Month: August 2017

Few folks, who have never lived in Indiana, will ever know how important a basket ball goal, is to a adolescent male. That solitary goal standing in the driveway, alley or backyard became either the escape from or entrance  to, social acceptance.  A simple game of Horse could turn in to a full fledged three on three , depending on the number of available young men passing by. Just as well, practicing one’s free throw shots could become hours of alone time.

In the area I grew up in Indiana, teenage boys, fell in to two groups. The ones that played on the school basketball team and the ones that did not. This is not to say that if you didn’t make the team one year, you would not aspire to make the cut for the upcoming season. Practice was always on the mind of either of these groups. So, shooting a basketball at a metal hoop attached to a stationary object was the main pastime of most boys in my neighborhood. It was a pastime that could be done alone or added to, as the day progressed.  By the time we reached our Freshman year in High School it was pretty apparent who would be on the team and who would not. This did not diminish the hours that most guys spent at their goal just for fun.

“Getting up a game” was accomplished by grabbing a basketball and mounting your bike for a ride up and down the nearby streets. It didn’t take long for a group a guys riding down the street carrying basketballs to attract a following. In those days most of my friends hung out on their front or back porch when at home. The simple process of riding by and yelling “getting up a game”  was generally enough to illicit immediate response to a few dedicated hoopsters. Occasionally, these inquiries attracted more than a few participants, in which case, we redirected our efforts to one of the schools nearby, that always had a court waiting patiently to be used.

Playing basketball in Indiana was a given, for athletically inclined boys.  Even for those who chose not to participate, the loosely organized outing ,  was a social gathering. Some guys just came to watch and talk.  The group playing never included girls, and as well,  the group watching, rarely ever did. There was something uniquely male about this activity. The issues of the day, like the latest 45 record or teachers at school, were some of the interests that we discussed as the game progressed.

Only now, as I reflect on those times, do I realize how important those social building blocks were in my upbringing.  Without being aware of it, we were learning things like team building, entrance into a hierarchy, pier approval, athletic stamina and social acceptance. It was not so important who won or lost, there was always another game tomorrow, it was how we all interacted at that moment to accomplish a collective goal.

Much has been written about the obsession with basketball in Indiana. I think it is not so much an obsession as it is an ingrained characteristic. Hoosiers are universally known as good and decent folks with a tolerance for other ways of life. I think some  of that can be traced back to our experiences on the basketball court. Something  like a round rubber orange ball and a metal hoop and a collective goal, could it be that simple?

Growing up in the early sixties I was exposed to the every day threat the Cold War brought to us via the nightly news. As I think about it, it seems that 1962 was a very scary year internationally. It was more that a little scary In Muncie, Indiana because that was the year my parents decided to build a bomb shelter in our house. In the context of the time, I guess it made sense but now it appears laughable.

You see, at school we were used to Air Raid Drills. On the first day of the new school year in 1962 all the kids in the class were giving a block of instructions as to what to do, in the event the Air Raid Siren was sounded. Intermittently, during the year , a loud siren whose speakers were located  in the hallway of the old brick school building, would be activated.  Just the sound of the siren blast, with no warning, was enough to make your bladder  forget all of it’s training.  At the inception of the warning we were to drop to our knees and crawl under our old wooden desks covering our heads with our arms; remaining there until the teacher called for an “All Clear”. At that point we were to returned to a seated position and resume our studies. All of this was protect us in the event a bomb was dropped on our school by the Russians.

Even at eleven years old, I had a few questions. Not the least of which was, why would the Russians want to bomb our school? Another was , how is the desk top going to protect me on the top floor of a three story building? When asking my parents for answers I was told , “do what the teachers tell you to do”. That was code in the sixties for, I don’t know the answer either.

Returning to any semblance of learning  experience was pretty much out of the question when we had all been crawling around on the floor. That and the fact that we all needed a trip to the bathroom. The teachers did what they could to maintain some sort of decorum but mostly we were just told to read quietly until the bell rang for class dismissal.

Enter into this insanity the recommendation, from some office of the Federal Government, that it was a good idea to build a bomb shelter in our backyard in case the bombers were to fly over at night. Construction of a properly built “Bomb Shelter” ten feet below ground with a ventilator shaft and concrete cover was cost prohibitive for most of the folks on my block. However, most homes had converted from coal to gas heat in the last few years. What we did have were unused coal bins in the basement. They were concrete reinforced and about the right size to house a family of five in the event of a nuclear war. So down to the basement we descended. Cleaning the coal dust out was no small feat. Once cleanliness was pseudo accomplished, survival preparations were next in order.

My Dad built 2 sets of bunk beds on opposing walls and Mom set about equipping the shelves with the summer’s vegetables and fruits that she and Grandma had canned. No survival stone was left unturned. We warehoused water, matches, flashlights, toilet paper (although we had no toilet) and a whole lot of reading material. It seems that if the television station would be bombed we were to wait out the catastrophe catching up on back issues of Field & Stream and Look magazines.

