Life in Mississippi...

    

      I lived in Mississippi when I was young. Each time Alabama plays Ole Miss in football or basketball in brings back memories. I love basketball. It isn’t easy being a round ball man in an oblong ball land. Don’t get me wrong. I like Alabama football, but my heart beats a little stronger when the Tide takes to the hardwood. Loving basketball isn’t the standard bill of fare in the Deep South. Down here, football is king. There is no doubt about which sport rules the unique area we call home. And there was no doubt my family were 'Bama fans. 

    Basketball has always been my favorite game.  I learned to play hoops in Jackson, Mississippi. My family wasn’t rich. We weren’t poor, but there wasn’t a lot of money to spend on extra things.  Back then, your mother opened the back door to let you out to play with your friends after breakfast. She said don’t coms home before lunch or be back by dark. The difference in me and the kids on my block was I had a basketball tucked under my arm and not a football.   All the white kids played football. I played basketball. We lived a block or so from the black neighborhood. It was literally across the railroad tracks. Most of my friends were black because of basketball.  We played basketball on asphalt courts. The rims had no nets.

    When I was eight,  a couple of older black kids said I shouldn't play with them because I was white. They told me it was better to play with the white kids. I told them it didn't matter.  Eventually, I was just another kid who wanted to play basketball. The white kids called me names, said some things I  will not write here. My mother and father explained this was the way the world was. But our family treated everyone the same and told Mississippians what we believed.    It was a good lesson to learn in 1955. It wasn’t a popular one, however. That was 64 years ago. The world hasn’t changed as much as it could have.  People still hate. Ignorance abounds, but hope lives on. Basketball taught me a lot more than making baskets.  I’m still that little kid that goes outside with a basketball under his arm. You can’t see that basketball, but it’s there.  I still hear my parents telling me that everyone is my brother and sister.  I still know most of my black buddies from that asphalt court. We talk from time to time, mostly at funerals now.  They still call me “little cracker”.  Back in 1955, I learned to shoot the rock from downtown, dribble behind my back, and throw a no-look pass. It was a magical year in more ways than one.