Earl the Pearl
Page 7
In junior high I had a paper route that my mother and I built up until it was profitable. Like I said, my mother did everything to help me when I was growing up. She was so protective of me and used to go around my paper route with me, basically selling my papers, delivering them to the different houses. She really didn’t want me being out there by myself. (That’s one of the reasons why later on I tried so hard to make something of myself in basketball, so I could do something good for my mother.)
One day we went to a house to deliver a paper and a kid came to the door and called my mother “the paper lady.” Hearing the little boy say that about my mother hurt me so bad it left an indelible mark on my mind. I knew right then that there was something more I needed to do for my mother, because I never ever wanted to hear anyone else think that was what she did. I mean, she worked every day and this was what she did with me in the evenings, so I wouldn’t be out there alone delivering papers at night. That’s just how much she loved me. She was always more than just a mother to me; she was a great friend, as well, and I really always respected her for her commitment to my well-being.
We—all my friends, too—were teenagers now and we wanted to do the things we saw adults doing, you know, like drinking and dancing, making out with each other, kissing and having sex, listening to music, driving cars, getting into clothes and fashion. But we needed a place to hang out, so my mother let us use our basement. We started a boys and girls’ club there called the Activity Club while I was going to Bartram. We’d meet in the basement of my house at 1120 South 26th Street and dance and make out. At first, when everyone arrived, the lights would be on, then as things heated up the lights would go out. When they came on, everybody would have white all over the backs of their clothes, because all the walls were whitewashed and that’s where we were kissing and doing the do, up against those whitewashed walls.
My sister Theresa, who was about 9 or 10 years old at the time, sold wine in our house for 50 cents a glass like Mom was doing in her house. See, we found out that the Puncheanellas had left these gallons of homemade wine in the basement. So Theresa, being a very enterprising young girl, sold shots of wine to kids in the neighborhood.
Selling stuff was good training for Theresa because later, after we moved to 1217 26th Street—when my stepfather bought Mr. Siegel’s house with the grocery store—she would be behind the counter selling candy to the kids in the neighborhood for a penny. Later, when Theresa went to college, she studied accounting and business, which was right up her alley. She had a big jar full of penny candy, and she used to fill it two or three times a day. Theresa was something else, and cold-blooded, too. I remember one day some girl in the neighborhood came to the door of the grocery store, and she had been shot in the arm by somebody. The girl, who was around 16, was trying to escape from whoever shot her. But Theresa, who was by herself, just closed and locked the door in her face so the shooter wouldn’t come in the store after her. I never knew what the girl’s name was, but I heard she survived. I’ll always remember that incident because it showed me that even at a young age, my sister really knew how to handle things and was tough as nails.
Man, we had a great time in that club! We started the Activity Club when I was 16 or 17, in the 11th grade. Looking back, it was all about growing up, trying to find and shape our own identities when we were entering those teenage years. We wanted to separate ourselves from our parents—like all adolescent kids do—and, as always, there’s risk in doing that. At the time, however, we didn’t mind or know we were really taking chances with our futures. We didn’t consider the possibility that we might produce babies by having sex, or do something stupid as a result of drinking. We just didn’t think about those dangers because we were having too much fun.
The interesting thing about growing up where and when I did was that I began to see, as I got older, that there was a lot of racial tension between white and black people in Philadelphia, and as a result of this tension we had race riots in the city every spring. Even though I grew up in a mixed neighborhood, I still didn’t have any white friends. But I met some at Bartram.
At the time, though, I didn’t really know any white people, or how they were in real life. My impressions of them came only from what I saw on television. I used to think most white people were funny because I loved watching Red Skelton, Sid Caesar, Lucille Ball, Milton Berle, and Imogene Coca on television, and they were hilarious to me. So at first I thought most white people were just like them, until I knew the real deal better. But I loved watching those comedians on television. I remember we’d have a houseful of people cracking up over those comedians and their slapstick skits. They were hilarious. I remember some of the older people talking about how funny a lot of black comedians were, but I never saw any on television at that time, and it wouldn’t be until much later on that I saw and heard how really funny a lot of black comedians were, like Moms Mabley, Redd Foxx, The Amos ’n Andy Show, and, even later, Richard Pryor. But watching those white comedians on television got me thinking somewhere deep in my head about trying to be a comedian myself when I grew up. Later in my life I did try to become a comedian, too, but it didn’t work out.
My study habits hadn’t improved by this point, either. I still didn’t like being in class or with my teachers, so my grades weren’t good. That started to upset my mother and stepfather. I considered my time at Audenried one lost year—the 9th grade—because, despite getting into girls and music and also getting my first introduction to organized basketball, I didn’t want to be there. By the spring of 1959 and into the summer of that year, after I graduated from Audenried, I really started to play on the playgrounds a lot with the Trotters, against other teams, and my basketball skills improved quickly. It was still, however, a definite learning period for me in terms of absorbing what I needed to know in order to become really good at playing the game.
