Basketball Jones Part II: Ground-Based Vegetals, and The Never Ending Quest For The Proverbial Hardwood Floor ~ Original Photography And A Rather Long Story In Two Parts ~

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How Far Would YOU Go, In The Quest To Play On The Ultimate Hardwood Floor?

A continuation of the story of four individuals very dedicated to the sport of Basketball, and the resulting 'Jones' of the sport.
To catch up with this fascinating story, see Part I:

Basketball Jones -- Part I

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Whereas Our Basketball 'Jones' Boys Continue On The Ever Present Quest For Hardwood, And A Really Good Game Of Basketball

When we last left our intrepid round-baller's, and their precious hardwood floor, they had just been 'exited' from the local College bastion of basketball, and were cast back out to the harsh reality of the asphalt playgrounds of the Midwest. And on we go...

Asphalt Again -- Are You Kidding Me?

The idea of going back to the asphalt was both a hard pill to swallow, and a potentially expensive proposition of play. The city hadn't improved the local playground surface in our year-long absence, and as such, the thing was still darn hard on our Adidas and one precious, leather ball.

However, play we must, and serious games resumed in the outdoors for a time. With one eye always kept to the sky, as we were all too aware of the harsh conditions that would soon set in and make play less-than-enjoyable in the out of doors. Not only that, our precious leather ball was once again rapidly fuzzing up like the proverbial peach. Something had to be done.

As that one saying from somewhere about the other things of life goes: “If at first you don't succeed, try, try again, to find another sneaky way around it.” We just needed a bit of ingenuity. That's when T. Brown came up with another plan.

His brilliant plan of complex simplicity.

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If At First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Something Else

We needed to MAKE a stamp. Our own stamp. A new stamp that would efficiently get us past the cage, and onto our precious hardwood.

The theory was that upon entry we would just claim, as each of us entered at perfectly timed, random intervals, that we had already been IN the gym...we just had to go back out for “something in the car in the parking lot”.

It's a common plan, patterned after actions often seen in the older-person office environs of today. When avoiding meetings, or other events of the 'must miss' type. Keep your head down, move with authority, say nothing unless asked, and at ALL times, act like you know where the heck you're going as you scurry on down the hall.

We just needed a stamp for this plan to succeed. But how to craft one ourselves? And from what material? In today's modern world, one would just go online, order a stamp with large, capital CR letters, buy a four-color ink pad, and be in the gymnasium in five minutes flat. But this was before the Internet. And the now common, chain store “Stamp-It” emporiums of rubber stampville.

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A Brilliant Idea Is Born

No, this required genuine, good old-fashioned scofflaw ingenuity. Hmm, what to make a stamp from? We pondered for a time, gathered our collective wisdom, and came up with the only thing that made any sense. A potato.

These vegetables were plentiful. We all had access to them in our Mother's pantries. They were easy to carve, and luckily a few of us still had our old Exacto® knives from our pre-basketball, model building days of old.

Those were the days. Holed up in the basement all day long, scratch-building balsa wood buildings for my model railroad. All to the repetitious tune of my Mother's admonishments down the stairwell from the kitchen above: “Don't you have something better to do with your time than stay down in that basement all day? You're turning into a hermit. Go outdoors, get some SUN.”

Mother's of the world WERE often right, even though we didn't want them to be at the time. I did finally graduate from cloistered model building to my new love, basketball. And now, we badly needed a hand-stamp to pursue our great love.

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We were downright SURE we could still get onto the hardwood. After all, we had the necessary mix: youthful exuberance, a wealth of self-assured ingenuity, and not ONE of us was encumbered with a smidgen of that pesky, self-confidence filtration thing that afflicts we humans as we age.

We borrowed a few practice potatoes from our unsuspecting Mother's, piled down my basement stairs, and got busy on the model workbench of old. I was principal carver, since I had the knife and had spent more of my youthful days down in the dank basement than my fellow round-baller's.

Many dulled Exacto® blades, band aids, and bouts of cursing and laughter later, we had a pretty nifty looking, hand-carved potato stamp. It was comprised of a large, raised CR in bold caps, that majestic-ly stood out from the rest of the round Idaho spud 'blank' below.

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Art 101 Revisited

Our potato stamp was a bit like a small 3D statue, which was fitting...as any time we would run into a snag in the carving procedure...the comedic T. would mutter his standard phrase: “Make like that Michael Angelo Italian statue guy, just carve away anything that don't look like a CR”. Our T was a phenomenal point guard, but was a bit remiss in the realm of Art History.

Once we had our new, bold CR fully carved, we proceeded with 'inking' and testing our new product. With fervent excitement we painted the top of the raised, flat surface with a red Sharpie marker, and ceremoniously stamped the 6'7” David's huge hand. Much noise and fanfare of disappointment filled the basement air, not un-like the brain-damaging odors emitted from my little bottles of Testor's Model Cement years earlier.

Our new creation did not stamp out a bold CR as expected. Our potato stamp DID work well. It stamped just fine. It's just that the final result on the hand said RC, only in backwards, mirror-image letters.

