The gigantic tree was no more.
“Gigantic” might be overstated, but I swear that tree was 100 feet tall, maybe taller.
It stood proudly alongside County Highway J in rural Harrison Township, only a quarter of a mile from where I grew up. If you were driving west from our farm, it would greet you on the right side; left side if you were driving east.
In the spring of 2000, when I was commuting home from classes at Mid-State Technical College in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, spotting the huge tree always meant I was close to home. I missed that tree after I left home a year later, starting a new life at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.
I am not well versed on species of trees. I have no idea what type of tree it was. But I can dip into the memory banks and see clearly that tree rising high off the ground, spreading its vast branches into the sky like a phoenix. It looked out of place. Lonely. It was the only tree in that area. It hugged tightly against the ditch, power lines cutting through its higher branches.
It was awkward. Unique. Beautiful.
A couple of summers ago, while visiting my hometown about seven miles from “The Tree,” I decided to take an alternate route and drive past my ol’ stomping grounds. I anticipated seeing that bold, majestic force of bark and leaves as I turned from Highway C onto Highway J and accelerated toward the farm. But to my astonishment, the tree was … gone. What!? I did a doubletake. Checked my rear-view mirror as I brushed past the spot where it once stood. Even slowed down, craned my neck and shot a backwards glance to make sure what I was seeing was real. Nope, no illusion.
The gigantic tree was cut down. Only a large stump remained.
A small pit of emptiness filled my stomach. That tree had been there forever. Was it 100 years old? 150? Who the hell knows. Was it dying? Had it been struck by the unfortunate cruelty of a lightning bolt? Whatever the case, the gigantic tree was no more.
No matter how many times I drive through my old neighborhood, I’ll never see that tree again. I know what you’re thinking, Dude, it’s a fucking tree. Get over it. OK, maybe I’m weird, but that tree provided a sense of comfort. It was a symbol of home, even though I haven’t lived on that farm in over 20 years. A warm reassurance that as much as the world changes, some things stay the same.
Like the big tree along Highway J.
Searching for the old hoop
It’s a strange concept. When we’re young, say around 18, we can’t wait to graduate high school and leave home. We yearn to spread our wings. Explore. Find new freedoms. Before you know it, we’re old and nostalgic. We cling to items that remind us of the past. Of home. A simpler time when our heads weren’t filled with anxiety over jobs, bills, deadlines, mortgages, kids, spouses. So, when even a shred of something remains intact, we try to hold onto it for dear life. It takes us back to a place and time we can never quite duplicate but desperately wish we could.
Our old farm was for sale again about two years ago. Curiosity came calling a couple weeks ago and I did a quick Google search looking for realtor ads of the farm online. Bingo! One ad featured a terrific gallery of photos. I started clicking through.
Man, it looked different. I barely recognized the house I grew up in. Since my brother sold the farm in 2007, the house has undergone extensive renovation. It looks nice, but hardly reminds me of home. I felt a bit sad. As I kept clicking through pictures, checking out a barn and two large sheds that still stand, I was searching for one small thread from the past that I was hoping – through all the change – was still there.
I was looking for my basketball hoop.
Probably around 1995 or so, my older brother and I moved our hoop, which was hanging up in the garage, to an upstairs portion of my dad’s shed. Dad, who worked in construction for about 25 years before moving to full-time dairy farming, built that mass of concrete bricks, steel beams, wood and shingles in the summer of 1966. Several buddies from his suburban Milwaukee construction crew made the 150-mile trek to little Iola, Wisconsin to lend a hand. I can’t imagine what (if any) my dad paid these guys to do all this work in the hot summer sun, but I’m sure plenty of laughs and a few cold Point beers were doled out as compensation.
I’m amazed he built that study structure with his bare hands. I hope it still stands for another 60 years and beyond.
One half of the upstairs was an oat bin and at times, a nursery for my mom’s chickens. The other half had been used to store extra hay bales that we couldn’t quite fit up in the hay barn. By ’95, we no longer needed that space for hay. It just sat there collecting dust. My brother figured it would make a suitable spot for half-court play. We swept up the remnants of hay chaff, scrubbed the encrusted drops of bird shit off the wood floor and went to work. We grabbed a ladder, measured up to 10 feet on the nose, and hammered in the backboard. To really make the space feel “courtish,” we painted orange lines on the floor, marking out a college three-point, along with a free-throw line and lane. The floor wasn’t quite wide enough to extend the three-point line all the way to the corners, but who cares! To me it was Boston Garden.
