shot baskets with once while still living above Murph's on the high hoop located at the grade school just up the street. For many years Big B and Shot and I would drive through Dubuque on our way to Wisconsin on fishing and hunting trips and I would see that grade school and wonder what it would be like to live in this old town and in that particular neighborhood. Careful what you wish for. The night life in Dubuque was unique, very, very different from that of the ICE. College kids were resented by much of the working class folks in Dubuque, and there was also a high degree of racism in the city. There were a few college bars located on a one block stretch on the main road between our pad and UD. There was also a chicken joint there where I always stopped to buy a plate of French fries on my way home from school (when I had any money). The most popular bar was called Gomer's. That first semester with Big B and Big Swan we hit up Gomer's a few times on the busy Friday nights. The place was packed with a line out the door sometimes. If there were any hotties to be found in Dubuque, Gomer's on a Friday night was the spot. On one of our first Gomer's experiences Big B and Swan and I were in the bar on a Friday night checking out the scene when a tough looking black kid with thick glasses and a backwards ball cap came up to us and asked each of us to take his lighter and put the flame to his hand. None of us bit on this crazy proposal. Later that night I saw the crazy masochist take his coke bottle glasses off and head out onto the dance floor, where chaos then ensued. Bodies started flying everywhere and that pretty much ended the evening for everyone. The bar was cleared, cops showed up etc... It's weird how bar fights are so unnerving and unsettling yet so fascinating all at the same time. I later heard some stories about who that bar brawling lighter toting kid was and its a good thing we avoided any confrontation with him. There is another famous Gomer's story, the most famous and infamous to me, and I wasn't even there to witness it, so what I write is only based on what I remember from hearing from other people. It seemed like crazy stuff always happened when ever I wasn't around. This was one of those instances. I was off visiting a girlfriend. Big Swan and I were still living at the Murph's South End Tap pad. Big B, Ike Lambert, and another new friend of Big B's (a UD baseball player) hit the night life and went to Gomer's on yet another Friday night, where they proceeded to drink some serious quantities of liquor. But before hitting the bar they did some pre-drinking in the dorms. There was a UD football player from Florida who always wore shorts, even in the winter. He also sported a mohawk hair style. He mixed up a huge deadly secret batch of a combination of hard liquor and dared Swan to drink it. Big mistake by a big man. At Gomer's there was a popular concoction served in a shot glass which Big Swan also hit up. The story goes that the 350 pound brother (Big Swan) was stumbling around in Gomer's knocking tables and people over as he stammered about. Eventually he was kicked out. According to Big B and Ike he was just gone all of a sudden. He wasn't spotted again until closing when he was seen outside in the crowd being held up by a group of hot young women. The story follows that he was apparently found lying along the road at the park near bye by these hot babes who took pity on him and helped him back to Gomer's to find his "friends." Ike and Big B had a serious grimace on their faces every time they told the story of how they later that night had to carry Big Swan up the wooden stairs behind Murph's up to our apartment. Swan was sick for a week after that, and that part of the story I did witness. If I would have been there I would never have abandoned Big Swan in such a condition after being kicked out of Gomer's. At the end of the summer Big Swan eventually found a new pad and a new room mate he met at Wendy's, and I moved into the dorms at the start of the next semester.
