YELLOWJACKET#27: POST #47

I don't remember when I did not like basketball. My older brothers liked basketball and we played it a lot at Herman Junction. Before we had a real basketball we had a home made goal with a rim from a barrel or keg nailed up on the end of the little barn and later made a goal out of an old Texaco sign. Our basketball was a toe sack or two rolled up in a ball and held together with twine and we would bounce it on our hand instead of dribbling. You know, a toe sack ball won't dribble too good. If you ever stopped bouncing that thing in your hand you had to shoot or you would walk and you would lose the ball.

I played on the Junior High team in the 9th grade and would have played before that but there was no way to get me into Bay for games. I was not very good I guess in the 9th grade because I have never forgotten that I was the only player on the team that never took my warm up off the entire year. I never played one second in a game and I think that I certainly would have remembered it if I had. I think that if I had been the coach every player would have played at least a few minutes in a full year but I didn't. I never missed a game though and practiced as diligently as every other player.

In the 10th and 11th grades I got to play some and just loved it. There were certainly too many good players on the team for me to get in very often but I did get to play some. In the closing part of the 11th grade year I got to play a bit more and then in my Senior year I played a lot. I did not start many games but I normally was at the scorers table when the game started ready to come in at the first opportunity or the coach would call time and put me in. Winston (Truck) Holmes started every game because he was taller than the rest of us and he jumped center at the beginning of nearly every game. I loved playing basketball and stayed after school and practiced and then walked home. While the baseball team was playing a few of us who didn't play baseball were in the gym playing basketball in the spring. In the summer time I spent as much time as I could playing basketball.

The best one half of a game that I ever played was against Jonesboro in the NEA Tournament at Arkansas State in my Senior year. I was wide open a lot and made 18 points the first half. Coach Bob Pierce told the other guys to get me the ball and screen for me and let me shoot the second half too. But, that didn't happen! The Jonesboro coach put Ralph Buhrmiester on me and told him to see that I didn't score any more and he did it except for TWO points! The whole half Ralph was in my face and do you know what else he did? He would play right up close to me so the Referee could not see him, and grab my jersey and hold me. He never got caught and I never scored but two points. I tried that same thing with Jimmy Mote from Monette one night. Jimmy was a lot faster than me, as nearly everyone was, and one time he was getting away from me and I grabbed his jersey and we stretched it nearly from one end of the court to the other and of course I got caught.

The day before the game with Jonesboro I sprained my ankle pretty bad in practice. The day of the game Coach Pierce took me to Jonesboro to put me in a whirlpool to try to help that ankle. I had never heard of a whirlpool because we never had many of them in a Number 3 wash tub at Herman Junction. I sat with my leg over the edge of that whirlpool for I don't know how long and then they taped my ankle real tight before the game and I played the entire game. It was one of the few times that I started the game and it was real nice to hear my name called and get to run out there with the other starters. Barbara heard the game on the radio at home and got to hear my name called quite a bit for the first half of the game and then she must have thought that I died because she didn't hear it the last half thanks to Ralph.

One game that I especially remember was a game against Green County Tech. I was a Junior and the coach put me in after we were so far behind that we couldn't have won anyway. I was over between the basket and the left corner and someone threw me the ball. Here I was with the ball and the biggest man in the nation guarding me! I think that his name was Pigg and he was a BIG PIGG! I didn't see any of my teammates open and I couldn't dribble. I simply turned to my left and let go a hook shot with my left hand and it hit nothing but net! It wasn't because I meant for it to go in but it was just a lucky throw. But, everyone gave me a big hand just like I meant to make that basket.

I love basketball. I played with some great guys and we remain close friends to this day. Every year our high school class has a reunion and every time we talk about those games in high school I get better and better! When I preached in North Little Rock, Arkansas for seven years, I was invited to go to Barton Coliseum and give the invocation three times every day at the State Tournament when the entire thing was conducted in Little Rock. I watched a lot of basketball. I really enjoyed it when Bay came to the tournament. I watched the McMaster boys, Butch Isbell, Eddie Morrison, and others play Rector in the tournament and it really brought back memories. The tournament lasted for three weeks and I watched a lot of it and really did enjoy it.

We've come a long way from a balled up toe sack at Herman Junction but I loved it even then. I may go back there and challenge Mayor Linda to a game but she will have to play barefooted and promise not to hit me in the head with her shoe if I beat her. Oh, yes everything is good at Herman Junction today.