The hoop was up. The lines were drawn. It was time to play.
But for the next couple of years, I farted around up there, shooting every now and then, not taking it too seriously. That all changed in the summer of ’97.
The Summer of (Hoops) Love
I have liked basketball since I was about eight years old, but I didn’t really fall in love with basketball until age 16. In early April of ’97, the surprising Arizona Wildcats won the NCAA men’s Final Four. In June, the mighty Chicago Bulls won their second of three-straight NBA titles and No. 5 in the Jordan era. Around July, I purchased a PlayStation and the first game I bought was NBA Live ’97. Kings shooting guard Mitch Richmond graced the cover. Also, I read Sports Illustrated every week, soaking up the magazine’s outstanding hoops coverage.
I was officially a hoops head and I started feeling the itch to play. I began shooting in our makeshift court. But I had other aspirations too. I wanted to lose weight.
I was halfway through high school and hadn’t had a girlfriend yet. When you’re 16, it’s all about trying to impress the ladies. I wasn’t chunky, but I certainly wasn’t skinny. Self-consciousness crept in and I wanted to look good. Get in shape. Sure, working on a dairy farm everyday helped, but it’s different. You build strength tossing hay bales in the barn, but you’re not getting much aerobic exercise. Nothing that’s controlled to push your body.
On the court, I had no drills to follow. No coach barking at me to do this or that. I simply picked up a ball and started shooting. I tried to emulate the stars I saw on TV. OK, so I wasn’t throwing down mad dunks like Shawn Kemp, but you don’t have to be a 6-foot-9 athletic freak to shoot. I pictured Larry Bird, how he would jump straight up, cock his arms back above his head and fire away with the most beautiful jump shot you’ve ever seen. I would square up my body to the basket, elevate and snap my wrists as I felt the ball leave my fingertips.
I spent hours shooting in that dank, ill-ventilated grainery. That shed was hot. When it was built, my dad and his buddies shingled the roof, keeping warm air locked in during the winter but also leaving it roasting in the summer. I melted off almost 30 pounds that summer. When school started again in late August, a cute girl I shared a bus route with noticed my newfound weight loss.
“Good for you,” she said, nodding with an approving smile.
Of course, I was still too shy and self-conscious to ask her on a date, but the compliment has stuck with me for over 25 years. Being kind can go a long way.
Sweating away shooting hoops that summer was the most time I had spent practicing a sport. The more time I spent hoisting jumpers, driving the lane, firing passes against the wall to imaginary teammates, the more I felt I had found my sport.
The court wasn’t perfect. About 95 percent of the floor was made of this weird particle board mix nailed to support beams from the lower floor. And it was full of dead spots. I would often dribble into the lane, my body travelling forward as the ball stayed put. I would curse that stupid floor but, if nothing else, it made me a better ball handler.
The entire summer, none of my friends knew what I was up to. There was no social media in ’97. I didn’t own a cell phone. The thought of snapping selfies on the court with the caption “OMG! Sweating my ass off up here. Putting in the WORK,” wasn’t even in the realm of consciousness. There was no fanfare. I did it on my own.
My coach (me) was a bit of a hard ass. He wouldn’t let me leave the court until I made my last five shots. Only one could be a layup and one had to be a three-pointer. Yeah, so it’s not the maniacal stories you hear about Kobe or Pete Maravich shooting 500 buckets before leaving the court, but it challenged me to hit shots from all over the floor and to not give up if I missed.
Gym class buckets and longtime regrets
One day, in the fall, I picked up a ball during gym class. My buddy, Dave Maloney, was shooting around and I figured I would join him. I was somewhat intimidated because I knew Dave played varsity basketball. He stood at least 6-4 and was a solid post player. Small, rural schools don’t exactly have 6-8 powerhouses sprouting from trees, so Dave was our center.
I sheepishly put up a few shots and started draining 15-footers. I was warming up as I shot, feeling the confidence I had gained during all those hours in that sweaty shed. Rise. Fire. Swish. Rise. Fire. Swish. Dave, rebounding for me, turned around with wide eyes.
“Damn, you’re hitting everything,” he said.
“I played a little this summer,” I said with a wry smile.
“I see that. You have a good shot.”
“Thanks.”
“You should go out for the basketball team this year.”
Dave’s comment caught me off guard, but in a good way. Wow, a dude on varsity thinks I can shoot. You go through high school just hoping for an ounce of acceptance from your peers, and my buddy’s little compliment gave me validation. But … I was reluctant.
