A memorable double feature playing out

A memorable double feature playing out. “God is my copilot” and

John Steinbeck’s “Of mice and men”.

                                                         II

Watching the shuttle Enterprise piggy back on a modified jumbo jet 747 (an apartment house atop another) on its tour de force to dry dock in two months at the Intrepid sea and air museum   its holding pattern being across the bay at JFK. A barge waiting to navigate the Enterprise’s last “hurrah”

                                                        III

The four and five year old kids at Battery Park playground continued riding their swings, swinging their lithe bodies on the monkey bars, sliding down the smoothies, jumping on the trampoline    as all children must....  jumping rope, doing the Dutch.

Their mothers fathers governesses and nurses shifted their eyes from their cares to the blue cloudless sky ceiling of themselves.

The thirty thousand feet altitude in no way diminished their grasp of the 9/11 twin tower massacre of 3000 innocents ten years + ago.

The murderous conspiracy at Twin Towers had left its mark on these adults, the kids in the playground were in their warm up suits sort of speaking, their life styles immune to original sin and tragedy.

It was beyond their state of mind, was n‘t it. In their playground whirl of whirls they knew little of the Gemeni Apollo programs from Cape Caneveral and Edwards Air Force Base in California.

Bad weather delays, landing on the moon “One small

step for man, a giant leap for mankind “ quoteth civilian Neil Armstrong..

Colonel Buzz Aldrin, the second human to step on the moon’s Swiss Cheese of a surface.

The programmed computers in Texas, teamed by astro phyicsists slapping, shaking hands in a euphoric, acknowledgment of this feat of Buck Rogers accomplishment.

Flash Gordon and his Dale had made a similar journey in those daring comic pages of World War2 when endeavors on the planet, were denigrated and published in the circles of the comic book writers on East 42^nd Street,(near Times Square) scribbling excerpts, which were in the Sunday comics.

Here then as the piggy backing Enterprise soared through the skies, some of the kids looked skyward, the Enterprise was on a merry go round, its mother jet, searching for the gold ring on the free wheeling cycle, closing down forever.

 Pioneers Colonel Glenn Alan Shepherd, their comrades, nevcr to be forgotten in the legacy and history of space  exploration.

The parameters had made their initial dents on the Coney Island and Santa Monica piers, the programmers and entrepreneur translating those baby steps  into digaling

transfusions into through and over our Continent.

Space exploration thru the Sputnik and Mir programs captivated&dominated the Kremlin’s thinking per se.                                            

                                     

As Enterprise piggybacked over the Hudson River, beginning its decline toward JFK’s lengthy landing strip, the merry go round whirl passed over the Statute of Libverty and the sky line of skyscrapers,

                                                  IV

                                                                                

Meanwhile the cardiology labs at Duke University’s medical center were exploring “dehydrated”

mice for stem cell cardiology”rebirth .

CBS’s Charlie Osgood, had warmed up to the program. To see whether or not the studies with mice could invoke a dimension of original pathology

Not a fountain of youth but a pathology bordering on a mended heart recyucling of dimmed heart tissue and muscle.

That the Maimonides surgeons and cardiologists in neighboring Brooklyn, claimed the

department was only two months away from their own “Of mice and men” playing out.

Betty Smith’s “A tree grows in Brooklyn” seemed but one small step toward “God’s way” as the streets flourished in springtime, the Atlantic Avenue yards, awaiting the arrival of the Brooklyn Nets (hoops) and the renaissance of the long awaited revival of what was once the Brooklyn Dodgers before they departed for what was once Palm Tree environs in the City of Angels.                                         

the City that never sleeps, April 28, 2012

A force of nature, the 9 inning allegory playing out at Boston’s Fenway Park, April 20, 2012

A force of nature, the 9 inning allegory playing out at Boston’s Fenway Park, April 20, 2012, the 100^th birthday bash. Those yesterdays of 1912 dusted off, Tris Speaker making contact, a clutch hit in the 11^th inning, whopping the Highlanders from the Big Apple.