My freshman year at UD I played mostly on the JV squad. The head coach modeled his program somewhat after the Iowa Hawkeye Basketball program (the big U. in Iowa located in Iowa City which is my home town) by having a practice squad to play and practice against the varsity. Nearly all the schools in the Iowa Conference had JV teams. Most of the players on our JV squad got to see action that year at the varsity level and most of us dressed for all the varsity games. That first year the coach was using a style of play called the Loyola Maramount system. It was a high paced run and gun three point shooting offense that used a lot of players. The previous year the UD squad had all the talent in the world, but Big Mo, D Rog, Rue, Rye Hubb, Square, Trellis, and others all graduated. There was a talented returning sophomore class with players like Zeke, Ike Lambert, Darby and Brute Mahone. The freshman class too was talented. Big Mo and D Rog were coaching our JV team and we started the season with seven straight wins. We kicked the crap out of the varsity in practice on a daily basis. The first semester I shacked up in a coed dorm with two dorm mates: Ike Lambert from Hazel Green Wisconsin, and Spike from south side Chicago. These were two of the most honest and sincere guys I ever met, and it was my only semester of dorm life in all my 13 years of college. One particular incident in our dorm room sticks out as a great memory that allowed Ike and Spike and myself to bond and become closer friends. We were all settling in for the night with the lights off and in bed, or so I thought. I had to turn a light on momentarily, on and off real quick, and in that brief moment that the room was illuminated I glanced over and saw Spike on his knees at his bed saying prayers. There was a brief moment of awkward silence and then I said, "And what's he doing?" Then we all started dying laughing, not because praying was funny but because of the awkwardness of the situation. I respected Spike a lot before and after that. After the giggles left us that night we all had the "Do you believe in God" conversation.
I had a girl friend I met working at Bonanza steak house in a suburb of the ICE that then lived in the small Wisconsin town of Boscobel, located 60 minutes from Dubuque. She was the reason I had moved to the area. Before UD I had attended a junior college in Richland Center Wisconsin, just 30 minutes from Boscobel. The girlfriend was three years older than me and she had got a job as a grade school teacher in the wild turkey capitol of the world known as Boscobel. I had decided to move with her when she got the job. It was a chance for me to continue my dream of playing college ball. South West Wisconsin was so beautiful and I loved to explore and drive around in my 4 wheel drive Toyota pick up (with the awesome custom stereo system.) There are many basketball and life changing stories from the semester I spent at Richland Center, including the fact that I flipped and rolled my truck traveling between the ICE and Richland Center after a weekend of deer hunting. That particular story is called "The Curse of the Big Buck" and it tells how I barely escaped the crash alive, opening the driver side door of the truck while it lay on its side as flames burned under me and down the ice covered road from gasoline that was spilling out after the crash. I met two ballers who became friends while at UW Richland, one from inner city Milwalkee and the other from Battle Creek Michigan. I visited UD on a recruiting visit with the kid from Milwalkee when we were both thinking about transfering, and that was how I ended up at UD. Anyway, while I was living in the dorms that first full year at UD I was still dating the girl in Boscobel. Our relationship was being strained by the long distance status of the relationship. And I was still young and experiencing college life while she was starting her career. Other females in Dubuque were becoming tempting temptresses. The two ballers from UW Richland were both black kids living hip hop and basketball lives. Players they were. Having more than one girlfriend (or a wife with "mistresses") was a way of life for them, and admittingly I was somewhat influenced by the culture. So part of this culture was having many girlfriends, and at the time I thought it was super cool. I bring up Boscobel and the girlfriend because our JV team went to play at Richland Center, our eighth game of the season, JV only, no varsity on the trip because UW Richland was a junior college. The game became our first loss of the season. But before that trip occurred Ike Lambert wanted to move off campus into an apartment during winter break that year. So we got a place down the main road from UD, very near to the old duplex that Big B and Big Swan and I first lived in the year before. This new pad was called the Wilson Street Crib. I was taking care of a Doberman Pincher that I was part owner of when I first moved to Wilson street. The dogs name was Duke and he was a great dog. Eventually I had to take him back to the ICE because it became to hard to take care of him while playing on the basketball team. The game against my