Black Men, Basketball, Making It (“We Always Knew.”)

The thing to know about remembering memories is that memories beget memories. That is to say that the more you begin remembering the more likely it is you will start remembering someone or something else, and then something else after that, or someone else you only thought you had forgotten, and on and on and so on it goes. And that is also to say, said differently, that memory’s vaults, once opened, are not easily shut. Even though knowing this about remembering still in no way explains the workings of the enigmatic, inscrutable, alchemical processes that transform some of our lived experiences into the gold of memories that we will someday, in the future, mine, while others fade into the dross of what is forgotten, discarded past experiences lost to our the future presents, past selves that our future selves we will never remember.

There used to be a Run N’ Shoot Athletic Center in District Heights, MD. It was open twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. Three hundred sixty-five days of the year. And it had ten, count them ten, full-court, hardwood basketball floors.

The Run N’ Shoot was located just off of Marlboro Pike in Great Eastern Plaza. A Giant grocery store used to be in that mall, a store known for being convenient for seniors. (This is one of the grocery stores I wrote about driving my Grandmother to in a previous post.) But it’s closed now. The building remains vacant. Another conveniently located grocery store in a Black working class and working poor community closed. No news there. And no new grocery store opened to take its place.

But the Pep Boys Tire Shop & Auto Service is still there. So is the Checkers Drive Thru. The Citgo gas station across from the mall, the one located on the other side of Marlboro Pike that doubles as Western Union, is still there too. The Church of the Olive Branch is now the Spirit of Love Christian Center. But Capital Seafood and Crab remains there, unchanged.

Anyway, there used to be a Run N’ Shoot around the way, in the neighborhood where my Grandmother used to live, even though that feels, now, like several lifetimes ago.

Back in its heyday, Run N’ Shoot was one of the most popular places to ball throughout the whole DMV urea—if you know you know. It’s parking lot was always crowded with cars. Teenagers from the neighborhood dribbling their basketballs across the lot all the way up to the entrance doors was a common sight to see. Which meant you could always get some run. Back then, just inside the doors, there were metal detectors and security guards checking for weapons before you were allowed to enter. Which meant that Run N’ Shoot was a place where you could get your hoop on in relative peace. Of course, ball being ball, and dudes being dudes, fights could still break out over hard fouls or words that crossed the shifting line that divides trash-talk from unplayful humiliation. But that is all in the game.

And for one magical summer, some twenty five-years ago, a group of men I trust with my life, men I grew up with and made it up and out with, along with a group of men I met in college who also made it out and up of neighborhoods in cities where the margins for that happening remains thin, men who I also trust as intuitively as breathing air in and out, all found ourselves living in and around the Nation’s capital, the one and only Chocolate City, and meeting on Saturday’s mornings to get some hoops in at Run N’ Shoot.

As I recall, it started during an evening of Bid Whist, trash talking, and spirits—Heinekens, Hennessy, and Seagram’s Seven were all involved. Liquor has always been an accomplice to folk writing checks they might not be able to cash. Which is to say that some of these same men I’m referring to here, to wit, brothers who grew up in Philly, Newark, and Gary—if you know brothers from Gary, G-I, as they would have it you already know where this going—started making noises about their basketball skills and what us brothers from the DC and surrounding parts might be able or not be able to do about it.

That the decision to test and challenge each other over some ball grew out of a game of Bid should come as no surprise. Both games are proving grounds for Black boys and Black men. Both require you be part of a team. Both require you to compete with the kind of flair and style that marks you as an individual and as a worthy competitor, with no excuses accepted, no exceptions given, and no special dispensations granted. Basketball and Bid Whist both invite you to serve them grits if you got them, as old folk used to say.

A weekend or two later, we all met at the aforementioned Run N’ Shoot around 7 AM on a Saturday morning to sort the situation out.

We were still young, fit, and spry enough, then, to compete on the hardwood for hours. All of us being, then, in our early thirties, we knew nothing much yet about the disconnect between a willing mind and unwilling body in the heat of athletic competition, a lesson still a few years away from being learned. And even though we were still a few years away from being wise enough to pop Aleve before competing, not a few those little, blue analgesics were passed around and popped when the hooping was done to counteract the soreness that was the going price we now had to pay for playing a game with men’s bodies that we fell in love with when we were still boys.

