So on Jeopardy today (Monday) in the category of 'Americana' the answer to a question was something like: This Iowa city was named after the Frenchman who first settled there. The question was: What is Dubuque? When things like this happen it feels like a message from God saying, "Keep on doing what you are doing!" Or are the Jeopardy writers reading my blog and using my material? Or are they using computer search engines to look for hot fresh new ideas or popular themes on the web? Is the web the digital collective consciousness? Maybe it's all just pure coincidence? What ever the case it was real cool, cool as ICE.

Big B and I had friends from the ICE come visit us once in a while when we were living in the Wilson Street crib in Dubuque. Our very good friend D. Rosenhammered (or 'Hammer' for short) made a few such visits. Hammer received a full ride soccer scholarship to the Division I school of Western Illinois after setting our high school's scoring record for goals in a season. He was also nominated as KCRG TV 9's athlete of the year. Hammer was a really small guy. In grade school he would play football with us at Longfellow Elementary's Shraider Field, but because of his size he would get thrown around and beaten like a rag doll and sometimes he would get knocked out of the game and go on I.R. due to broken bones and such. He was tough and not a quitter though, and after recovering from his injuries he would always show up again to play football where once again he would get beat down and spun around. Hammer's initiation into basketball at the rec. is a story I remember all so well. One day we needed one more guy to make 10 for a full court game so we asked Hammer to run; he had been shooting by himself on a side hoop. My slam dunking mentor Shot Blender threw down one crazy ass dunk on poor little Hammer in that game. On the play Shot was coming down the court with the ball on a fast break and Hammer was the only one back on defense. Shot took a hard dribble bouncing the ball up and over Hammer which Shot, after jumping off the stride, caught with one hand above the rim and dunked it with his usual ferocity. Welcome to the rec. center Hammer. After playing soccer for a year at Western Hammer transferred to a school that I had applied to and almost attended. It was called Luther College which was located in the upper north east corner of Iowa in the same general area as Dubuque. Luther was in the same athletic conference as UD so we played them twice every year in basketball. If I would have visited Luther's campus during my decision making process I surely would have made the decision to attend because Luther has one of the most scenic college campuses I have ever seen with limestone cliffs, forests, trout streams... I still wonder what my life would have been like if I would have gone there right after high school instead of Cornell College in Mt. Vernon (which was way closer to home). The soccer program at Luther was taking off and Hammer became one of the teams best players. Big B and Hammer were both two years my junior and Big B was much better friends with Hammer than me during that period. Besides playing football with Hammered at Longfellow and going to grade school and high school with him his dad was a pediatrics doctor at a clinic near Mercy Hospital in the ICE who once treated a dislocated finger of mine. I dislocated that finger many times and I tried to put it back into place by myself once or twice, so now it it is deformed and does not bend at that joint. In later years I kidded Hammer's dad about mangling my finger. The clinic where Dr. Rosenhammered worked was at one time a vacant lot owned by the school district and was where I practiced quarterbacking my 7th grade football team of Central Junior High Little Hawks to an undefeated season in the last year of the schools existence before it was torn down (torn down coincidentally by one of my best friend while growing up's grandpa, a legendary Iowa City figure and tycoon named Max Yokem). Our 7th grade team played our games at Shraider Field at my old grade school, Henry Woodswarth Longfelllow, which bordered the back yard of Hammer's folks old house. It is also where Hammer set his soccer scoring records years later in high school. Many of my ICE friends are from the same graduating class as Big B and Hammer so none of them went to Central. The 100+ year old school (built in the late 1800's I think) used to be the high school and was located in the old downtown Iowa City. The memories I had of my 7th grade year are so classic and the memories of football practices in the Autumn heat at the vacant lot where Hammer's dad's office now resides are some of the best in my life. Another Hammer memory involved the fact that I bought a dirt bike from him in grade school or Junior High, or at least I had planned to buy it. He gave me a great deal on a Schwinn Predator frame. I payed him 5$ upfront but promised to pay him 50$ by the end of the summer. I didn't come up with the money and when I went on vacation Hammer and his dad came over and repossessed it (I blame my folks for not helping me pay for it). I mention all this stuff about the schools and the fields and the connections between Hammer and I because it is important to understand how 'old school' Iowa City myself and my ICE friends are and how intertwined our families are in the history and community of the city. And it goes even way deeper than what I've mentioned here (most of my IC stories are not included in this blog). For me there was always like a sacred connection between myself and the place, or the ground, or the field, or the court, or the land...? I can't even explain it really. Does my blood, sweat, and tears leave an energy mark or something on a place? Energy that I can feel at a later moment in time? I know one thing and that was that I would play and battle and even actually fight if it came to it to defend courts of childhood lore. It felt like I could draw on old memories of games I had played and battles I had fought to fuel an extra level of athleticism or skill whenever it came to returning to a place of familiarity while defending the neighborhoods rep. and my own rep. in a game of basketball or even football. Anyway, back to Hammer time. When Big B and I were first in Dubuque he used to have long phone call conversations with Hammer. After Big B returned to UD during the year of the Mexico trip and while we lived in the Wilson Street Crib the long phone conversations continued and Hammer even came to visit a couple of times, and visa versa (we went to visit him at Luther a couple of times). I can not remember the order of how and when things happened in the stories of Hammer's visits, but the highlights alone are like climactic punchlines. For example we all went to a dance at the school one night and at the time Big B and I were dressing up Chris Cross style (clothes on backwards). So since Hammer was going with us we put this green striped shirt with a collar on him, backwards! And to complete the look he also sported a backwards ball cap and backwards genes.That night he got separated from us and ended up hanging out with some black dudes he didn't even know who took him to a party somewhere. Some other black dude either at the dorms or at the party saw my little friend dressed up with his clothes on backwards and all and decided to attack him by throwing a giant plastic street light cover at him. The huge round plastic cover was amazingly pliable and had lots of give but nonetheless Hammer was beamed right in the head with it by the angry black dude. Fortunately one or two of the guys Hammer was with stepped in said that hammer was one of my friends. That was enough to save Hammer for a little while, but I think he had to flee at some point and then found himself lost in a huge sprawling dying town that had more dead ends and steep cliffs and sprawling hills and rundown boarded up neighborhoods than one can imagine. Hammer ended up sleeping on a park bench in some really nice park somewhere. He somehow managed to find the Wilson Street crib the next morning. We thought maybe he was dead somewhere or maybe, just maybe, he got lucky with a honey. OK, we didn't think that he got lucky and I was in fact a little worried about him. We should have made sure that we all stuck together the night before, and I have no idea what happened to me or Big B that night where we misplaced and temporarily forgot about our good friend like he was an article of clothing or something. Hammer was tough, and smart, and could outrun anyone if he had to and I admit now that it was somewhat amusing letting him fend for himself in such a rough and tumble city and even more wildly amusing to hear about his adventures and survival tactics from that night. He returned that morning with the huge plastic street light cover and wacked me over the head with it. I'm telling you that that plastic was about the softest and most giving plastic protective cover I have ever seen or felt, and the blow to my noggin didn't hurt a bit, but its a real scary and alarming sight to see a huge round heavy looking sphere coming down about to strike you in the head. Hammer gave the giant plastic sphere to me as a keepsakes and I kept it for many years. On another occasion Hammer and his pal and Luther teammate Dan Diablos came to visit with Big B and Big Swan. Diablos was a sneaky bastard, and the climactic story of the end of Diablos' time in the IC came many years later after soccer and after he had moved to and lived in the ICE for a few years. On this particular trip Diablos' antics had wore thin on the nerves of Big B and Big Swan and Big B ended up loosing his cool and picked Diablos up, threw him on the ground and then smothered him, all right in front of the STW's Sarai and Alley Cat in Johny Duke's dorm room. Sarai played soccer for UD so I introduced her to Hammer and attempted to set them up. Hammer is such a little guy that a person has to see him in action on the pitch with their own two eyes to appreciate his athletic prowess. My hype about my friend Hammer to Sarai probably sounded and seemed like a tall tale especially when she saw how short he was. The visit where Hammer first met Sarai was actually a different visit and happened a year or two prior then the visit where Diablos succumbed to the public beat down by Big B. Also, I better make it clear that Big B's aggression on Diablos was fueled by years of dealing with Diablos' shadiness, thievery, and lies, and also a tight ride and long road trip from IC to Luther to Dubuque in Big B's S-10 with 350+lb. Big Swan riding shotty and Danny Boy in the middle. Even though it happened during my one last semester at UD, I may as well tell that whole story now since we're on the topic of Hammer and road trips between Luther and Dubuque. Big B, Diablos and Swan rolled up to Decorah (where Luther is located) from the ICE to see Hammer, then their plan was to come and visit me. It was a three day weekend of some sort as I recall. They all ended up going to a bar in Decorah but as was the norm Big Swan didn't have any valid ID with him so they wouldn't let him in at the door. They had drank Night Train or Mad Dog before going out so they were real hammered (pun intended). Big B played pool and somehow managed to start a fight with some locals when he slammed his pool que on the table and broke the tip off. They tried to kick him out and at one point Big B was swinging four guys around the bar all at once. Then the owner punched him in the mouth and then Big B really got mad and was just about to demolish the guy when the guy at the last moment pulled the old, "I'm about to die of cancer. Please don't hurt me." It was a good clean way out for Big B, but by then the cops showed up and arrested Big B. and Hammer and even Diablos I think. They were hauled downtown but were released later on. On their way home or at some point they saw Big Swan leaned over a huge boulder on the Luther campus. Hammer said he thought Swan was puking, but alas it was not so. Swan was leaned over making out with some hot chick! Big smoothy. I think Hammer met his eventual wife during that trip or on one of those Big B. visits. Needless to say when Big B, Big Swan, and Danny Diablos showed up in Dubuque they were all so miserably hung over there was no partying or craziness to speak of. Except for hearing about their misfortunes and fortunes in Decorah from the days before, their visit was lame and they were no fun to be around. Diablos was the only one who wanted to go out.

