Bad Back acts up in current life as writer/farmer

Tough day for me today in my current real life situation. I hurt my back leaning over to turn on the TV this morning while trying to check the most recent weather update for the next few days. This blog entry is one where my real life meets my past life. Cross over blogging. A couple months ago a wrote a blog entry called "Story of a Street Blogger from the ICE". It was the blog about the blog. I lost it as I tried to post it online (I type my blogs on my laptop then I have to go outside and over to the landlords house to plug in online where I then attempt to post what I have written or edited). My back pain has to do with basketball in regards to something I mentioned in my first or second blog entry, that is the fact that upon turning 39 this coming January I want to train for a year so that I can hopefully be able to dunk a basketball at the age of 40, which is one of my lifetime goals. I was already in pre-training mode but that has sort of fallen by the wayside with the onslaught of fall wet weather and being so busy on the farm where I live. I did manage many 20 mile long very hilly bike rides to the south end and back during this past summer. Speaking of the bike rides I finally tried Red Bull energy drink, and let me tell you, it is the real deal. It actually gave me lots of energy for the rides home and for work on the farm afterwards. In any case, the back pain I have and the 45 minutes of being virtually paralyzed from the pain this morning has me questioning the reality of achieving my goal of dunking on a ten foot high regulation hoop at the age of 40. It was a bad back that ended my basketball career. But that happened many years after Dubuque. The story is troubling to tell because it rekindles the frustrating and helpless feelings I had concerning my last employer, doctors, lawyers, Workman's Comp. etc... I would have been very happy to stay in the IC working at a job I liked and playing basketball in what I bet is one of the greatest basketball Mecca's in the world (and yeh, there is some home town bias in that comment, but there have been books written by people who have traveled across the U.S. and played at all the famous or relatively well known basketball play grounds, rec centers, and field houses and the U of I Field House in the IC has received the highest ratings possible). I better save those stories because the focus of these blog entries is supposed to be about my University of Dubuque basketball experience.

So where was I last time. Oh yes, first full season, playing on the JV squad but getting some varsity time as well. My memories of that season are a little blurry, especially concerning the second semester once Ike and I moved into the Wilson Street pad. We picked up a couple roommates named JT who was an awesome UD linebacker on the football team, and Scooby, a former UD basketball player. Two black kids from Chi town. Ike wasn't so sure about having the two new roomies. He was from small town Wisconsin after all and there were some cultural differences to be worked through in the new arrangement. Both JT and Scooby and another athletic muscular black kid from Chi. named Big Stace (who at one time or another wrestled, played football, and eventually even basketball - after I transferred - for UD) all avoided playing basketball for the team or in pick up games with or against me because (only a theory of mine) I dunked on all of them at one time or another. JT got two handed rebound dunked on while playing in a full court game on the lower courts in a pick up game one time, and another time someone threw me an ally-oop which I proceeded to two hand dunk on him. Big Stace got similar treatment. Scooby, Spike and I were playing 24 or 21 in the upper gym (where the team practiced and played) and I drove baseline and cup dunked on old Scoob. I think the thought of a white kid from Iowa dunking on them and making them look helpless to do anything about it is what I think they most feared. Spike told me that Scooby said he thought the only two players on the UD team that he thought could play in "The League" as they called the NBA were Ike Lambert and myself. Two white guys? Cool, but in actuality I thought he was nuts. That being said I would have to say that that was one of the greatest basketball compliments I ever got. Ike and I were the same height and ended up playing the same position. JT ended up running up a huge phone bill which he never payed and he and Scoob eventually moved out (maybe I kicked them out, can't remember for sure). At the end of the year Ike found out that his mom got a job for our cross town and inter conference rival, Loras College. He could get free tuition if he decided to transfer, and since his family did not belong to the upper class or financially endowed, Ike did just that. There were no shortages of potential new roommates. Spike wanted to move in during the summer, and so also did Big Stace, and unfortunately so did non other than Mick Glajoe. The basketball season that year ended uneventfully. I can't even remember it. I was drinking heavily at the time. I made a point of drinking every night for a month straight. Kills off internal parasites ya know (or so I always say and hope). Havatake was my main drinking buddy. His dad drank vodka like a Russian, so drinking was in G Money's blood. Finding money to drink wasn't so easy, but it wasn't so hard either. 