former school, UW Richland, came during winter break. Ike and I were already moved into the new pad. There was a road game for Varsity on the Friday night before the showdown at Richland Center. The JV team traveled and dressed for the Friday night game, and some of us even played in it and got substantial playing time. We won the varsity game Friday night, came back to Dubuque and partied hard and long into the morning. I had a new girl friend that I had met through Ike. We spent that night together and needless to say I got hardly any sleep and I was very dehydrated the next morning. The JV players only had to make it to the van early that Saturday morning for the road trip into Wisconsin. D Rog and Big Mo drove us with me giving directions. It was a nastalgic journey for me returning to old stomping grounds with a new team. The only problem was that all the guys on the team were looking like a bunch of zombies. That road trip, without the head coach present, started the trash talking and ribbing sessions that highlighted the long van rides to games that took place in and out of our conference. I think this was the trip where one of the players on the team, a red headed kid from small town Iowa was dubbed "Period Baby" by D-Rog. I really got a kick out of that and I had been waiting for my chance for some ribbing sessions with the likes of D-Rog and Mo. Most of the guys on the team weren't hip to it all, but I cherish those memories, and I loved the comradeship that existed on the teams that I traveled with and played with and the experiences with teammates that I lived with. I had a chance to ask D Rog and Big Mo about how best to recover from a long night of sexual healing. D Rog said he was once told that the best thing to do was drink lots of water. Our team was put to the test at the game that day. In short, we laid an egg. It seemed like nobody was even trying. Bye bye undefeated JV season. My old girl friend from Boscobel was in the stands watching that day. My old coach was on the other sidelines. I didn't stay at UW Richland after my first semester there because there was not enough basketball for me. I needed and liked to play everyday or whenever the spirit moved me. The IC was an oasis of basketball and games could be found at any time on almost every day of the year. Dubuque was a much larger city then Richland Center and with four colleges it offered more opportunities to find a basketball game then the small Wisconsin town. The guys on the UW Richland team complained about having to play once a week. I was also an out of state student at UW Richland and I couldn't afford tuition so when I was there I was only taking one class while trying to gain Wisconsin residency. I did get to practice with the team. My flatmate Ike Lambert had been recruited by the UW Richland coach and told me a story of how the previous year when he was on the UD JV team that the UW Richland coach said after the game during the traditional team handshakes, "You could have been playing 30 games a year Lamb!" This year that old coach had only one decent player who actually dunked on us in the game. At half time of our game after receiving a thrashing I came into the locker room and said loudly, "I quit!" I was actually just making a point and making fun of the rest of the team. In reality it seemed like they quit! But D Rog and Mo never let me live that remark down. "I quit, I quit!" D Rog used to say. He didn't get it. Even Period baby came up to me in the locker room and said, "Are you really quitting?" No one got it. I was the only one who didn't quit. I led the team in scoring, rebounding, steals, and probably in blocks and assists that day. I played my dehydrated hung over ass off. My efforts didn't matter. Period Baby was the first one to get serious playing time on the varsity and got his big break in the previous nights game, so this JV business was probably small time now for him. Havatake played like the Invisible man. He was invisible on the court and in the stat book. Usually he put up about fitty a game, no bull. Reecy "Dragon breath" Vankinscoff, usually a rebounding machine, was coming off a serious ankle sprain, so he didn't contribute much. In the game he looked like his bad foot was bolted to the court. The mad Russian Cray Murphy, starting point guard, chipped in a couple baskets but thats about it. It was a humiliating loss. The UW coach didn't have much to say to me during the post game hand shake. The old girl friend from Boscobel left as soon as the game ended and I didn't even get a chance to speak to her. She later on the phone said she thought I played well. I actually had an open fast break opportunity for a dunk near the end of the game but I had no legs that day (long night with the new girl friend). I did finger roll the rock and made the open shot, and Havatake afterwards was like, "Why didn't you dunk it?" After this game the starting JV players from the start of the season were starting to be plucked off the JV roster one by one for sole action at the varsity level. Injuries and bad play by the upperclassmen caused the JV break up. I eventually even got my chance on varsity that year.