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Our Stamp Looked Like This On The Hand:

"The Dag-gum Thing Is BACKWARDS!"

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Ms. Wheeler's 8th grade art class at Bellvedere Junior High had not been totally lost on this Jone's-ian group. The fix was obvious. We needed to carve our CR letters BACKWARDS on the potato, to have them PRINT forwards, once stamped. So much for all that noisy, self-assured, large group ingenuity. I'm sure Ms Wheeler would be very happy we figured out how to fix this hugely important dilemma.

Many potatoes, finger cuts, dumb T suggestions and much mirthful laughter later, we had a pretty good rendition of a backwards CR stamp, 'en- potatoe'. With a bit of practice, it actually made a pretty convincing stamp on the back of our hands. We were elated.

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Hurry Up And Get To The Hardwood!

The drive over to the gym was a noisy, giddy affair, and once there, we sent Eric in to scope the situation. The stamp color of the day needed to be discerned, and we had to match the right Sharpie® to the correct color to 'ink up' our potato.

After wandering about the front halls of the complex in 'feigned belong', peering at various hands, Eric returned to us outside with the verdict. "It's GREEN today!” We huddled between the dumpster and a large Arborvitae behind the complex, inked up our tater with the proper colored pen, and proceeded to self-stamp our hands, and eventually gain access to the gym. And all that PRECIOUS hardwood. The CR police were none the wiser. Just like in the office of today, when trying to miss those annoying meetings. The secret? Go go in one at a time, move fast, and say little. We knew we were really onto something big.

All we had to do to enter each day was bring the tater stamp, our collection of Sharpie® markers, send someone in to nonchalantly note the color of the day, and we were good to go for full-on hardwood play. Whenever the 'gym cops' wandered by, we'd surreptitiously make sure that enormous, back-of-the-hand CR was facing their direction. Preferably from a distance, so no questions could be asked, and thus we would be 'invited' to stay.

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Back In The Jones Business At Hand

The stamp worked great. As long as we had that CR mark, we never got hassled while playing ball in the gym the rest of that winter. We were once again in Basketball Jones Heaven. Things were going well, very well, until another difficulty arose, that once again tested our youthful ingenuity and stick-to-it-tive-ness.

Our potato hand-stamper would function wonderfully for a few days of use. However, as is wont to happen with any ground-based vegetable...once removed from said ground...our tater-stamp began to warp, shrink, mold, and basically lose ALL face as an important aid in sports-based sneaky-ness.

Our new, precious stamp got a bit wiggidy over time, rapidly becoming compost in a few days, which required us to start the whole process all over again.

We procured several dozen vegetable stamp 'blanks' from our Mother's pantries over the next few weeks, and managed to carve them up for appropriate use, which lasted a day or three, depending on weather and how long the thing got left in a coat pocket/auto glove compartment/bedroom dirty clothes pile.

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This stamp carving process was rapidly becoming all too impracticable. It took FOREVER to carve a simple CR, though it would have been easier if we didn't have to carve the dumb thing backwards. And our Mothers were beginning to wonder why their pantry-based potato supplies kept dwindling away. It was time to devise a new plan.

I think it might have been Winston Churchill who coined the phrase: “Dire times create dire needs, which require dire measures”, and our moldering tater stamp debacle was rapidly becoming a dire need. I don't remember who came up with the new direction of our grand plan, but since I am not in contact with my other Jones-ian friends these days, I'll claim full credit. “Bring forth CR hand stamp -- version 2.10 -- 'The New Stamp'.”

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The Grand New Plan Is Hatched

I have to say, this new idea was even more brilliant than the potato. A permanent stamp. One that could be used over and over and over again, without rapidly becoming compost.

The following Saturday, we four headed down to Read's Hardware Store and School Supply, and procured two of the largest, rectangular Eberhard-Faber, green-rubber erasers for graphite pencil that we could find.

Anyone with a school day's memory, or who now works in a standard office, should be well aware of these block-y, odd smelling things. If not from erasing penciled mistakes, they should have at least observed some niftily crafted eraser, pushpin and paperclip desktop diorama’s on various desks around the office. Usually re-creating such famous historical events as the Battle of Waterloo, or Cowboy Bob and His Eraser Horse, wandering the infamous Paperclip Corral.

I suppose it is possible many of you accomplished actual WORK during your office time, so maybe we should move on here. I appear to have progressed with reckless abandon into a backwards direction of some sort or another.

Back to basketball and The Jones. These small blocks of rubber were actually much easier to carve with the Exacto® blade, since they weren’t round, slimy, and stayed in one place on the table when operated upon. We set to work down in my basement once more, and after a few trials, had a pretty nifty backwards CR in the face of the things.

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Rubber Vs. Vegetable. There Really IS No Comparison

I say 'things' plural, because after a bit of trial and error, we actually needed two stamps. The Eberhard's were not as large as your standard Idaho spud, and not wide enough to make a full sized, backwards CR in one full, eraser-face. We had to carve a backwards C and a separate, backwards R, line them up 'just right' for a hand stamp, and then we would be back in gymnasium business.

