McCone Meanderings

"We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory."

(Louise Gluck, Pulitzer Prize Poet)

I hadn't watched a National Basketball Association game on TV beginning to end for years and then a few years ago I stopped watching altogether. But just the other day while channel surfing on my way to an old SEINFELD episode or maybe it was the Munich tennis tourney on Golf Channel, I saw the Celtics playing somebody. Which—as everything seems to in these elderly days of mine—reminded me of somethings: how important basketball was to me growing up in Circle; how important it is for young people to find activities they're good at and enjoy; and how crucial it is that they be encouraged in their meandering searches for them.

Back in the 90's, I worked as Havre's high school principal. One of our teachers had a relative in Circle. I can't remember my colleague's name, but I do remember her telling me once that she had a round town relative and that that person, an older woman, I think, knew me: "Oh, yes, he was that kid always shooting around on the basketball court out behind the Masonic Temple." I was "that kid" all right.

It's not too much to say I loved basketball as a boy—playing it, watching it, reading about it, memorizing basketball statistics, daydreaming about it in class. My earliest and fondest memories include watching my sister Marcy's dad, Fred Boyum, and a bunch of other locals play—with some success!—the Harlem Globetrotters ("B-Squad" version) in the old Baldwin Building gym. (Charlie Moline told me once he'd heard Fred was real good in high school.)

And, of course, memories of the Wildcats competing there against league rivals—the Wolves always their fiercest opponent. (Did giant Wolves' center Earl Babcock play in those days?) I can picture like it was yesterday one of the Merry brothers jump shooting. "00" was his number. He kicked both heels up towards his rear when shooting. Gave the shot extra oomph, I figured. Early 50's events, these.

That big, round, red and black clock up there on the left, guarded by a substantial wire screen. There was a kind of three-sided alcove, I guess you'd call it, where you could stand right below the clock, observing—hearing!—time expire. Someone at the scorer's table had to blow the horn at exactly the right moment when the second hand showed no time left, quarter or half concluded. Room for controversy there. And the steepness of those wooden bleachers, their benches' edges worn over time to slippery rounded bevels. School officials should've posted warning signs indicating the grade down those bleachers! Those earliest memories of mine include a scary and exhilarating recurring dream—a fall from the topmost row turning into flight!

My mother taught the seventh and eighth grades. She had keys to Baldwin, keys that'd get you into the gym. Starting in my eighth-grade year, I think it was, she'd let me have them Sundays, so long as I didn't turn on the gym lights. I remember shooting around there both when the bleachers were still intact and when they'd been torn out, making room for classrooms, which were behind a big white wall constructed from floor to ceiling at the court's edge.

In any event, man did I love running around on that old creaky rectangle shooting hoops: Can't quit till ya make 10 straight at each mark around the key! 5,4,3,2,1, he shoots, he scores, the crowd goes wild! Sometimes the worn Spalding'd bounce up onto the stage, and you'd have to vault up there and retrieve it from among stuff saved from some play or the prom or maybe some stuff the Scouts had been working on. You had to be careful of the radiators on the side towards the Catholic Church.

Every kid needs a "niche," something he or she's kind of good at and really takes to—something that likes him or her back. I wasn't great in school (now there's a niche many of the girls in my class found early on—Suzanne Brown, Gayle Rolandson jump to mind), was a real sub-par sousaphone player in Mr. Tehrhar's band (though I enjoyed sitting up there in the back row alongside sousaphone virtuoso Gordie Garpestad), but I had found my niche in basketball.

I figure one of the Lutheran faithful must have spotted me unlocking the gym door and alerted the Superintendent. My mother told me "Red" (Mr. Schnebly) had in no uncertain terms advised the faculty against loaning keys to "unauthorized individuals." She was by no means a shrinking violet around the school administrators of her day (e.g., Mr. Drewiski, Mr. Bell, said "Red"); but she chose to be pragmatic in this instance. I couldn't have the keys anymore. That'd have been my freshman year, '59-'60.

I first saw an NBA game on TV at my great friend Larry Olson's house (Mr. Olson—Olaf?—also got a copy of the SUNDAY NEW YORK TIMES, which was chock full of info about college and professional basketball and Broadway plays and….). The action of those games and the skills of the players thrilled me. We didn't get a television set until my sophomore year. (Cousin Cec' Goodale, acting as unpaid broker, secured a used one for us for twenty-five bucks when Jimmy George decided to update his Brockway bar's media.) Peggy Dykman, a friend and colleague of my mother's, said she wouldn't mind if I watched the Sunday morning NBA contests at her place. I watched a lot of games at Peggy's and Doc's and Sedley Sue's place. I don't think Peggy (may that dear woman rest in peace) would mind my saying she let me borrow her school keys now and again.

In another of those vivid memories we're sometimes blessed with, I can see Cec' Goodale and Gordie Garpestad and their Highway Department truck and a big bunch of shirt-sleeved local men (lots of VFW fellas, seems to me) erecting those hoops, spreading the court's asphalt "out behind" the Masonic building and across from the new P.O. (10 feet high, the hoops, no concessions to little kids. Learn the game "from the ground up," was the ethos of those 1950's Montanans!)

So many "at-one-time" and "all-the-time" McConians to thank for helping me find my niche as a kid back in the day—B-Squad game refs Messrs. Pawloski and Schuld; Coaches Mr. Gallahan, Dick Corrall, Gary Rafter, Gene Espeland. So many good folks to congratulate for their support of McConian youth—moms and dads; current coaches, teachers, and administrators; 4-H and all other youth organization leaders and volunteers; the McCone community at large; BANNER subscribers and advertisers and publisher/editor Marcie for their support of the coverage of young people's activities and accomplishments. "Way to go!"