40 oz. bottles or quarts of beer were only about a buck and a half. I got a little spending money for food and rent from my mom and from my dad (divorced when I was three) and from my grandparents (God bless their souls). I could eat cheap by shopping at a grocery store called Aldi's Save a Lot, cooking for myself, eating deer from the freezer that Big B and I would bag every year during deer hunting season, and by eating with the team and by sneaking into the campus cafeteria. I always had food sent and given to me by all the sets of grandparents and by my mom and dad. I tried to share with other hungry and poor associates and teammates. I earned the nickname of MacGyver (old TV show where a guy made a bomb out of anything available) for creating food when it looked like the cubbards were barren. As part of my financial aid package I was "awarded" work study. The first semester that year I had a job working the desk at the sports facility. I was unable to find the discipline in myself to consistently show up for my shifts. The office I was to work in was in the lower level of the sports complex facing a brick wall. This was a very small school and hardly any body ever came to the desk. We weren't supposed to shoot baskets or anything when we worked (although I usually did and the head man hardly ever complained). With my major as Environmental Science I had more hours in class than any one else on the team (besides flight majors who the coach usually made pick between basketball or flight school) because of all my lab time. I only lived on campus the one semester and did not have a car consistently through my UD tenure so transportation to work (and practice) was also an issue. It seemed every time I was supposed to work there was something else going on. Especially during my Sunday shift at the work study gig. I could not discipline myself to study during the three hour shifts. The tiny equipment check out room was like a prison, very depressing, very dreary. And being on a college basketball team is like having a full time job. We did fund raisers and had other functions through out the year. There was weight lifting, practice, and game travel. And I had to play and dress for two games every time (JV and Varsity), with a women's game in between half the time. Yet others on the team did it all, worked a job and played on the team. Or at least one other person did it. Ike Lambert had a job working at a local bank where he counted the change every night. He would have a full day and then at the time of night when I was about ready to settle in he would say that he had to go to work. That was a good time for me to study when we lived in the dorms. Ike would always come back with McDonalds and he always offered me a burger and fries. What a good friend, no doubt about it. Ike had to study a lot harder than I did just to pass his classes. Ike had discipline. Probably from his dad making him do chores on the farm every day. We went to his house on several weekends and I always wanted to help him with the chores and he wouldn't even let me. Big B once said that Ike got his strength on the basketball court by wrestling all those cows around and throwing those bales of hay around. Spike also worked at the same work study job I did and he used to remind me about my shifts coming up and give me a hard time when I skipped out and when I eventually got fired. The head of the sports facility who was also my boss was a really great guy, a good boss, and he gave me so many chances after I had skipped work so many times. He always told me how I was a really good referee in intermurals. I had to ref one of D Rog and Moe's intermural games when I was playing for the UD team and they were coaching. I knew the game of basketball and the rules and I always tried to do a fair job when refereeing. My boss even went so far as to tell the basketball coach about my potential. Reffing is a hard gig and who wants to get yelled at all the time and for only like 5$ something an hour? When the final call came from the boss about me being fired and all I told him how I thought he was such a nice boss and such a swell guy, and I meant it. He tried to give me the job back but I told him I didn't think I could do it, that it would be much more of the same thing, not showing up or leaving early and still writing down my full time (or having someeone else like Spike punch me out). Spike tried to cover for me so many times. It seemed that the poorer kids on the team had it made. Their school was payed for a lot of the time. At UW Richland my two pals were getting payed to go to school. I was going deep into financial debt due to the student loans. Not taking advantage of work study and by spending money on booze and taking out more student loans and financially taxing my entire family has always been instrumental factors in shaping my life experience, from the time spent at UD and after. For the record, my life time experience in the business world of making money and working a job does not necessarily follow the blue print of how the work study experience went. I have worked jobs where I was a dependable long time loyal employee. I guess I just didn't have enough free time to my self during the semester of work study. I tried to get other jobs while in Dubuque, and I got them and the people were instantly impressed with my skills and abilities but all the jobs were so depressing I couldn't keep my sanity working them so I eventually quit them all soon after starting. Now that I am writing and thinking back about my UD days I am realizing how I compared to others in regards to how I was seen as a person, not just as a basketball player. I could have done so much more and done so much better, in basketball, in paying for my schooling at the time, in studying and learning more, and in being a more responsible human being and a better friend. I guess thats what I am doing in a way by writing these blogs, by telling my story, and working through the memories of my failures and of my successes regarding the game I once loved and the life I lived while playing it.

