August 12, 2006--Saturday Story: "The Boys of Harlem"--Part One
Donny Friedlander, who was our best foul shooter, was on the line. Typically, he sank eight out of every ten attempts. Not bad for a skinny sixteen year-old from Brooklyn.
He was also well known for his preparation routine before shooting—three dribbles on his left side, three on his right, a semi- deep-knee bend, followed by a quick two-handed shot. And then swish, invariably 80 percent of the time. One point for the Rugby Rockets of the Brooklyn Boys Club!
This time, however, he dribbled just twice on his left, once on his right, and forgot the deep-knee bend entirely. We knew something was wrong; and this was confirmed when he shot, missing both the rim and backboard.
The ball was immediately rebounded by our opponents’ center, who passed it like a spear the full length of the floor, where it settled into the hands of their darting point guard who, in a single graceful motion, caught it and slammed it home, just beating the buzzer that signaled the end of the first half.
The crowd went wild and the score board flashed—
Visitors (us) 6; Harlem Boys Club 22.
Demoralized, we gathered our sweat-soaked towels and slunk back to the locker room where our coach, Mr. Ludwig, spent the next fifteen minutes berating us.
“That was pathetic,” he spat, glaring at Donny who sat slumped on the bench in front of the pockmarked steel locker, “You throw up an air ball to end the half and they convert it into two points. A three-point swing. This is the way you compete for the New York City Boys Club Championship?”
He now included all of us in his contempt. “How many times do I need to remind you about how to face challenges? Do I need to tell you again about D Day, June sixth, nineteen hundred and forty-four?”
If any of us had had the energy we would have groaned, having heard about the First Wave from him at least a hundred times. “Well, those of us assigned to the First Wave,” I looked over toward Heshy Perlmutter, hoping to catch his eye so we could together distract ourselves by mouthing the words to this all too familiar story, “we huddled in our LCTs, our amphibious landing craft you remember, waiting for the ramp to drop and the whistle to blow indicating it was time to hit the beaches.” He paused to allow the full effect to descend upon us. No one moved or looked at him. We were all lost in our exhaustion, and fear. Not of him but of our opponents and even more of the neighborhood, Harlem, where we found ourselves. Most of us had never ventured so far from Brooklyn. Much less here.
“The Jerrys were waiting for us; but when that ramp dropped,” for emphasis he slammed his hand against a locker door and even the Harlem Boys Club team members, who were clustered at their end of the locker room exchanging high fives in celebration of their success, jumped as if shot.
“When that ramp dropped, even though we were staring right down the muzzles of the Krauts’ guns, we hit the beaches. You remember the pictures I showed you? From the news reels?” Charlie Aaronstein rolled his eye up in his head but nodded back at Mr. Ludwig so the rest of us could ignore him while sucking air back into our lungs. The second half would be starting in a few minutes. All we wanted to do was get it over with and escape with our lives.
“That longest day was a living hell,” he had lowered his voice as he always did out of respect for the lost and wounded. “But did that stop us?” He had resumed his stentorious narrative, “Did we curl up in a ball and cry for our mommies? Did we quit?” By not so subtle implication it was obvious that as he reached his peroration of rhetorical questions the comparisons he would be drawing between his courageous band of brothers and our team of wimps would be starkly clear. He pointed at me now, I was the team’s undeserving captain—it was simply that I was his favorite because he and my mother were friends—“I ask you what would have happened if we had given up?”
Without waiting for an answer, he played his trump card, “Well, all of you would be speaking German or maybe already have been made into bars of soap or lampshades.” He snorted and let the nightmare of that possibility sink in.
Though the thought of serving as some Nazi’s night light was no longer as frightening as it had been the first dozen times he had forced us to imagine the fate we had escaped, it did seem to again agitate Stewie Hirsch enough so that he threw up all over his sneakers.
Mr. Ludwig nodded knowingly in his direction and said, “Exactly. Just as I was saying.” No one had the energy or motivation to ask him what he meant by that non sequitur; but he must have thought Stewie helped drive home his point since he smiled empathetically at him while the rest of us struggled to stifle our own rising nausea as the mess and smell oozed their way into that over-heated space.
“So, men, again we find ourselves at war. Far from home,” his majestic gesture took in all of the battered locker room. “But we are not alone. We have each other.” He tried to force each of us to look him in the eye. “That’s the definition of a team. We are like a hand,” from this familiar simile we knew he was near the end of his inspirational rant, “Look at my hand.” He held his hand before us with the fingers spread widely apart. We knew he would not continue unless we looked up at his starfish-contorted hand. So we did. “Note how without the thumb,” he flexed it back and forth on its hinge while holding Donny in his gaze, “it is no longer a hand. Just four fingers.” Donny was always the thumb. “And of course the smallest of fingers, the pinky,” he wiggled it, looking at Stewie, of course our pinky, “without it there also would be no hand.” He added, “No team” in case we were missing his analogy.
He smiled again, but this time with a sense of self-satisfaction. He felt that when the ramp, so to speak, was dropped to signal the beginning of the second half and the referee’s whistle blew, we would hit the hard-court beaches and no matter the incoming we would prevail.