Team goes on a run after Mexico

After returning home and traveling together and playing through some extremely tough circumstances in Mexico the team put together a nice win streak during the second half of our season. Our conference play had begun and these games and winning the conference decided whether or not a team from our conference would be invited to the NCAA Division III basketball playoffs. I played well in Mexico and it seemed as though I was on the verge of breaking into the main rotation, but the new semester brought a new class schedule that once again conflicted with the practice schedule. I had two science labs that ran into practice time. In practices coach was implementing new press defenses and new plays for the team so I was always scrambling to try and keep up to date on any changes. When I was at practice that semester I was like a wild stallion trying to break out of a fenced in pasture. I wanted more playing time and in practice I let my teammates feel my wrath. I can't even remember how much playing time I got in games, but it wasn't much. I think I played in most of those games and I must have scored some, but what I remember most is the play of the team. Everyone was playing well and playing together. Chucky Amsterdam was scoring consistently and playing hard in practice. Putzman was coming along too, so with 6-8 Brute Mahone, 6-6 Chucky Amsterdam, and the 6-9 Putzman, there wasn't much playing time available for me in the front court. Zeke and G Money held down the wing spots, and Lil Lamb ran the point. Black B was still working on eligibility status. Coach played Chubby Rundy because he was good friends with Spanky's dad who also happened to be a high school coach in the area. Spanky aka Chubby Rundy was a decent spot up shooter and a great quarterback in high school but he was short, chubby, and slow on the court. We also got a new player at the semester, a kid that went by the nickname of "Q". He was 6-4 and outweighed me and played my position as well, and his older brother was a former UD player that still had sway in the program and came back to play and coach in the summer basketball camp, so now I had to compete against him for playing time too. During games I focused on being a good teammate and encouraged players in the game from the bench. Johny Duke said it sounded like I was coaching the team. We went on an 11 game win streak and were tied for first place going down the stretch. I know this is going to sound very self centered, like I was somehow all so important to the team and it's going to sound like I think the whole world revolves around me, but the team and the world didn't and doesn't revolve around me, the team revolved around coach. I was just one of many cogs on that team, but I was definitely a major personality on the team. Three teammates and a former coach and all-time UD great player all lived in my house. It seemed to me that I dominated more practice's than anyone else. This was in part because I was always teamed up with my boys on the JV which was like the practice squad for the starters or the top players in the rotation. It allowed me to shine offensively against the starters and I loved to pick off passes and take off down the court for a dunk or layup attempt while coach had been trying to install some sort of half court play for the starters at the other end. I got pushed in the back and into the wall one time after one such steal by either Chucky or Lil Lamb. Big B said he asked Chucky and it wasn't him, so it must have been Lil Lamb. It was his pass that I had picked off on the play, which was one of many that year. There is nothing so dirty and cheap in my mind than pushing a basketball player in the back when they are going in for a layup. I thoroughly enjoyed my role on the team as the in practice spoiler and I loved playing with Big B, White B, and Hot Breath and most of all I loved making a mockery out of coaches tactics and plays in practice. But that wasn't enough for me. I was feeling stronger than ever in my life. I had been lifting weights heavily for three years and I had actually benched the most weight on the team in pre-season weight testing (that was before Q arrived). I had put up 265 lbs. 2 times. I was just finally recovering fully from the 2 and a half year old ankle injury (thats really how long it took to get back to the place where I was before I hurt it in that intramural game my first semester). I was dunking again with more regularity, and near the end of the season I went on a string of dunking at least once a day in scrimmage like situations during practice. One such dunk was on a play in a scrimmage situation at the end of practice when coach was working with our JV alone and without the varsity present (they had already hit the showers). I got another steal for a fast break and with White B right on my tale I flared wide as was my habit and with B right there I leaped off my left foot off the stride and slammed one home. I kidded Sneaky Sig about that dunk after practice by saying that I dunked on him. He responded by saying that he had to run down there on the play because coach was there. He was right and I didn't really dunk on him, although he was right there, but it was fun kidding him about it and seeing his reaction none-the-less. That was probably a poor decision on my part and might have had something to do with my downfall later on. In practice one day G Money got a steal and took off for the dunk, so I raced down and in the air tried to swipe the basket. It was a crazy play with two high fliers going full speed and from opposite sides of the court and coach was pissed as hell at me afterwards and blew the whistle and yelled, "We're not trying to hurt anybody here!" First off I am not letting someone dunk on me if I can help it (I have never pushed anyone in the back though), and I didn't hurt G Money or even foul him, and third I was actually trying to re-in act a play I saw as a kid at the Iowa City Prime Time Summer League one time when Brian Garner from Milwalkee and Rodell Davis from Chicago did the same play and had the same showdown with a chase to the basket from opposite sidelines and a swipe of the basket by the defender as the other player tried to dunk. I can see why coach would have been upset because I was basically hurling my body into the air at full speed like I was going to tackle Havatake. I would love to have seen or see that play on tape so I could examine if I was really out of control or if it was just two athletes going head to head in an amazing athletic display of grace and determination. Lastly, why didn't coach blow the whistle and make a fuss when I was pushed in the back by Lil Lamb on a break away play in another prior practice? I wish I would have let it all out right there and had it out with coach in front of everyone. I was getting sick of the hypocrisy and double standards by coach. I would talk to D Rog and the roomies about it at night back at the pad. D Rog would always defend coach. OK so I probably didn't deserve to play because of my clandestine love affair with M. Jane, but other star players and even former coaches like D himself were guilty of the same crime. And since I decided to keep my major as Environmental Science I had no choice but to accept a class schedule that compromised practice time. That was just the breaks. But when it comes to double standards especially concerning cheap shots and the like in practice, that was an act that caused me to loose a lot of respect for our head coach Don Javison. My grades were suffering, it was hard to get to classes from the Wilson Street pad. I dropped a class even and I was down to taking just 10 credits for the semester. The old school wrestling coach was my professor for one of my classes and he almost failed me for missing to many classes. He had me meet him in his office and he asked me what the problem was. He said I had more smoke than anyone in the class, even including the teachers (I got all A's on his tests and was always the first one to hand in his tests and he still was going to fail me based on principle). My response to him was that as basketball was going so went the rest of my life. I was frustrated with basketball and my class schedule and was also in the process of moving, which is why I told him I had missed so many classes. He allowed me to make up the missed class by doing a large extra credit project. I could tell that that man had his principles and his rules and he stuck by them. It was tough but at least a person knew where they stood and he seemed like the type of coach who would never allow favoritism to play a part in his coaching decisions. As I've said in a previous post that old man was the former UD head football coach but they made him step down because he was to old school and over the top hard core. Big Stace wrestled for the coach during his first couple years at UD. The meeting and this whole episode with the wrestling coach seemed and still seems important to me. It was like he was the only one trying to reach out, and I barely knew him and he wasn't even my coach. During this period I still drank a few beers most nights, either partying or at home with D Rog. D would also come home with some cigars and alternative replacement contents every night. Being at the crib and hanging out with the fellas was more fun than anything else. It was nearing the end of the season and there were only three games left. If we won out we had a chance to make the play offs. In an upcoming game the JV team was scheduled to play a group of semi-pro players from the ICE before the varsity game versus another conference opponent. I couldn't wait. I thought I knew who the guys were that we were going to face and I couldn't wait to get at them and compete and dunk in their faces. It was a chance for pay back on the IC 'in crowd' ballers that I had always had a big rivalry with. There would be one problem. A big winter storm hit and there was a no show by the other team. The JV team was split into two teams and we had an inter squad JV scrimmage instead. I was matched up against White B in the game. I had 19 points before half time when he stuck his foot out under mine on a drive to the basket and down I went, another crippling ankle injury. I left the court, went down to the locker room, put my clothes on, and hobbled and snuck out the far corner back door, an exit hardly ever used by anyone. While I was leaving an older woman was coming up to the door trying to get in. I saw her slip on the ice and whack her head on the ground. I came out and held the locked from the outside door open for her and asked if she was OK. I limped and hobbled home and stopped at the Oky Doke store on the way for some 40 oz. King Cobra Malt liquor bottles and a bottle of Robitusm. At home I consumed all of the above and then watched an amazing moment on all of sports television when during ESPN's first annual Espy awards the very ill and close to death former NC State coach Jim Valvano gave his awesome awe inspiring speech about "Never give up". The speech put me in tears. I wasn't even supposed to have been there, at home, watching TV. I felt like a quitter in one respect because I kind of quit on my team. The reason I had snuck out of the sports complex was because if I would have gone down to the training room I would have gone into an emotional rage against coach, the school, White B... another ankle injury and an early end to my season when I had just started rounding into great form on the court was more than I would have been able to keep inside. And I was going 100,000$ into debt for all this? By laying low I saved everyone from having to witness a potential emotional breakdown on my part. If I would have been stronger and wiser and more patient I would have known that the right thing to do was to get treatment and be on the bench or sidelines even if it was in street clothes cheering on the team. I did go to the varsity game later that night wearing my pull over hoody that I bought in Mexico but I sat way up in the bleachers. The team lost the game and then lost the next three. No playoff appearance for the team. I was back on then back off the team again in those final weeks of school. I was even considering transferring to Clark College (which was the old Catholic women's college) for the next school year where they had built a beautiful new basketball and sports facility. Things at the Wilson Street crib were getting out of hand with parties and unruly roommates so I moved out and into G-Money's Townhouse which he shared with Q and Rundy. Reecy asked me at the time why I was moving out and he said, "What about us?" I reminded him about D Rog pissing all over Rue's jacket in the living room and about the crap Reecy pulled one night when he got rough with a girl and the cops took me, Hot Breath, and White B down to the station for questioning. He reminded me how Havatake had sold me out so many times. I needed to be close to the school and in a more stable environment so I left the Wilson Street crew to fend for themselves. We had one humungous party before I moved out, but the cops showed up and busted the party up. D Rog, Mo, White B, Hot Breath, a former UD student named Curtis from Chicago, and a few others were listening to my stereo up in the 'bat cave' when there was a knock at my bedroom door. Reecy cracked the door open to see who it was and he quickly closed it and said it was the 5-0. We thought maybe he was kidding for a second but he was not so all the cigar innards were dumped and the blunts were hidden. The cops smelled cigar as we walked out of my room and downstairs. There were like 10 cops on the scene. Havatake let them in the house and sent them upstairs. I guess the music had been to loud. It was a raging party and I was the only one charged with keeping a disorderly house, a misdemeanor which I had to appear in court for. I made the first court appearance and pleaded innocent but I missed the next court date and all the dates thereafter which for years had me worried that I had a warrant out for my arrest (they eventually fined me and took it out of my tax returns years later).

