by Earl Monroe
But, other than this day of sadness, I was starting to acclimate to college life, socializing a little bit, you know, going to parties. I dated a few girls during my freshman year at Winston-Salem. I can only remember a couple, though, including one named Louise, a senior from Philadelphia. Louise—I called her Lou—was a short, nice-looking girl with big bowlegs and a beautiful spirit. I remember after she graduated I went to visit her where she was teaching in Gretna, Virginia. Smitty loaned me his Buick and I drove. Lou had told me it would be about a three-hour drive, so I left in the late afternoon.
By the time I reached Danville, Virginia, just over the North Carolina border, the sky had grown dark. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw all these cars flashing their lights and a bunch of guys in white hoods. All of a sudden I realized I was in the middle of a Ku Klux Klan rally! I saw a street off to my left and I just turned the car down it to get out of that mess. A couple of cars followed me, though, but then they turned back around because I was pressing pedal to the metal, speeding to get away from there. Anyway, I drove around in the darkness for a little while until I finally found my way back to the highway, got back on it and drove until I saw the exit sign for Gretna. Fortunately, Lou’s house was right there by the exit and we got together for the night, which was nice. We talked about my little run-in with the KKK and I decided I would be more careful, considering where I was living now, when I was in areas with a lot of racist white people.
In the morning I had to plot my way back to Winston-Salem, because there was no way I was going to go back the way I had come. I left Lou’s house at first light because I didn’t want to be out on the road driving in the dark. I got on US Route 29 headed toward Greensboro, North Carolina, then hooked up with Interstate 40, which shot me into Winston-Salem. Boy, was that an adventure.
Another time during my freshman year I had another girlfriend named Eula who was from a place called Haw River, North Carolina, which was close to a place called Mebane. She wasn’t great looking, but Eula was sensuous. She was tall, brown skinned, about five eight or five nine, with nice, big legs (I guess I’ve got a thing for legs). She was just a very nice, sweet girl. No sparks flying, no lightning rods throwing off electricity or anything like that. I was still shy at the time and I was still seeing Louise, but she had gone home for Thanksgiving and I was seeing Eula a little bit, too. So when she invited me down to see her and have Thanksgiving dinner with her and her family, I accepted.
So I took a bus to Haw River, but I didn’t have her address or a telephone number with me. I had forgotten them, left her address and telephone number in my room. So I figured that when got there I would ask someone if they knew her. When I arrived and started asking around, though, nobody knew her. I only saw white people, so I went to the police station to ask. Now, I had this nice suit on, so I walked into the station and approached the policeman sitting behind the little desk.
“I just got off the bus and I’m looking for a family,” I said. “The daughter’s name is Eula. I go to school with her up in Winston-Salem.”
“I don’t have any idea who that could be,” the policeman said. Then the guy looks hard at me and says, “You sound like a Yankee. You a Yankee?”
I was puzzled because I didn’t know what he meant. The only Yankees I knew were the New York Yankees baseball team. So I said, “Naw. I’m not a Yankee.”
“Yeah, you are,” he said. “You one of them slick Yankee niggers!”
So now I knew where I was and it wasn’t anywhere on the beaten path I wanted to be. So I just sucked it up and said, “Well, sir, I think I’ll just go back to the bus.”
He just looked at me and said, “You do that, because we don’t like your kind round here.”
So I left and went to the bus stop and waited for the bus to come. I didn’t need that kind of shit in my life. With my short temper, I just didn’t want to be around that kind of stupid stuff, you know what I mean? I’ve always looked around for an escape route wherever I find myself, and there was none in Haw River except to catch the bus, which I did. Later, after Eula came back to school the next week, I told her what had happened. She was cool about it, but disappointed. I found out from her that Mebane, the town next to Haw River, is the place where all the slave owners had fathered their illegitimate kids. So Mebane was a town filled with light-skinned black people and some of them went to school up at Winston-Salem.
In February 1964, my heart was lifted sky-high when Cassius Clay knocked out big, bad Sonny Liston and lifted the World Heavyweight Championship crown off his head in Miami Beach, Florida. His victory thrilled a lot of people, even though some thought his brashness, cockiness, and confidence were over the top. I didn’t because I loved his attitude and admired how he did what he said he was going to do. He was an inspiration to me, a fresh new face on the American scene. I loved his creative boxing skills, his audacity, from day one and I would feel that way throughout his entire career, especially when he later made his heroic stand against being inducted into the army to fight in the Vietnam War.
I averaged about 7 points a game that first year at Winston-Salem without ever starting a game. Coach Gaines would bring me off the bench when the team needed some instant offense. I would come in, score, bring our team back, and then he would take me out. I remember one incident when we played the Georgia Invitational in Atlanta. I forget the name of the team we were playing, but we were behind when Coach Gaines called my name and put me in the game. I went into the game and scored nearly 20 points in just eight or nine minutes, brought our team back, and then Coach Gaines took me out for the rest of the game. We won, but our opponent almost caught us.
