A house just a few doors down from ours in southeastern North Carolina has a basketball hoop set up in its driveway. The residents are relatively new neighbors, having moved here just a few months ago. So far I have yet to see anyone taking shots at that rim.
The driveway is like the parks we drive by, parks with baseball diamonds and basketball courts. We never see anyone playing the kinds of pickup games my pals and I played when we were boys back in the early 1960s.
So it goes these days when video games, played mostly indoors, are the rage.
But getting back to basketball hoops. Back in 1962, when I was a 15-year-old Easthampton High School sophomore, my best friend Dick Dubiel’s house on Sheldon Avenue, had a hoop attached to its one-car garage. Dick and I were both in the process of trying out for the junior varsity team. We practiced hour upon hour on that paved surface next to the house in which the Dubiels resided.
Dick was a sure thing to make the team, and would eventually divide his time playing both JV and varsity ball. I was a long shot, in more ways than one. I had a killer jump shot from the corner, and coach Guy (Doc) Cerutti was taking interest in me. Doc was also the EHS physics teacher.
Dick was one of his best students, and I was one of his worst. Our friend Patti Johnson was a cheerleader whose “Go Teams,” and rah rah rahs cheered players on. Patti called Dick “The Science Brain.” I was “The English Brain.”
Dick ended up majoring in physics in college. I majored in English and journalism.
It wasn’t just Dick and me who played in his driveway. Dick’s next door neighbor, Bruce Forbes, was a regular. As were Roger Walaszek, Jim Soja, Stanley “Skip” Jarocki, Jack “Ziggy” Zabek and Dick’s brother Bob. All of whom were juniors and varsity players.
All those juniors — all Polish guys whose roots were in the New City section of town, across the pond from the mills in which their parents and grandparents worked — went on to…
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