Life at the Wilson Street Pad

The year of the Mexico trip I had five roommates living in Ike Lambert's and my old apartment on Wilson Street. Ike was going to school at Loras College after transferring and moving out and lived only a few blocks away. So now living in the house was Morris "Dragon breath" Vankinscoff, White B aka Sneaky Sig, Big B Growley, and after Mick Glajoe moved out D Rog moved in. The usual daily routine was to get a ride home at the end of the day after classes and after practice from Big B in his Dodge S-10. We had to ride 4 deep with someone sitting on someone else's lap. As we turned the corner from University Ave by the little pub on the corner we would think of home and proceed to call out: "First Sega!", "Second Sega!" Everyday we did this. What we were referring to was playing video games and calling out who would get to play first. There was only one video game we played actually, and it was non other than "John Madden Football" on the Sega Genesis (which was the number one video game from my generation in hip-hop culture). Homework was an afterthought. While the first game was played the roommates who didn't get in the first game usually cooked up some grub, either hamburger paddies or polish sausages from Aldi's Save a Lot grocery store. They did this while watching the game and listening to the smack talk. During the evening time we also talked about the interesting things that occurred at practice or at school that day. More times than not I cracked open a 40 oz. or two. We always watched Sports center on ESPN at 6PM, and then we would go back to playing Sega. I've got some great stories about smack talking and epic battles and TV sets getting thrown and more when it comes to playing John Madden football at the Wilson Street Pad. We all had our favorite team and we sometimes did individual secret practice sessions trying to get down a teams offense or what ever. "The Book" as we called it was the game manual that had player profiles and things of that nature and we were always studying it and looking all over hell for it when ever it got lost. Basketball speaking Big B, Reecy, White B, and I were all JV players for the most part, so we had a pretty tight bond between us, but sometimes there was also jealousy and an intense rivalry. I played more varsity then any of them but we were all around the same caliber of player and also about the same size. White B was recovering from serious knee surgery which slowed him up during that time and with out a doubt the injury affected and limited his college basketball career. There was always some hip-hop tunes thumping and coming from the direction of white B's room. 2Pac's first and second CD and Dr. Dre's "The Chronic" were played continuously. White B had them as soon as they came out and always had other new CD's before anyone else. Hip-hop rap enthusiasts know the significance that those two musicians and their records had on hip-hop, especially Dre's "The Chronic", which brought west coast funk infused rap into the forefront of hip-hop culture. It was mesmerizing music, but it seems to have lost its mesmerizing affect over time. I sure do miss those times. And I miss all those guys. D rog was the only other one to come home with beer every night, usually a six pack, sometimes a twelver, and he always shared with me. He had about six girlfriends who bought him what ever he needed. They were all pretty cool in my opinion, and of course they were all attractive. I really really miss those days. All those guys had so much charisma and personality. Big B and I would always pull the "Iowa Hawkeye's are the best" routine. "Hot Breath" Reecy Vankinscoff and White Boy Roy were both from Illinois, so whenever the Hawkeyes took on the Illini. it was a real big occasion and we all gathered around the TV set, me with my 40 ouncers. The smack talking was at it highest during those games. There was one particular unforgettable occasion when the Hawks were up by five with like six seconds left. Big B and I were really letting White B. and Reece have it. It was high fives and dancing the cabbage patch. Then that white dude shooter who played like seven seasons for their team hit a three and then a half court three to win it, all in that six seconds. Big B and I went from dancing and talking trash to being dead silent and watching those guys high five and dance and yell and point and laugh. To tell you the truth it was a classic moment, I have to admit. There were all sorts of other goings ons concerning the ladies besides just D Rog's harem. As I have mentioned before White B had a girl friend who would bless us with her presence occasionally, and occasionally she would even bring a friend over with her. Hot breath, Big B, and myself never had any long term steadies, but we each had our fare share of action.

Duke Day
After practice one day coach gave us a speech right before sending us off the court and downstairs to shower. He said he wanted to dedicate the day to a player on the team who never made a "peep or a hum" but just showed up and worked hard and kept his mouth shut. Coach pronounced it was: "Duke Day!" My bud Johny Duke was our hero after that, so Big B and I obtained about 2 cases of Mickey's Big Mouth Malt Liquor hand grenade bottles and proceeded to celebrate like had never been done before. And I mean never. Walls were smashed in, doors were broken down, things were set on fire, books were burned, glass was broken, burning plastic singed a lifelong scar into my wrist which I did not feel at the time as I watched it happen, blood from some various self imposed injuries was smeared into words on the walls... and we kept screaming "Duke Day!" and then slammed our green hand grenade bottles of beer and then threw them against the walls of our apartment. They exploded the dry wall in our walls and left lingering clouds of white drywall dust hovering in the surrounding air until the next day. Ike Lambert and Johny Duke ran out of the apartment in terror that night not to return until the next day to check and see if anyone had survived the drunken insanity from the night before. The next morning I came down from my room in the attic which D Rog had dubbed 'the bat cave', and I had to climb over and through the door leading to and from the attic which had been demolished by Big B in retribution for me jumping through the wall that separated his and Reecy's sleeping area. There was broken glass and wood splinters everywhere on the floor and there was light shining through the window into the living room where Big B and Reecy slept and there was a thick smoky haze that could be seen in the form of light beams where the suns rays shown directly in. The CD player had been stuck on the same song all night and was skipping at the same spot. It was stuck on "Georgy Porgy" by MC Lyte (who was one of Big B's favorite rappers). What a night it had been. Those green Micky bottles were indestructable. Maybe the two streetballers from the ICE were a bit crazy in the head. Lil Lamb used to call us "devils" because of the blood on the walls from that night and because we liked to eat our steaks rare. 'The morning after' is an image I can see in my head oh so clear. For some reason I had somewhat a sense of accomplishment that morning, and I guess I still feel that way now. Perhaps because I knew that the craziness of Duke Day was so awesome that it would never be forgotten thanks in big part to the drinking ritual of the beast Big B and I.