We stuck to the same brilliant entry plan, with the only addition of a more resilient stamp. Someone still had to scout the day's stamp color, then report back to the group waiting word in the bushes. We'd soon 'ink up', and head into the hardwood mecca of basketball.

Using the same stamp over and over and over did have one glaring disadvantage. It often took awhile to ink, line up and stamp, as there were four of us, and we had to first 'clear' the stamp each day, of the previous 28 layers of the past colored ink. In this regard, the moldering vegetable stamp was an advantage. Less buildup. Our new Eberhard stamp got rather thick with ink buildup, but still worked well.

This whole surficial clearing process took more time and mirth than it probably needed, but we managed, as that is the true joy of unbridled youth that I SO often miss today. Simple, somewhat dumb things, that we always found completely and utterly hilarious.

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No...Thank YOU, Mr. Eberhard

The eraser stamp got us in, and we were off to our daily business of basketball. We played hours and hours and hours of basketball on the hardwood, and to this day I give thanks to the Eberhard-Faber company of hand-stamp blanks. Don't know how we could have done it without you. I'm sure our Mothers were happy as well.

And I suppose that yes, it is a lot of work to go to such lengths to play basketball on hardwood. And yes, we were rather silly in doing so, but it was all well worth it. After all, every one of us were HEAVILY afflicted with the Basketball Jones.

I would love to report that this story had a happy ending, and that we got to play free and clear hardwood-floor basketball for the next 17 years of our life. But once again, things in life don't always work out as we are quite sure they should.

The More Things Change, The More They Don't Stay The Same

The next year someone at the College changed the policy once more, making it even HARDER for us to play the sport on our favorite hardwood floors we weren't even supposed to have access to. Possibly, someone in the ivy-towered halls of higher learning got wind of the notorious Potato/Eberhard-Faber Gang, wreaking all sorts of illegal havoc on the gymnasium access system of their fair school.

More than likely, it was just some policy change put into place to lock things up a little tighter and keep any 'non-collegiate's' from taking space and time from the College kids and their parents who were actually PAYING for all these nice, sport amenities.

In older, mature hindsight this makes a lot of sense. Back then, in “hey, they're taking away OUR gym” huffy-hindsight, it didn't make any sense at all.

Whatever the reason for the change wafting in the procedural breeze, change it did. And we had to move on with those breezes. The new, in-place policy at the college that fall required both checking in at the cage with your OFFICIAL school Identification card, AND the resulting hand stamp once you were cleared with the ID. No amount of sneak could overcome this front door policy. We were plain and simple, out of basketball luck.

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If Life Gives You Lemons, Sneak Around A Bit More

And though we pondered it rather long and hard, we were pretty sure forging four illegal College ID's in my basement, just to play basketball, might not be the best idea we ever came up with. Yet we remained undaunted till the end. They tried to take away our easy-access vegetable and rubber eraser stamp system, but we persevered as any good Jones could be expected.

We still stamped our hands, but had to get in the door another way. For some odd, inexplicable reason, side-door security became a bit more lax a month or two into this new policy, and we resorted back to sneaking in through those large metal side doors whenever someone exited the gym.

Once again, by pre-stamping, moving fast, hiding in the high-jump pit or behind the curtains during movement, and blending in with the crowd, we still managed to play a bit longer on our precious hardwood floors. All of us had aged a bit over the last two years, so we looked a little more like College kids now. Once fully ensconced into a full-court game, we seldom caught any grief from the CR cops from then on. They probably just thought we now belonged in the gym.

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Moving On In The World Of The Jones

In the end, it did not matter all that much anyway, as this was our final year of high school. We all went off to separate Colleges shortly thereafter, where we didn't even NEED to carve potato or eraser stamps to play on the hardwood floors of basketball. We just showed our newly minted, legal College ID's, walked in with our smooth leather ball, and played on the precious hardwood for as long as we wanted. And enjoyed our new found lives as full fledged, in-perpetuation Basketball Jones nuts.

I'm not entirely certain, but I think we all may have learned a thing or two about girls while we were there in College too. Though that is probably a story for another time. Play on, all you Basketball Jones's. Play On!

~ Finto ~

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BASKETBALL JONES, By Cheech & Chong:

_{Song from Youtube}

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Thanks for stopping in and viewing Part II of the Basketball Jones Series. If you have any thoughts about Basketball, The NCAA Tournament, that sublime, squeaky-shoe'd hardwood, leather balls, homemade vegetative hand-stamps, or anything else this post reminds you of, please feel free to comment away in the spaces below. I'd love to hear from you.

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Please UPVOTE, COMMENT and FOLLOW if you enjoy my works.

And go to @ddschteinn -- There's a whole lot more...

_{Posted: 04/12/2019 @ 10:59}

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Excerpts From Late-Night Conversations With A Mechanical Cat

Fact Number 135