by Steve Rushin
The consolation game the next night provides no consolation, beyond twenty-four more hours in the hotel and thirty-two more minutes of basketball against the hometown team, Saint Paul Central. It’s almost a relief when we lose on a shot heaved from nearly half-court at the buzzer. As the horn sounds and the shot rips through the net, I retrieve the ball and spike it so hard into the court that it rebounds up toward the rafters.
I will never play another competitive basketball game, one with a scoreboard and a clock operator and referees in striped shirts and coaches and 13,997 spectators who hired babysitters and paid to get in and parked in a downtown parking garage. For ten years I’ve been handed a uniform and bought new shoes and molded a mouth guard marinated in boiling water, sucking the air out of the rubber to form-fit it to my teeth. Permission slips, participation fees, tryouts. Hockey sticks curved over the red coils of the stovetop. Like monks illuminating manuscripts, Mike and Ope and I illustrated our rubber basketballs with ballpoint ink. At the center of every one of these rituals was a contest of some kind—a game. And there would always be another game. Games were inexhaustible. We were too. But in this instant my athletic career is over.
As on a game show, it ends with a buzzer. Never again will I be part of a real team competing in a real league covered by real television channels and newspapers. That part of my life lasted three days. I’ve never been better at basketball and will never again play it competitively. I’m seventeen and a door has closed behind me with a thud and a click.
Emerging from the Civic Center locker room, hair wet from the shower, I’m greeted by Mom and Dad and Amy and John, but also by Jim, who had flown up for the weekend from Chicago. In years past, Jim would have consoled me with something like “Nice game—you want a medal or a chest to pin it on?” But tonight Jim greets me with a smile. He has seen something he admired, and these are the first words out of his mouth: “Nice spike.”
We return to school as if it never happened. Orwell’s Winston Smith makes his first diary entry on April 4, 1984. The Twins have lost their opener to the Tigers at the Metrodome, a predictable result, yet not one foretold by Orwell. I have an application in to work a concession stand at the Dome. I’m seventeen, and have to be nineteen to sell beer there, so Dad takes my birth certificate to Mickey Mining, makes a copy, whites out the last number in my birth year, rolls the Xerox into his secretary’s glorious IBM Selectric II, changes 1966 to 1964, rips the paper out of the typewriter with a flourish, and—voilà—I am now nineteen, old enough to sell Grain Belt.
At least I’ll have a job this summer. I’ll have graduated by then. Sometimes I allow myself to think about the consolations of leaving home, though most of these balms are an end rather than a beginning—not mowing grass, not pulling weeds, not shucking corn, not working jobs that require smocks and visors for net wages FICA’d into fractions of an infinitesimal gross. And then I realize I will still be doing all of these things over the next four summers.
Hall & Oates have a new song called “Adult Education,” and while I don’t care for it, there’s a line I can’t get out of my head: “Believe it or not, there’s life after high school.”
I have preemptive homesickness, having not yet left home. I want to—in the words of John Cougar Mellencamp—hold on to sixteen as long as I can. Even though I’m already seventeen and am really holding on to age ten.
As one of my final acts in the school year, I finish Orwell’s 1984. On the penultimate page, before Winston Smith abandons his humanity and embraces Big Brother, he allows himself one last look back. “Uncalled, a memory floated into his mind.” Winston is in his bedroom, “a boy of nine or ten, sitting on the floor, shaking a dice-box, and laughing excitedly.”
He might as well be playing Strat-O-Matic.
6.
One More Summer
We all look the same in our caps and gowns. But as members of the Class of ’84 are called to the stage in alphabetical order, and I wait one more time for the Rs—flanked by Rud and Rynchek in the countless roll calls of student life—I find myself at eye level with the shoes of those As and Bs and Cs matriculating before me: the wafflestompers and Weejuns, the high heels and Hush Puppies, the high-tops and flip-flops. And I know who they all are, from the ankle down.