                                                                             II

No  imitative Ring Lardner, Joe E. Brown’s “Alibi Ike”   Coop’s “Pride of the Yankees”Redford’s Natural “ could capture the renaissance enchantment.

 A divinity  as in Bogy and Ingrid Bergman recognized their destiny, the twins Philip&Julius Epstein penning “Casablanca”

Their grandson Theo, playing the general manager’s role  before committing to the Windy City. His pops Leslie, English Department Chairman, Boston University..

                                                                III

John Updike’s New Yorker portrait of Ted Williams in his “Adieu kid”. A 19 year old lean&hungry Caesius out of San Diego, metamorphosing into “the greatest hitter who ever lived.”

Tom Yawkey, the owner, capitalizing on the Babe Ruth Sultan of Swat persona, Williams 

a capricious Nester Achilles who as a Marine pilot played our his interior nemesis while preserving his timing, left handed swing, wrist power  eyeing the ball&the hurler’s motion, knowing the  fans were also waiting his return from 2 wars.

 

                                                                 IV

A baseball addict from the 1912 pioneering yesterdays at Ebbets Field knew Rancho Mirage was playing out in the reality scenes of Bedford Avenue when the relative Landstown Street behind the green monster  at Fenway..the kids waiting with their baskets to catch home runs...

A pageantry here that belies the history, their former manager Terry Francona getting the largest ovation as he walked in from center field. Big Poppy (David Ortiz) wheeling Bobby Doer (92) and Johnny Pesky (89) in their wheel chairs. 

A double feature....Burt Lancaster’s “Field of Dreams” and Marquez’s “Hundred years of Solitude”. As these dreaming alumni spread eagled from all the exits unto the grass, their profiles flashed on the electronic screen.

The famous immortals the well known the ordinary the lesser known and the obscure.

“I thought he was dead”

                                                                   V

Unnumbered unnamed uniforms, the ownership going to no expense to recreate the 100 years. The logo on caps, every detail from “central casting” The grape juice containers in a toast to these heroes, kids idolizing their own dreams in their idols who made it from their own little league dreams.

“I wanna marry you, Zooey of New Jersey. Franny,” read one sign. The innocence of the miracle playing out brings tears to “Great expectations” as the planet revolves on its moral axis. Here the dreamer and “making it to the Major Leagues” was coalesced in the invisibility of Fenway’s “Field of Dreams”

                                                                  VI

The vicarious experience is multifaceted. Didn’t Dom DiMaggio, Joe D’s kid brother joining Bobby Doer and the “Pesky Pole” shortstop in their eternal quest to the “adieu kid” was coming up for his last ups in the ninth inning. David Halberstam’s “Friends”

 Therefore the myth of the Prometheus and its allegorical place in the psyche may be gut wrenching in adolescence..”Eat wheaties, the breakfast of champions”

The Babe Ruth gloom an doom was finally broken in 2004. The 84 year old drought broken. Fired manager Terry Francona reliving his Verdi Grand Opera. 

Pedro Martinez’s appeared in the historic uniform,. His poise on the mound indispensable in the tech messaging Blackberry aps of today’s digital marketplace..

Christie’s auction of Julius Caesar’s  bust and Picasso’s six and a half million $ abstract..  Nestor and Achilles of the Holy Grail.  Homer’s “Odyssey”

 The Greeks insouciance exploited by Duke Wayne’s Trojan Horse on USC’s campus. Director John Ford casting him, riding shotgun. “Stagecoach”

Ted Williams in his Hamlet like sulking, his brain waves on his goals...”to be the greatest hitter of all time” .  Selfishly or not, wasn’t the game a unifying challenge.