My freshman year at UD I played mostly on the JV squad. The head coach modeled his program somewhat after the Iowa Hawkeye Basketball program (the big U. in Iowa located in Iowa City which is my home town) by having a practice squad to play and practice against the varsity. Nearly all the schools in the Iowa Conference had JV teams. Most of the players on our JV squad got to see action that year at the varsity level and most of us dressed for all the varsity games. That first year the coach was using a style of play called the Loyola Maramount system. It was a high paced run and gun three point shooting offense that used a lot of players. The previous year the UD squad had all the talent in the world, but Big Mo, D Rog, Rue, Rye Hubb, Square, Trellis, and others all graduated. There was a talented returning sophomore class with players like Zeke, Ike Lambert, Darby and Brute Mahone. The freshman class too was talented. Big Mo and D Rog were coaching our JV team and we started the season with seven straight wins. We kicked the crap out of the varsity in practice on a daily basis. The first semester I shacked up in a coed dorm with two dorm mates: Ike Lambert from Hazel Green Wisconsin, and Spike from south side Chicago. These were two of the most honest and sincere guys I ever met, and it was my only semester of dorm life in all my 13 years of college. One particular incident in our dorm room sticks out as a great memory that allowed Ike and Spike and myself to bond and become closer friends. We were all settling in for the night with the lights off and in bed, or so I thought. I had to turn a light on momentarily, on and off real quick, and in that brief moment that the room was illuminated I glanced over and saw Spike on his knees at his bed saying prayers. There was a brief moment of awkward silence and then I said, "And what's he doing?" Then we all started dying laughing, not because praying was funny but because of the awkwardness of the situation. I respected Spike a lot before and after that. After the giggles left us that night we all had the "Do you believe in God" conversation.
I had a girl friend I met working at Bonanza steak house in a suburb of the ICE that then lived in the small Wisconsin town of Boscobel, located 60 minutes from Dubuque. She was the reason I had moved to the area. Before UD I had attended a junior college in Richland Center Wisconsin, just 30 minutes from Boscobel. The girlfriend was three years older than me and she had got a job as a grade school teacher in the wild turkey capitol of the world known as Boscobel. I had decided to move with her when she got the job. It was a chance for me to continue my dream of playing college ball. South West Wisconsin was so beautiful and I loved to explore and drive around in my 4 wheel drive Toyota pick up (with the awesome custom stereo system.) There are many basketball and life changing stories from the semester I spent at Richland Center, including the fact that I flipped and rolled my truck traveling between the ICE and Richland Center after a weekend of deer hunting. That particular story is called "The Curse of the Big Buck" and it tells how I barely escaped the crash alive, opening the driver side door of the truck while it lay on its side as flames burned under me and down the ice covered road from gasoline that was spilling out after the crash. I met two ballers who became friends while at UW Richland, one from inner city Milwalkee and the other from Battle Creek Michigan. I visited UD on a recruiting visit with the kid from Milwalkee when we were both thinking about transfering, and that was how I ended up at UD. Anyway, while I was living in the dorms that first full year at UD I was still dating the girl in Boscobel. Our relationship was being strained by the long distance status of the relationship. And I was still young and experiencing college life while she was starting her career. Other females in Dubuque were becoming tempting temptresses. The two ballers from UW Richland were both black kids living hip hop and basketball lives. Players they were. Having more than one girlfriend (or a wife with "mistresses") was a way of life for them, and admittingly I was somewhat influenced by the culture. So part of this culture was having many girlfriends, and at the time I thought it was super cool. I bring up Boscobel and the girlfriend because our JV team went to play at Richland Center, our eighth game of the season, JV only, no varsity on the trip because UW Richland was a junior college. The game became our first loss of the season. But before that trip occurred Ike Lambert wanted to move off campus into an apartment during winter break that year. So we got a place down the main road from UD, very near to the old duplex that Big B and Big Swan and I first lived in the year before. This new pad was called the Wilson Street Crib. I was taking care of a Doberman Pincher that I was part owner of when I first moved to Wilson street. The dogs name was Duke and he was a great dog. Eventually I had to take him back to the ICE because it became to hard to take care of him while playing on the basketball team. The game against my