His team of Jewboys was not about to be made into deodorant soap for the Boys of Harlem! Or so he imagined.
To be continued . . .
He was also well known for his preparation routine before shooting—three dribbles on his left side, three on his right, a semi- deep-knee bend, followed by a quick two-handed shot. And then swish, invariably 80 percent of the time. One point for the Rugby Rockets of the Brooklyn Boys Club!
This time, however, he dribbled just twice on his left, once on his right, and forgot the deep-knee bend entirely. We knew something was wrong; and this was confirmed when he shot, missing both the rim and backboard.
The ball was immediately rebounded by our opponents’ center, who passed it like a spear the full length of the floor, where it settled into the hands of their darting point guard who, in a single graceful motion, caught it and slammed it home, just beating the buzzer that signaled the end of the first half.
The crowd went wild and the score board flashed—
Visitors (us) 6; Harlem Boys Club 22.
Demoralized, we gathered our sweat-soaked towels and slunk back to the locker room where our coach, Mr. Ludwig, spent the next fifteen minutes berating us.
“That was pathetic,” he spat, glaring at Donny who sat slumped on the bench in front of the pockmarked steel locker, “You throw up an air ball to end the half and they convert it into two points. A three-point swing. This is the way you compete for the New York City Boys Club Championship?”
He now included all of us in his contempt. “How many times do I need to remind you about how to face challenges? Do I need to tell you again about D Day, June sixth, nineteen hundred and forty-four?”
If any of us had had the energy we would have groaned, having heard about the First Wave from him at least a hundred times. “Well, those of us assigned to the First Wave,” I looked over toward Heshy Perlmutter, hoping to catch his eye so we could together distract ourselves by mouthing the words to this all too familiar story, “we huddled in our LCTs, our amphibious landing craft you remember, waiting for the ramp to drop and the whistle to blow indicating it was time to hit the beaches.” He paused to allow the full effect to descend upon us. No one moved or looked at him. We were all lost in our exhaustion, and fear. Not of him but of our opponents and even more of the neighborhood, Harlem, where we found ourselves. Most of us had never ventured so far from Brooklyn. Much less here.
“The Jerrys were waiting for us; but when that ramp dropped,” for emphasis he slammed his hand against a locker door and even the Harlem Boys Club team members, who were clustered at their end of the locker room exchanging high fives in celebration of their success, jumped as if shot.
“When that ramp dropped, even though we were staring right down the muzzles of the Krauts’ guns, we hit the beaches. You remember the pictures I showed you? From the news reels?” Charlie Aaronstein rolled his eye up in his head but nodded back at Mr. Ludwig so the rest of us could ignore him while sucking air back into our lungs. The second half would be starting in a few minutes. All we wanted to do was get it over with and escape with our lives.
“That longest day was a living hell,” he had lowered his voice as he always did out of respect for the lost and wounded. “But did that stop us?” He had resumed his stentorious narrative, “Did we curl up in a ball and cry for our mommies? Did we quit?” By not so subtle implication it was obvious that as he reached his peroration of rhetorical questions the comparisons he would be drawing between his courageous band of brothers and our team of wimps would be starkly clear. He pointed at me now, I was the team’s undeserving captain—it was simply that I was his favorite because he and my mother were friends—“I ask you what would have happened if we had given up?”
Without waiting for an answer, he played his trump card, “Well, all of you would be speaking German or maybe already have been made into bars of soap or lampshades.” He snorted and let the nightmare of that possibility sink in.
Though the thought of serving as some Nazi’s night light was no longer as frightening as it had been the first dozen times he had forced us to imagine the fate we had escaped, it did seem to again agitate Stewie Hirsch enough so that he threw up all over his sneakers.
Mr. Ludwig nodded knowingly in his direction and said, “Exactly. Just as I was saying.” No one had the energy or motivation to ask him what he meant by that non sequitur; but he must have thought Stewie helped drive home his point since he smiled empathetically at him while the rest of us struggled to stifle our own rising nausea as the mess and smell oozed their way into that over-heated space.
“So, men, again we find ourselves at war. Far from home,” his majestic gesture took in all of the battered locker room. “But we are not alone. We have each other.” He tried to force each of us to look him in the eye. “That’s the definition of a team. We are like a hand,” from this familiar simile we knew he was near the end of his inspirational rant, “Look at my hand.” He held his hand before us with the fingers spread widely apart. We knew he would not continue unless we looked up at his starfish-contorted hand. So we did. “Note how without the thumb,” he flexed it back and forth on its hinge while holding Donny in his gaze, “it is no longer a hand. Just four fingers.” Donny was always the thumb. “And of course the smallest of fingers, the pinky,” he wiggled it, looking at Stewie, of course our pinky, “without it there also would be no hand.” He added, “No team” in case we were missing his analogy.
He smiled again, but this time with a sense of self-satisfaction. He felt that when the ramp, so to speak, was dropped to signal the beginning of the second half and the referee’s whistle blew, we would hit the hard-court beaches and no matter the incoming we would prevail.
His team of Jewboys was not about to be made into deodorant soap for the Boys of Harlem! Or so he imagined.
To be continued . . .
posted by Steven Zwerling at
6:51 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home