 Get the”w” Tempers flaring, Ty Cobb spikes flashing , the 21^st century Yankees 9 zip in the sixth, 24 hours later. Yogi Berra’s “it ain’t over till it’s over” never discouraged, making one of the greatest comebacks of all time.....15-9.,completing the Hundred Years of the “Field of Dreams”..

                                                                           VII

 To be paid for living your dream  ”Adieu Kid”

 A sidebar as they say in the seats next to the green monster fence.....A grown up John Henry sitting in the owner’s box, outside the Sox Nation’s reality scene of some 37000 fans.

Emotions running high. A new brain trust with Bobby Valentine, the former Met and Japanese master mind, getting booed as he trotted out to the mound, signaling for a reliever from the bullpen.

Shades of the Brooklyn Dodgers own 1912 pyrotechnics. Hugh Casey Fat Freddy

Fitzimmons in the war(WW2) time years at Ebbets.

                                                                      VIII

Caroline Kennedy, JFK’s daughter, and Ted’s niece, threw out one of the first pitches. Neil Diamond not in attendance for his “Sweet Caroline”/

You had the feeling that “Chariot of the fires” was playing out. That the underdog “Nation” had seen “Casablanca” and it was time to move on as they say by the knothole kids, sitting in the bleachers.

  Joe the Pro hawking his American flag pins. The bleacher creatures ,their grape juice gospel toasted to the blue azure skies, wisp of clouds circling.

                                                                        IX

A  pleasure principle, being with old friends, reliving our youth, growing up. Mortality not on the awakening field of Fenway.     Life was still long.

These were mirror of ourselves. Our heroes prancing up and down. Pounding their mitts, breaking bats, spitting tobacco juice, powdering their grip, knocking the dirt out of their spikes.

Steroid enhancing testerone like injections not on the menue. Although the Texas born pitching star Roger Clements, was not present. A no show, obviously.

“Alibi Ike” playing out, Joe E. Brown waving his hands, hitting his chest with those  cues in hit and run dramatics.

                                                                       X

Meanwhile those grown up knothole kids a long way from Chavez Ravine and Bedford Avenue’s simulcast sipped their grape juice. The Mad Russian mudged Ish Kabibbel    . “Bases loaded. Going for the distance. What say Ish?,” scanning his amigo’s scorecard.                       .

Park yer Carcus and Leches Pete speechless  ”Bigger than Jackie Robinson stealing home on a squeeze bunt. The dust from his spikes, drifting up toward the grandstand.”

The four exiles from Brooklyn touched their cups for the toast. A blessing to their stamina and endurance in circumventing their own mortality as “the Field of Dreams was playing out. Their stub clenching yesterdays, long since vanished into those watersheds of adolescence and schoolboy alliances.

                                                                         XI

There were stains of drips on their scorecards. Were they tears? Or grape joice? Either way they were relics of growing up. Carl Furillo, “Cookie” Lavagetto, Pete Reiser smashing into the center field wall, ‘Ducky”Joe Medwick, once of the St. Louis Cards Gas House gang. Leo pouncing from the dugout “Nice guys finish last”

 And the immortals like the Sultan of Swat, the Iron Horse , Joe D. Old Reliable when Mickey Owen booted the dropped third strike in the World Series, Stan the Man, Mickey Mantle Willie Mays  Hank Aaron.

 The Babe on the Ucla campus, walking on Westwood Boulevard. His camel haired coat open as he eyed this  gangling student crossing  Joe E Brown field, the two humans sizing each other up.

One immortal, the other just glad to be alive.

                                                                       XII

“But enough,” said Leches Pete. “There’s no place for sentimentality in our “Field of Dreams”“Right, Park yer Caracas?”

“I agree,” said the grown up kid, beholden to only knuckleball hurlers. “What do you think, Ish?”

“I go with the crowd. I never been a rebel. An original thinker,” said Ish Kabbible. “And you the Mad Russian? What do have to say for yourself?”

“Pray continue, you Gods of baseball. We’re in your debt, forever.”