At least one brother, it turns out, could still send it in. Though nothing close to Jerome Lane’s rim-shattering dunk, the one that provoked Bill Raftery’s sublime and immortal call. Handles were, for the most part, intact, still in good working condition. So, too, the ability to get to the hole or fill it up from outside. Trash was talked. Crow was served. So, too, were some grits. And after we finished hooping, we cooled down and lingered and talked about our marriages, our relationships, our families, our children, our parents, our careers, and our jobs. But most importantly, laughs were laughed, good times were had, where needed encouragement and support was given, bonds that were already strong, grew stronger, and golden memories were made, proof of this claim being this writing.

And I should say, for the record, that I respect my Gary, Newark, and Philly brothers, much too much to bother much about sharing any of the gory details of the lessons they learned when lacing them up against some of DC’s finest.

Like I said, it’s all in the game.

Like I also said, it was a magical summer. Fellowshipping with brothers who were making it. With Black men who remain some of my dearest and closest friends. Brothers who saddled their dreams of becoming lawyers, consultants, dentists, professors, doctors, teachers, and rode them to professional success. Brothers who still dreamed about what it would have been to be a hoop-star, because hoop dreams, as everyone knows, no matter how old you are, never, actually, die.

Now you would think, given all that I’ve been saying about how much those Saturday’s meant to me, that there would be exactly zero chance in the world that I would miss out on playing most of the last Saturday we met to hoop together. But even though you would think that that is precisely what happened. Not that I couldn’t make it. Not that I wasn’t there. I was there. I made it. I was there and on time. I was laced up and ready to get it in. I was ready to impart some lasting and, hopefully, painful lessons about the consequences of letting me get open or leaving me alone and unguarded with an open look at the hoop.

Until I spotted a brother shooting around that I hadn’t seen in years about three basketball courts away.

The moment I saw this brother, I made a beeline in his direction. Never once did I take my eyes off of him, even as I struggled to remember his name. My stare had to have been intense, because I triggered his sixth sense, the sense that lets us know when we are being watched another. By the time I had gotten within twenty feet of him, he was facing and staring back at me. His visage now slightly gritted. His head slightly tilted. He relaxed his arms at his sides. Which, if you don’t already know, roughly translates into meaning who you looking at, you sure, what’s up, to Black boys and men born in the DMV and who grew up in a certain generation.

But by the time I got within ten feet disaster was avoided when I remembered his name.

--Garland, what’s up, been a long time, remember me, I’m—

He cut me off before I could finish, already flashing a smile.

-- Little Mark, from 3201, how long has it been? You all grown up. It must be going on at least 15 years.

Some pounds were exchanged. A hug was shared. Smiles and loads of laughter were exchanged as well. Garland from 3205 Toledo Place. Me from 3201. Two boys who grew up together in Hyattsville-Chillum, MD. Two men marveling at each other. It had been so long. Too long. Two men now all grown up.

Garland, or Big Garland as we sometimes called him, was older than me by at least three or four years. Always bigger than most kids his age, but a gentle giant, Garland was now standing about six feet four inches. He was tipping the scales at over two hundred and fifty. But you could tell he was fit and in good shape. Garland was still, as he always had been, cool and chill, but also, still, gave off the vibe of being someone you never wanted to provoke. The one or two times someone got crosswise with him, and it turned physical, they caught his hands. But most dudes knew better than to test how deep Garland’s still waters ran.

Garland was also smart, funny, easy to talk to, always bearing a sly grin when he talked (and still was). Like me, he was an only child. He was the kind of dude who, even when we were all together on a stoop chilling, always kept a part of himself to himself. He nodded when he agreed. He nodded when he approved. He listened more than he talked. His Mom, if memory serves, was a nurse, who worked all kinds of hours, which meant he spent, like the rest of us latchkey kids without siblings did, a good amount of time alone and on his own. His comic book collection and his electric football teams were the things of legend. He was the first dude I knew who bought two copies of his favorite comics: one to read and one to be preserved in mint condition. He’d let you borrow comic books to read, but returning them to him damaged in any way would definitely be a problem. It didn’t matter if that was the copy he bought for reading. He expected you to handle his comic books or anything that belonged to him with care. He was so meticulous when it came to his electric football teams that he found numbered decals from somewhere that were small enough to fit onto the front and back of the player’s jerseys. He also cut the names of his team’s players from team rosters printed in the Washington Post Sports section to affix to the back of their jerseys as well. Playing against Garland in electric football, like I did a couple, three times, where he reigned supreme in our neighborhood, remains an honor and a privilege. Garland, I should add if it’s not already apparent, was superordinary when it came to neatness and attention to details. So I wasn’t even a little bit surprised to learn that he had become an electrician.

