Gary Indiana

My former coach D Rog invited me to go home with him to Gary over easter break one year. Big Moe and Rue were also invited. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see more of the world and see where D Rog had came from. They rented a car and Moe was the designated driver. It was the four of us at the start, but Rue asked to get out about half way there at some town along the way outside of Chicago where one of his kids and the baby's mama lived. D Rog and Moe said that that always happened when Rue came along. I respected and even admired Rue for making the right decision even though I too wished that he would have came along with us. We smoked a few jizzoints on the way and had some deep discussions and did a little smack talking, and then D Rog brought up what I thought was just too funny. He warned me about his friend Blizzo who was going to bring up stories of some old basketball showdowns that occurred between the two once the smack talking would start and once we were around D's old friends from home. When we reached Chicago the sight seeing began for me. I love that old city and the feeling and the energy that it gives off, that all large unfamiliar cities give off, but there is something special about the windy city. We had to travel through the south side of Chicago and past the huge project housing which was right across from the White Sox Stadium. That stadium looks like the seating goes practically straight up, straight vertical, like you would have to climb a ladder to get to your seat. We crossed over what is known as the skyway, which is a giant interstate highway bridge that travels across the railroads and abandoned steel mills that line the shores and the vicinity around lake Michigan and connect East Chicago to Gary. I never saw so much garbage and wasteland. For many miles I saw nothing but rusty smoke stacks and giant deteriorating brick buildings. Railroad tracks for miles, one set lined up next to another, for ever they went on. No houses, no people, just smoke stacks and coal and railroad tracks and garbage. Again, I have never seen anything like it, not even in a movie. D Rog said he used to be scared to drive across the skyway when he was a kid. For me the scary part wasn't the massive size of the bridge or of the incredible height, but what we were driving over. Some of those factories were the size of giant skyscrapers with broken glass windows from end to end. I wondered what the hell was inside of such buildings? Some of the smoke stacks were like 100 stories high it seemed. Some even had smoke coming out of them. It looked like the biggest industrial wasteland on the planet, and maybe it was (and still is). We went to D Rog's grandma's house when we got into one of the residential sections of Gary. We had passed a road sign that said 'Hammonds' on it earlier, which is where D Rog played his high school ball. D Rog's grandma owned an adobe style brick apartment building. It looked like a home for Jawa's (of Star Wars fame). Apparently the adobe was water proof, highly insulated, and most important it was bullet proof. You know when your in a rough town when the black guys your with, a 300 pound 6-5 kid from New Orleans and and a 6-4 kid from Gary, are worried about just getting out of the car and walking into the house. Sure enough we heard automatic weapons being fired in the vicinity. There was a school across the street where D Rog said they used to play basketball for years every Sunday morning until too many people got gunned down while playing. At one time it was supposed to be an unwritten but well respected rule not to bring any outside grievances to the court. Catty-corner from D- Rog's grandma's and across the street from the school was a plot of small white houses. They were really small. D Rog pointed to one of the houses and said that thats where the Jackson family had grown up. Michael, Janet, Tito, Latoya... all grew up across the street from D Rog's grandma. D Rog's uncle and his cousin also lived at his grandmas. His cousin was young but extremely beautiful. His uncle was a mechanic but he used some sick leave to miss work while D Rog was home visiting. His uncle graduated high school across the street with Jermane Jackson back in the day. Previously another one of D Rog's UD teammates came to visit Gary one time, a kid who played on the UD team that first semester I had arrived but when I wasn't on the team officially yet. D Rog's uncle had a computer basketball game where you could program in the names of the players on the teams. The other kid to visit's name was Pearl and he was a player's name in the video game. Since I was the new guest Pearl's name was erased and my name was put in. It stayed in that game for a long time, which was a great honor. D Rog's hot young cousin (who was really nice to me) and the adobe style apartment complex gave me some good smack material for later. We slept the night at D Rog's mom's house, which was a two story house in a regular looking but old neighborhood. Her husband was a truck