 
The city that never sleeps, April 22, 2012

"Hold the presses "from Ben Hecht’s Front Page

"Hold the presses "from Ben Hecht’s Front Page, the gift from Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift. Enthusiasms riding high at the Daily Planet’s press room, Clark Kent aka Superman, is a buzz beyond the Pyrenees, the mountain range bordering Spain and France.

II

From tinsel town’s Mark of Zorro (Tyrone Power) and the Cisco Kid (Cesar Romero) tossed their sombreros into the smog laden clouds hanging over the San Diego Santa Monica freeways.
El Cid and Don Quixote heading for their Basque turf in Bakersfield and San Bernardino County, in the New World of Fathers Crespi and Serra in Southern California.
No, it was no gala, merely a pause in the daily routine of planetary vibrations to flavor

those quiet minded Basque twins, Julen and Ander, in their quest. At five years and two months, the boys transcended their Mark of Zorro&Cisco Kid origins, restoring a semblance of quality to an otherwise provincial marketplace and bull ring ambiance. Hillside casas on stilts as in Valencia and Barcelona, in Espana.

III
Their gift of quiet mindedness in a sense betrays the sound and fury of the marketplace both here and in Basque country.
Indeed, didn’t Ava Gardner Geraldine Chaplin and Dali find the solace of quiet mindedness that the Bard would appreciate.
IV
Basil Rathbone’s "Sherlock Holmes" placed his violin down. ""Watson, how can we contain the quiet mindedness of Ander and Julen . To market their gift in our noisy Diaspora where peace of mind is alien to the planet’s twisting brain washing mob spirit.
"The Corsica Twins" playing out , Douglas Fairbanks Jr, grinning "En garde senor,"his sword touching is twin’s saber as they targeted their twin souls.
V
"The lads are the stuff that dreams are made of," Aesop and Grimm, notwithstanding. Hansel et Gretel, Jack and the Beanstalk.
May Ander and Julen’s dreamy life like countenances, embrace the quiet mindedness beyond their years.
From El Cid and Don Quixote to Zorro and the Cisco Kid beyond..
The city that never sleeps, April 16, 2012.

Hear ye hear ye..

Hear ye hear ye.. Count your blessings Attention be given.
II
Hollywood Boulevard’s surreal starred sidewalks, Sid Grauman’s Chinese lobby finger printed into profiles in the "cement mixer cement mixer" posterity, ranking absurdity with those natural wonders that grace our continent.
Grand Canyon Petrified Forest Niagara Falls. Yosemite Redwoods, Hoover Dam Yellowstone.
Old man of the mountain.
To say the Three Stooges are such a phenomena in cinema? Curses says the Major .
Beholden to the Marx brothers(Groucho, Chico, Harpo) across the basin. MGM’s Culver City . Santa Monica Boulevard’s 20^th Century Fox’s Ritz brothers. Walt Disney’s "Fantasia" of Mickey&Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck (Burbank) raging war on pretensions
The rich and famous were but a glitch in social networking amidst unemployment lines and the homeless..
How can you beat the system? Running away to join the circus. Jumping on the next freight box car, going nowhere. Sharing space with hobos as Joel McCrea .. "Sullivan Travels"
III
Bath Beach’s Moe Larry and Shemp Howard mimicked the ordinance forgiving absurdity as they punched their cross country tickets on the Union Pacific to L.A’s terminal annex
Pies in those smog free skies, non existent freeways. Ah to live again, breathing fresh air off the Pacific Ocean and the Venice laden muscle beach.
Meanwhile Columbia Studios, the working man’s labored dream, was gasping, their arrears into a Harry Cohn bipolar bankruptcy, his despair onto Sicilian born Frank Capra of the barrio and Cal Tech, to shore up his flim flam gamble.
Didn’t Max Arno or Sam Briskin, even tend an offer to that Boys #2, tennis steady, from Tilden High and LIU, brother Joel, sorting out fan mail on Gower Gulch’s turf.
V trio were given a tentative 7 year deal in their mad capped adaptation of the Marx Ritz brothers across town.
Auditioned, screen tested by Arno , the unholy
Could their own Beatle (Liverpool) flavor capture the post depression fan base of Capra...."It happened one night""Lost Horizon""Mr. Deeds goes to town" "Meet John Doe""Mr Smith goes to Washington""It’s a wonderful life"