More Adventures in Mexico

Many of the bus rides we took into the mountains and to nearby towns lasted for hours and sometimes we did not make it back to the hotel until very late. On one of these long trips we visited a large market up in the foothills. The air was cleaner and there was no sign of the large city buildings or even of city life. It was like we traveled through a time warp or something and came out into a village in a far distant land where pollution and the hustle and bustle of city life didn't exist. There were lots of people still, everywhere you looked there were vendors and shoppers and tourists and small shops. One thing that I noticed immediately was a man that looked like a manikin standing up on a stool or ladder or something dressed like a gypsy with a turban on his head and standing completely motionless like a statue. There was a little sign next to him that labeled and explained his actions (I couldn't read Spanish yet at that time). Apparently he was demonstrating against something. I stood a ways a way and watched him to see if he ever moved. He did change positions a couple of times but I never caught him actually doing it. Then later in the day like magic he was gone. Near where this man had been demonstrating in his own unique way there was a little store called the Taj Mahal. There was some very sweet incense burning in there and I kept going back in every so often, either to take a closer look or because one of my teammates dragged me in there to show me something. That memory has reminded me so much of a scene from one of my favorite movies, "Kelly's Heroes" with Clint Eastwood and Donald Sutherland. The scene from the WWII movie is the one where Sutherland's character named "Oddball" shows Kelly (played by Eastwood) his tank unit that he is in command of who happens to be laying low and taking advantage of R and R in a field behind the army's supply depot. The Taj Mahal store had a back door which I peaked out and the scene looked so similar to the "Kelly's Heroes" scene that I watch the movie sometimes just so I can sort of relive those feelings I had that day in that Mexican market. Big B had been taking a long hiatus from smoking the cactus but he mentioned to me on the bus after we left that market that he really felt like toking up for the first time in over a year. I knew what he meant. The mountain air and the ambiance of that market and of that town was as powerful a mind altering experience as any high from any drug I've ever ingested. Before leaving I bought a blue wool blanket that said 'Mexico' on it and a silver chain with a particular silver plant leaf charm attached to it from some street vendors. The silver chain I eventually lost and the blanket I ended up giving to my grandma Ruth (RIP).
We also went to another large market area in the center of the city during our stay. The smog was more severe and the area was much dirtier with more garbage everywhere. There were some sort of animal heads roasting in a big roaster and I asked what they were and one of the guys standing there responded in good English, "It's dog!" in a somewhat evil or thuggish sounding voice. We didn't stay to long at that market.
We went to a major tourist and pilgrimage sight that is well known but I can't remember for sure what it was called. Maybe "Guadalupe.." something or other? It is where a miracle was said to have happened and we got in a long line with hundreds of other people, Mexican families mostly, and traveled slowly down through the layers of the old city to what was now an underground very old hut and saw a lime deposit or something that looked like the standard image of the Virgin Mary. Seeing the layers and layers of the old city while going down into this dungeon like dwelling was as or more curious and interesting as the so called miracle itself. It is still unfathomable to me how a city over time grows up from sea level on top of itself like that. I still can't believe it. The old dwelling where the miracle occurred was like 40 feet down. It was like seeing an excavation sight at an Egyptian Tomb or at an archaeological dinosaur dig. That same day I was so thirsty I decided to buy a pop and a snack. They poured and then gave me pop in a plastic bag (they kept the bottle) and they wouldn't give me all the food I wanted which was just a taco like thing with veges on it. They wouldn't give me veges because they were trying to protect me from Montezuma's revenge, which I didn't realize at the time.
We met the ladies team one day at some nearby ancient Mayan temples. We climbed to the top of Temple of the Sun. The stairs were so small and it was easy to fall. G Money made a move on the cutest babe on the Scranton team (actually they made a move on each other simultaneously) and while the two frolicked about she ended up taking a spill and twisting her ankle while making her way down the Mayan pyramid. I purchased a Temple of the Sun clay pipe at the vendor's tables next to the parking lot. I had that pipe for a long time.
On New Years Eve day we played the Mexican National players again. The sports club we were at had visiting locker rooms that were very run down; it was not the same facility as where we played them the first time. There was water dripping everywhere and it was real dirty and old. The crowd was unruly that game. We heard that they had been waiting for hours to see the game. About the only play I remember from the JV game was on a missed free throw where I jumped in the lane as early as I could (we were getting more used to the lack of good officiating) and went up over the dunking machine from their junior team, missed grabbing the rebound with my right hand but caught it with my left and nearly lean in dunked on the missed free throw. White B talked about it after the game and had seen exactly what I had almost done. Just talking about the play got the both of us hyped and this was a basketball play that I would have loved to be a witness of (watching myself on that play on video tape would be and would have been so awesome, but no such tape exists as far as know). I played real well in both that JV and Varsity game, and I most certainly led the JV in scoring and probably the varsity again too. Both Zeke and G Money got a nice dunk each in games along the way, but this particular game would be a game and an experience that I think drew our team together and helped us go on an amazing run in conference play once we got back to the states and to our regular season play (as I have mentioned previously these games in Mexico were not NCAA sanctioned and therefore did not go on our regular season record). The Mexican team played very physical and dirty and I have already told the story about the head hunting player from the junior team. He pulled that same crap while playing against our varsity. They had their 30 some year old looking black dude with dread locks there to manhandle our big guys. Leave it up to Brute Mahone, the hick from Indiana, to start a fight. That day was the most scared for my life I have ever been. Brute almost started a fight in every game he ever played in actually. And he wasn't even a fighter! It was always all about the drama for him. That game against the Mexican national players got real physical, and eventually the refs lost control to the point where coach almost pulled his team off the court. That fool Mahone had gotten into a shoving match with the big black dude and the two of them squared off for a minute like they were really going to throw down. I sincerely was thinking that our whole team was going to get jumped by an ornery and restless mob of fans and players, 4000 Mexicans versus the 15 or so of us. I give thanks to Jah for allowing us to live through that treacherous ordeal. I was worried that we all were going to have to stand back to back and fight for our lives. That experience brought our team together like nothing else could have. I was thankful for every last player, coach, and chaperon that was with us on the trip and with us at that game.
Our assistant coach and head JV coach Shad Spock threw down some nasty dunks at an outdoor court after one of our games. Someone had the idea of having him play with us in the JV games. It didn't happen. I think I remember running a little four on four at that outdoor court with the JV players and with Spock's girlfriend (she had been a great baller in high school) after our game. The game turned into a dunk fest for Spock and I. We ate dinner on New Years with the other teams players again. G Money and I drank more tequila than I thought was humanly possible. They kept bringing these little bottles for us with the worm in it and everything. When loading on the bus outside after the meal and the festivities put on by our most gracious host I saw coach standing with some burning sparklers in his hand. He motioned me over to an outdoor hoop behind some bushes and behind him which seemed like it appeared out of nowhere. He proceeded to do a rocker step basketball move with his back to the basket and then followed it up with a turn around hook shot and tossed the burning sprinkler through the hoop. Coach was hammered. It was our one moment. He said something to me about how he really liked me as a person. I got on the bus and told some of the guys about coaches sparkler routine. Lil lamb started rapping out loud about female body parts "squooshing and sloshing" and coach's wife heard it and gasped and then stormed out of the bus disgusted. Charlie tried to get coach to let him ride on the girls bus on the way home but coach wasn't having it. I guess the tequila kicked in because I got this crazy idea to see if I could steal Chuck's idea and steal a ride on the girls bus, so I slipped off our bus and slipped into the girls bus like it was nothing. I don't have any idea where or what the coaches were doing. I didn't say much more than hello to the girls and one of them actually spoke to me and said, "Your the one who doesn't talk." Ah yes, at least they had noticed me. My lack of funds alway adversely affected my self confidence concerning the ladies, so thats why I didn't talk much. I think I wanted to meet a Latina cutie more than spend time chasing those Scranton she-ballers. They were a fairly attractive group of young ladies to be honest. After I had been conversing for a while with the ladies coach came into the women's bus where I was with a mad as hell look on his face. He said something about me not wanting to see him get angry. That stunt I pulled was like the little kid who wanted to get attention from his old man or a kid trying to see what kind of crazy stunt he could get away with to try and impress his buddies. Once I got back into the bus I was informed that I was real close to pulling off the switched bus caper but non other than Brute Mahone piped up to coach about "someone" missing. It was right before the buses were about to head off. The ride home was a long one and I barely made it back without getting sick. Damn good thing I wasn't on the ladies bus. I made my way up to our room and took a shower in an attempt to try and sober up. I also hurled in the toilet a few times. I came out of my room to find a big team meeting going on in the hall way. I was dressed only in a towel. Word was that the rest of the team was allowed to go out on the town, all except for me and G Money (and coach himself). I interrupted the meeting (that I was supposed to be a part of) and announced to everyone that they could all blame me for the trouble and then upon turning to go back to my room I dropped my towel and mooned everyone including coach Spock's girlfriend who was also Ike Lambert's sister (I forgot she was there when I did it). That was one rough night of sleep and I almost blacked out at the game the next day and even had to lie down behind the bench for a while during the game.

That is all of the stories from the list I made concerning our adventures in Mexico City. The story of our time spent in sunny Acapulco is still to come.

Ode to the Gold
Acapulco Gold. My case of deodorant was my midnight expressed. Sniff my vapors. Marked ass suckers make your wager. Montezuma's revenge, caught at the Subway on the strip, lettuce was the culprit, my hungry stomach to blame. 17th floor Ramada Inn on the balcony overlooking the Pacific and the mountains, the toilet that night was my only friend. Parasites in the water in the southern hemisphere is the revenge. Am I now immune? Was that experience my friend? The Temple of the Sun's mouth came in handy, a serpentine figurine it was, with a snakes head as the stem, and the Sun god's head in the horizon. A dude on the beach was I approached, and he pointed me to another, then another, then another, the exchange was made, and a natural remedy for my ailment was put to a flame. Some may gasp, some may be oblivious, others would think that I was just having fun. I tell you I lived it, I'm the writer, and now I give it back to the people with whom back in the day I did run. If you are reading this then now its in your head too, here is the universe revealing itself to itself and so now you see it, at least in the form of letters that make these words which you are reading. The waves in Acapulco I felt them, I saw coach get thrown from about ten feet in the water to about 2 feet in, the old man did he look when I was using a body board to ride in. The club that night we did hit it, we met these young cats and a circle we made, and then we battled, one by one, their crew representative in the middle dancing, and then one of our crew members did the same. When my turn came I entered the circle and busted out my well rehearsed short but sweet routine, earning the respect of my teammates and of the Mexican youngsters who danced with us that day. It was good to see that breakn' was alive and well in this festive land. It was one of the best nights of my life, but after that sub sandwich, the shits made me stay in my hotel room for the rest of the freakn' I'm trippn', if only I had the foresight and the money to film that trip and then I would be raking in the riches. From my balcony on the 17 floor below I watched on the strip the flashing lights of the dance clubs that lined the Acapulco coast for many miles. The story goes that on that night when I missed going out with the fellas, a beautiful Mexican girl stuck her hand down the pants of Murph that lucky fella (it was just for a gag and nothing more). I myself even met a hot and sexy young American woman (who modeled for TV commercials) in the lobby of our hotel. She wanted to go out for a beer, approached me she did but I didn't have a dime to spend because Zeke had kicked that door in. I had forgotten about that girl for years until this very moment while rewinding the images in my head from a trip I took south of the border to where the sun shines bright fiery and red and the blue waves of the Pacific Ocean come splashing in. Have you ever met a member of the opposite sex who you have that instant special connection with? But do to circumstances you were unable to get down or get close or experience a love or even just a friendly affair? Maybe at that moment in the lobby in our hotel in Acapulco I should have asked the lovely lady to wait while I tried to borrow some money from one of the guys, and then maybe a night or a lifetime of difference could have occurred for me there. Some other interesting moments did happen while in the city of the golden sun. My teammate G Money was jocked by a chaperon in front of the whole team and everyone at a meeting we had, I think someone sold me out for the clandestine activity I had done. The praise G Money got was ridiculous, and everyone just kind of smirked, when this old guy got up and made a speech like he was John Wooden. "One player on this team represents the attitude of a winner and of a Spartan, and that player is Brag Havatake!" was that old man's war cry; which games had he been watching? Let him step on the court and try to run. One last tidbit or two of memories about that great city, there was a bar on the strip called "Happy Hour" which had drink specials all day long. Rundy and Havatake made it their home base, and drank pina collatas from dusk to dawn. Rundy was caught on the beach by the cops after hours one night with a player from the Scranton squad, he then had to pay off the cops to avoid more harassment. I caught Chucky Amsterdam creepn' from a room of a Scranton player, that New Orleans personality was more than a woman could bare. Finally upon our departure I said goodbye to the hotel high rise and to the lobby that had the indoor waterfalls, mirrors, and rock garden indoor pond. On the bus ride to the airport just like the bus ride in I saw huge "gold" plants growing in the jungle. Upon boarding the airplane Rundy was the last one on, little Spanky was part Mexican from his mom who was from the land of the sun. He made a vow he would return some day and I shared his sentiment. I did not want to leave. We all made it through customs, the gold in the deodorant intact, "Represent your team, your school and your country" were the words coach had departed to us, so I did in my own way, it was about way more then just having fun. I know it was unwise and even stupid it was, to smuggle my ideas of freedom, choice, and justice as a practitioner of ideas of a woman named Jane that was grown in the land of the sun. We returned via Air Mexicana to Chicago in winter, a blizzard was what we came back to. Coming home was so depressing for me, but we had the rest of the season to look forward to and a new vast arsenal of memories, from a trip of a lifetime to a place where the Aztecs once ruled and where the Mayans came from.