When I reminded him of his supremacy in electric football that Saturday morning he burst out in laughter, but at no point did he deny the claim. He knew he was the man then when it came to that and other things and that knowing look, through all the laughs, was still in his eyes. He remembered how I would spend hours throwing a tennis ball or hard rubber ball against my apartment steps stoop to practice my fielding for baseball. He also remembered how my mom would call my name to come in for dinner. How loudly she called my name. How embarrassed this always made me. And how she never let me be out on the stoop past when the street light came on. We both remembered all the two-hand touch football we played on the parking lot, using the parking lane lines as down and distance markers. All the throw-up-tackle we played on the grass field between 3201 and 3203, where the Oak tree was one endzone and the other was the dirt path beyond edge of where 3201 stopped. We remembered how you had to claim the name of your favorite running back before the game of throw-up-tackle even got started. Or if you were lucky enough to receive this high honor, when there was confusion, or two boys claimed the same running back’s name, one of the older boys, like Garland, would intervene and say, nah, youngin’ right here runs more like Billy Sims—raise your hand if had the Adidas Billy’s Sunday shoes poster?—Wilbert Montgomery, Terry Metcalf, Joe Washington, Eric Dickerson, Marcus Allen, or Walter Payton than you do, so you’re going to have to let him claim that name. We remembered how the ice cream truck used to come down into our cul-de-sac in the summer and how long the line was for Bomb-Pops, Pushups, Fudgsicles all kinds of candy and bubble gum. And the water gun and water balloon fights that we also had during the summer that left us soaking wet. We remembered the snowball fights we had until or feet and hands were too frozen to continue battling. We remembered (and joked about) how roaches seemed to infest all of our apartments at times and how everyone had cans and cans of Raid, how you could sometimes go into the kitchen and turn on the light, and there’d be roaches everywhere like it was some kind of convention, or a party. We remembered how when the heat wasn’t working, we’d make a pallets and sleep on the floor outside the kitchen with oven on and open. We remembered how slow maintenance was to fix anything and how fast they were to evict. We remembered that one time we snuck up onto the roof of my apartment building and almost got caught by Ms. Jones. We remembered that shortcut path we used to take to get to PG Plaza where we’d get those hand-packed pints of butter pecan ice cream t from High’s, slices of pizza we from Mama Lucia, sleeves of popcorn we got from G.C. Murphy. We remembered how G.C. Murphy was also the place to go to pet fish, pet birds, pet, hamsters, pet lizards, and all the food and supplies needed for their upkeep. Remember the Grand Union grocery store. Remember Raleigh’s Haberdashery, the Hecht’s and the Woodies. Remember the Antique Underground where we bought all our comic books. Remember Jo-Ann’s Nut House where we would buy bags of candy. Remember, what was the name of that stall, that sold the leather poker-brimmed hats everyone was wearing back in the day, the hats with our Go-Go nicknames carved into them. How many hours did we spend just in PG Plaza? And remember that time we all played Tag-You’re-It on the elevators in the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms building, across the street from The Plaza—whose idea was that, how did we even get in there, we were lucky that the security guards didn’t have us arrested and only put us out.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before we got to the roll call and to talking about how dudes were doing, where folk were, who was still caught up in the life, who was in prison, who was living, and who had died and was with us no longer.

I called off names of the dudes we’d grown up with: Calvin, Timmy Lee, Darren, Little Earl, Reggie and his younger brother Willie, Adrian, Mookie, Sean, Frank, Carl, Sweepy, Alphonso and his younger brother Alton, Man-Man, Deion, Phee, Dink and Andre—Phee, Dink, Andre, and Deon all being brothers with Deion being the youngest.

It was Garland who knew everyone’s story. Some were locked up. Some were still caught-up in the life which meant they were still in and out of lock-up. Some had reconnected with the Church and were turning their lives around, or as Garland put it of the brothers who had found religion: oh, him, Jesus got that nigga.

I have to pause here and say that anyone who knows me knows that nigga is not a word that I use. It does almost no work for me. But when it is used expertly, comically, and unexpectedly, like Garland did that morning, it always makes me laugh, despite all my misgivings. So when he said Jesus got that nigga referring to dudes now heavily into church, you can bet that I dropped, laughing, almost to my knees.

