Welcome to the “Front-Porch.”
“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds …” Hebrews 10:24
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your eyes,” I said, twirling a thought in my mind that I knew would be as life-changing to these high school students as … well … as meeting the boy or girl of their dreams, or just this side of it.
The students looked up. They had not read Julius Caesar yet, so they did not know it is ears, not eyes. But I knew something they didn’t know. A teacher – despite all their superpowers – cannot measure the degree to which teenage ears are activated. But the eyes, with those, you have a chance.
The daily pleadings for these future scholars to “lend me their eyes” come in many forms. Sometimes it is, “Let me see your eyes,” and sometimes – to be as dramatic as a Shakespearean actor playing Caesar himself – I’d raise my voice over the clamor, call out “Ladies and gentlemen,” raise my arms like Marc Anthony who made the "Friends, Romans, countrymen" speech, and gaze up into the sky. All of those motions in sync usually get me at least a glance, which would be all the encouragement I needed to continue:
“So, friends, Romans, countrymen, tell me, what are you goin’ to do when you wake up in Hickory?”
“Hickory?” they asked in unison.
“Yes, Hickory. Have I not told you about “Hoosiers,” the greatest sports movie of all time, where Coach Norman Dale rides into the one-horse town of Hickory, Indiana, to take over the basketball team way back in 1952, and when he gets there, everybody is against him?”
There is no response except a few shakes of the head.
“So, why are they all against him? Thanks for asking," I said. "Well, because it’s a little-bitty town, you see, and in a hick town, there are ways to do things and ways not to do them. I mean, they’ve been done the same way since before I was born in 1856, and no city slicker is goin’ to ride into town on his white horse and change the way things are done.”
“They have their conventions,” I guess, answered Clint, a young man who always has an answer or a question even if nobody else does. You can always count on Clintwood, as I called him.
“Yes sir,” I said, “you see, Coach Dale just has a funny way of doing things. He wants to practice at times without a ball, and in a game, he makes the team pass the ball five times before they shoot. That sure didn’t work, not at first anyway. So, the town gets a posse together one night and forms a lynchin’ mob that gathers in the church – of all places – and everybody in the whole town meets to vote on firin’ Coach Dale.”
“Who wins the vote?” asked Clintwood.
“Oh, it is practically unanimous against Coach,” I continued, “I mean, he really woke up in a bad place when he woke up in Hickory. It was a thousand to one against him.”
I gave all a second to think before resuming: “Oh, it wasn’t all bad. Prior to the vote, this lady teacher named Mira stands up to speak. She has been giving Coach down the country ever since he rode into town …”
“ …. on his white horse?” said one of my witty students with a smile.
“Oh yeah,” I said without hesitation, “but her problem was that her mother, with whom she lived, took a liking to Coach, to her chagrin. She walks up to the podium with a letter to read that would seal the coach’s fate. The article from 10 years earlier reported that Coach had hit one of his players. She had researched and dug up the dirt on him, and he didn’t stand a chance.”
“Does she read it?”
“Oh, she stands up to read it, her voice crackin’, but, you know, something comes over her, and she folds it up, puts it in her pocket, and says, ‘To be fair, I think it would be a big mistake to let Coach Dale go.’ And then she pauses, and says, ‘Give him a chance.’
“Man, her voice cracked again, almost like she was in love with the Coach (Could it be?), and you can see that Coach is winnin’ her over. Don’t forget that point, now. Sometimes you have to win people over. Write that down in your notebook.
“Coach Dale smiles at that, and Shooter does, too. Shooter is the town drunk who knows basketball like the back of his hand. He is pretty much the only one in the whole town who likes Coach, except for Mira’s mama and one of the players’ fathers, who, on the first day of practice, drug his son back up to practice after he had walked out.
“But Shooter is his biggest supporter. Ah, man, it’s not saying much having the laughed-at town drunk on your side. So, even after Mira’s vote of confidence, it is still like 100 – 3 against our man. Mira sits down and, oh, does her mama just grin like a possum to see her turn the corner! And when the town votes and passes the ballots up like you guys do your homework, the ex-coach Coach fired on the first day stands up with a grin as wide as the Pacific and announces with glee that Coach is outvoted like 50 – 2, because Shooter didn’t even get a vote.”
“So, he’s done, Coach?” said Billy Ray, one of our own school’s best ballplayers.
“Well, he would’ve been had what happened next not happened,” I said, smiling. I noticed all the students' eyes that at first had looked glazed over like a donut were as bright as ocean water.
“What happened, Coach?” said Jacobian from way back in the far corner of the room.
“Well, Jimmy walked in?”
“Jimmy?”
“Oh, yes, Jimmy is one of the best players to ever come out of Indiana. And he won’t play for anybody after the old coach had died. One day, Coach Dale catches him outside shootin’ baskets and basically says, ‘If your heart’s not in it, I don’t care if you play or not.’ He rebounds one of Jimmy’s shots as he says that, then rubs the ball contemplatively, and passes it back to him and walks away. Coach does a lot of walkin’ away in the movie. Don’t forget that, either, we’ll talk about “walkin’ away.
“So, Jimmy Butler walks into that town meeting. He’s carryin’ that same ‘ol black leather ball under his arm, and when the Hickory folks see him, they grow quiet as that little mouse at Christmas. Jimmy uses his own dramatic pause, then says one of only two things he says in the whole movie,
‘I think it’s about time I play ball,’ he says quietly but emphatically.
“Ah, man,” I said with added enthusiasm, “you wouldn’t believe how the room carries on. You’d think they’d just won the state championship, which basically might be true. Everybody had been hopin’ all season that Jimmy would play, because, you see, basketball is as big of a thing in Hickory, Indiana, as peaches are down in Georgia, where I hail from.
“When Jimmy says that, the ex-coach hollers out, ‘I told ya, we jus’ had to get rid of him!’ But Jimmy ignores that, and says, ‘One more thing. I play, Coach stays. Coach goes, I go.’”
The whole room stirred at that, and Clintwood snapped, “Coach, what happened next?”
“You mean after the ex-coach’s teeth fell out and rolled out on the floor,” I said, chuckling, bringing a few smiles across the faces looking back at me. “Well, Mira’s mama jumps up and says, ‘I think we need to vote again, and whatever teeth the ex-coach had left fall out again and roll on the floor with the rest of ‘em, and they revoted. This time the dad who brought his son back to practice stands up with a smile as big as Dallas and says, ‘Coach stays!’
“Which brings me back to my original question, ladies and gentlemen.” Dramatic pause, then, “Friends, Romans, countrymen, tell me, what are YOU goin’ to do when you wake up in Hickory?”
I let it sink in, scanned the class like a secret service man, and closed out the way we always closed out a day’s story.
“Hands please!”
The students obliged, as always. But, then, I had to add over the noise of shuffling books,
“Oh, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, tomorrow I’ll tell you what I did … when I woke up in Hickory back in 1992.”
Swish, I thought with satisfaction.
Nothin’ but net.
Coach Steven Ray Bowen served as a teacher and basketball coach at Red Oak High from 1998-2012 and recently came out of retirement twice for teaching tours at Ferris and Waxahachie High Schools. He and his wife Marilyn (the “amazin’ blonde”) have slowed down some of their travels and reconvened in their evangelistic work with the Church of Christ of Red Oak at Uhl/Ovilla Roads, in addition to Coach’s work as a writer and author, including the working to publish “Crossing The Georgia Line” that ran in the Ellis County Press. Call or text (972) 824-5197, email coachbowen1984@gmail.com, and see frontporchgospel.com.