VI
Moe Howard’s children: daughter Joan and son Paul, will make their assessing statement on Charles Osgood’s Sunday morning CBS show April 15 at 10:30.
Their presence lends an authenticity to our own cross country migration to Venice in 1939. Being bitten by the movie theater bug, lighting up Wilshire and Pico Boulevard two&three feature, if you mussed up your hai at the "mo tickee no laundry" cashier..
Our own escape from those grim soup lines across town..
The Three Stooges
"deja vu" ridicule, mirrowing the Keystone Cops Laurel&Hardy W.C. Fields and Charlie Chaplin’s "Modern Times"
"
Holed up in Toluca Lake, Moe’s energetic lunacy on life’s absurdities, belied the Howard’s
own legacy and survival into "the field of dreams".
What it was like to live out those personas, the screaming antics and madcaps, will be given a reality check, come Sunday ten thirty a.m, channel 2's Charles Osgood..
The city that never sleeps, April 11, 2012. surfaced amidst that reality, their butt making but an antidote into the

On interviewing Kirk Douglas

On interviewing Kirk Douglas. the movie star, CBS’s Mike Wallace of "60 minutes" asked in his mea culpa frame of mind "Why are you known as a horse’s ass?"
II
The Brooklyn born actor and college wrestler, the Bryna four floor apartment house two blocks down from the Park Slope Pavilion theater, had its corner stone named for his Russian born mother.
He attended the Academy of theater&film while sweating a role of a Scrraft’s waiter.
The solicitous haunts gave his psyche&upper body confidence to emerge as Stanley Kramer’s "Champion"

II
Michael Douglas,, the volleyball player, who distinguished himself at Oona Chaplin’s t father Eugene’s estate in New London playing "the game". Eugene’s home away from home in the Big Apple, on off Broadway’s stages...."The hairy ape" "The iceman cometh".....