The Holidays in Mexico City

There are so many good stories from my Mexico trip that I took with and while playing on the University of Dubuque Men's basketball team. It was the trip of my life. I also happened to play the basketball of my life against the best players in Mexico, including seven players from the Mexican National team, two of which were also on the Mexican Olympic team. I had my only career real game college dunk in Mexico, a real beauty, on the first day after arriving in Mexico City via Acapulco and Chicago on an airline called Air Mexicana. That part of the story has been told in a previous post. That post was basically about the first day of our trip including a partial summary of the basketball side of things. As I have mentioned before, my laptop was on the fritz for a while and during that time I discovered the proper order of some important events and stories. So when I restarted writing again after getting the laptop working I went back in time in my mind to my freshman year and wrote a couple important tales, which have been included in my last couple of posts. So back to Mexico now during winter break of my sophomore season. The second day of our trip in Mexico was Christmas day. We played games versus various club teams from the region almost everyday while in Mexico City and in between traveling to games we traveled around on a large luxurious tour bus with a beautiful woman as our tour guide. I believe she was an important government official, perhaps the head of tourism in Mexico City even. Its hard to remember the exact order of how everything happened in our travels from day to day and from game to game. We played a few weaker teams and actually won some games, but we played the really good team with the national team and Olympic team players on it twice. Our hotel was real nice and we stayed with and did some traveling with a womens team from Scranton, Pennsylvania. There was a Dennie's Restaurant across the street from our hotel in another hotel nearby, and that was about it for anything resembling American style food. Coach allowed us some free time to do what ever we wanted at night when we as a team made it back to the hotel at a decent hour after a day of playing and sight seeing. On Christmas night we were at the Hotel and used the chance to take a walk around. The city was like nothing I had or have ever seen. There was old beautiful Spanish architecture along with modern sky scrapers and so forth everywhere. There were people living in every store front and in every square inch of park space or where ever there was open space. The word was that the people from the surrounding mountains had been coming into the city looking for work and ended up living in what ever space they could find. There was a fairly nice large park just down the street from our hotel with thousands of people and families living in giant card board boxes. It seemed unusually organized and the area was neatly roped off from the sidewalk and street. There were markets with puppet shows and musicians and magic acts and all sorts of street entertainers and vendors. Everywhere there was a festive atmosphere. There was one stage set up with some musicians or performers, I'm not sure what to call them, all dressed up in really intricate costumes in a Christmas scene like setting and they were allowing kids or people to get on the stage and have their picture taken with them. One of my teammates in our little group had the idea of getting on stage and getting our picture taken with the performers, so we did. I think that these particular performers were from India. They did that purely East Indian side to side head movement when they were performing that I have always found so strange and hypnotic. The feeling I had at that particular time on stage with the fellas and the entertainers was one like I have never felt before. I don't know the words to describe it. It all seemed like a dream. The guys in the photo included Big B Growley, Brag Havatake, White B aka Sneaky Sig, Bad Shamron, Johny Duke, and myself. Cray Murphy and or Feldi (a JV player on the team and on the trip that I forgot about) might also have been in the photo. The photo itself changed hands between players a few times through the years. I think Big B. ended up with it; I used to see it around at his mom's house in the ICE (which happened to be a house once owned by the legendary author Kurt Vonnegut). I've been thinking about the possibility of making a documentary someday about my basketball upbringing, something akin to the legendary award winning skate board documentary "Dog Town Z-boys", and the photo from that Christmas night in Mexico would be a cornerstone photo representing the Mexico trip. There were photographers at many of our games and even in the markets ready and pushing to sell you a photo.
On one of our many outings we were taken to a major business center that had plazas, business buildings, old architecture, restaurants, etc... There were people everywhere. Some really young kids dressed in simple white clothing sang some harmonizing Mexican melodies on the sidewalk as an older gentleman, presumably their father, played the guitar. During that whole day a stark naked Indian, naked except for some rags that hung around his neck, followed us around off at a distance, usually about a block or so away. He was just letting it swing in the breeze and hang free, and he was unusually well hung, I mean really unusually, and he was quite tall. He was very dark skinned with scraggly hair down to his neck. I looked at everyone on the team to see if they were watching what was happening, and it seemed like I was the only one to take notice. Coach was looking at me funny and seemed to be watching me. I even made a remark to G - Money like "What's with old boy following us around. The guy is hung like a horse." G- money started laughing and coach and everyone looked at us like we were way out of line or something. I had a sincere straight look on my face and I didn't think it was funny. To see such a sight was disturbing yet very curious at the same time. Everyone else in our group looked away and ignored it, most wouldn't even look at me looking at them not looking at the naked Indian, even when he was beaten down in front of our eyes by a policeman with a night stick. What was the message there? What did that naked man want us to see or think? It seemed like I was the only one that was human in my reaction to that situation. I've always felt that there was something unusually significant about that experience, like it was something that I saw or was supposed to see that was such a powerful and unforgettable once in a lifetime event that it compelled me to have to write this story. I felt great compassion for all the struggling people I saw in Mexico City. During my post-Dubuque years studies at the University of Iowa while obtaining my B.A. in history I took several classes pertaining to Mexican history. They included Colloquium for History Majors: Women of Latin America, The Mexican Revolution, and a class on The Conquest. I also took two years of Spanish and several of my teachers were from Mexico and I studied the Mayans in a class called Introduction to Native American Studies. So, now, while writing this some 20 years after the trip, I know much more about the city and the history of Mexico City and of Mexico in general. The Aztec Indians ruled the majority of Mexico before the arrival and conquest by Cortez the Killer. The Aztec capitol was located in an enormous valley surrounded by mountains and was in essence a giant floating city situated in the middle of huge lake where Mexico City now stands. Cortez's men fought the Aztec's on the causeways which connected the mainland to the city. Overtime the lake was filled in and it now no longer exists. There is so much pollution in Mexico City because of the mountains that surround the city. The exhaust from automobiles and from factories in the city are trapped in the great valley unable to escape. The smog was very apparent, very visible, and the air and the sun were always hazy. During our travels in our tour bus we embarked several times up into the mountains. On one occasion we must have been on the side of a mountain because I could see for what seemed like miles of sloping hills going off into the distance. As far as I could see in one direction there were shantytowns, or actually it was one giant shantytown. There is a strange juxtaposition in this little story about the shantytown. Most of the guys on the team (all but Big. B and I) did not take to the Mexican cuisine, so our tour guide took us to a Mexican McDonald's. The interesting part was that it was very near the edge of the giant shantytown, maybe even across the street, I can't quite remember, but it was definitely close. The food at McDonald's didn't taste much like the McDonald's we were used to. They use corn oil and corn flour for cooking much more in Mexico. There were some jokes made about the possibility of horse meat in the McMexican burgers. Later that day we passed by the 1960 Olympic Stadium and heard a brief history of it. It was located in an enormous and immaculately clean acreage surrounded by a huge steel fence. I can't remember if it was a park or what. We were on a bit of a hill overlooking the grounds, which must have been many square miles in size , and off in the distance in this huge area that looked like the worlds biggest golf course (the grass was perfect and there was no garbage to be seen) we could see the Olympic stadium shining bright in the sun and looking like it was an enormous spaceship or something. It was the size of a small mountain and it was a real contrast in the foreground of the distant mountains that lay far off in the horizon. Our tour guide also took us to the central plaza in the heart of Mexico City. For some reason my teammate Goofy wanted me to try and enter the entrance area into the subway terminal, and when I did so an armed security policeman stepped in front of me and pointed his machine gun at me and waved me away. Goofy then wanted me to take a ride with him in a horse and buggy around the central plaza, so I did and he payed for it. I learned in my Mexican history studies that while they were building the underground subways preceding the Olympic games they dug down and hit the old causeways that Cortes himself and the Aztecs fought on. Hence the subways were built on the old causeways and beautiful murals depicting the beauty of the Aztecs and Mexican history and of the Spanish conquest were painted on the underground subway walls. The murals are said to in part have told the brutal history of the conquest, a fact that is not hidden but celebrated by the government as part of their unique heritage. On another one of the nights where we had some free time we went out to a nearby club. On the way, just outside our hotel, we flagged down a car full of local fellas, rapped a few minutes with them and asked them where to go, and even persuaded them to part with a few Tecate servesas, which we promptly slurped down right there in the middle of the street. The club was an upstairs joint, nothing to big or fancy. There were some attractive Mexican girls in the establishment and I even found the courage to step up and talk to one. She acted like she didn't speak English, but later I caught her talking to Zeke in perfect English and once back home I saw a whole bunch of photos with Zeke and the Mexican cutie I had picked out. Good for him, and the funny thing was Zeke wasn't even known as a ladies man. In fact in my three or four years of knowing Zeke I had never seen him have a stronger connection with a girl than he did with that girl that night in Mexico City. The Mexican basketball fans all thought that Zeke was Michael Jordan or something. Besides dance music and such the DJ in the club that night played some contemporary hip-hop like "Jump Around" by House of Pain and "Hip-hop Hurray" by Naughty by Nature. The team did a step line dance (black fraternity style of dancing) around the whole bar and everyone in the club got in line behind us and joined in. At one point I was standing up somewhere drinking a beer and out of nowhere Brute Mahone, the hick from Indiana, comes up from behind me and grabs me and plants a wet one right on my cheek and says, "You got more moves than a hundred dollar hooker. Its a pleasure to be your teammate." I think I may have started that crazy stunt when I was real drunk one night while trying to embarrass one of my oh so tough and oh so cool, too cool, teammates. The truth is I loved my teammates like brothers. There were some not so nice moments on the trip and some friction within the team. In our hotel in Mexico City Big B., White B., and I were roommates. Zeke, Lil Lamb, and G Money were across the hall. They called themselves "One, Two, and Three " which were their positions on the court. I tried to say, "Hey yeah, and I'm Four," which was my position. They didn't like that and were like "NO, no,no..." Their reaction was predictable. I think they felt threatened by the possibility of me taking their starting positions due to the way I had been playing on the trip, especially with leading both JV and Varsity in scoring and also dunking in the first game and all on the junior teams best player. About three days or so into the trip I was walking by their room or standing in the doorway and Zeke came out of the bathroom and flicked water in my face. He was like, "That's toilet water cous!" Lil Lamb chimed in as the dominate instigator, "Oh man, Zeke through toilet water on you." He kept saying that over and over. I was like OK, thats how they want to play? Big B. and White B. saw the incident and pointed out the obvious fact that they were trying to conspire a plan to bring me down. We formed our own plan which included Big B. shitting on a newspaper, White B. sliding it under the door, and me knocking on the door, and then running. The plan worked all to well, way to well, because I heard Zeke got shit on his clothes somewhere. I was in our room when all of a sudden the door comes flying off the hinges and Zeke comes charging in yelling. Surprised I stepped back and tripped on the bed while he swung on me and hit me with two glancing blows on the top of my head (I never felt a thing). I was like, "What the f--- you doing?" He really wanted to go but somehow it was avoided. Soon after that I ran into Zeke in the elevator while going down and he asked if I wanted to go right there. I should have. The thought of physically assaulting someone makes me sick for the most part, and I have always been more scared of hurting someone then of being hurt. Me and Zeke were pretty closely matched in size and strength and in everything, but we never went. That situation put an uncomfortable riff between Zeke and I forever there after. Coach said he didn't want to know what happened and we all had to pay for the door, which really sucked seeing as how I had about the least amount of money as anyone on the team. I had to borrow ten dollars from Murph in Acapulco. Back to Brute Mahone for a minute. He was one of those guys who always started some sort of drama in every situation, be it a game, a trip, a party, you name it. On this trip the drama revolved around his girlfriend who was back in Dubuque. He had been calling her non stop and was planning on borrowing money from coach for an early plane trip home. We had a big team meeting and Brute explained to the whole team that his girl friend was talking about suicide and that he needed to go back. He left to make another call, but came back a little later and much happier. He apologized and said he wasn't going home early now. He then said, "You know how you all have been trying to gang tackle everyone on the team at least once this trip, well you still haven't gotten me yet," then he swung open the door and ran out of the room like we were all going to jump up and chase him. No one even flinched a muscle and you could hear crickets chirping for a few moments before Zeke and then everyone else started laughing hysterically. Another interesting story about our stay while in Mexico City involved meeting this local fella named George who was educated in the states and spoke perfect English. He even found our hotel and called our room and asked if we wanted to go to a party. Bad Shamron and I ended up traveling out with him and he showed us around one night. He introduced us to a high class female street worker he knew well, and she went up to Shamrun and opened her coat to reveal some incredible cleavage. I told that story to the whole team and told about and demonstrated the cross eyed look and huge smile on Shamrun's face while eyeballing the street workers huge jugs. I told our friend George that I thought his lady friend was a bit too old for my liking. I think that was exactly the way George liked them and he seemed puzzled that I didn't agree.

