big schools, known schools, scholarships for Indian players were never-never. Just didn’t happen. Think about it. There’s a pipeline from the ghettos to college ball. How many Indian players you ever see on TV? In high school we’re the best players in the whole mountains and plains region. We’re shut out of college, except for the places you never heard of.
We’re not gonna talk reasons, least I get mad.
Coach Ragsdale finagled this athletic scholarship, and the tribe came up with a stipend. I was leery of it at first. Can’t tell you what it’s like to come off the rez and live among white people, and going to college was definitely doing that. To us they are pushy, impolite, indecorous, and generally out of line. We don’t understand them, they don’t understand us. You whitefolks who’ve gone to Mexico and been irritated by Mexican slowness will know what I mean.
And Coach came up with the one thing more I needed—like a roommate, only better, someone who would put me up, listen to me, help me out, steer me. No one needed one more, and my guide was named Bradley Dornan.
I was skeptical, living with some old teammate of Coach. Bradley was a grizzled, pipe-smoking black bachelor with degrees in communications, as the college called it. He ran the radio station. He broadcast the basketball games. He was a guy of wry humor and a skewed sense of life who never fit anywhere but was amused wherever he went. He let me have the basement apartment in his old Victorian. He fed me. He gave me advice about life and basketball. He listened to me when times were hard. He turned out to be my best friend.
Wouldn’t this piss parents off? You get the important part of your college education from three people, your roommate, the one professor you hit it off with, and one professor you can’t stand. My roommate was Bradley. He introduced me to the traditional college vices, getting loaded and getting high. He played guitar duets with me. And he showed me the way around the best of all your music, the blues. Bradley had an incredible collection of old-time blues musicians on 78s, the music that came up the rivers to Memphis, St. Louis, and Chicago—Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mississippi John Hurt, Henry Johnson, Huddie Ledbetter, Muddy Waters. Unfortunately, I also contracted from Bradley one of the intellectual diseases of our age. You call it agnosticism. I call it being a Great White Doubter.
Before I get to that, I’ll tell the other parts of my college career. The basketball went fine. Played all four years, did good, starter the last two years. Never considered trying to go pro—not big enough, neither high nor wide. I had a lot of fun. My teammates called me Wings (another one of my gajillion names, inspired by Crow)—it was for my long arms to block shots, and the fans picked up on it. It was fun.
I learned that white college girls think of athletes as, well, stallions standing at stud. I got irritated about that sometimes. Other times I took advantage of it.
I did okay in my studies. My freshman English teacher was the one prof I couldn’t stand, the blonde, fair Mrs. Standish, who looked like she’d just graduated from Young Republicans. She was always on my ass about one thing or another. Mainly, it was what she called my attitude. One day Mrs. Standish put it to me hard; she asked me, “Why are you all angry at white people? Isn’t that visiting the sins of the fathers upon the sons? Is that fair?”
I said I’d tell her in one of those papers we had to turn in every Friday. Here it is. I forgot about it, but Emile saved it all those years.
Your ancestors did the stomp dance on my ancestors, yes, and that’s a pisser.
You say, that was then, this is now. We’re not doing the stomp dance anymore. Not fair to visit the sins of the fathers on the sons.
Yeah, it’s not fair. So let’s talk about your own sins, right now.
It’s impossible for traditional Indians to live the way we want to today. We
We’re not gonna talk reasons, least I get mad.
Coach Ragsdale finagled this athletic scholarship, and the tribe came up with a stipend. I was leery of it at first. Can’t tell you what it’s like to come off the rez and live among white people, and going to college was definitely doing that. To us they are pushy, impolite, indecorous, and generally out of line. We don’t understand them, they don’t understand us. You whitefolks who’ve gone to Mexico and been irritated by Mexican slowness will know what I mean.
And Coach came up with the one thing more I needed—like a roommate, only better, someone who would put me up, listen to me, help me out, steer me. No one needed one more, and my guide was named Bradley Dornan.
I was skeptical, living with some old teammate of Coach. Bradley was a grizzled, pipe-smoking black bachelor with degrees in communications, as the college called it. He ran the radio station. He broadcast the basketball games. He was a guy of wry humor and a skewed sense of life who never fit anywhere but was amused wherever he went. He let me have the basement apartment in his old Victorian. He fed me. He gave me advice about life and basketball. He listened to me when times were hard. He turned out to be my best friend.
Wouldn’t this piss parents off? You get the important part of your college education from three people, your roommate, the one professor you hit it off with, and one professor you can’t stand. My roommate was Bradley. He introduced me to the traditional college vices, getting loaded and getting high. He played guitar duets with me. And he showed me the way around the best of all your music, the blues. Bradley had an incredible collection of old-time blues musicians on 78s, the music that came up the rivers to Memphis, St. Louis, and Chicago—Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mississippi John Hurt, Henry Johnson, Huddie Ledbetter, Muddy Waters. Unfortunately, I also contracted from Bradley one of the intellectual diseases of our age. You call it agnosticism. I call it being a Great White Doubter.
Before I get to that, I’ll tell the other parts of my college career. The basketball went fine. Played all four years, did good, starter the last two years. Never considered trying to go pro—not big enough, neither high nor wide. I had a lot of fun. My teammates called me Wings (another one of my gajillion names, inspired by Crow)—it was for my long arms to block shots, and the fans picked up on it. It was fun.
I learned that white college girls think of athletes as, well, stallions standing at stud. I got irritated about that sometimes. Other times I took advantage of it.
I did okay in my studies. My freshman English teacher was the one prof I couldn’t stand, the blonde, fair Mrs. Standish, who looked like she’d just graduated from Young Republicans. She was always on my ass about one thing or another. Mainly, it was what she called my attitude. One day Mrs. Standish put it to me hard; she asked me, “Why are you all angry at white people? Isn’t that visiting the sins of the fathers upon the sons? Is that fair?”
I said I’d tell her in one of those papers we had to turn in every Friday. Here it is. I forgot about it, but Emile saved it all those years.
Your ancestors did the stomp dance on my ancestors, yes, and that’s a pisser.
You say, that was then, this is now. We’re not doing the stomp dance anymore. Not fair to visit the sins of the fathers on the sons.
Yeah, it’s not fair. So let’s talk about your own sins, right now.
It’s impossible for traditional Indians to live the way we want to today. We
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