The following summer was one of the best I ever lived. Basketball, making money doing something I enjoyed (working basketball camp), parties at the Wilson Street Pad, the women, it was the best Dubuque summer ever in any case. Spike and Stace moved in and over the summer Spike and I shot a lot of hoops at a few different parks we found. One was a little park located on a dead end street that came to a point atop the limestone cliffs that overlooked the city and the Mississippi River Valley. The court had a nice hoop but the pavement was small. I liked that and I told the fellas that I thought the small court really forced us to develop our inside game. The other court was down on the low end, located somewhere in the middle of the long narrow seemingly endless downtown. It had a nice hoop as well, maybe just shy of 10' (I loved playing on rims that were just a little short of ten feet) and it had a full court sized blacktop, but there was only one hoop. Spike and I found a game of 21 there onetime with like 12 other brothers playing. A cat that used to hoop for the UD JV squad (during the very first semester Big B, Swan and I showed up on the scene) named Main (brother of Square, another former UD player) and Scooby were there in the mix that day, and maybe even the aspiring rap artist "Emerge", who tried out for the UD team at the beginning of the previous year. Basketball wise the whole set up was perfect for me. I may have been the only white guy there, but maybe not. This was street ball at its purest form. No out of bounds and no fouls, unless crazy obvious and over the top. This is the game I grew up playing. Tip ins were a key factor in this type of game, and I loved to basket hang and tip players out of the game, something I had mastered over all the years of playing 24 at Longfellow Elementary and Dodge Street Park (aka Oak Grove) back in the ICE. In the martial art of Kung Fu I've heard it said that it can be more easy to fight multiple opponents at one time than fighting a single opponent. Its the same when playing a game like 21 or 24, where no one person really commits or can commit to playing match up one on one defense. Even if one person tries to match up they usually get screened out or picked by other players on the court who are taking up space. There's always a group of players huddled around the rim and in the paint waiting for a rebound. A few quick players who feel they got a chance at stealing the ball on a dribble often times take turns guarding or double teaming players from the outside. There was a lot of cats on the court that day. I had the mojo flowing, that feeling like the basketball spirit had a hold of me. In the game I soon started raking in rebounds, put backs, tips, and wins. I had my favorite spots to stand, right on the side and underneath where I could grab any soft shots that rolled off, any air balls that I could put back before any one knew what happened, and any near misses that just nicked the rim that may have just as well have been air balls. After checking the rock up top and hitting a few deep shots, and I mean deep long range jumpers, I drew several defenders almost every time I got the ball. Sometimes I would use old tricks to catch people off guard for a quick and easy two. And then there were the two times that I broke through the initial wave of defenders by a spin dribble or high dribble and cut through the lane and tried to jump over and dunk on like seven dudes. On the two occasions I tried this I hammered the ball of the back of the iron, shook the whole back board, post, park and the whole Low End with the power of my thrust, and nearly broke the steel rim off the pole. A still frame photo of those two plays must have looked like the old Michael Jordan poster that came in the Wheaties boxes where J. (one of many nicknames for Jordan) is shown jumping over about ten kids on his way to the hoop at a court that had colorful graffiti painted on the wall in the background. After one of the dunk attempts I made a comment in response to someone else's remark like, "I should have dunked it backwards on all of ya." That wasn't well received, but from my perspective I was just telling them what I really thought, and so "matter of factly" as my good friend Kemp once told me. Now, some 20 years later while writing this, maybe I was a bit too bravado in my confidence and attitude. I wasn't known as a trash talker, but some people took my "matter of fact" style of responding or remarking as trash talking. And people probably still do to this day. I'm always just being honest. But I do know and see how people take my confident know it all style and the whole thing tickles me, especially the fact that I can, or could, always back it up or at least gain their respect trying. Surprisingly the city of Dubuque took down the hoop at that downtown park. I bet they saw it being used so much (you know, by all the gang banging and drug dealing black guys from Chicago, oh yeh and by those basketball players too) that they decided to tear it down. That was a sad moment when I heard that news. That was a real nice court and hoop in a real nice park in a nice folksy downtown neighborhood.

I lifted a lot of weights with Spike and Big Stace that summer. We would head up to the UD sports complex and down into the weight room where there were free weight stations to get in a great work out. Basketball camp started sometime in July and lasted three or four weeks. We got free room and board and were payed 200$ a week. An Iowa high school player by the name of Rafe Lafrentz was at the camp that year. He went on to play at the University of Kansas and even the NBA. Coach had several local area coaches come to the camp to help out, and some were older guys from the IC that I knew and had grown up watching and playing against. Like every summer I traveled back to the IC now and then just to get away or to go and party with old friends in the bigger college town that had the better night life. Kids from the team would occasionally come back with me over the weekends. I was looking forward to the next season, especially because the team was planning to travel to Mexico over winter break. That news was enough for Big B to reconsider his plans and he decided that he had better not miss such an opportunity, so he decided to transfer back to UD at the start of the next school year.