So that summer after I graduated from Audenried, I practiced a lot and played many pickup basketball games on the Oakford playground—and on other courts around the area, also—with my friends on the Trotters. I felt all this focus, hard work, and practice would serve me well and get me ready for when I entered Bartram High School that coming fall.
Chapter 3
HIGH SCHOOL YEARS: 1959 TO 1962
I BEGAN ATTENDING JOHN BARTRAM HIGH SCHOOL in September 1959. The school was located in Southwest Philadelphia, in an all-white neighborhood, at 67th Street and Elmwood Avenue. But a lot of black kids also attended the school, and the basketball team was mixed. My best friend, Steve Smith, also went to Bartram, as did a bunch of other kids from my neighborhood, like Leaping John Anderson and Ronald Reese. We didn’t really want to go to South Philadelphia High School or Bok Technical High School, which were both located in our area of South Philly. But the main reason we decided to go to Bartram was because our fellow Trotters, George Clisby and Edwin “Wilkie” Wilkerson, were going there, and we decided to follow them. They were both ahead of us. Wilkie was a smart kid who skipped a couple of grades in school (eventually he went to Cheyney State Teachers College with Ed Bradley, the 60 Minutes commentator), so by the time we got to Bartram he was already about to graduate.
I really enjoyed going to Bartram because it was so far away from where I grew up and lived and it probably also had something to do with having a different experience. Like I said, I have always been a practical person, so I just looked at the situation of going to high school at Bartram as something I had to do, you know, because my boys were going there. It was what it was. I had to go to high school and the choice I made was the best choice for me. Plus, when I got to Bartram, I didn’t face any race riot–type stuff out there, although I knew it could happen. What’s important to understand is that when black people find themselves in an integrated situation, we adjust quicker and better to the circumstances than, perhaps, whites would if the situation was reversed. Blacks have had to sometimes adjust to living in all-white environments throughout our history in this country, so it wasn’
t a big thing for me to adjust to this new situation; I just rolled with it.
I think I started to compartmentalize my life while I was going to Bartram, you know, separating what was happening in the black community I had grown up in from what I was beginning to experience in this all-white community. This would later extend into my experiences as a basketball player, when I had to reconcile the organized, traditional way I had to play at Bartram with the more creative, improvisational game I had to master on the playgrounds in South Philly. I didn’t realize at first when I started doing it, but I embraced this compartmentalization of my life as I matured.
The neighborhood around the school wasn’t violent in the way my neighborhood was when I was growing up. In fact, it seemed kind of like a civilized community, tolerant toward blacks. I didn’t see white guys pointing at me because I was black, or riding on top of cars and calling me names, like happened in other white neighborhoods in Philadelphia. That’s not to say there weren’t racist, violent white people in the neighborhood or at the school; I know there were, but they just didn’t bother me. A lot of racist stuff had been happening all over America for a long time at this point, like what happened in 1958 out in Little Rock, Arkansas, when governor Orval Faubus blocked those nine young black kids from going to a white public school out there, you know what I mean?
That kind of ugly stuff was beginning to appear in the local newspapers, and a lot of my family and other black folks in Philadelphia were talking about it all the time. And, you know, I was now at an age where I was beginning to recognize and think about what all this racial stuff meant for me, too, even though I didn’t know what I could do about any of it. But it was calm out where I was going to school, so it was cool for me going to Bartram.
In my first year, playing on the junior varsity team in the fall of 1959, I played about the same as everyone else on the team. Coach Klingman, who was white, as most of our players were, emphasized a passing, balanced team approach to the game. So our team scores against other teams were not gigantic, and a guy could be the high scorer with, like, 10, 11, or 12 points in any given game. We were all learning the organized way of playing together as a team, setting screens, passing the ball, and getting better as a unit. Still, things were starting to look up for me in terms of playing the game, both on the playgrounds and in Coach Klingman’s system.
I was playing better and starting to get a little recognition at Bartram, though I wasn’t where I wanted to be. I still had a lot to learn about playing the traditional team game. I’m sure that had I attended South Philadelphia or Bok Technical I would have encountered black players and coaches there who would have also stressed team fundamentals over individual play. It’s just a matter of organized play versus playground. But I was beginning to get there, you know, making baby steps, and that was cool. Unfortunately, I still wasn’t studying for my classes like I should have been and in the winter of 1960, disaster struck. I was left back in 10th grade because of bad grades.
I probably had been deluding myself, because I thought I was doing fine with my schoolwork when my homeroom teacher, Mr. Fine, failed me. Looking back, I now realize my failing was a carryover from the bad habits I had developed in my last years of junior high school. Now, failing was bad enough because I knew Ma was going to come down hard on me for it. She had been getting tired of me for a while for not dedicating myself to my studies, and one day she had laid down the law on me. (She didn’t curse me out, though. Ma never used foul words on me, although I had been told she knew how to use them.) Now I knew she was going to read me the riot act, and she did, telling me I had better get myself together, or else. This time, though, because I’d failed, I soon discovered I couldn’t play basketball anymore, and that really hurt me.