I’m on the floor at Met Center. Ordinarily, Willi Plett of the North Stars and Knuckles Nilan of the Canadiens would be exchanging haymakers on this very spot. Next week, Blue Öyster Cult will be playing “Don’t Fear the Reaper” here, and the week after that, Rush will play “Subdivisions.” I have grown up in a subdivision—South Brook—whose poet laureate is Geddy Lee and have absorbed half the Rush discography through open windows. “In the high school halls, in the shopping malls…In the basement bars, in the backs of cars.”
It’s strange to be in this arena without hockey or heavy metal playing. They have the same hair, the North Stars and rock stars. I should be up in the seats, selling popcorn. Instead, I’m on a folding chair, the ambient hum of “Pomp and Circumstance” playing. We’re not yet through the Es. Hell, we’re not yet through the Ericksons. “Jennifer Erickson…Lars Erickson…Margaret Erickson…Teresa Erickson…” I don’t recognize my friends until they’re on the stage, summoned there by formal, unfamiliar names. “Daniel Keane.” Hey, that’s Gator.
There’s at least one student I don’t recognize by name or face. He’s known to me as Ferret and I’ve only seen him in costume, as the Kennedy Eagle mascot, flapping his wings at basketball and football games. Ferret smokes. Oly claims Ferret smokes inside the Eagle head, and that if I look closely, I might see smoke curling from the beak. In the last few months of school, with seniors walking across the street to Burger King at lunchtime and never returning to class, Ferret’s been hosting a matinee poker game at his house. Even his dad, who sometimes participates in the games, calls him Ferret. But what his real name is, or what he looks like, or if he’s already been summoned to the stage, I don’t know. He’s just an Eagle named Ferret.
They move their tassels from one side of the mortarboard to the other. Some collect their diplomas and shout that they’re free. Individual families up in the hockey seats squeal when their common surname is called. Some of these kids are done with school, some are attending the U, others are off to Normandale Community College in Bloomington, what Jim and his buddies always called Harvard on the Hill. It’s June 6, 1984, the fortieth anniversary of D-Day.
I collect my diploma. A gold plastic “84” is tied to my tassel. “Here we come,” I tell Mom later, “storming the beaches of Normandale.”
Forty percent of my classmates told the yearbook staff that they’re going to a four-year college, eighteen percent to Normandale, eighteen percent to vocational schools, ten percent into the military, and the remaining fourteen percent are unsure what they’re going to do with their lives but have all summer to think about it.
In the yearbook—Prime Times—staff members predict their future vocations and avocations. Almost every prediction is a (successful) effort to sneak a sex reference past the faculty advisor. One will have “a sex-change operation to experience the other side of whoopie.” Another will become a madam on Hennepin Avenue (what passes for Minneapolis’s red-light district). One will “give up a life as a flasher to write the Penthouse Forum column.” One will become “a photog for Swank.” And on and on it goes, for two pages: “Florida G-string critic,” “stripogram agent known as the Molten Mountain of Human Desire,” “porno film star,” “transvestite maid at the Grab and Stab Family Inn.”
A few make earnest attempts to forecast their future, ranging from “Gets Nobel Prize in medicine for curing AIDS” to “Marries Adam of the Ants and moves to Edina.” The most poignant entry reads: “Marries a Jefferson graduate, settles down for a mediocre life in Richfield.”
Mike’s going to play basketball at a small college in Kansas City. On graduation night, in his basement, he and Ope and I watch the Celtics play the Lakers in Game 4 of the NBA Finals. The L
akers’ Kurt Rambis, who wears a mustache and black-framed glasses, a cheap detective’s disguise, is driving for a layup when McHale clotheslines him. The three of us surround the ancient TV, Richie the C, cheering McHale.
“Kick his ass, Kevin.”
“Sit down, Rambis, you Revenge of the Nerds–looking motherfu—”
Dory has left the prison tray of snacks and drinks at the foot of the basement stairs and silently retreated to the safety of the kitchen.
We laugh when announcer Tommy Heinsohn, a former Celtic, says of McHale’s violent act: “It’s part of the game, ya know.” We roar our approval when the Lakers’ James Worthy misses a free throw and the Celtics’ Cedric Maxwell makes a choking gesture at him. And we are high on life, cheese popcorn, and 7 Up when the Celtics beat the Lakers in overtime 129–125 behind Larry’s 29 points. At the Castle, we try to eat one slider with vinyl for every one of Larry’s 21 rebounds.
