Life on the Run (6 page)

Walt Frazier controls the game from the opening buzzer, putting on a show for the eight members of his family in attendance. He scores 34 points against Pete Maravich, the white darling of Atlanta, and the Knicks win by 8. Frazier’s family is dressed in their Sunday best. Clyde (a name Frazier acquired because of his preference for the wide brimmed hats and 1930s styles seen in the movie
Bonnie and Clyde
) arrived at the game in clothes a little more conservative than usual. He, too, respects his past. The first time he came to Atlanta, for example, he shortened his Afro because his grandmother didn’t like hippie long-haired kids, regardless of how “cool” they were.

Walt Frazier is the oldest of ten children. His grandparents on his father’s side come from farm country near Augusta. Since slavery ended, people in his mother’s family have continuously done subsistence farming on a plot of land near Sandersville. During most summers of his first ten years, Walt, along with his sisters, mother, and grandmother, visited their country relatives. From those days, he remembers the taste of freshly picked corn and newly plucked chicken, fried Southern style. He recalls the near impossibility of catching a baby pig on the run, however quick your hands. Then, at night, conversations about snakes filtered into the kids’ bedroom from the living room where relatives spoke in cautious tones. Finally, the midnight train with its shrill whistle passed so close to the house that Clyde and his sisters feared it might come crashing through the bedroom door one night.

In Atlanta, Walt lived with his mother, father, brother, and sisters. His father’s parents lived next door. His grandfather worked from dawn to sundown. “You’re not a man unless you have credit,” he said. He worked on an assembly line at the Atlanta Paper Company for thirty years, until he was forced to retire at age sixty-five. He got a good pension, but he still insisted on doing work such as lawn and building maintenance at homes where his wife was employed as a domestic.

From his grandfather, Walt heard the familiar Puritan litany about hard work and frugality. From his father, he saw the rewards of the fast life. Walter, Sr., was a hustler in the Summerhill section of Atlanta and provided his family with a comfortable lifestyle. “As a kid,” Clyde remembers, “whatever I wanted my father got me, from spending money to tickets for the Globetrotters. We went shopping every Saturday.” Whenever someone in his family wanted to go somewhere, Walter, Sr., sent one of his employees in a Cadillac to drive him. A maid came once a week to cook and to clean and there was always plenty of food and clothing. “I can remember trying on my father’s clothes alone in front of the mirror,” Clyde says, “wishing I was big enough to wear the bright two-button sport shirts that opened in front, or the brown and white Stacey Adams shoes. I liked the way they looked on him and I wanted to look the same.”

When Walt was twelve years old, his father lost his territory. Clyde’s grandfather had always urged his son to save his money, but Walter, Sr., was an incurable spendthrift. Abruptly, the pockets that used to be full of twenties, fifties, and hundred dollar bills had only fives in them. “The house was always crowded with people,” Frazier says, “and then suddenly, nothing. Nobody came when he no longer had cash, except some whites who came around looking for money he owed them. He started coming home only three nights a week. It was bad but I never asked him what happened. In my own mind, it was like some guy in power who lets things go to pot. Everybody played the numbers. He was just the man lucky enough to control it—for awhile. I don’t think my father had worked a day in his life until then. I don’t think he ever had a job.”

When Walt was eleven years old, he stopped going to the farm and devoted all his summers to sports and work. At the playground three blocks from his house, he spent long hours playing baseball, basketball, and football. When it rained, the instructor introduced Clyde to ping-pong, Scrabble, and Monopoly. Clyde gained a reputation as a ballplayer, and this, strangely, exempted him from the gambling that the older teen-agers went in for after playground hours. “Go home,” they would say as they rolled the dice. “You’re going to be an athlete.”

One summer, Clyde got a job cleaning up the old Atlanta Cracker baseball park during the day. Then he and his buddies returned at night, sneaked under the stands and gave hotfoots to the paying fans. Other jobs were cutting grass in the white sections of Atlanta, cleaning carpets in private homes, and working as a bus boy in a restaurant or as a curb attendant at a Zesto ice cream stand.