During the last couple of months my laptop has been out of order and during that time I had to resort to and revert back to writing with pad and pen. I was really in the groove writing every day and night before the laptop's power chord broke beyond repair (I had to wait for my mom to send me a new one, she had a spare). Those past moments and memories that I was writing about were all fresh in my mind so I wrote down in a list all the little themes within the stories that were still bouncing around in my noggin and waiting to be told. I also did some research by looking through my old newspaper clippings to try and find out the timings of some certain events. Luckily I did this because I discovered that one of the most crucial memories from playing for UD and scoring official NCAA baskets occurred during my freshman year instead of my sophomore year. I had been writing about events from my sophomore season when the computer technical difficulties occurred, so I need to backtrack to in-conference play during the second semester of my freshman year. Here is the newspaper article from the Telegraph Herald about the game which I am referring to:

Spartan Men Win
by Craig Reber

Trailing by 19 points and a five game losing string hanging like an anvil in a willow tree, the University of Dubuque used a big second half to knock off Luther, 89-87, Friday night at UD's McCormick Gymnasium.
Luther was tied with Loras for third place in the Iowa Conference, Dubuque was sixth.
The skid was wearing on a number of Spartans including 6 foot 7 senior (Shad Spock).
"This was one we really wanted," said (Spock), who scored 15 points and pulled down nine rebounds. "Luther is one of the top teams in the conference. Maybe its a start. Maybe we can knock off the rest of the teams in the conference."
Dubuque could play spoiler, with road games remaining at co-league leaders Central and Simpson on Feb. 28-29.
Luther jumped to a 13-0 lead on 5-of-7 shooting and extended it to 25-6 midway in the first half. Dubuque scrapped back in the second half and took its first lead, 76-75, on a (Period Baby) layup with 6:33 remaining and held off a late Luther charge.
(Mac) added 15 points for the Spartans(8-12 overall, 5-6 conference). Jim Holien, Steve Hillman, Troy Terry and Scott Heggen all had 13 points each for Luther (12-9, 7-4).
"Tonight we beat insurmountable odds, nobody felt we could play this way, said UD's (head coach). "It's an indicator of our character. They battled and that was the key."

End of article.

Not a bad little sports article in my opinion, especially the imagery of the anvil hanging in the willow tree. The first line in the article reads, "Trailing by 19 points...". That was true, but here is the rest of the story: At that time the score was 19-0, but there was just under 5 minutes to play in the first half. The part in the article about the Spartans trailing 25-6 midway through the first half is inaccurate. At like 4:50 to go before halftime I remember looking up at our big goose egg on the scoreboard and sitting on the bench wondering if Luther was going to hold us scoreless in the first half. It was at that moment when coach turned and looked down the bench and yelled, "Matt! Get in the game and lets see how tough you are!" He then turned back and began yelling at the refs or one of the other players on our team. I jumped up thinking to myself, "Why that mutha... f---er, see how tough I am?" I got in the game and scored 5 points in a matter of moments, first a three then a two pointer. Big Ced, a 6-9 brother who occasionally (do to multiple injuries) played on the football team said to me after the game that as soon as I hit that three pointer all the girls in the stands stood up and started screaming my name. After scoring the baskets each time I looked over at coach and he didn't even know what had happened or who scored because he had been to busy yelling at the starters that were currently riding the pine. I ended the game shooting 2 for 3 from the field for five points total, which was more points then Zeke, the kid from Morton, my roommate Ike Lambert, Brute Mahone, and G Money himself Brag Havatake(who didn't even make it into the box score) scored. I only played a few minutes the entire game while most of the guys I listed played major minutes. I'm not saying I was better than any of those guys or anyone else, but I always felt and still feel like I constantly had to prove myself as a worthy college level baller on the court, even if it was only Division III basketball. Some other notes of interest, Chucky Amsterdam was in the box score, so I guess he had transferred to our school and joined the team over winter break, and maybe the same goes for Rundy, who was also in the box score. As the team walked off the court after the game coach was standing at the gym's exit next to the bleachers. As I approached he stuck out his hand like he was going to shake hands with me so I started to extend my hand, but he sidestepped me and walked to congratulate and shake Cray Murphy's hand who was coming behind me. Zeke happened to be watching and chuckled a little and condescendingly remarked, "You were the spark, bro!" Gee, thanks. I thought even right at the time of it occurring that coach walking past me when I had my hand out was a once in lifetime like comic moment even though I was the one that looked the fool. I should have known better. Its all good though because I can still laugh about it to this day. I may have seemingly and possibly combined some aspects of this story with other stories in my previous blog entries, but coach was always yelling at someone when I scored a basket and he was always congratulating Murph, the back up point guard, after games. This story as I told it is how it actually happened and it was the highlight of my freshman season and one of my varsity NCAA basketball highlights while playing for the UD Spartans.

There is another story that I need to tell but I can't remember for sure which year it happened. The story is not about a slam dunk of mine or about some points I scored in a game, it is about having an end of the season meeting in coach's office with coach and Shad Spock about the season and about if I had achieved my goals. The part that confuses me about which year that this particular meeting occurred is that Spock was at the meeting. He was team captain my freshman year and he was the JV coach my sophomore year so there was good reason for him to be at the meeting either year. Also, I remember talking to Ike Lambert about the meeting afterwards which leads me to think that the meeting occurred my freshman year, although I still talked to and hung out with Ike after he transferred to Loras during my sophomore year. So I now think that this unforgettable meeting occurred at the end of my freshman season. Why it was unforgettable has to do with the fact that I broke down into tears in front of coach and Spock to the point where I couldn't speak. The look on Spock's face was like he had been forced to witness an execution for the first time or something. There was so much I wanted to say to coach but I couldn't conjure up the strength to spit it all out. I was frustrated with my class schedule and that I was missing so much class and so much practice. I was a poor kid and going into major debt attending the University of Dubuque. My middle class parents helped a little but they felt the burden of there contribution which fostered a sense of guilt inside me. I was expected to work work-study jobs, an idea which I basically ended up abandoning after being fired or quitting one to many times. I didn't have a car and had to walk a very long way to class and practice every day. It seemed no one else on the team had to carry as heavy a workload as I did. For one thing the inner city poor kids on the team got way more financial aid than I did, and the other kids on the team were from wealthy enough families that they could afford to pay tuition outright. It's been 20 years now since then and as I sit here and write this I still haven't finished paying back my student loans. Also, I wanted coach to realize himself that if he wanted the best chance for his team to win then he should have played me more. Since I was not recruited by coach (I chose UD, it didn't choose me) I felt like he didn't have a clear vision of what I could do for his team. I also was probably having guilty feelings toward the fact that I drank and smoked every day, and that I wasn't shooting baskets by myself every day like the gym rat that I had been the previous semester and for most of my life. It was a very awkward moment in coaches office and coach admitted to me on occasion that he didn't quite know how to handle me or get me to become the type of player or leader or teammate that he wanted me to be. Of course I always thought that I would be a better coach than most of the coaches I ever played for and this was true for my coach at UD too, so that was another thing I was keeping welled up inside as the tears were flowing during our meeting. I don't think anything was accomplished at that meeting. I remember apologizing to Spock that he had to sit through such a pathetic display of pent up emotion. Coach said to me before I walked out of his office, "It's OK, it means that you care." I cared alright, way to much.