This whole thing was a wake-up call for me, and I remember finding out I couldn’t play like it was yesterday. Bartram’s junior varsity team was scheduled to play against Edison High’s JV team at their gymnasium, so we would have to ride trolleys and trains to the game. To get there the school gave everyone on the team tokens to ride the trolley and the train, and I had just picked up mine when I saw our coach, Mr. Klingman, in the hallway. He called me over with a wave of his hand.
“Earl,” he said, “I just got word that you’re academically ineligible to play, so you’ve got to give me your tokens. Also, you have to go down and see your counselor. I’m sorry about this.”
I was shocked, stunned. So I gave him my tokens and went to see the counselor and that’s when he told me Mr. Fine had failed me, that he had given me the okeydoke, which meant I had to be left back a grade. Man, that hurt me real bad, cut me deep to the bone. But I decided then and there, very quickly, to use that disappointment as motivation. I knew my mother was going to be very angry with me, so what was I going to do? I decided that I would buckle down and work extra hard on my studies during the next semester, and I did. I got a double promotion. I got put back in my regular class, and that meant I could play basketball again.
I played very well once I rejoined the JV. At first everyone on all my teams—the Trotters at Oakford playground and the guys at Bartram—was better than me, but constant practice changed all that, and eventually I moved ahead of them, both in high school and out on the playground. But I also found out that most of the best players were still out there playing on the playgrounds and that I still had a lot to learn about the game if I was to succeed out there playing against those guys. At first I’d be out there just sitting on the sidelines, watching. I mean, even after I learned to play the game pretty well I still wasn’t good enough to compete on the playgrounds with those guys. So, I’d be one of the guys just sitting. They had guys running games out there who’d played college ball, people like Wali Jones, Walt Hazzard, Wayne Hightower, and even Wilt Chamberlain would come out sometimes. These guys were legends already in Philadelphia playground basketball, and they would be out there showing their stuff on the playgrounds and playing hard.
So I’d be sitting on the sidelines hoping to get to play against some of them. And if there was nobody else around they’d look over, you know (and it’d be so funny, because they’d be looking me over and I’d be trying to inch up, you know, trying to get a little taller, so they could see me), and then, maybe, at the end of the day, after I’d sat there all day long, somebody might say, “Hey Earl, come on, we need five guys here, so you be the fifth man.”
But in my head I used to always say to myself, I don’t want to be the fifth man, I want to be the number one draft choice. That’s what I always said to myself, and I worked at it, worked my way up through hard work until I could not only just play with the big boys, but compete with them at the same high level they played at. That’s when I started to feel pretty good about myself. But I got my biggest feeling of revenge when I later started to dominate the playground basketball scene in Philadelphia. To my way of thinking, this was a sign of very good things that were to come.
I was becoming sort of a risk taker playing basketball on the playgrounds; this was happening because of my growing philosophy of doing things through trial and error. I had begun approaching most things I did through trial and error, and it became a practice that would last me the rest of my life, especially in basketball. Doing things through trial and error helped bring me to an approach to the game that I would later call “the science of the game.” Now, “the science of the game” basically starts out as trial and error, because a lot of the time back then I wasn’t involved in organized basketball, like when I was playing on the playgrounds.
But my real focus at this time was on becoming a really good basketball player both at school and out on the playground. In order to do this I had to compartmentalize myself in that I had to discipline my game at school, yet improvise and play free out on the playground. That was a hard thing to do, but this was the challenge I faced. By this time I had caught up with and then surpassed my friends Smitty, Leap, and Reese in terms of basketball skills. Smitty at one point in time had a reall
y good jump shot, but he lost it when he started trying to play like Elgin Baylor, you know, twitching and shaking his head as he was going to the basket, trying to make all kinds of moves. When he changed his outside game to one in which he was always driving to the hoop, he lost his jumper. Still, he was a good point guard at five foot nine because he could handle the ball, pass, and dribble, so he was like the quarterback of the JV squad. Reese was a steady ballplayer who never did anything spectacular, and Leap just could jump out of the gym, though he wasn’t a great shooter.
By this time I was able to play out on the perimeter, or on the side of the court. I had been practicing a lot on the playground, developing moves that would allow me to drive to the basket. In my junior year at Bartram I could not only play with my back to the basket down low, but I could also play facing the basket and make moves out there that would allow me to get my midrange jump shot off, which was also improving by this time. But the fancy, creative stuff I left on the playground because I was playing center for Bartram. My play on the junior varsity team had improved so much by this time they wanted to bring me up to the varsity squad. I had gotten better not only at shooting the ball, but also in my passing skills and my leadership.
My friends and me on the Trotters never had anyone around to coach us on the playground, so we coached each other and learned from the older players. See, in Philadelphia the older guys pass on the history of the game on the playgrounds. That’s where basketball wisdom is passed on and where I got most of my knowledge of the game of basketball. Like for instance, players in Philadelphia might not be the best dunkers, but they learn to outthink their opponents out on the court. The playground is where I learned to see the flow of the game. Then I had to focus on what was happening and understand where I was in the game and what I had to do to make myself better. I started to understand this concept when I was around 15 or 16, but it took me a couple of years before I really started putting it all together.