The Atlanta of his childhood was a world of separate and unequal societies for white and black people. The wrestling matches, the buses, and the ballparks had special black sections; even the drinking fountains were segregated. Clyde and his friends called whites “crackers.” They often played with them in pick-up games or swam with them in creeks, but, as Clyde recalls, “Once you left that field, you went your separate ways. I never had a run-in with adult white people when I was young. I was never too many places where they could call me ‘Nigger’ for long. There were places or neighborhoods you knew you shouldn’t go, but the other guys would. I would always mind my own business.”

His all-black high school did not compete against white athletic teams. When the time came for him to go to college, he wanted to choose Tennessee State or Grambling, each a black school. His grandmother and mother, however, wanted him to go to an integrated school, and he dutifully chose Southern Illinois University. He led Southern Illinois to the NIT championship of 1967. After seeing the all-around play he demonstrated in that tournament, the New York Knicks drafted him number one, and two months later he signed a contract to play professional basketball in New York.

Now, after the game in the Omni, eight members of the press crowd around the players in the steaming locker room.

“How would you describe Clyde’s game tonight?”

“Why were you hitting so well in the third quarter?”

“Do you think the Hawks will make the play-offs?”

“How would you compare Maravich and Frazier?”

Star of the game: Walt Frazier. He is promised two knitted shirts. We shower, stuff our wet clothes into our bags, and head for the bus.

Back at the hotel, the beauticians are partying. I notice that the door across from mine is open. There are people inside laughing. I drape my uniform across chairs to dry and wander across the hall. Three men and three women sit on the beds drinking and talking of sex, clothes, make-up and what they used to do in high school “up at Van Buren.” One of the men, a Georgia Congressman who spoke at the beautician’s dinner, makes a hasty exit after no one listens to his discussion of taxation and political integrity. With the departure of the Congressman, I am the third male. A man pours more bourbon. The talk decreases. I hesitate briefly, but what the hell I’m only young and single once.

After so many nights on the road in so many different hotels encountering so many different situations, everything takes on an ephemeral quality; everything ends with the payment at the cashier’s desk the next morning. What normally would be out of the question for me becomes acceptable in the self-contained world of Mt. Marriott or Holiday Valley. Normal shyness would prevent me from entering a stranger’s hotel room, but on the road there seems to be nothing to lose. Everyone in the hotel sleeps under the same roof for one night and moves on. Loneliness can be overcome only by reaching out for contact: a conversation in the bar, a sharing of dinner, a question in an elevator, a direct invitation, a telephone call to a room, or a helping hand with doors, windows, TVs, locks, or ice machines. The percentages are that if a man spends enough nights in hotels he will meet a woman with whom for that night he will share a bed, giving each a brief escape from boredom and loneliness. Make no mistake: Life in hotels is no continuous orgy. There are months of nights in one’s room, alone. And it is rare than an encounter develops beyond the verbal level. It is very unusual when everything feels right and the loneliness of the road oppresses two strangers equally at the same time.

“T
HIS IS THE LAST CALL FOR FLIGHT
623
TO CHICAGO
,
DEPARTING
from Gate 54 on the East Concourse.” I hurriedly swallow my orange juice, roll and coffee and head for the gate. The plane ride is full of familiar sounds, sights, superstitions, and annoyances.

Generally, I prefer to sit next to a team member. After a few years of trying to meet and talk with strangers on planes, I began to put more value on being alone while in the air. There are no telephones or interruptions up there. A trip to the West Coast guarantees five uninterrupted hours of splendid solitude. It is different from the loneliness of hotels and terminals, or the yearning for permanence that glimpses of cities and mountains generate. Seated next to a window with a book in hand and the hum of jet engines as backdrop, I enjoy flying. The movement of the plane and the knowledge of changing environments imply that things are being accomplished, while I rest in total comfort. Some of my best moments come on airplane flights. In the off-season, I sometimes fly off somewhere just so I can concentrate during the flight. The fuselage of a jet airplane serves as a mechanical sanctuary for me.

As I get on the plane, all the seats are taken except one—next to a man wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and striped tie. I sit down and immediately start to read. The man looks at me between glances out the window and at his
Sports Illustrated
. “Pardon me,” he finally says, “but aren’t you Bill Bradley?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Jack… I went to basketball camp with you fifteen years ago.”