Here is a poem I wrote many years ago after playing ball for the last time at the University of Iowa Field House in my hometown of Iowa City. I wrote it many years after the Dubuque experience and after I had come home and solidified my legacy as one of the ICE's most authentic and legitimate street ballers who put together and led teams to many a victory and even to a few city league titles. I want to post this poem and get it out there before it is lost, never to be contemplated, ridiculed, or enjoyed by others:

He's Given His life to the Game

But who cares?
Writing poetry with his motions, moves that only give other players silly notions, An aging hippie playing the part of, A warrior in sheep's clothing preparing for battle with unyielding determination to play for his love... the game.
But who cares?
Years preparing, learning, giving, teaching, paying the price for game. Confronting fears and strengthening weaknesses. Seen em all, played with and against some good, some great, some legends. But usually waiting, and watching in corners, practicing, or defending courts of childhood lore, once described as hardcore. It's all real...
But who cares?
Overseas the possibility of dreams await, been there too, small school. In the red for his passion and the adventures, came away with some game, some say more, while others say: "Why does he do all that practicing for?" Led teams composed of of leftovers, looked overs, or whoever would play with him to victories of unbelievable proportions, those that fell to the player and his team still not believing how and that they lost, He always plays to win, no matter what the cost...
But who cares?
"He's not that good! I can take him, his outside shot is suspect, no handles, no defense, out of control, hacking mother f-er!"
Just step to the stage, don't be fooled by his old age, bad back, bad knees, bad ankles, the basketball player's Nemesis.
But he plays on, giving for the love of the game, over coming the feeling of pain. So don't underestimate the old and the meek, those who lace them up for the passion of playing the game, it's more than victories that they seek. It's for the life and the love of the game he plays, so takers beware!
But still, nobody cares.
So there he sits, writing about a game he once played, if only the aging process could be delayed.

End of Poem


I wrote this poem after an afternoon of playing basketball at The University of Iowa Field House (in the south gym where there are 6 full courts). Playing had become a more and more spiritual experience for me every time I played. This day of playing was a day near the climactic end of my basketball journey, and I think it was the last day of playing full court at the Field House, or it was very close to it. I went by myself that afternoon. A one man gang. I parked my truck in the University owned parking lot that lied directly under the south gym, a lot that I had cleaned for years while working for the parking department. My mother parked in that same parking lot since its opening and worked at the U of Iowa Hospital across the way as an RN in the pediatric ward. I had been to Punt, Pass, and Kick competitions as a kid during the mid 1970's at this very spot before the old Field House Armory was torn down and the new south gym was built. Back in the day on this spot there was just a huge field next to the old Field House where the Hawkeye basketball teams used to play before Carver Hawkeye Arena was built, teams coached by basketball legend Lute Olson with players like Ronnie Lester and Bobby Hansen and where I saw Meadow Lark Lemon and the Harlem Globe Trotters play and where Meadow Lark hit a 3/4 court hook shot. Before going inside I said a little prayer and gave thanks for the day and for the talents and for the opportunities. It had become normal for me to do this as time had gone by and as the stakes had always gotten bigger. It was a response to the feeling I had acquired or come to terms with over the years of not knowing for sure whether or not this day or this day of playing basketball would be my last on this earth. Who knows what can happen with gangs, thugs, egos, rivals, or a fluke accident on the court playing a physical game with 9 other grown men running and jumping and checking... If things fell the wrong way it could lead to permanent injury, being assaulted, assaulting someone in self defense, jail, or even death. I admit this feeling probably evolved from the paranoia I had developed while romancing the stoned. I had seen a lot of things playing ball all those years and I had heard a lot of stories, including all the undesirable possible outcomes I mentioned. I played the game hard, and I always played on the best court if I could get in that game, and that meant playing with major Div. I athletes, sometimes against pro athletes, and often on the black guy's court, and often against gang members or rivals or who ever? It wasn't like that everyday of the year at the Field House, but weekday afternoons were like that almost every day, or at least when school was in session and when basketball was in season. I went into the gym after having to walk by the Olympic sized swimming pool that separated the south gym basketball courts from the rest of the Field House. I remember walking in the door to the gym, like I had done thousands of times before, and smelling that old familiar smell that all gyms have, a mix of sweat and floor cleaner and various deodorants. It was not a super busy day, but most courts had games on them. I shot around to warm up near the best court and soon a kid walked up to me and said, "You wanna run next game?" Of course I did. He had next game on one of the top two courts, but it was one of the courts at the far end and not the middle west side court where the best games were usually played. My team was made up of a bunch of short kids, but they were decent ball handlers and decent shooters and they played smart, never trying to do more than they could (in short they passed the ball around instead of trying to beat the defender one on one). We easily won the first game and then moved to center court. As we were playing, more and more ballers and some of the usual black crowd came in. There was some tall white dude who I saw dunk in a game earlier, and my team was matched up against his team in our second game. I had never seen him before and he was talking to some other familiar looking guys so I bet he was from nearby Cedar Rapids, a city of over 200,000 people. On one play in our game the kid was trying to get away on a breakaway but I took a good angle on the play and caught up to him and hacked him pretty good on the arm while trying to knock the ball away and as he was going in for a dunk. Sorry fella, not on my court. I heard the kid talking to a buddy before the game and they were talking about whether some kid named "the goat" was going to show up (at the time the comment stood out because one of the greatest streetball legends ever from New York was nicknamed "The Goat"). Somehow I thought maybe they were talking about me because I always sported a goatee. Anyways, we beat the kids team and then found ourselves in the position of holding and defending center court, which was about the most honored position a baller can say when they go out to the bars later that night and recant their days accomplishments to their pals or to their gal. But the story was just beginning for us that day. We ended up holding the top court for a 4 or 5 game stretch, beating stacked teams made up of players with local ballers like Toby Newsome, Rob Moore, Kevin Washpun, Diondre, etc... As the taller white kid was walking off the court after being defeated he told the next teams best player, a tall black dude with corn rows I recognized from somewhere, from C.R. I think, and I know he played college ball somewhere (Ellsworth J.C. maybe?): "Watch out for that dude, he's hardcore." He was referring to me. There were some close games in our streak, and the opposing teams kept getting more and more stacked. On one occasion the little dude on my team who originally picked me up (i.e. asked me to play) came up to me between games as the two teams were first matching up before the first check, and said, "Do we even have a chance this game?" I said, "Yeah, just play smart and hit your open shots. Then I quickly broke down the opposition and pointing to each player on the other team I said: don't let this guy shoot the jumper, make this guy shoot the jumper, keep this guy from penetrating, etc... and I'll get all the boards. In every game that day my teammates started hitting early jumpers to put us out to an early lead, and on at least one occasion Toby and his crew made a late in the game run. It was clear to see the momentum swing in those games and my team definitely got rattled near the end of some games, but we kept pulling out the wins. They would finally just pass me the ball and let me go to work when ever things got tight and I would put the team on my back. I carried us to some tough wins and my teammates were great, especially for realizing where to pass the ball at the end of games. I had some heated battles against the tall black dude from C.R. He tried to put a dribble move on me a few times, but I had seen it somewhere before, so when he faked and swerved right and cut left, I just cut left and he would collide into me and then call a foul. The same play happened about three times in a row and a fight almost erupted. I said one thing, and that was that I had reached the spot first while going for the ball when he made his moves and that he ran into me. It turned into a bit of a showdown and I was flexing my muscle, one against many, a one man gang, but it definitely could have ended badly, but the white kid who tried to dunk on me was right, I was "hardcore." I tried to use a power spin move at the end of one game when my team was having a problem even getting a good shot off, and I stepped on the C.R. dude's foot, managed to still get an easy shot off, but missed, and the dude said, "O.C. muther F---er!" O.C. meant "Out of Control" but I didn't realize exactly what he had said and at the time I even thought that maybe he was calling me an "O.G. mother f---er", which was something entirely different. We won that game somehow. The final game, exhausted and weary, went the same as usual. The game again went into duce and again I had to take over offensively for my team near the end. It seemed as though I was earning the respect and admiration of everyone there, even from the C.R. black dude who I was again matched up against in this last game. I was so worn out and was running on nothing but adrenalin, but I recognized the beauty of the moment and so I found energy and spring in my step as though I was drawing power from the land and the building and the history of this place and the special connection I had had with it for the past 20 years. On one particular play the C.R. brother was guarding me tight as I brought the ball across half court. My team had spread the floor out and"feeling it" I whispered to my opponent, "Watch my left." It was like I could feel the rhythm of everything and everyone on the court and I knew what move I had to do, which was a move and a play I had never made before, but I could feel it inside of me that I could pull it off (I felt spring in my legs). I jab stepped left then right but crossed over back to my left and I had the kid turned and the steps to the basket counted. I picked up my dribble, planted the left, then the right and with all my momentum going up and forward I went up for a left handed dunk, which would have been my first and only left handed dunk on a ten foot hoop in any game in my life. I was high enough to dunk but the defender made a last second cheap foul and barely was able but managed to push me in the hip. I was to far away from the basket, and he had just saved himself from being flushed on by a white dude at the end of a game in a half court set and after I called my shot. I called the foul, and laughed a little and walked back to the top of the key to check the ball. Everyone just stared in awe I guess? I wish I could have seen the play myself? I am not trying to brag, I am just telling the story as it happened, and I felt and feel very fortunate to have lived through and experienced such great basketball plays. I really feel in a way that the people watching some plays are more lucky to have witnessed the play then the ones actually involved. I know I was high enough to dunk, I felt the perfect plant and the perfect jump, and executed perfectly my instinctual yet preconceived plan of attack. I turned the defenders hips around so bad I was surprised he was even able to foul me, and in fact he looked very awkward doing it. My team somehow managed to score again and on the next play back at our end I grabbed an offensive board after a missed shot from one of my teammates and put up a shot after getting hammered by two dudes underneath, but didn't call the foul, and out jumped again the two taller, bigger, more athletic looking black dudes under the basket for the rebound, and went up again for what I thought was a sure two. The C.R. dude managed to grab my wrist in desperation and once again caused me to miss the shot. The ball circled around on the rim and I thought for sure it was going to fall in and that we had won (or were going to win) the game, and after I was fouled I was so out of breath that I couldn't speak or call the foul even after everyone paused for a moment, but my shot attempt just rimmed out (even with the dude hanging on my arm I almost made it) and the C.R. cat just stood there and said to me, "You gotta call your fouls." Next thing you know the ball was going the other way, they scored, scored again, and then it was over. It is not proper basketball eddicate to call a late foul and I tried to always follow the code, so it was a play I just let go do to circumstances and overconfidence and it was one I would regret. So we lost, I shook hands with the victors and my own teammates, and then went home. It was a great day of playing, but that loss still gnaws at me to this day. Going undefeated would have been a perfect ending to a great day of hoops(dare I say legendary? - it is in my own mind anyway). Once at home I felt so depressed that the day was over, that playing basketball that day was over, that I was alone, that I cost us a chance to win in the last game, and that maybe it was going to be my last time playing. It wasn't the last time I ever played, there was just as memorable one last day of basketball at the Robert A. Lee Community Rec Center, my home away from home, yet to come. Anyway, I was so depressed that I used my soka (Sanskrit for grief) and made sloka (Sanscrit) for art, and wrote the poem, But who cares?