driver who watched TV in the bedroom all day. They lived on the second floor of the building, which was safer then living on the ground floor due to all the stray bullets flying around at ground level. D's mom cooked up one hell of an Easter dinner with ham hocks, okra, sweet potatoes, corn bread... it was the best meal I think I have ever had. We finally went out at night to D Rog's friend Blizzo's house. We picked up some brews before we got there. When we arrived D Rog introduced me to his old pal and another dude who was there hanging out. We sparked a few and sipped on some brews and listened to the stories and the smack about the years gone by. The warning that D had given me about his pal (who's home we were now in) was prophetic, for sure enough the story was told how Blizzo's high school team beat D's team and Blizzo went off in the game and scored like 30 points and got the best of D. While we were hanging out someone kept calling Blizzo's phone looking for the other cat who was hanging out with us. The guy calling was looking to gun down the kid at Blizzo's and Blizzo kept having to tell him that he wasn't there. The guy on the phone used to play football for Notre Dame (one of the best college football programs in the United States) and the smack talk somehow got around to him even. Apparently the kid played running back and on the first play he ever ran he was handed the ball on a running play but he fumbled. He never saw the field again after that, ended up dropping out of Notre Dame, and went back to Gary to become a thug. The dude he was trying to find and was calling about, who was at Blizzo's with us, also got smacked on. He had been a part of his high school's record setting 4 x 100 relay team. They made it to the state finals and were poised to become state champions and set a new state record when during the race the kid dropped the baton on his hand off. The guy was fairly well dressed that night and wanted us to go out on the town with him to Chicago's Rush Street. But dress shoes were required at those clubs and we all had none. The next day we went on a long tour of the city of Gary. I was the only white person I saw for three days until I saw an old white guy crossing the street in a small business district somewhere. I yelled out in the car, "What's up homie?" which got a chuckle out of D and Mo. I saw more boarded up houses in more deserted neighborhoods than I thought possible. Gang signs and messages were painted on houses and walls and buildings everywhere. One such message read, "Kill all white people." It goes without saying that Gary used to be the steel capitol of the U.S. When the economy turned and the steel mills closed people lost their jobs and moved away. The experience of seeing it all made a life long impression on me, and I don't think that many Americans even know that such places exist in their own country. It was a huge practically abandoned city that was now like a war zone. The last place I remember seeing on the trip was where there once was a real nice park and beach overlooking Lake Michigan and the Chicago skyline in the distance. D Rog said he used to come here as a kid, but now it was run down and the Chicago side couldn't even be made out in the smog like haze that hung over the great lake. That is about all I can remember from that trip. I hope I have described it well enough to get across the lonely and disturbing feelings that the run down all but abandoned city gave off. We made it in and out alive, and I was thankful for that so that one day I could write about the experience and share it with others. I've told many people about my visit to Gary over the years, and I've gotten the feeling sometimes that people don't quite believe my story, especially the part about Michael Jackson's family living across the street from D's grandma, and the automatic gun fire that could be heard off in the distance 24 hours a day, and the size and scope of the skyway and the abandoned steel mills below, and of the blocks and blocks and miles and miles of boarded up and abandoned buildings and houses and the vicious gang signs and graffiti written on them. The stories of D Rog's old friends and of their infamous sports experiences too seems all to far fetched. It seemed and still seems to me that almost every athlete I ever met from Gary had that something special about them. D Rog, Darby, Lil Lamb, and others all had such a strange charismatic quality about them. They were all unbelievable athletes. The three I mentioned all had pointy ears and light colored skin that practically glowed. They reminded me of elf warriors or something when they played basketball. I mean all that I have just said as a compliment, and even if its taken the wrong way that is how I can best describe them. I too have been accused of having pointy ears, and having one ear that sticks out a little farther than another one, and my old friend Shot and I used to kind of joke that we thought that a person with pointy ears is predisposed to being a great jumper (we both had pointy ears).