And of course, some were dead, which is to say some of them had been killed. No surprises there. Thousands of Black boys and young Black men had been killed in the eighties and early nineties throughout the DMV. Like my neighborhood best friend Deion who was stabbed to death at a Go-Go in 1985. I was a junior in high school. I was at school when he I got word that he had been killed. It is a day I have never forgotten. And one that I will never forget.

Garland didn’t have to update me about Deion. He knew that I already knew. We both had attended Deion’s funeral.

Deion had been more than a friend, he had been a big brother, and by extension his big brothers—Phee, Dink, Andre—had been my big brothers as well. Deion was a prince in our neighborhood. There wasn’t anyone who didn’t admire him. Everyone loved him. His smile was magnetic. He remains one of the most charismatic human beings I have ever met. And when I tell you that Deion bought up every wolf ticket I over-sold when my trash talking and chirping had set an older, larger boy on tilt, he bought all of them up. To get to me you always had to go through Deion first, and no one wanted to deal with Deion’s hands.

But much more than defending me, and getting me off the hook when I had run my mouth too much, he always looked out for me as a friend and a big brother. It's like he knew that as an only child I often felt alone. That, for all my trash talk, lack confidence. And he was always cheering me on giving me a boost. That I was painfully shy and needed to be pushed, at times, to give something new a try—Deion was fearless, he’d try anything. There were times he’d knock on my apartment door just to get me to come over to his apartment building, 3203, to kick it with him and his brothers while they were cooking, cleaning—Ms. Williams, their mother did not play—or watching movies, or just annoying each other to death. Other times I think he invited me over because he knew I had a crush on his baby-sister, Monique, and he got a kick out of how tongue-tied I was whenever she was around. Or how when she said anything at all to me, or when she smiled at me, I would always blush and sometimes begin to sweat.

The thing to know about remembering memories is that memories beget memories. That is to say that the more you begin remembering the more likely it is you will start remembering someone or something else, and then something else after that, or someone else you only thought you had forgotten, and on and on and so on it goes. And that is also to say, said differently, that memory’s vaults, once opened, are not easily shut…

Garland and I stood there running it back and catching up for hours. Even though a lot of what we said that was the most important stuff to say wasn’t even said with words. Like the fact that we were standing there, talking to each other, having made it. And that we knew, without saying it, what making it had cost.

But it was one of the last things he said to me that threw me for a loop.

Look at you, my man, Little Mark from 3201 Toledo, Apartment 103, we always knew you were going to make it out. That you were going to do big things. I ain’t surprised you about to go off to start law school. Not one of us would be because we always knew.

What do you mean you all always knew, we were all boys, how could you all have known, I didn’t even know.

His comment, like I said, had thrown me for a loop. But before Garland repeated what he said, I had one of those moments when I could see how so many things had come together for me to make it out and up, how the same was true for Garland, and for every one of the men I was supposed to playing basketball with. I could see, in that instant, all the folk who had loved and supported and sacrificed for me, all the lucky breaks I had caught, that had allowed for me to become me. And I knew, in that instant, that same was true for any living, human being. Each one of our lives being so precarious and fragile. And I could not stop thinking about how improbable it was that we had all made it. Nor could I stop thinking about how certain it was that we had made it. We had been built to manage life and life’s stresses, just by watching, daily, how our parents and families struggled as we struggled along with them to live. Even though I would not have thought that any of that was a struggle in any political sense anyway. For me, it was just my life. It was only when I made it to college did I begin to realize how much of a blessing my upbringing had been. And right when, in that same instant I was feeling proud of myself and of all of us who made it, I thought about all the brothers, Black boys and Black men, who didn’t make it, and how ridiculous it was to be proud for surviving the booby traps that had been laid for all of us. That’s when the survivor’s guilt started seeping in. Something Black men hardly talk about at all. Something we need to talk about more. But then I thought about how all of those guys I grew up with had cleared a path for me. Whether it was sending me home when things were about to get extra, or refusing to let me ride with them if they were riding dirty. They were saving a life for me that they didn’t believe that they would ever live for themselves.

We always knew. We always knew you were going to make it out.

Garland said, again, releasing me from my avalanching thoughts. By that point, I had no words. Though tears were beginning to swell in my eyes. And Garland was getting a little misty eyed too.

So we left it with a few more pounds exchanged, a few more smiles, some laughs, and a hug, before we said our goodbyes, before went on back to play ball with the men we had come to play ball with, men who were still in the game, men who, by all appearances, were making it.