8 Mile Inspired

Do or die, make or break, like B Rabbit in "8 Mile" it's got to happen for me now, or... I'll be broke and half crippled. When B. Rabbit first tried to perform in front of a crowd on the Mic he got psyched, but me, I'm just a writer, my work is done at home, late at night, in front of a type writer. I like to catch the spontaneous thoughts as they come, sometimes not just for fun or not to be outdone, but so down the road I can reflect, relive, and review a moment caught on paper in a rhyme that I spun. And its not about battling an MC opponent. This is my story, including the stories of many others, but I have the last word here, I'm the writer, I'm the poet. So all you play write haters f--- off! and just enjoy it, and as for my writing and rhyming skill go ahead and watch me hone it. I used to play ball, the game captured my soul, I wanted to play forever but instead I grew old. My lap top was broke, my desk top is not working, so there I sat writing with pen and paper like an old fool, while in my mind the memories were lurking. Eminem gave me some inspiration, the old school hip hop, that generation is where I came from and where I was branded. The I.C.E. is not Detroit and it sure ain't the windy city, and it definitely ain't the NYC or the land of Cali, but hip hop was playing on my radio in the early eighties with songs like "Jam On It", a quick shouts out to KRUI and a DJ named Monk, then to DJ Early who always rocked the funk. My homeboy Scott rocked a tape from La Rock, and it was he who taught me the art of slam dunking. From the age of 12 I be jammin, it started on the low hoop at the Longhorn school, and my boy Scott loves to catch Salmon. This rap is dedicated to to the memory of all the summers that we were slammin, from the Robert A. Lee to a park we called Dodge, to across the river at Roosevelt where we shoveled snow and played in the fog, or back to the east side at Horace Mann old school low hoops against the Hillbillies where Scott would jump like a frog. And those days of working out at Shraider Field late night undercover style, with Big B. or and Big Swan was a secret of our basketball power. Together the beast and I ran and together we won championships. It was fun while it lasted, for ten years or more we hooped and competed, but eventually it all came to an end, and all that is left is a few plaques, a few trophies, a few memories, and now because of me there is also a few recorded stories written by my pen. For the good or for the worse I write and sometimes I rhyme, and sometimes the spoken word is my companion, but tonight with the pen as my sword I unveil my soul and reveal the stories of a silly game, all with reckless abandon. "8 Mile" rocks the TV set and VCR, but earlier 10 miles south I road on my bike, then 10 miles north I returned, all for pastries, for beer, and for a Red Bull to fuel my journey. My poor back does it hurt from doing my work, and bless my back for the load it has carried, the strain I put it through on the court, in the factories, and on the street, so many times was I stupid or foolish or blind or clueless, I could get so drunk that I could think like a Buddhist. The Buddha's teachings I did study, from the wisdom passed on I hope I have learned, as for the teachings of Jesus, Rama, and Mohamed their wisdom by me has been observed, on the court it was Magic, His Airness, the Doctor, and Bird. These things I reference, the wisdom, the teachings, 8 Mile, the ballers, the stories, and my dreams, by some must seem absurd. His story did I study, and his story of world religions did I expound, The U. of Iowa was my teacher, while the streets and ball courts of the I.C.E. were my playground. The night life was a blur, so I give a shout out to the G. Room and a birthday shouts out to the One Eyed Snake, I once fell in like with a girl from my friend Joe's place, and now her name resides on a street post next to the corner on the curb. Dion's pad was our hang out, Stag and Wally bought and brought the beer, and Mary Jane was our lady and music was our friend, there was a mouse that was modest, and Wally bought a Benz, ohh woops I mean a beamer, and this story does not end. But before this ever happened, Big B. and I took our game to U.D., inside and outside was our forte, we were the street ballers from the I.C.E. On this blog is where the UD stories are being recorded, at Dion's crib is where many a stories were told and many a girl has been courted. If someone tries to byte my rhymes, lyrics, or phrases, its OK, because the story is mine, I lived it, and for me when I write it is my personal oasis. It is a break from the monotony of my rural and secluded lifestyle where I live off and on the land, grow my own food and raise goats all according to my master plan, I wish I had my own land, so I could properly manage the resources, build a house, or move and live in my caravan. On other peoples land there seems to be the tendency of arising negative forces, usually about polluting the air, water, and soil by the landowner not understanding the cons- to the -quencies, the repercussions, or the alternative courses.... of action, any idiot can make a rhyme about anything, but the question then is whether or not artistic endeavor has meaning or whether it meets others satisfaction. Life was so simple back in the day, whether it was just going to class, playing ball, working on the P.M. Crew, going to mom's house for some good food, or going home to smoke the cactus. I knew a girl once who called it relaxing, some call it a habit. For me its a lifestyle choice, and it sucks that it needs to be clandestine. Does anyone read this? Does anyone care? Or is my artistic endeavor futile, meaningless, and real tired like the old gray mare. A small miracle or bit of help is all I need, with what talent I have and the hard work that I've done, the truth is now no matter what! I must get access to more land so that my herd can feed. If the help does not come I and my small furry army could endure much criticism, hardship, and the lack of basic necessities to live a worthwhile life with food, shelter, and each other for basic companionship. The present and the past are intertwined in my rhyme, its all about the love of a game, survival, growing food, my life and how I have lived it. I am who and what I am, do I credit society, a lack of knowledge or wisdom, or the lack of a good father? The lessons I have learned from playing a game has probably taught me more than any book, teacher, or brother. I need to be at peace with my surroundings or the negative affects will be abundant. Eminem made it in 8 Mile, is the talent of a rapper much different from the talent of a writer? Is a good story thats true a good story to you if the one in the story is a little different? Let me drop an old school reference on you old UD and Chai. town ballers, we watched Cooley High back in the day, poured a little out for the ones that we pray, like the side kick of Cochise (the one who bought it) to deal with the pain, he took his soka and made sloka and wrote the story so others could learn and someday do the same. I Elvised myself to the friend of Cochise, trying to break the shackles of the colonial imposed language by distorting it. First I make the story my own because I lived it, then I write it down and report it. If Rolling Stone were to call, my pen will be ready, this is just the tip of the melting iceberg, you heard it here first and on this blog I purport it. One slug, two slug, three slug, four, there were more slugs in my garden this year than the thoughts of my estranged wife that ragged hor...rible dresser, married her I did,and it was not just a simple gesture, I miss the the touch of a woman and the chance to caress her. The slugs that ran through my shotty this year were few, the life that I took was out of compassion, Trey consequences the cause and I worried about the probability of maggots. The dark side of my inspiration at the last moment the writing I changed it, I kept one thing in because its the one thing that is all to flagrant. My feelings on paper is hard to declare, the feelings of my story is as close to me as a skull is to hair, and its time to put it all out there, its like the dark side of the moon, and once again I warn takers beware. Then there is the backstabbing, jealousy, revenge, and resentment of others, if I had none than I would not be just another brother. The stories of a street baller from the ICE I keep writing, this time its in a rhyme, next time it will again just be a story, from the 10,000 or more in my head, about the dunks, the games, the friends, the lessons, and the glory. As for the number of stories there are to many to count, to many to ignore, they run through my head and my heart, its all one big story of my journey from the womb to the grave and the formation of art. "Flip the script on this shit" said Future the uncle Tom MC in "8 Mile". Word is born on this morn, let the lifeblood and breath of my story take the world by storm. To a battling MC like B Rabbit I can say, "Tell the world something they already don't know about me." If I stop writing my story I might just go crazy. What else do I do alone at winter at night, its been seven years now and still it does not phase me. After watching "8 Mile" I hot wired a boom box in my box of a trailer, The Big O from the ICE and KRUI is now radiating vibrations from the streets and the cities. The tape I've not heard in a year or two and right now it sounds amazing. An old school hip hop injection of memories, they memorize me, but the present is so hazy.

(*Written in the very late fall of 2008 on pen and paper when lap top power chord broke, some minor alterations made when transferring from paper to lap top, most transferring being done on the day of the winter solstice, the first day of winter as a blizzard dumps snow on the land here)

Shouts out to all the Basketball teams ever I played on:

Iowa City Central Junior High 7th grade team

Iowa City High 9th grade team (quit 1/2 way through the season)

AAU Junior Olympic team I tried to put together (we practiced a couple times at Longfellow)

1986 Rec League team I put together but never played on

1987 and 1988 Champion Iowa City Rec League teams

U. of Iowa Intramural teams put together by Kavli Khirana (w/ Paul, Sherman and Kenny)

Doc's 1988 AAU Junior Olympic team

Cornell College (Mt Vernon, Ia) - transferred before season started

UW Richland team - ineligible but practiced w/ team before transferring once again

UD Intramural Champion team w/ Big B. our first semester and Hubbard twin, Eric and Gerb...

University of Dubuque teams year 1 - 4

Lancaster (Wis.) 3 on 3 tournament Championship team w/ M. Lamb and his pal Jeff

Freddie's City League tournament champion team at South East w/ Scott, Don Euchas, Larry...

Fab Five Team w/ Wally at Ellis Community Center 6-3 and under league in C.R.

Rob Cordle's City league team w/ Greg Shank, Warnamont etc...

Gringo's City League teams

City League team w/ Big B. wearing red Prime Time shirts, R. Larson called us "score keepers"

Mike's Tap U of Iowa Intramural team w/ Drugstore Jim Bob Price and Big B. etc...

P.M. Crew U of Iowa intramural teams

P.M. Crew 3 on 3 team

Lambeer and Sons Drainage (LSD) City League 3A team w/ Big B., Michael Ray, Stretch, Jake...

Volven Concrete Championship City League 4A team w/ Big B., Donald and Malcolm, Stretch...

Cedar Rapids KCRG three on three teams with Stretch and Kemp... (and Kimm one year)