Fathers and Sons - Part 1

I was roughly 6 years old when my dad put up the basketball hoop in the front yard, it was inevitable really, all the neighbors were getting sick of the young boy who would run out of the house any time he heard a ball bouncing, i was always eager to play and shoot around and finally one day my ma was like "we'll put one in our driveway for you" and of course by we she meant my old man, so out we went to the store and we bought the pole and the backboard and the rim, my dad then set out digging a hole and getting the base in and filling it with concrete to hold it, then when it had dried he went back out and put the rest up, taking great pains to make sure it was ten feet high and meticulously level, it would be decades before it dawned on me how much care he put into putting that thing up, a basket that i would eventually spend hours at shooting jump shots and free throws and playing games against the neighborhood kids and anyone else who might show up, the place where i practiced all those fucked-up fade aways and scoop shots, shots that would earn me a place among the playground lore, help me pay for college and end up as the third all -time leading scorer in my high school's history, behind two guys who had played over 20 years before me, it might have been the best investment the old man ever made, hell it almost kept me out of trouble, almost...

I remember being around 8 or 9 and my uncle and i played the old man 2 on 1 and he beat us, granted my uncle sorta sucked but still i was in awe of the old man, he had a good jumper and knew how to get to the basket but as he told my sis when i was born, get your licks in early cuz that baby boy is gonna be big, granted i was more tall than thick, hell for most of my young life i could have been a poster child for famine relief i was so skinny, but as the years went on i kept playing and the old man knew i wasn't gonna be Kareem tall so he kept teaching me to play guard, to dribble with my head up, to read the game, he never forced it on me just gave me tips on how to do things, tips i usually asked for, and seeing how he was only 26 when i was born he was still pretty young by the time i got old enough to give him a game, and so sometimes on saturday afternoon or early evening the old man and i would lace 'em up and go one on one, usually to 100, by two of course and there were even two spots that counted as three, deep shots that were barely in-bounds, and for the first two years i took my beatings... i was around 4 i think, there is a home movie of me and my dad playing football in the snow, all you see is him dumping me in the snow and about every 5 minutes or so i come running up crying cuz my dad wouldn't let me win, wouldn't let me do what i wanted, when my mom told him to let me, he told her, the boy's gotta learn how to lose, it may have been the most important lesson he ever taught me, two sides to every coin and two versions of every story, sometimes it ain't gonna show heads and you're not gonna get off, but i digress, of course years later he would tell me about the only thing i was worse at than winning was losing, believe it was after one of those games of one on one...

Now the old man was a right smart one and what he knew is that someday he wasn't gonna be able to beat me but he was not about to divulge that info to his young, competitive son, he knew what he was doing and so he kept on playing as hard as he could in order to keep beating his growing boy and it was the spring of my 8th grade year, i was all of 13 that we had one last epic battle, see the old man had always beaten me by double digits but on this day i was hanging in, actually taking the lead a few times only to lose it back, it came down to the wire and the score was 98-97 to him but i had the ball and i went to the three point line and fired but i was tired and it came off the front rim but like i was always taught i followed my shot and it zipped past my dad's hand and back into mine, i took the ball back and dribbled, feinting a bit and then just as i was about to make my move my foot caught a wet spot and i slipped and lost the ball, my old man picked it up and laid it in, fucking game, i was so pissed i could barely even speak, i was that fucking close and the old man just smiled at me and said "good game kid", i could tell he knew he escaped but i always wondered later if he knew that would be the last time he'd ever beat me...

See the old man ducked me the next week, might have been that i'd worn him out but the week after i was out shooting around when he came out and asked if i was ready to play, i didn't smile, i just shook my head, cuz this was gonna be the day, at the time i was probably about six feeet tall and my old man was a shade over 5'10, over the next few years i'd end up at over 6'4 but for now i had a little bit on him but not much, obviously he outweighed me and was much stronger at the time but it didn't matter, i don't know what happened in those two weeks, if it was practice or the bitter taste it left in my mouth or i was just so focused on what i wanted to get done but the outcome was known pretty early, i was relentless, i beat him by damn near 40 points, the dragon had been slayed, maybe it was that first mythic step that every son takes in killing his father, metaphorically of course, but at 13 i didn't understand it yet, when it was over i stood there with my eyes welling up, not knowing why, it didn't feel good, i remember the old man looking at me and walking up and putting his arm around me and saying "good game kid, i knew this day was gonna come, you did good," and with that he walked in the house and i turned and looked at the sky and let the tears flow down my face, it was the beginning of something and it was the end of something at the time i just didn't know what... to be cont.