Coach Gaines never said anything encouraging to me during that first year other than an occasional “You did good. We needed that.” He only said those kinds of things when I scored a lot and brought the team back in close games. So after my freshman season, I had a beef with him. I felt strongly that I should have played a lot more than the 10 or 12 minutes a game that he was playing me, and that I had earned it by beating up on the guys playing ahead of me in practice. I thought I should have started, and I was pissed off about that. So after the season I went to his office and we had a talk.
“Coach,” I said, “I thought I should’ve been starting. Every time I got into the game my scoring brought the team back, got you even. Then you take me out. I don’t think that was good because I can play.”
“Well, Earl,” he said, “you know I don’t play freshmen.”
“Well, you played me enough sometimes to get you back in the game,” I said. “So why wasn’t I—”
“Well, maybe next year it’ll be better,” he said, cutting me off.
“Well, I don’t think I’m going to come back next year,” I said. “I’ve been talking to some people and I think I might transfer to Temple or someplace else this coming year.”
Then Coach Gaines reared back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, leaned back, and rolled his eyes up in the air as if looking at the ceiling.
“Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t you step out of the room for a little bit and I’ll call you back in about 10 minutes.”
“Okay,” I said.
I stood up, left the room, and closed the door behind me. What I didn’t know was that he called my mother. So after a short while I heard his voice calling me back in. After I went in and sat down, I saw the phone was off the hook and lying on his desk.
“What’s up?” I said
“Pick up the phone,” he said. “It’s your mother.”
I was shocked. So I picked up the phone.
“Earl,” my mother said, “Coach Gaines told me you’re getting ready to leave school. Boy, you better stay down there. I’m not going to say anything more. You better stay down there.”
“Okay, Ma,” I said, stunned. “I’ll call you back later.”
“No,” she said. “Do you hear what I’m saying to you? Do you understand what I mean when I tell you you better stay down t
here?”
“Yes, Mama,” I said. “I’ll talk to you later. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said.
So I gave the phone back to Coach Gaines, and as I did I heard my mother say to him, “He’s high-strung, but he’s a good boy.”
After he hung up, he looked at me and said, with a little smile playing around his lips, “Now, your mother wants you to stay. What do you want to do?”
“I guess I’m staying,” I said.
That was the end of that. That’s when he flashed me a big smile and said, “Great decision. Everything’s going to work out next season.” I just nodded my head as I was getting up to leave.
“See you in the fall,” Coach Gaines said as I was leaving. “Everything’s going to work out just fine. Trust me on that.”
And it did. Coach Gaines was smiling when I left his office to go pick up Smitty. We stayed in Winston-Salem for a while and went to summer school to make up for having both failed biology in the spring semester. The biology final exam looked like Chinese arithmetic to us when we first took the test because we hadn’t studied hard enough for it. But this time we buckled down, read the material, and passed the test with flying colors because we didn’t want to be ruled ineligible to play ball in the fall.
After they told us we had passed, Smitty and I went home to Philadelphia to play summer ball. It was now 1964, and I was 19 years old. I was determined that when I went back to Winston-Salem I was going to be ready to start and play up to my potential. So I worked hard on my new, upgraded game out on the floor that summer. I had really improved my jumper by then, my dribbling, ball handling, and passing, too. Everyone in Philly was stunned and surprised by how much I had improved the shooting range of my jump shot. Most of them only knew my game to be about making slick moves to the basket, or pulling up and shooting midrange jumpers. Now I was making my jumpers regularly from beyond the top of the key, though it was years before college basketball would introduce the 3-point shot.
The legendary Sonny Hill, who was the head of Philly’s summer Baker League and would later become my mentor, was really starting to watch me closely now. But playing in those playground games and in a few leagues that summer, plus in some all-star games, honed my skills to razor sharpness. All of my constant practicing was beginning to pay off. My confidence was high and I was prepared mentally and physically for my sophomore year at Winston-Salem. And as the summer months drew to a close, I found myself eagerly looking forward to going back down to play in college and to show everyone, especially Coach Gaines, that I was ready to take my game and my team to a championship level. But before the summer of 1964 ended, I was presented with another unexpected surprise and a great gift. I finally met my father.
Chapter 7
REUNITING WITH MY FATHER: SUMMER 1964
I MET MY FATHER AGAIN IN 1964, when I was 19, right around June, after my first year at Winston-Salem State. My father had moved around a lot as a young man, singing and dancing with jazz-blues great Bessie Smith, or at least that’s what he told me when I got to know him and what I later heard from other people who knew him. I found out he hustled pool up in Canada and down in the upper regions of the United States. He never had a legitimate job until he was 61 years old, when he started working as a night watchman at Philadelphia Community College. I guess that was one of the reasons he never came around, because of all his moving around.
