A Shoe Story

"If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about those."
The Counting Crows  (Mrs. Potter's Lullaby)
 
Somewhere in my mind I hear the squeak of my basketball shoes on the gym floor.  That is the strongest memory I have of my pathetic little athletic career.  I love that sound.  I'm not so sure I loved it back then, but I desperately love it now.

During practice we would spit on the floor, then rub the treads of our shoes in the saliva to get the perfect bite from our hightops.  We did this all practice long, hundreds of times a day. It was like some sort of giant microbial cesspool, a TB experiment gone horribly wrong.

When we got too dry, we would dribble water from our mouths at the water fountain to make a good puddle on the ground, then squeak our way through that. Truly excellent traction!

For games, we somehow found our manners, and would lick our fingers and wipe the bottoms of our shoes.  I don't see professional players do this.  Do they maybe have somebody who licks their shoes for them?  I would probably do it if I could be in Sam Cassell's posse.  Maybe their shoes are just a little bit better than mine.  That would figure.

Nothing was better than the feel of a clean basketball floor and a leather ball perfectly inflated.  The gym empty and only partially lit, with the bleachers pushed back into the walls.  The extra goals would be hanging down screaming, "We Play BASKETBALL Here!".  Every dribble would bounce perfectly and echo forever.
 
I own Danny Fortson's shoe.  There, I said it.  His right shoe, game-worn.  I know this, because it came with a piece of paper that tells me so.  I don't think he got to play much in that game, because the shoe looks pretty fresh.  It is a big shoe and it is signed, but it is not superhuman big—maybe a 15 or 16.  It is the centerpiece of my living room. This shoe sits in a glass case between my two tvs. 

You do know who Danny Fortson is, don't you?  I hope so.  Nobody else seems to. They all just think I'm weird for having it.

Memories are strange.  I remember the squeaks on the floor and the ballgames and everything was happy.  I rarely think about how much I dreaded practice every day.  How these men that were supposed to be teaching me about sport and life instead just taught me that if I wanted to play the game I loved, first I had to survive.  I HATED almost all of my coaches.  They took the fun out of basketball, which I thought was impossible.  At the time I thought the things they did to us bordered on abuse.  Approached the line of cruelty.

I'm not entirely sure anymore.  But maybe I am.

When my brother was in ninth grade, one of the coaches lined up four of the kids (including my brother) and began swatting them with a big paddle as part of a "Kangaroo Court".  It was supposed to be funny.

The next day my brother and one other kid could barely walk because the backs of their legs were swollen with hematomas and their skin was split.  Everybody still thought it was kind of funny. My mom didn't.

In front of the whole class, she laid hands on that coach and asked if he wanted her to swat him.  He just stood there, always a weakling and a coward when not intimidating children.
 
Fortson's shoe was a gift from my brother.  Sports are important between us.  Basketball says things that words cannot.  Nobody understands why he bought me Danny Fortson's shoe, even after I explain it to them.  I explain it to women as a sort of test, to see if they "get it."  They don't.  Kind of like when I was in my twenties and I would have women read "Fisher's Hornpipe" and see if they laughed at the right places.  They never did.

See, the thing is that it doesn't have to be Danny Fortson's shoe.  It could be almost anybody's shoe.  As long as they aren't a superstar or my favorite player or something like that.  It needs to be the shoe of somebody who is kind of anonymous now, almost a nobody.  But at some point, at some level, they were a star.  They meant something in the sports conversation if you were paying attention.  They remind us of a specific time and place because they never went anywhere else.  Danny Fortson was a BEAST at Cincinnati.  He's an undersized, overpaid hothead now.  These things are important in my world. If someone understands who Danny Fortson is, then I know they are in my tribe.  Do you see?

The shoe could be Ledell Eackles' (which would be way cool!), or Jerald Honeycutt's.  It could be Chris Washburn's or maybe Derrick Chievous' or the crown jewel, Fennis Denbo's.  It just has to take you to a place that few can go.  Do you see?

In Arkansas lore, it would be Lawson Pilgrim's or David Scott's or Trey Trumbo's.  Maybe James Crockett's or Ray Biggers'.  Do you see?

I love the echo of a dribbled basketball.  It is the sound of footsteps in Valhalla.  When I close my eyes to sleep I see a crowded gym.  Two dozen balls are bouncing at random.  I try to synchronize their beat until it is a syncopated rhythm.  Do you remember that?  When it would happen ever so briefly?  All the balls being dribbled in unison.  Maybe one just slightly off so the sound was like that of heart valves closing—perfect, but not simultaneous.

And then the rhythm breaks down and it all becomes random again, and I wonder if I imagined it to begin with.  In some ways that  is basketball to me.  Or maybe that is life to me.  I get confused sometimes.

Danny Fortson's shoe is a bridge to things, a bridge to basketball, to my brother, to humility, to the tribe of sport.  Sports are a bridge as well.  Not a wall, not a moat, they are no kind of barrier.

Does this mean I'm looking for a Cinderella to fit into Danny Fortson's shoe?