Thoughts on Jackson Island

I played basketball in high school for the freshman squad. I wound up quitting after two teachers of mine sandbagged me after class. They tried to Miss Watson me out of my Huckleberry ways. Church me up, so to speak. I'd better behave more, they told me, "or they would talk to Coach Jefferson." I didn't cotton to being coerced like that, and I suspected Coach Jefferson didn't like me very much anyways. So I quit. He was the son of an ex-Redskin who had opened a barbecue joint in Arlington. He sat and ate pulled pork mostly, and had benched me after missing a practice. Years later, my suspicions were confirmed when my brother took a ball in the face at the try outs. He got a bloody nose and had to see to it, to which Coach Jefferson said, "Just like your brother." So he quit playing hoops for the school too.

I was telling this story last Easter, (after me and my brother had shot some hoops at our house) and my Ma's beau said to me, "You're lucky it didn't make a quitter out of you." I didn't really say boo to that because I've felt like quitting alot in my life -and lots of times I have-classes I couldn't hack, relationships, character building jobs, acting and theater, you name it. I don't quit on really important things, I like to tell myself, (I didn't drop out of college, I came back to New York) but sometimes that just ain't so. I feel alot like that coach's son in THE BAD NEWS BEARS who just holds the ball and lets 'em run around the bases. 'Cause if the desire to win is so strong that your pops backhands you one on the mound, then winning just ain't worth it. For better or worse, that's the attitude I've adopted. So when it comes to villanelles, give me Elizabeth Bishop's THE ART OF LOSING over Dylan Thomas's DO NOT GO GENTLE- I don't care what odds them Vegas boys give miss Bishop, I think that pound for pound, she takes the welshman any day of the week and even on Sundays.

So I went gentle I guess. I quit hoops and started guitar, grew my hair out, did plays, wrote poems, discovered girls and learned most of the songs that we played by request last night at Union Square. We got a coupla shout outs for the Grateful Dead -mostly Jerry songs. We played DEEP ELEM BLUES and discovered that Flynn plays some mean clarinet solos over it, and that felt good. It felt good to turn him onto that song too. We obliged some folks with I KNOW YOU RIDER and they even sang harmony. But they dug the originals too. And the vision of those two folks swaying with each other over by Heartland Brewey during SALVATION ARMY BAND did my heart a world of good, or did my world a heart of good -which don't seem that different to me. Another bunch of folks gave us half of a birthday cake. They couldn't finish it, and wanted us to have it, which I thought was very sweet of them. (pun sort of intended) Some guy wsa broadcasting our TIME TO MOVE ON to his buddy via cell phone early on. If I had a nickel for everybody that we make smile, and vice versa -I'd count myself a rich man. Come to think of it, we do. Come to think of it, I am.

And I guess I owe some of those riches to Coach Jefferson and those two Miss Watsons for trying to civilize me. And I owe another chunk of 'em to the Grateful Dead for being the Jackson Island, where I ran away to play pirates. "Okay, the pirates are just for me," to quote Shelktone in HALLOWEEN, 1987. But that's what I did after resigning my position at point guard. I guess it was around that time that I read HUCK FINN again, and I learned alot of songs in that stretch too. Most of which we play at some point or another. I guess in alot of ways -I'm still on Jackson Island. Though now it looks alot like that North West Corner of Union Square across from the Coffee Shop Bar -the famer's market folks packing up their tents, rats chasing each other behind us (mating or sparring, we can't tell which) and good folks coming and going. They give us postcards, picks, change, five spots, chocolate cakes that read "Hap Birth" and smiles (ours and theirs) Meanwhile, we get better and better at what we do -it may not be ball handling, give and goes, and your basic triangle offense, but it's something. I'll never be able to play for the 76ers, but I can and do play for HUCKLEBERRY SLIM. Well, I actually play wth Huck Slim. I play for the kinds folks who like what we do, (which I hope is ya'll) and of course, chocolate cake.