Who knew?
I mentioned earlier that the basketball hoop in the playground changed everything. Here’s why.
All dwellings in the lower regions of middle earth had small driveways, and the higher numbers on my street were on a steep hill. Few had basketball hoops attached to garages, due to thin driveways and most of them developed ruts. The ‘portable’ hoops you see everywhere in the streets today did not exist.
Basketball ruled our school district. I’ll go into that later in detail, but our district had one strength and that was basketball. Football was a lost cause since the 1950’s. Not that us male youngsters knew much about that, we played everything………most common game was called ‘kill’ where the guy with the ball got tackled and thrashed til they gave up the ball to someone else, who was then thrashed.
Meanwhile, “up on the hill”……they had wider driveways, BUT. When I say hill, I mean it: 90% of the houses had uneven/steep lots. Which of course means anything resembling a round ball rolled out of control in the blink of an eye.
This playground hoop solved all problems. The hill guys came down and we walked up. No more hanging out at the corner store. All males from sixth to 10th grade hung at the playground after supper. Even if you didn’t play (like yours truly, who was pitiable), you came to hang and the games were very entertaining. Of course, once you drove, you had no time for a playground. heaven forbid!
Catholic school kids also gravitated to the hoop, especially one guy who was one of those kids you hated cause he was gifted in anything athletic. So was his sister, who was taller than him, but she looked so much like her brother she probably hated it.
It was perfect for me in retrospect–I was healing big time after June, and this was a way for me to socialize minimally. I sat back, watched and laughed like hell. Time to move on with my new body cast.
The games went on til the 9:30 curfew. Intensely competitive, but no one ever lost his temper. Many times, it was so humid everybody just took a break. When someone fell, they left a sweat outline on the tar. You fouled someone, you put your hand up and apologized.
What really made it entertaining was the creative use of obscenities.
Often, it was a case where someone was open under the basket and another one took a far off shot that missed the entire basket.
Simple nouns (asshole, idiot, moron) were not enough. Now you were a scrotum, donkey cock, steaming load, dog shit, or a pus pile.
My favorite was “You suck a wet cock and slimy balls!!” That one was so good we stopped for 5 minutes–everyone sat and laughed so hard they couldn’t speak.
Someone needs to immortalize these raucous times and participants, if only for a small mouse hole on the net. Here’s to: Sham-licker, Twizzle, Meat, Kathy R, Quinn, TC, Cos-lick, Kramer, Brofe (RIP), Louie, Alan the Lifeguard, Jobs, Mark Y, Sue H (lifeguard and queen of the court) and of course, Nyuh.
Heh. You may ask, Am I nuts?
No! “Nyuh” was the nickname for one of the guys. No, I don’t know how he got it. He was a nice even tempered guy who didn’t mind. The hook for Nyuh comes if you listen to the songs. Just replace the hook words with ‘nyuh’ and imagine that someone is singing them out of tune as he’s playing basketball.