former school, UW Richland, came during winter break. Ike and I were already moved into the new pad. There was a road game for Varsity on the Friday night before the showdown at Richland Center. The JV team traveled and dressed for the Friday night game, and some of us even played in it and got substantial playing time. We won the varsity game Friday night, came back to Dubuque and partied hard and long into the morning. I had a new girl friend that I had met through Ike. We spent that night together and needless to say I got hardly any sleep and I was very dehydrated the next morning. The JV players only had to make it to the van early that Saturday morning for the road trip into Wisconsin. D Rog and Big Mo drove us with me giving directions. It was a nastalgic journey for me returning to old stomping grounds with a new team. The only problem was that all the guys on the team were looking like a bunch of zombies. That road trip, without the head coach present, started the trash talking and ribbing sessions that highlighted the long van rides to games that took place in and out of our conference. I think this was the trip where one of the players on the team, a red headed kid from small town Iowa was dubbed "Period Baby" by D-Rog. I really got a kick out of that and I had been waiting for my chance for some ribbing sessions with the likes of D-Rog and Mo. Most of the guys on the team weren't hip to it all, but I cherish those memories, and I loved the comradeship that existed on the teams that I traveled with and played with and the experiences with teammates that I lived with. I had a chance to ask D Rog and Big Mo about how best to recover from a long night of sexual healing. D Rog said he was once told that the best thing to do was drink lots of water. Our team was put to the test at the game that day. In short, we laid an egg. It seemed like nobody was even trying. Bye bye undefeated JV season. My old girl friend from Boscobel was in the stands watching that day. My old coach was on the other sidelines. I didn't stay at UW Richland after my first semester there because there was not enough basketball for me. I needed and liked to play everyday or whenever the spirit moved me. The IC was an oasis of basketball and games could be found at any time on almost every day of the year. Dubuque was a much larger city then Richland Center and with four colleges it offered more opportunities to find a basketball game then the small Wisconsin town. The guys on the UW Richland team complained about having to play once a week. I was also an out of state student at UW Richland and I couldn't afford tuition so when I was there I was only taking one class while trying to gain Wisconsin residency. I did get to practice with the team. My flatmate Ike Lambert had been recruited by the UW Richland coach and told me a story of how the previous year when he was on the UD JV team that the UW Richland coach said after the game during the traditional team handshakes, "You could have been playing 30 games a year Lamb!" This year that old coach had only one decent player who actually dunked on us in the game. At half time of our game after receiving a thrashing I came into the locker room and said loudly, "I quit!" I was actually just making a point and making fun of the rest of the team. In reality it seemed like they quit! But D Rog and Mo never let me live that remark down. "I quit, I quit!" D Rog used to say. He didn't get it. Even Period baby came up to me in the locker room and said, "Are you really quitting?" No one got it. I was the only one who didn't quit. I led the team in scoring, rebounding, steals, and probably in blocks and assists that day. I played my dehydrated hung over ass off. My efforts didn't matter. Period Baby was the first one to get serious playing time on the varsity and got his big break in the previous nights game, so this JV business was probably small time now for him. Havatake played like the Invisible man. He was invisible on the court and in the stat book. Usually he put up about fitty a game, no bull. Reecy "Dragon breath" Vankinscoff, usually a rebounding machine, was coming off a serious ankle sprain, so he didn't contribute much. In the game he looked like his bad foot was bolted to the court. The mad Russian Cray Murphy, starting point guard, chipped in a couple baskets but thats about it. It was a humiliating loss. The UW coach didn't have much to say to me during the post game hand shake. The old girl friend from Boscobel left as soon as the game ended and I didn't even get a chance to speak to her. She later on the phone said she thought I played well. I actually had an open fast break opportunity for a dunk near the end of the game but I had no legs that day (long night with the new girl friend). I did finger roll the rock and made the open shot, and Havatake afterwards was like, "Why didn't you dunk it?" After this game the starting JV players from the start of the season were starting to be plucked off the JV roster one by one for sole action at the varsity level. Injuries and bad play by the upperclassmen caused the JV break up. I eventually even got my chance on varsity that year.