“Yeah, what do you do now?”

“I work for Kimberly Clark, the paper company.”

“How do you like your job?”

“You know, I’ve learned a lot. Once you sell Kotex as a man you can sell anything.”

We talk about the basketball season, players salaries, his family, and his athletic past for ten minutes.

“You still play ball?” I ask.

“Not much, but I help organize teams for our athletic club in Detroit.”

“That must be enjoyable.”

“Yeah, usually things go all right,” he says, “but one of the basketball nights a member invited a friend who invited another friend who was black. Now, you know, I don’t think I have much prejudice. I don’t care if blacks are members, but I know how the guys felt. Thirty percent of our club is Detroit policemen and they hate them. Anyway, I went up to the black guy and told him to leave, that this was an all white club. He took it the wrong way and next thing I knew the NAACP was suing the club. It’s terrible the way things are. I think some day we’ll all be one race. As long as people know what they’re getting into and what it means for the kids, it’s okay with me. Take our company, for example. There is only one black at our regional meetings. He’s really sharp but that’s one of the things wrong with the company. They say they won’t hire a guy if he’s not a graduate of college. I say you don’t need no degree to be a good salesman.”

Our conversation dries up after lunch and then I ease into reading my book. The rest of the trip to Chicago is uneventful and silent. When we land, the salesman says to be sure and look him up in Detroit—maybe I might want to visit the athletic club.

After getting off the plane, I go directly to the soda fountain at O’Hare Airport, where I buy the only genuine vanilla ice cream cone available in an American airport. As we pick up our suitcases from the baggage conveyor, one black porter says to another, “They’re the Knicks. Did you see the one in the long black maxi with the fur collar and hat? He was somethin’.” We board a city bus, the kind whose sides are all windows, whose seats face each other, and whose bright fluorescent lights are either all on or all off. Lucas’s bag is lost. We sit in the bus waiting twenty minutes until the airline authorities assure him it will be at the hotel by evening. People on the sidewalk stare at us in the bus. Lucas finally boards with the team’s public relations man and we pull away. Like an illuminated fishbowl in the rush hour traffic, we move toward Chicago.

I find a message at the hotel which says to call a Chicago friend. When I reach him, he says that he has arranged a little party in my honor at his apartment. He lives off Rush Street in a brownstone. People start arriving around 9:30 and the evening quickly turns into an interrogation.

“What is Frazier really like?”

“Is Holzman the best coach?”

“Will Willis ever be 100 percent again?”

“Is DeBusschere a good guy?” a girl asks.

“Yes.”

“Who is the toughest guy for you to guard?” asks her boyfriend.

“Havlicek.”

“Tougher than McMillian?”

“Yeah.”

“No, how can you say that? McMillian is so much bigger and better at one-on-one. McMillian’s the best. He’s better than Havlicek. He’s harder for you to guard.”

“No, he isn’t.”

“I think he is.”

“Okay, whatever you say.”

Finally, one of the members of the group says, “Do you really like to play basketball?”

“Yeah, more than anything else I could be doing now,” I reply.

“That’s great. You know, I once played the trumpet. I think I know what you feel. I played in a little band. We were good. We’d play on weekends at colleges. In my last year we had an offer to tour and make records. Everyone wanted to, except me.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“My father thought it wasn’t secure enough.”

“What about you?”

“Well, I didn’t know, I guess I agreed,” he says. “The life is so transient. You’re always on the road. No sureness that you’ll get your next job. It just doesn’t fit into a life plan. So, I went to law school and quit playing the trumpet, except every once in a while. Now, I don’t have time.”

“Do you like law?”

“It’s okay, but nothing like playing the trumpet.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING
,
DEBUSSCHERE GETS UP BEFORE
10
AND
walks to the nearby office of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith to check the progress of the market. He is going to have lunch with a vice president of a Chicago bank to obtain information on the McDonalds Co. He has been toying with the idea of getting one of the New York franchises and believes that since his banker is a personal friend of the president of McDonalds, he has a chance.