“Umm … yeah, I don’t know.”
I never joined the team. I’ve always regretted it.
Back then, I sort of dismissed the suggestion, never really giving it a second thought. When you’re 16, you don’t think about how a decision is going to affect your life 10, 20 years down the road. You live for the moment. At least I did.
I knew it wouldn’t be feasible. Practices were after school, games in the evening. I had to be home every day by 4 p.m. to start chores and help my brother milk cows. By the mid ‘90s, my brother and I were mostly running the farm’s day-to-day operations. Several years earlier, Dad had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. The neurological impairment is a devastating little bitch that slowly strips away your mobility, cognitive aptitude, and speech functionality.
Few of my closest friends even knew my dad was sick and I doubt any of them had an inkling of how truly ill he was. There were good days when he could jump on a tractor and help my brother with fieldwork. Other days he was mostly bedridden, his feat twisting up into painful cramps that made even walking too difficult. My mom spent most of her time taking care of him.
By junior year, playing sports or doing any extra-curricular activities was mostly out of the question. And my parents weren’t big sports people. They certainly weren’t pushy sports parents, but a little nudge would have been nice. We had a couple of friendly neighbors that would help with farm work or repairing machinery every now and then but asking to help milk cows was another thing. In a line of work where desirable jobs are few, milking cows has to be near the bottom of the list.
Asking my parents to ditch nightly chores to play basketball would have been a tough sell.
I’m proud that I sacrificed sports to help support my family, but I can’t shake the nagging feeling of emptiness that I didn’t at least give basketball a try.
I did get to play with Dave, however. Junior year was the start of mixed gym class with the seniors. We got some pickup games going and it was epic. Shirts vs. Skins with bragging rights on the line. Every sweaty clash felt like Game 7 of the Finals. Each basket was contested. Dramatic.
I loved watching Dave work the low post, backing his down his defender, and either muscling in for a tough shot off the glass, or opting for a hook or fadeaway jumper. Sometimes, if he was double-teamed in the post, I would pop out to the baseline, Dave would fire a pass to me in the corner and, initially, I would hesitate to shoot.
“Shoot it!” Dave would yell.
Sure, I’d miss a few and scoff at myself but as I kept firing away, my confidence built. One of the hardest shots in basketball – the corner jumper – became one of my best.
Playing with Dave was also the first time I found out that if you’re fighting for a rebound while falling out of bounds, you can throw the ball off an opposing player and if it lands out of bounds, it’s a turnover on them. I remember clearly Dave doing that while losing his balance along the baseline and thinking, Oooohhhh, shit! You can do that?! It sort of blew my mind.
I wonder what would have happened if I had joined the team. I never got to don the school’s colors, drape a jersey over my chest and sprint out of the locker room to a cheering student section. Never got to drain the winning shot over a dreaded conference rival (I’m looking at you, Rosholt). Never felt the camaraderie of being on a team or swelling up with pride knowing you’re representing your community.
In that dusty shed, all I had was a basketball and a hoop. For an hour or two, I could focus on one thing: basketball. I didn’t have to think about a father stricken with Parkinson’s; the 44 cows I had to help take care of or the heifers I had to feed. The pressures of school, fitting in as a nerdy teen and trying to get good grades to get into college one day so I could leave the farm behind.
But as I clicked through those photos, looking lost, hoping to find some familiarity of home, I thought about what I wouldn’t give to be that 16-year-old again, firing jumpers in that summer hotbox.
As I came to a photo of the shed’s second floor, my heart sank. I didn’t see the hoop. Like the gigantic tree, it was gone. Somebody who owned the farm after my brother sold it had taken it down. I slumped in my chair. Oh well, nothing lasts forever, even old, dingy basketball hoops.
But wait … I was fixated on the wrong end of the shed. I had forgotten the layout. Forgive me, it’s been 20 years. Hope renewed; I glanced optimistically to the left side of the image. Faintly, in the far-left corner was THE HOOP. The net was almost totally stripped away, with only one three-inch shred dangling pathetically off the rim. One last, lonely remembrance of the summer of ’97. A thin smile crept across my face and my body flushed with relief as I sat in my office, pleasantly staring at my computer screen.
Hold on, there’s more. A small orange sphere at the bottom of the photo. Grainy, but no mistaking what it was.
Resting on the floor, only a few feet from the hoop, was a basketball.
Well done. As a fellow nerdy wanna be sports hero (my pastime was throwing footballs at the trees in my childhood neighborhood), I really enjoyed this.