Chestnut Hollow Blues

My freshman year had been a rough one since I came to college in California from Pennsylvania without a place to live, no money for books and literally had to scrounge for every meal. I lived like that until early November when I made the basketball team and earned a daily meal ticket at the local smorgasbord and a part time job I did not have to show up for in the campus field house.  Once I made the basketball team I had dinner every night at the smorgasbord downtown where I ate like the last piglet in the litter. I ate so much and so many different things that some days I found it difficult to walk back home.  Also, suddenly I had three jobs: one in the phys ed department that I didn’t have to show up for, one at the smorgasbord where I was required to work one hour a day to cover the cost of my meal, but I never did, and one at the US Post Office as a Youth Opportunity Program Clerk which was easy work and it paid me a healthy hourly wage.  At the US Post Office I drove around collecting mail from various boxes. I may have only been a freshman, but I was smart enough to know that only a fool messes with Uncle Sam. I did my work well. You just had to be sure not to pick up the mail early or late because some concerned citizen would be calling downtown reporting you.  Overall, along with my $68 social security dependent’s check from Mom Mouse and Pop Mouse I had a pretty good income going especially since two of the jobs I did not have to actually go to work, and could use the time as I saw fit to study, practice basketball or track and lift weights, eat and sleep.  Like every high school kid I had come to college with dreams of being a big star, but basketball had been rough for me especially in the beginning. I wasn’t playing against your typical college freshmen, but rather a bunch of grisly Vietnam veterans returning from the war who were three or four years older than me, convicts recently released from San Quentin prison and a bunch of other great athletes from the black ghettos of the Bay Area like East Palo Alto and Vallejo who had been admitted to college under the California junior colleges liberal open admissions policies.  These guys I was playing against would have never been admitted to Eastern and Midwestern colleges and universities because of their rigid admissions standards, but in the California junior college system you just had to graduate from high school and sign your name and you were, “In like Flint.” If you were eighteen years old you did not even need a high school diploma to enroll in community college. After getting embarrassed a few times in the early games of the season eventually, I was able to adjust my attitude and my game. Also since I started having regular meals instead of cigarettes and soup and crackers from the vending machines for dinner I started picking up weight again and to get my speed, strength and mental sharpness back.  Also I had to figure out and accept that sometimes at the collegiate level you were not going to be able to overpower guys like you did in high school. You also were not always going to be the best player on the floor. You had to be able to out think, and out work the other players because sometimes they were just more talented and experienced than you.  In my case they were also usually taller than me. I had had a fairly successful year basketball wise after I got used to the size and speed of the college game, and I did pretty well in track and field winning multiple high jump championships up and down the West coast.  More importantly though I had a 2.4 grade point average which gave me the option to achieve my goal of transferring to a four-year school.