Ill
Aided and abetted by a columnist from Berlin, Germany. A screenwriter turned director, Billy Wilder, who gave him a break as "Ace in the hole".......a scenario breaking a disaster in rthe
mines.
"Spartacus" "20 thousand leagues under the sea by Jules Verne, the mesmerizing "Paths of glory" with Adolph Menjou. MGM’s "The bad and the beautiful" "Gunfight at the OK corral" co starring the trrapeze gymnast Burt Lancaster., and a Ann Southern flick ("Maisie) and one with Raymond Burr ("Perry Mason") and Elizabeth Scott.
V
The studio castre system- theaters distribution contractual role players- was under seige by the Justice department, the scenario smacking of anti trust monopolies
Doulas cast his Bryna lot, above the William Morris flesh peddlers, sharing floor space with a sci-fi scribe who had an office on the floor.
VI.
Meantime a gangster named Mickey Cohen, once the preoprietor of a candy store in Brentwood named Mickey cohen ,was indicted and found guilty of using the maltedmilk licorice stick seltzer water of not playing a sintinlating role behind the fcandy store’s soda fountain.
Locked up, Mike Wallace found his way to his cell. The putting words in Cohen’s mouth, Mike found his acidic touch, squeezing the reality out of Cohen’s sinful misgivings.
Cohen himself out of Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles’s barrio, may have needed an agent as he made his way to Brentwood and the "candy store"
VII
Cavorting as a movie actor, Douglas met Irene Wrightsman, a scion to her father’s Texas oil fortune. Their tennis rapport and chemistry was but an Edgar Alan Poe’s "Raven", where we and
"Mr.Ed" Alan Young’s kibbitzing with a talking horse was wanting.
Playing out his sombrero, Mr. Ed reminised about how we interviewed him for his summer impasse, a replacement for Jack Benny during his summer hiatus. About how Henry Fuchs, Midwood High School’s journalsim advisor and senior English maestro, and Judy Hershcopf, m an Argus feature editor, to go out and profile an engaging young comic from Canada.
Not withstanding a hurricane, Judy and ourselves, subwayed to Jack Benny’s summer replacement.
The young couple served us hot chnocolate and cookies, telling us the break he hoped the radio show could offer more lucrative scenarios as television was taking roots at Hollywood&Vine..
"It sure was a wet night," he scribbled on his glossy, the weight of the furies smashing against the Park Avenue windows., "Mr. Ed" and his first wife, showing us to the elevator.
Judy and ourselves dodging fallen trees and branches as we entrained back to Flabush and the Argus offices of Bedford Avenue’s Midwood High School the following morning..
VIII
Meanwhile Jack Benny playing out his parsimonious role, placed an on line ad in the Hollywood Reporter beseeching the readers for a chauffeur and multidimensional funny man named Rochester..
Driving him and Mary Livingstone to their North Rodeo Drive rounds and and the William Morris Agency. south of Wilshire.
IX
We will miss Mike Wallace’s cantankerous invasion pf the Mickey Cohen’s he interrogated behind bars that startling Sunday on ABC’s Mike Wallace ‘s "60 minute" audition.
He metmorphosed with Don Hewitt , Mike’s sighting at the U.S. Open, the television catching his dapper well groomed persona, his shades concealing and protecting those eyes as he followed the tennmis balls at the Artur Asche stadium at Flushing Meadows.
His black hair combed back with a respected 60 minute I.Q.. It had a CBS Ed Murrow Walter Cronkite touch.
X
Mike Wallace and ourselves exchanged two interpretations about General Westmoreland’s self serving "take" on intensifying the South Vietnamese invasion of South East Asia.
Wallace and 60 minutes chilled Westmoreland’s argument before a Joint Congressional hearing was self serving, Robert McNamara and LBJ believing the Sluth Vietnamese invasion was clearly justified.
In the meantime we passed Senator Kennedy on his way to hear the General, while we were on our way tro Senator Pastore’s sub committee on commerce, Senator Moss hearing the words and passion (Senator Pastore excusing himself to hear the General,) for Congress passing the Public Television Act of 1967.******
Mike Wallace passing yesterday at 93.The city that never sleeps, April 8, 2012

Whether you’re a basketball junky or not

Whether you’re a basketball junky or not, the optimism streaming from Bill Self, the coach of the Jay Hawks from Lawrence, Kansas, ( Kansas University), lifts his team and players to the heights of comeback "w"’s.

II


Adolph Rupp of Kentucky (tonight’s championship rival) John Wooden of UCLA Coach K of Duke, Bobby Knight of Army Indiana Texas Tech’ and Eddie Sutton of Oklahoma State. Coach Self playing out his role as an assistant to the jacked "original" Okie State coach a quarter of a century ago.

III

Everybody finds their own level Hopefully later than earlier after stirring challenges to the surrogate father’s persona and role, his athletes attaching themselves to his direction and command.
The beauty of these physically gifted young men out of high school finding themselves by identifying with coach Wooden for the sake of the guest, is that their attachment to their coast to
coast gig transcends the game and has mystical proportions.
Attachment to the surrogate’s system masks the proclivities, bettering human beings in their
in the longing to dominate and conquer.
To those Hubie Brown diagnosticians who see the Bill Self system playing out before that global audience reiterate the word "selflessness" articulating the quest. "Going coast to coast, spacing the pumpkin and finding the open man... their other Self in disguise.
That a human doesn’t have to prove him self by challenging the status quo. The proof lies in the pudding to drop a cliche. It lies in the collective will of losing oneself to find yourself, in a the hour glass "of running a coast to coast" metamorphosis.
Sharing the pumpkin, the high fives, touching skin on a partner’s nifty move, double pump or a fake or fade away ‘j’. An instinctive give and go, a breathless three pointer from down town,the shot clock and game clock ticking down.