Monday, October 6, 2008
The Cage
The rest of the Dubuque stories are not going to be told in chronological order necessarily. I'm just going to tell them as they come to me. "The cage" was a fenced in blacktop playground with two full court basketball courts located at an old downtown Dubuque church. The church was built in the northern section of the city in what we called the "low end", a vast downtown located on the flats below the limestone cliffs of Dubuque and the Mississippi River valley. To really set the stage and describe the whole ambiance of The Cage and of the city some descriptions of the lay out and the history of the city has to be told. Dubuque is an old city built on and around the many underground mines that exist throughout the local region. A geology teacher I had at UD said there were miles and miles of mine shafts and tunnels through out the city. The architecture of the buildings was Victorian style mostly,with lots of brick and limestone, and with houses and neighborhoods built on every cliff and on every nook and cranny imaginable. The downtown was huge compared to that of the ICE. Dubuque's downtown stretched north a couple of miles with numerous mini small business districts and neighborhoods. Most of the residential districts were built up on the cliff tops. All the brick buildings and churches reminded me of Chicago. In the 1960's the population of the D was near 90,000 persons. In the 1990's the population was a mere 60,000. A huge portion of the storefronts on the low end were boarded up. The downtown was like a ghost town, thanks in most part to recessions that hit the Mississippi River towns in Iowa during the 1980's. The film "Take This Job and Shove It" was filmed at the Dubuque Star brewery. There seemed to be a bar on every block in the city. I loved to play basketball anywhere and everywhere and like I used to do in the IC I traveled around Dubuque looking for courts to play and dunk on. The Cage and its surroundings looked like it came straight out of a huge inner city.
The antagonist of this story is none other than a kid named Mick Glajoe (pronounced French style according to Mick). Big Swan befriended Mick, and Glajoe actually became a roommate of mine at the crazy ass Wilson Street pad during the summer before my sophomore year at UD. Mick loved to talk a big game, and one night while hanging around the house he started talking smack about how he could whip me on the basketball court. I couldn't even take him seriously, but he kept talking junk. I was like, "Look Mick, you better pipe down because your making a fool of yourself." Some of our roommies like Big Stace added fuel to the fire by provoking us to make a wager. It was late and dark when the smack started flowing but it was probably late summer time or early autumn so it wasn't cold outdoors. Mick put up a new pair of Nike's for the wager(he worked at an old Dubuque shoe store called Kunert's) and I put up? I can't remember what. So we all climbed into a few cars, about eight dudes or so, maybe a few honeys came too, and headed to The Cage. Once there the cars parked facing the best hoop (flattest surface and straightest rim) with all the headlights left on in order to illuminate the ass kicking that was about to transpire. The game was not close. I knew I could beet him with one hand tied behind my back. The final score was like 10 to 1 or something. It was a bit nippy out but I think I even managed to throw a weak dunk down on him. He never payed up on the bet. I didn't give a damn about the game, but the whole memory of playing in the cage at night with the car headlights shining and a whole bunch of cats that were from Chicago and other places where basketball was viewed as an ancient art that was deeply woven into the culture of the inner city youth and especially black America, watching and rapping and jiving while the game was going on, is what I appreciate most about the memory of the experience. Mick Glajoe is in a few other of the Dubuque memories and stories that float around in my head, but some of the best Glajoe tales are not directly basketball related.
Asbury Park
This was the main outdoor spot for pick up games during the summers in Dubuque. Asbury was a suburb located to the north of Dubuque, and it had a nice park with a swimming pool and tennis courts and one really nice outdoor basketball court. The court had a smooth synthetic tennis court like surface and the rims were a couple inches low. Lots of memories playing at Asbury. Havatake said his favorite dunk of mine was when he threw me an ally oop from half court and I two handed dunked it on a kid (my nutts in his face) that used to date one of Havatake's old girlfriends. One time Big B and I came up to UD from the ICE in the summer and drank some 40 oz's and then went to Asbury to hoop it up. That day I decided to wear some old kicks I bought in Chicago's Jew town years earlier. They were old and beat up but I wore them for memories sake and for good luck. The kicks were made by a company called "Jump". The crowd at Asbury were dogging my Jump shoes on the sidelines. I recall Darby laughing and pointing when I made a stutter step cut and scraped my Jumps on the surface as I crossed up my defender on the way to the higher far hoop for two. I know one thing about that day. I got more rebounds than anyone. Big Mo and D Rog were there and I remember after the game hanging out, chiefing a blizzunt and getting their confirmation on my rebound prowness, but even they were miffed at my decision to sport the Jumps. I loved the fact that everyone was clowning me, and I had to explain to Big B about the many levels of "the game" and the mojo power of using or wearing an old item that has certain sentimental nastalgic value. The power of this story more than makes up for any negative affects I suffered from the experience of having people dog my shoes. Wearing those old Jumps was pure me, and it seems few others in my life ever understood my way of thinking when it came to things like this. Mick Glajoe was at Asbury the day I wore my old Jump sneaks from Jew town, and maybe after hearing the remarks on the sidelines about the old paint covered low tops I was wearing he got the idea in his head that I sucked at basketball. Big mistake on his part and the whole story of the Cage match against Glajoe reveals the hustle in the game, or maybe it goes even so far as to reveal the hustler inside of me.