On Saturday, in the screened porch in our backyard at 2809 West 96th, I’m the guest of honor at my own graduation party. Mom and Dad give me presents: a soft-sided suitcase the color of a new penny and a ProKennex wood-graphite hybrid tennis racquet with an oversized head. Ope and I sometimes play tennis on park courts, cursing and racquet tossing like McEnroe and Connors. Tennis will ease me into a life of recreational competition. Mom and Dad play tennis. As for the luggage, it has an unmistakable message: Get the hell out of here.
Mom and Dad’s friends file in and out of the screened porch, handing me cards with cash in them, congratulating me, urging me—now that I’m practically a grown-up—to call them by their first names.
“Hello, Mrs. Parker.”
“Call me Rita.”
But I don’t call her Rita, and I can’t, and I know (even now) that I never will, no matter how long we both shall live.
One Thursday night on Magnum, P.I., the world-famous professional football champion “New Jersey Blazers” are training in Hawaii in July, as no team has ever done or ever will, but so what, because here’s Dick Butkus as “Dumbo,” an assistant coach in beltless Bike brand polyester coaches’ shorts, Spot-Bilt coaches’ shoes, striped tube socks pulled to the knees, and a whistle around his neck, like every coach I have ever had but will never have again.
I settle in on the maroon love seat. The orange afghan that Grandma Boyle knitted is folded on the ottoman, and all I know of these ancient Middle Eastern peoples—the Afghans and the Ottomans—is our home furnishings. I wonder if houses in Kabul and Istanbul have little accessories—throw rugs and armrest covers—called “South Brooks” or “Bloomingtons.”
On Magnum, someone wants to murder the Blazers’ philandering quarterback. Magnum and his helicopter-pilot pal T.C. investigate while Higgins holds down the fort at the Robin’s Nest. It’s all so comforting. Watching Magnum in our family room while the dishwasher gurgles in the kitchen is something I will miss in a matter of months.
After Magnum cracks the case, there’s a short coda, just long enough to justify a final block of commercials on CBS. The quarterback knows his playing days and womanizing nights are near their end, and Magnum has wrapped up his own brief but happy return to football, and both men are content, having wanted only one thing at the twilight of their athletic careers: one last golden hour on a field of play.
The episode’s title, displayed an hour earlier in big gold letters, now makes sense: “One More Summer.”
That’s what I have, One More Summer. One More Summer sharing a bedroom with Tom, who’s home from Iowa State. We still fall asleep to Katy Lied on cassette, still sleep until midmorning, when Mom opens the door, complaining of the unspeakable smell. She dashes to the shades, pulls them open, and dashes back out the door, holding a handkerchief to her face as if fleeing a fire.
We both work nights. I sell pops and Dome Dogs out of a concession stand at the Metrodome when the Twins are in town, and Tom works the pass at T.G.I. Friday’s on the Strip. In his spartan childhood in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Dad was pressed into a Dickensian world of child labor—toiling as a pin monkey in a bowling alley, stoking the hellfires of a Gary steel mill—and he thinks it did him a world of good. I’m told to get a second job, for when the Twins are on the road. It must be a short enough drive that Mom can drop me off. Which is how I answer a want ad in the Star and Tribune for a dishwasher position at Bennigan’s on the Strip. When I submit my application and shake the manager’s hand, he doesn’t let go, and indeed tightens his grip, as if I’m pulling him back into a building from a window ledge. And perhaps I am. His only question after glancing at my application is “Can you start today?”
I show up at four in the afternoon in khakis and a white button-down, instead of more appropriate attire, like a scuba suit or a yellow rain slicker or nothing whatsoever, for unbeknownst to me I’m about to take a nine-hour shower.