IV

Didn’t the studio cast always say in retrospect after they finished toiling in a Burt Lancaster scenario that the former trapeze artist and circus performer "Burt always tried to make us ".

better

So in the sound and fury challenging our drive and passion, spreading the floor, those Eddie Suttons and John Woodens are able to weave a design, a magic carpet in their dress rehearsals the youngsters buy into.

                                                                                          

Losing themselves to find themselves

V

A case in point is the Jeremy "Linsanity" playing out among the pros in the NBA. His constantly in motion, after two franchises let him go. Whether the thinking was disenchantment or lack of chemistry, the point is he impressed the Knicks, spinning his fire works.
His flair restored Madison Square Garden to its glory days three decades earlier. The coach resigned, the new role playing coach concentrated on defense and the team’s collective will.
Then Jeremy crashed, his knee buckling. He could no longer cut to the boards. Thru the paint and his fluidity was not what it was when he was feeling it.
His fate interwoven with those of his other selves

VI

At 23 years of age, may the fans come to grips with his surgery, and what the basketball Gods are playing out.
In our time of insanity, our Uncle Max incapacitated behind the asylum bars of the Islip ward The witch doctor thumbing thru his dossier.
"All your Uncle Max needed was emotional support."

VII

Life on the planet is precarious to say the least, yet it still is precious. Heroics playing out our
own wish fulfillment..
A Brooklyn Flatlands Hall of Famer, Chris Mullin , a pure shooting lefty, found himself within the NBA’s Golden State, Indiana "fives", transcending his beer drinking addiction.
His St. Johns roots restoring his soul to the mirror of his self.
Soul searching into his cosmos was supportive of coach Self’s optimism. A guru giving his
insights post St. Johns, was humbling and optimistic in playing out his "coast to coast" passion and love of the game.
The city that never sleeps, April 2, 2012..

Mark Twain

Mark Twain, that river boat captain and printer extra ordinaire, once wrote “ Early reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated”


II

A spoof indeed but one yours truly committed some 24 hours ago on hearing Don Barksdale, the 6"6" center for the post WW2 Ucla Bruins had been selected for the 2012 Hall of Fame at Springfield, Massachusetts come September.

Such a mental lapse is unforgiven, whether on or off line in our age of the information highway, digesting and coughing up data at an Einsteinian epoch managing clip.

If ever our stallion of a weary civilization could be brought back to its stable, the moment is now.
Pressured web sites. com notwithstanding.

III

In this instance of an on line wrath gone ballistic .......how many of us are touched by immortality in our lives. For sure greatness can become mesmerizing tossing off “search engines” of vicarious hero worshiping in our isolation booths of abandonment and loneliness.

Don Barksdale’s recognition half a century plus later, renews all of the undergraduates who at that time may have been unaware of being touched by his modest greatness. On&off the pines.

Dave Minor, a post WW2 basketball “great” in his own right, played for Toledo in the Garden’s NIT, with a cast on his busted left or right arm ..

Subsequently, encountering him on Ucla’s Kherckoff Hall steps, he was aghast we remembered cast and all . He introduced Don Barksdale, the center on coach Wilbur Johns’ post WW2 quintet.


Even with our astigmatism, relatively speaking, we were touched by greatness.

Our 17 year old blue eyes realized Barksdale was a Picasso in motion. He had a quiet stancce

about his persona, and although Dave Minor was more gregarious, playing out his needs on an

d off campus, the older WW2 vet, was less extraverted, masking his aggressiveness and search for realization among the luminary pics like Jackie Robinson, Ralph Bunche, Woody Strode, Kenny Washington, and Tom Bradley that graced Kherckoff’s second floor walls.