The antagonist of this story is none other than a kid named Mick Glajoe (pronounced French style according to Mick). Big Swan befriended Mick, and Glajoe actually became a roommate of mine at the crazy ass Wilson Street pad during the summer before my sophomore year at UD. Mick loved to talk a big game, and one night while hanging around the house he started talking smack about how he could whip me on the basketball court. I couldn't even take him seriously, but he kept talking junk. I was like, "Look Mick, you better pipe down because your making a fool of yourself." Some of our roommies like Big Stace added fuel to the fire by provoking us to make a wager. It was late and dark when the smack started flowing but it was probably late summer time or early autumn so it wasn't cold outdoors. Mick put up a new pair of Nike's for the wager(he worked at an old Dubuque shoe store called Kunert's) and I put up? I can't remember what. So we all climbed into a few cars, about eight dudes or so, maybe a few honeys came too, and headed to The Cage. Once there the cars parked facing the best hoop (flattest surface and straightest rim) with all the headlights left on in order to illuminate the ass kicking that was about to transpire. The game was not close. I knew I could beet him with one hand tied behind my back. The final score was like 10 to 1 or something. It was a bit nippy out but I think I even managed to throw a weak dunk down on him. He never payed up on the bet. I didn't give a damn about the game, but the whole memory of playing in the cage at night with the car headlights shining and a whole bunch of cats that were from Chicago and other places where basketball was viewed as an ancient art that was deeply woven into the culture of the inner city youth and especially black America, watching and rapping and jiving while the game was going on, is what I appreciate most about the memory of the experience. Mick Glajoe is in a few other of the Dubuque memories and stories that float around in my head, but some of the best Glajoe tales are not directly basketball related.
Asbury Park
This was the main outdoor spot for pick up games during the summers in Dubuque. Asbury was a suburb located to the north of Dubuque, and it had a nice park with a swimming pool and tennis courts and one really nice outdoor basketball court. The court had a smooth synthetic tennis court like surface and the rims were a couple inches low. Lots of memories playing at Asbury. Havatake said his favorite dunk of mine was when he threw me an ally oop from half court and I two handed dunked it on a kid (my nutts in his face) that used to date one of Havatake's old girlfriends. One time Big B and I came up to UD from the ICE in the summer and drank some 40 oz's and then went to Asbury to hoop it up. That day I decided to wear some old kicks I bought in Chicago's Jew town years earlier. They were old and beat up but I wore them for memories sake and for good luck. The kicks were made by a company called "Jump". The crowd at Asbury were dogging my Jump shoes on the sidelines. I recall Darby laughing and pointing when I made a stutter step cut and scraped my Jumps on the surface as I crossed up my defender on the way to the higher far hoop for two. I know one thing about that day. I got more rebounds than anyone. Big Mo and D Rog were there and I remember after the game hanging out, chiefing a blizzunt and getting their confirmation on my rebound prowness, but even they were miffed at my decision to sport the Jumps. I loved the fact that everyone was clowning me, and I had to explain to Big B about the many levels of "the game" and the mojo power of using or wearing an old item that has certain sentimental nastalgic value. The power of this story more than makes up for any negative affects I suffered from the experience of having people dog my shoes. Wearing those old Jumps was pure me, and it seems few others in my life ever understood my way of thinking when it came to things like this. Mick Glajoe was at Asbury the day I wore my old Jump sneaks from Jew town, and maybe after hearing the remarks on the sidelines about the old paint covered low tops I was wearing he got the idea in his head that I sucked at basketball. Big mistake on his part and the whole story of the Cage match against Glajoe reveals the hustle in the game, or maybe it goes even so far as to reveal the hustler inside of me.
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