I found out through talking with him that, in between all that, my father had always been a salesperson. My father told me a funny thing that happened to him one time when he was selling medicines to people. One day, he told me, he decided to try what he was selling to customers and found out that it was some kind of laxative, and it kept him going to the bathroom all day that day. But he told me he had a clean body for a long while after that because those laxatives cleaned out his body and a lot of his sicknesses went away. I guess why he told me that story was, because his body had been squeaky clean and cool after he took those laxatives, he was suggesting that maybe I do the same thing. That’s when I started taking laxatives to clean out my body and I have been taking stuff like that since that day. No question, my father was a very wise man.
My father wasn’t a big man; he was only about five foot 10 (I got my height from my mother’s side of the family). He was very distinguished looking, though. Slender. He had gray hair and he spoke with a kind of accent, because he was from South Carolina, so I guess it was Geechee. I remember him always carrying himself with his head held high, with a lot of self-respect. Later, when I introduced him to people, they would say, “Yeah, I know that’s your dad because he’s very distinguished looking.” When we got to know each other better I found out he was just a nice person. So I guess it hurt me when I finally met him—although I was overjoyed, too—because I would’ve liked to have had him around all my life.
Anyway, around the time that my father came back into my life, my sister Ann had already been seeing him on occasion in and around Philadelphia. Now, my sisters and I are all from different fathers. Each of us had a different father. But it was my sister Ann who saw him in downtown Philadelphia one day. He talked to her and told her that he wanted to see me. So she came back and relayed the conversation to my mother. I overheard that conversation and agreed to go down and see him. Then I started having reservations about the whole thing, about seeing him altogether, because I had always told people over the years that he was dead. So I wasn’t supposed to even have a father, you know what I mean? I told everybody that he had died in the service, in the Korean War.
At first when my mother told me I was going to meet my father, it was kind of strange for me to be talking about going to visit somebody who was supposed to be dead. But I got over that and finally decided to get together with him because I was curious about what would happen. When I got to where he was living, I was really surprised to see cutout newspaper photos of me playing basketball and clippings about me on top of his TV and mantelpiece. When I saw this it kind of made me feel good to know that even though he wasn’t there in my everyday life, he was still thinking about me. He was living in North Philadelphia at the time, with a lady by the name of Hattie. He was living off of Girard Avenue. When I got there he was so warm it kind of broke down my defenses. He told me he’d always wondered if that was me in the newspapers. Hattie was just as happy as he was when I came by, and she had never met me or known me except through him. So, we kind of bonded that day. But it still wasn’t the same as being with someone that you’ve grown up with all your life. Certainly, just knowing that I really did have a father was another little triumph in my life. To know that there was somebody out there for me was a great feeling.
There was this connection between us, and, being a young guy at the time, I didn’t really understand what that was, though I knew it was something that could draw me closer to him in time. He seemed like such a good guy. Still, I didn’t hug him that first day we met. I just shook his hand, even though he seemed like he wanted to hug me. But he respected the handshake. There was this warmth between us, especially when I shook his hand. I felt an electrical current that shot between us, you know what I mean? There was this connection, and I knew from the electricity that coursed through my hand to my body that this was my real father. It was a deep, deep feeling I felt from just touching his flesh, a current that was almost spiritual. I believed it, right then and there, that it was something I had been waiting for all my life to experience.
I am a pretty observant person, and whenever I walk into a room I basically scan it so I can see and feel things. I saw that day that he was very meticulous about the way he lived, with everything in place. I am like that also; I want everything in its correct place, you know, like a neat freak does. And, like I said, I saw all those clippings and pictures of me. Then, Hattie came up to me and said, “You know that he kept all these things not knowing if it was you or not, but he kept them anyway, because he thought you might be his son.”
That really impressed me, and
even though we had already begun to bond I started to like him as a person from that point on. I knew right then and there that he had been thinking about me all those years, that I had been in his heart and mind, even though we lived apart. When I really looked at him, I could see myself in him. I mean, I saw we were a lot alike, even looked alike, and both of us were very reserved kind of people, with the same mannerisms, things like that. So I knew he was really my father.
When my father and I first got back together I initially looked at him as a source of money, you know, to help me with expenses as I was going through college. Maybe that was because my last memory of him was of him pouring all those silver dollar coins into my cupped hands when I was four or five years old. But over time I learned to know and respect him for himself, for his having bought land, houses, different things he could leave me if I needed them. That’s what he wanted to do for me, and I really liked that.
For the first time I really began to realize what life in general was all about, understood that here was somebody who loved me very much, even though he hadn’t been around when I was growing up. I just recognized that he had his own life to live and maybe he wasn’t the cause for things not working out between him and my mother. And as I grew to understand that, I realized I shouldn’t hold him responsible for not being there because he had to do his own thing, had the right to live his own life in whatever way he chose. I feel that about a lot of things, because a lot of times people leave a relationship and then you fault them for leaving. Perhaps things might have gotten worse if they had stayed in the relationship, you know what I mean? The friction between them might have become unbearable, so it might have been best for him to just leave. When I understood this about my mother and father I got a different kind of respect for him. As I got to know him better and we became closer, I would call him on the telephone whenever I had a moment and we would talk about all kinds of things, and that was good.