IV

Whether our exculpatory confession in any way mitigates our denial of Barkdale’s
immortality that moment on Kherckoff’s steps, we were touched by his “greatness”.
under fire”

Playing out own role on the Daily Bruin as a sports reporter, supported by Bill Ackerman, the graduate manager and tennis coach, and the director of publications, Harry Morris, of Riverside, little did we know how Barksdale towered over Ucla’s Pac 8 rivals.

Sam Balder, the radio “voice”in those prehistoric eras: the men’s gym, vet housing and no medical or law school or for that matter no Pauley Pavilion or John Wooden.

V

What did we know of George Mikan of DePaul? Or Bob Kurland of the Oklahoma Phillip Oilers at 7 feet. Sure there was no Harvard Alumni Gazette or Brooklyn public library telephone “ask the librarian”; your stream of stats coming from the Hollywood Citizen News or radio stations. KMPC or Warner Brothers Hollywood Boulevard microphones. Needless to say the aura of Barksdale became contagious, the ‘48 Olympic team with Adolph Rupp, as an assistant coach, went a mile as they say, for the six foot six Oakland native from Berkley High where he never played hoops.


VI


But for us to enhance his gold, Rupp beating the drums for his Marc Antony in shorts and sneakers, pre Michael Jordan Nike’s..

Drafted by the Baltimore Bullets before Wes Unseld and Earl “the Pearl” Monroe and the Lakers managing director, Barksdale was drafted by Red Auerbach of the Celttcs, until he was injured, his NBA career.... to a screeching halt.

He played AAU ball, returning to his roots in Oakland, playing out his “game” in music and owning several night spots. Starting up a Foundation for supporting high school kids searching for a way out of the inner city and ghetto environs.

VII


The basketball Gods a half century plus later, have seen to it that justice prevailed and that the scholar athlete we met thru Dave Minor at Ucla, the image and his larger than life soul morphing as 14 carat gold into posterity.

It gives his legacy a credibility he could not address during his lifetime.

VIII

A renaissance man‘s fate on basketball’s magic carpet gets his due, by the Hall of Fame’s moral authority a half a century plus later.


It redeems our own imaginary flair of hero worship&wish fulfillment way back in the schoolyards and hard tops of Wingate Field, our feinting and faking out defenders as we were imitating Bob Ripley’s “Believe it or not” larger than life Don Barksdales who share our dreams in guest for our own Golden Fleece.


IX

Posthumous recognition may come late at 89. But his genes and DNA, his lifeline lives on .His
two sons and his sister.

Didn’t Jackie Robinson who shared his South Western music store space in Los Angeles. An explosive chemistry bursts on the scene again.. Both their dreams given its acclaim. Hand eye coronation in Robinson “setting the tone” in his impact Hitting, running the bases,

Barksdale running the floor, crashing the boards, doubled up by “bigs”, *finding the open
man* in basketball’s Hall of Fame.

X

Needless to say those skin pigment editorialized in the Daily Bruin of yesteryear, have finally come home to rest. Again it was Kherckoff Hall where skin color offended some humans.

Bias and prejudice were used to discredit the merits of another’s odyssey and journey from cradle to the Hall of Fame.


Brainwashing hate envy and jealousy into the psyche of Don Barksdale’s opponents on and off the court for over half a century plus.

XI

Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation rings true at Springfield, Massachusetts in September.


******

Don Batrksdale teammates: Ucla 1945 46:. Chuck Clustka, the Stanich brothers, Davage

“Dave” Minor, Bill Rankin, Bill Lee,Alan Sawyer, Eddie Sheldrake, Ray Alba, George Englund and Kenny Saltzman coming off the bench...

W J, Wilbur Johns, coach and athletic director, pre J W, John Wooden’s arrival..


The city that never sleeps, April 4, 2012