A PERSONAL NEW MEXICO HISTORY
PAGE FIVE
ENTRY: Basketball Season...........early 1953
The game is about to start. It's cold outside. It felt good to come into the nice, warm gymnasium. I've taken my coat off and I'm using it for a cushion to sit on at my "desk." Just like at the football games, I'm turned around backwards in the bleachers, with my tablet and pencil all ready to write and draw. Basketball games are just like football games, only indoors. Both teams are still trying to get the ball past the other team and down to "their" end of the field or "court." The biggest difference between football and basketball games is that basketball games are noisier! Much Noisier!
At a basketball game, there's no place for the noise to go. It bounces around and echos back from everywhere: from the hardwood floor, the brick walls, the glass windows, and the high ceiling. Sometimes I put wadded-up Kleenex in my ears. (In 1998 I will still be putting Kleenex in my ears at a showing of the movie Titanic in a theater with digital sound---and I can still hear all the whispered parts. I don't know why everything has to be so loud. Is everyone deaf but me? It used to be that old folks like me were deaf---now it's the young folks---strange.)
But back to 1953 and the ballgame. The basketball coach has the same first name as my brother---"Buddy" Hendrickson. He's a tall man with dark curly hair. I spend a lot of time at his house playing with his kids---Linda and Mike. I know some of the ballplayers on my brother's team. There's Gilder Clary---his folks live on a ranch out in the country and own the feed store in town. Have you ever been to the feed store? It smells really good----strange, but good. There's L.B. Davis---his mom, Emma, owns the Midget Cafe, with the ice-house out back. . Sometimes I get to stop there with my dad and he buys a big block of ice to put in his water can on the side of his pickup.
Curtis Thompson's mom owns Gladys'
Beauty Shop. My mom goes there to get her hair done, and she always takes
me along. Most of the women in town get their hair done at Gladys'.
You should see them---I mean, when they're getting their hair washed, rolled,
and set. You wouldn't believe your eyes. Some of the prettiest women in
Jal turn into old hags (like the witch in Snow White) when their
hair is in rollers. They look awfully silly sitting there with matchboxes
over their ears under those big hair dryers. It's amazing! (What's even
more amazing is that ten years from now, when I'm in high school, it will
become "the style" to parade around with your hair in rollers---at
school, the grocery store, all over town. Everywhere except on "the
big date"---as if we guys are suddenly supposed to forget how she
looked all day long, simply because she now looks so gorgeous on "the
date." What are we, stupid? But I keep getting ahead of myself. Back
to the ball game.)
Know what I like best about
basketball games? You guessed it---the cheerleaders. "Course, there
are cheerleaders at the football games, too---the same cheerleaders, as
a matter of fact. But at football games, they're sometimes pretty far away.
At basketball games, the cheerleaders are right in front of you, and they
really put on a show. It's better than television.
(We don't have television yet, but I know it's better.)
I turn around to watch all their yells. The head cheerleader is Norma Jean
Hurta. She's a real good friend of mine. My mom and her mom do everything
together, so I get to see Norma Jean a lot. I'm not sure why she's called
the head cheerleader. I used to think that maybe it meant she was the loudest;
but the loudest is definitely Patsy Whiteley. Maybe it's "cause she's
the prettiest. Well, I think she's the prettiest. The other girls are pretty,
too--Patsy, Shirley Young, and Betty Lou Hampton.
But Norma Jean's special to me.
What the hell was that noise?
Oh, the clock. Jeeze, as if there isn't enough noise in this place, the
big clock on the scoreboard makes an awful sound---kinda like a sick train.
Sometimes it takes me by surprise and scares me. But I guess if it weren't
that loud, no one would be able to hear it over the rest of the noise.
Damn! I just dropped my tablet under the bleachers. We're on the tenth
row and I can see it down there on the floor. Wonder if mom will let me
go get it. She does. "Course, I know that she meant I was suppose
to walk down the steps to floor level, go around to the end of the bleachers
and then walk underneath them to where my tablet is. But since she's busy
watching the game, I decide to see if I can get away with climbing down
from where I am----straight down to where my tablet is.
Guess what? I got away with
it. That was definitely the most fun I've had all night. Being under the
bleachers is really neat. Everything looks so different from down here,
like being in another world. From here the planks of the bleachers look
so small and narrow ; and in contrast to the small, narrow planks---everyone's
butts look so big and wide. It really is a different world down here----big
butt world. This is fun.
And climbing back up to my seat is even more fun.
(Well, as you probably have guessed by now, in the future, I would "accidently"
drop my tablet many, many, many times. Mom eventually caught on and would
threaten to make me leave my tablet consigned to the oblivion of big butt
world, but she never did. You see, there was always a "special"
picture in my tablet I just had to show her,
if only she'd let me go get it : a picture
of her, a picture of my dog, a picture of the basketball game. )
And that "special"
picture was always one that I whipped out
as fast as I could , while down under the bleachers.
(Copyright 1998, by Jalfalfa)