okay? Long in the back.”
“Sure, Bill. Like one of the Be-ah tuls, huh? Everybody wants to look like one of the Be-ah tuls. You will look like a Be-ah tul too.”
He then started to clip my hair off . . .
“What are you doing!”
“Your mother called.”
At the end of my junior year, something good finally happened for us. Joel graduated college and got a job teaching art in the very, very same junior high school that we all had gone to in Long Beach (he had become a really wonderful artist). He decided to live at home and give Mom most of his salary. So a little bit of the pressure was off Mom now. Until the draft board made Joel 1a, ready for induction. The buildup was starting in Viet Nam, and the army wanted him. Mom wouldn’t let them take him. She made an impassioned speech in front of the military draft board pleading her case, that Joel was now the head of the household, with two younger brothers to support. She won, and Joel was spared.
Then came my senior year in high school. This time I made the basketball team the way I wanted to make it. I worked at it all summer. I was playing baseball wherever I could, but at night I worked on my shot, on my defense, my passing, and I played a lot that year. We were a very good team, the Long Beach Marines of 1965, and there’s one game that they always talk about. This was the game we played against Erasmus Hall High from Brooklyn.
They were a fantastic high school basketball team. They were the number two high school team in the entire country. The number one team was from the City, a team named Power Memorial. And their center was Lew Alcindor. Eventually, he becomes Abdul-Jabbar. (In between he was Izzy Itzkowitz, for about three weeks. He said the food was too gassy, and he felt guilty, so he became a Muslim. We almost had him.)
One of our coaches had played at Erasmus, and knew their coach, and they arranged a special exhibition game, and mighty Erasmus, a predominantly black team, agrees to come out to Long Island to play us, a mostly white middle- to upper-middle-class school, in a predominantly Jewish town. This is unheard of—a City team to play a Long Island team? It was big news in the local papers, almost like the Knicks were coming. I mean, Custer had better odds in Vegas than we did.
Erasmus terrified us by the way they arrived at our school. They show up at our school in a Greyhound bus for the team, and another bus for the children of the team. We’re in the locker room before the game having our legs waxed and—well, it’s a home game, you want to look good. And Coach Farry comes in and says, “Listen, guys. Erasmus is a great team. But we’re pretty good too, so let’s show ’em who we are. Take the court. Come on, Marines, fight.”
We run out there. It’s our home court. We’re greeted by a thousand Erasmus fans, stuffed into their side of the gym, and they’re all in dashikis, African tops. This was a terrible time for whites and blacks in America. The South was literally exploding: dogs biting, people rioting, churches with children in them blown to bits, buses burning, civil rights workers murdered, “Blood on the leaves, blood at the root.” Black people were starting to turn back to their African roots. The heavyweight champion had changed his name from Cassius Clay to Cassius X and then finally to Muhammad Ali. It was an edgy, scary time.
The Erasmus crowd was on their feet now, as their team warmed up. Even the cheerleaders could dunk. They’re swaying back and forth, their arms waving back and forth in these choreographed African-feeling chants: “Erasmus, Erasmus. KILL THEM.”
And our cheerleaders were on the other side of the court singing (to the tune of Hava Negilah), “Please don’t hurt our players. They’re very nice boys, and they bruise easily. OY!”
So we’re down 55 points as the second quarter begins, and I’m just sitting there. My mom’s in the stands. She came to every game, and every game
“Sure, Bill. Like one of the Be-ah tuls, huh? Everybody wants to look like one of the Be-ah tuls. You will look like a Be-ah tul too.”
He then started to clip my hair off . . .
“What are you doing!”
“Your mother called.”
At the end of my junior year, something good finally happened for us. Joel graduated college and got a job teaching art in the very, very same junior high school that we all had gone to in Long Beach (he had become a really wonderful artist). He decided to live at home and give Mom most of his salary. So a little bit of the pressure was off Mom now. Until the draft board made Joel 1a, ready for induction. The buildup was starting in Viet Nam, and the army wanted him. Mom wouldn’t let them take him. She made an impassioned speech in front of the military draft board pleading her case, that Joel was now the head of the household, with two younger brothers to support. She won, and Joel was spared.
Then came my senior year in high school. This time I made the basketball team the way I wanted to make it. I worked at it all summer. I was playing baseball wherever I could, but at night I worked on my shot, on my defense, my passing, and I played a lot that year. We were a very good team, the Long Beach Marines of 1965, and there’s one game that they always talk about. This was the game we played against Erasmus Hall High from Brooklyn.
They were a fantastic high school basketball team. They were the number two high school team in the entire country. The number one team was from the City, a team named Power Memorial. And their center was Lew Alcindor. Eventually, he becomes Abdul-Jabbar. (In between he was Izzy Itzkowitz, for about three weeks. He said the food was too gassy, and he felt guilty, so he became a Muslim. We almost had him.)
One of our coaches had played at Erasmus, and knew their coach, and they arranged a special exhibition game, and mighty Erasmus, a predominantly black team, agrees to come out to Long Island to play us, a mostly white middle- to upper-middle-class school, in a predominantly Jewish town. This is unheard of—a City team to play a Long Island team? It was big news in the local papers, almost like the Knicks were coming. I mean, Custer had better odds in Vegas than we did.
Erasmus terrified us by the way they arrived at our school. They show up at our school in a Greyhound bus for the team, and another bus for the children of the team. We’re in the locker room before the game having our legs waxed and—well, it’s a home game, you want to look good. And Coach Farry comes in and says, “Listen, guys. Erasmus is a great team. But we’re pretty good too, so let’s show ’em who we are. Take the court. Come on, Marines, fight.”
We run out there. It’s our home court. We’re greeted by a thousand Erasmus fans, stuffed into their side of the gym, and they’re all in dashikis, African tops. This was a terrible time for whites and blacks in America. The South was literally exploding: dogs biting, people rioting, churches with children in them blown to bits, buses burning, civil rights workers murdered, “Blood on the leaves, blood at the root.” Black people were starting to turn back to their African roots. The heavyweight champion had changed his name from Cassius Clay to Cassius X and then finally to Muhammad Ali. It was an edgy, scary time.
The Erasmus crowd was on their feet now, as their team warmed up. Even the cheerleaders could dunk. They’re swaying back and forth, their arms waving back and forth in these choreographed African-feeling chants: “Erasmus, Erasmus. KILL THEM.”
And our cheerleaders were on the other side of the court singing (to the tune of Hava Negilah), “Please don’t hurt our players. They’re very nice boys, and they bruise easily. OY!”
So we’re down 55 points as the second quarter begins, and I’m just sitting there. My mom’s in the stands. She came to every game, and every game
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