The man I’m replacing has the mustache, girth, and shiny skin of a seal, saturated by “the Hobart,” which is what Cody calls the dishwashing machine that stands before us belching steam. “It has the chemical conveyor,” Cody says, slapping the Hobart, “the resin-rinse nozzle.” Cody talks as if he’s trying to sell me the Hobart. “The patented Opti-Rinse technology.” He might as well be trying to put me behind the wheel of a Cutlass Supreme across the street, at Wally McCarthy’s Lindahl Olds. Above me is a showerhead on a hose whose purpose is to power-rinse the dishes before they’re fed to the Hobart. It reminds me of the microphones that drop from the rafters into the hands of a tuxedoed ring announcer before a heavyweight fight. “All of this,” Cody says gravely, “is your responsibility.”
Cody has been promoted to busboy but seems reluctant to leave the Hobart. I wonder if he’s had intimate relations with that resin-rinse nozzle. After three minutes of feeding the Hobart filthy dishes and extracting clean ones, I’m soaking wet. My white shirt is translucent, adhered to my skin. I have the shriveled fingertips that were once the hallmark of a blissful afternoon in the Airport Beach pool.
“The nice thing,” Cody says, “is you can get ahead of the dishes.” He gives me a conspiratorial look, as if he and I are gaming the system. “Buy yourself some free time. If you wanna go out back and smoke a cig, you can go out back and smoke a cig. If you wanna take a nice twenty-minute dump, you can take a nice twenty-minute dump.”
But you can’t get ahead of the dishes, any more than you can get ahead of time itself. On a Friday night they keep coming, great piles of cheap crockery, arriving in busboy tubs on a conveyor belt, like crowded trains at rush hour. The plates and bowls and glasses themselves are still half full, covered in ranch dressing, cigarettes stubbed out on salad plates, fork tines plugged with chewed gum and chewed meat.
Each one of these unfinished plates and drained beer mugs is evidence of a grown-up Bloomington life on the other side of this wall. It’s in the lipstick on a lowball glass, in the tongue-tied stem of a maraschino cherry, in the phone number on this paper napkin, scrawled with hope an hour ago, but consigned by its recipient—through me—to the Rubbermaid dustbin of history.
My first shift is four to midnight, and I never get a break. The twenty-minute dump is a pipe dream. I don’t finish the dishes until after 1 a.m., when I stagger into Cody’s Plymouth Volaré, for he has offered me a ride home. The June air is cool on my wet clothes. When we pull into South Brook, something about the subdivision looks familiar to Cody. But he can’t quite put his shriveled fingertip on it. As we pass the little traffic island on Upton, which the ladies of South Brook plant with flowers every spring, a light bulb buzzes to life above Cody’s head. “I passed out in that flower bed one night.” It’s nearly two in the morning. My next shift at Bennigan’s starts at ten. The Hobart dominates my dreams.
Two hours into my Saturday shift, the manager tells me there’s a “mouse” in the garage off the kitchen where the dumpsters are. Would I mind “taking care of it”? He hands me a push broom. I’ve seen enough Mafia movies to know that “taking care of” something means the opposite. I walk into the
garage in the dark, wondering if I’m being hazed, if I’m on Candid Camera, if Allen Funt is going to pop out and interview me after a madcap mouse chase in the dark.
I stand in the garage for five full minutes doing nothing. And then I return to the manager and hand him the push broom and say, “I’m quitting.” He doesn’t betray the slightest surprise. This position has weekly, if not daily, vacancies. The two of us stand there in the kitchen for a moment, he with the broom, me looking hangdog, American Gothic in an imitation Irish pub.
“Can you finish the shift?” he finally says.
I do, and when Mom picks me up at four she says, “How was work?”
“Terrible.”
“It will get better. When are you scheduled to work next?”
“I quit.”
“You what?”
“They asked me to kill a rat with a dustpan and I—”
“You will have another job next week. You will not lie around the house all summer. Do you understand me?”
“Yes!”
We ride the rest of the way home in silence.
Working Twins games more squarely aligns with my career aspirations. During home stands, I don a polyester V-neck work shirt and brimmed hat, like the Twins themselves. Of course mine isn’t a cap but a visor, and the “shirt” is a brown smock with a brown-and-orange plaid pattern across the chest and shoulders. If the Burger King were a real Scottish monarch, this would be his tartan.