Next came the family practice drills. They were usually on Sunday evening, right after Supper and before the Ed Sullivan show on TV.  My father would announce in a very concerned voice that this was an air raid drill. We all gathered up our favorite toys and scampered down the stairs to the coal bin to wait out the drill by the light of a kerosene lamp. Once sufficient time (usually about 15 minutes) for the bombers to fly over, we would gather up our things and head back upstairs to return to normal life in the sixties. This practice was not the exception in our neighborhood, it was very much the normal way of doing things. Eventually, the Cold War threat cooled off and we stopped gathering in the coal bin on Sunday nights.  My brother LB1 and I had begun to use the shelter as a secret club house , where no girls were allowed. And few years later when we moved to a new house we found several jars of canned goods waiting patiently on the shelves in the now little used room in the basement.

As I look back into my memory, I can still see my Mother’s smiling face sitting on a bunk bed, in a coal bin, on a Sunday night while trying to organize a board game to pass the time. I feel like these times made us closer as a family because we were forced to rely on each other for entertainment. I do wonder, occasionally, what idiot from the federal government persuaded Americans to huddle underground and in basements all over the US for years in the interest of personal safety. Probably the same guy that convinced us,  if we send a few advisors to Vietnam it would all be over in a matter of a few months.

When I was growing up in the sixties, going swimming was an integral part of my summer enjoyment. My town had a municipal swimming pool and it’s season began on Memorial Day and closed on Labor day. In the summer of my sixth grade year my mom determined that I was old enough to ride my bike to  the pool without parental guidance. This was an amazingly liberating feeling for a 12 year old boy. Looking back on the feeling I’m not sure why it was any different from delivering newspapers at 5:30 in the morning alone, which I had been doing since I was eleven. Oh, now I remember, there were girls at the pool.

There was a lot of preparation to look casual when getting ready to go swimming. First, your hair had to look good. Next the fashion of the day for young men was to wear a button up top  that matched one’s swimming trunks. If the top had a design on it that matched your trunks, it was the epitome of style. Following that, arrival time and with whom you arrived was quite important. Showing up with more than one buddy made you look like the neighborhood gang was descending on the scene. Riding up alone signaled that you were not popular and left you destined to swim alone. Also, when you got there was factored in to your achievement of coolness. No guy ever wanted to be the first to arrive. That’s when the girls were staking out where they were going to put their towels for sunbathing. Those towels were also strategically placed to watch the arrival of the guys. The girls rarely ever moved except to turn over or to apply more sun tan lotion. Swimming was out of the question. Swimming caps were required for females at the city pool and most girls my age would not be caught dead with one on.

So, once the girls had achieved their desired location, the boys began to trickle in. Bikes were parked in the racks, locks for the wheels were not yet a necessity, and a causal stroll up to the concession stand began the proceedings. Once outfitted with the obligatory soda and straw, the guys headed to the far end of the pool, ignoring the girls all together. Well, not all together, a sideways glance to see who had dared to wear a two piece suit was definitely in order.  Now, as the guys started arriving in pairs and dropping their towels indiscriminately, the mating dance began. Guys had come to swim and look and girls had come to be seen. In to the pool, the guys jumped, to discuss what girl had on the skimpiest bathing suit. Inevitably this conversation led to a dare that including leaving the pool and talking to the aforementioned young lady.

To achieve the culmination of this dare, a guy exited the pool, retrieved his drink and towel then casually sauntered up to his intended target. Upon arrival, he asked for permission to put his towel down and for a few seconds became the object of attention for everyone at the pool. If the young lady gave her permission then a transistor radio was placed on the ground between the towels and a conversation began. However, if the invitation were declined the boy had to retrace his steps, drop off his soda and towel and re-enter the pool. Asking another girl was forbidden because the second invitation was viewed by the recipient as if she were the booby prize and she was not interested in that designation. Once back in the pool the boy who had just his private life play out in public, was accepted back into the pack as if he had just had an unsuccessful ride on a bucking bronco. Success was not in the ride it was in the courage to make the attempt. Generally, one attempt per pool visit was the most a guy could muster up enough courage for that one day.

 As this adolescent practice played out during the day, the guys began to realize something that became much more apparent , the older they became. They had very little control over the agenda when it came to dealing with opposite sex. Some guys were quicker to realize this fact and most often were the ones that had longer and more successful relationships with their girlfriends.

Soon the sun began to signal late afternoon and most young people were required to be home, for supper, at a designated time. Towels were retrieved , one last walk by the girls was accomplished and bicycles were mounted for the ride home. Many serious discussions, about how we were going to approach the girls tomorrow, echoed down the streets and alleys as we made our way to our houses. The sunburn that we earned had already began to hurt , but our minds were working on our next twelve year old approach to the perils of manhood. Little did we know it then, but the art of social interaction was getting a good start at the local swimming pool, while we were growing up in the sixties.