We arrived at Prince Edward Island at dark, and it was our first real attempt at camping and “tenting”.
“All tent” Parham couldn’t figure Rand’s tent out, particularly in the twilight.
Finally Tee, at age 11, figured it out only to be told we’d erected it in the middle of the access road. Oops! We moved over near a group of French Canadian campers, settling in for the night.
Americans know little about Canada (“I don’t even know what street Canada’s on” – Al Capone). Most think it’s Eskimos, polar bears, and moose and Mounties and that they all speak French.
Margaret was bluffing when she pretended to understand our early morning visitor. We’d just fired up the “Coleman cooker” and were starting to assemble breakfast foods. Margaret whispered, “Someone stole his cooler, and I think he wants milk.” As she opened the cooler and offered the contents, he simply took the whole cooler and it’s innards.
Margaret, being Margaret, didn’t have the heart to chase him. We cut off the Coleman stove, and drank our coffee as the four of us headed to the Charlottesville, P.E.I. McDonalds.
So much for our maiden camping voyage.
Author: ethomasparham
HOME SWEET HOME–
Dr. White was a champion of the “total athletic program.” My first year he asked me if I thought we ought to add women’s soccer. “Tomorrow” was my answer.
I’ll never forget those early women’s soccer teams, remarkably successful, kick- ing though what was always a rain drenched play off win. My favorite was Katie McGrath, who also played basketball and volleyball.
I taught Katie and got to know her. She returned from the holidays one Christmas telling me her father had bought a motel.
“So your family is going into the motel business,” I commented.
Katie, one of their thirteen children, said “Oh, no sir, Coach. Dad bought it for us. I’m in #9.”
AGAIN ON SPEAKING
SPEAKING AT AWARDS BANQUETS (#14)
1. While this is a special time for you, your time is limited.
2. Rehearse your speech and try to finish under your allotted time. Brevity is the soul of wit.
3. Respect your audience.
4. If you speak for too long, you infringe upon the other speaker’s time, and create the potential for audience discomfort.
5. Many speakers “get in and can’t get out” — it’s okay to just stop telling a story and move on. Practice it.
6. Some speakers are surprised by their emotions. Talking about parents, family, team mates, coaches and schools can trigger deep and powerful and surprising emotions.
7. The monitor runs the show. It’s essential that the moderator make the ground rules for speakers clear in the rehearsal. If you should exceed your time limit, the monitor GET DOWN COACH will rise. This is the signal to wrap it up quickly.
NOT YET NORMA ROSE
NOT YET, NORMA ROSE
Our friend, Norma Rose White , is a retired high school teacher. Finding it painful to report negative grades for her students, yet required period comments, Mrs. White chose “not yet” as a grade for “those others”. Our family found this evaluation a reasonable response for many a category, and we often responded, “not yet, Norma Rose!” when expectations weren’t quite met.
MEAN MAN COACHES
Someone once said of pro basketball, “…give them both 100 points and just play two minutes”! Granted they play a season that is too demanding to play wide open for 90 games. Many times I hear people say they won’t watch pro basketball. Still, if you haven’t watched the NBA playoffs, you have missed the greatest athletes since Samson. The Final Four in college basketball is evidence of attrition in intense playoffs. Duke and Zion and Shoegate caused pre- tournament pause. Then Auburn and Texas Tech lose their top players. Then Baylor’s MVP in the women’s final.
All knees, and tv showed they weren’t fake injuries. Ouch!
Rules are changing to protect players. Should we pay them? Insure them? Deferred payment? Lawsuits for head injuries?
In the early 70’s I asked an opposing basketball coach about the kind of kid one of his players was. His response: “Wasn’t nothing to him till I whipped him with a jump rope I kept in my office!” I was stunned and said “Coach, you didn’t really do that?” Meaning I didn’t think he would do it. He took it all together differently. He thought I meant he wasn’t capable of doing that. Thus he said ” I stood in the doorway. He couldn’t get out. I did (another of his star players) the same way!”
Lots of changes since those days when “mean man coaches” were the norm. Almost had to be one to get a job.
Forty years ago my team won the NAIA men’s tennis title. One of my players had congenital emphysema, yet won three, three set matches in one day. All coaches can remember those instances. Athletics provides those moments and opportunities. And we don’t want to lose that. If there is middle ground now is the time to find it. But if players (and parents) think the goals they dream of come easy, those goals will go un-scored.
-Excerpt From: Tom Parham. “The Little Green Book of Tennis.” Apple Books.
Secondly, I see the young coaches work the kids too much. Your players are not employees, or machines, and you can run them in the ground. Perhaps the biggest criticism I heard of my teams was that we didn’t work hard enough. But, at tournament time we were fresh, eager and goal oriented. Very often we waxed the “hard workers” whose coach had worn them beyond caring much.
I never had a team that wasn’t ready to put away the racket for a while at the end of the season. It’s call “periodization.”
P.S.
Old football player–“Our coach is willing to lay down our lives for his school.”
THE FAMILY PASS, BUSINESS 101, AND RETIREMENT
I have written a lot about Coach Bill Miller, former basketball coach at Elon University. Even dared to use his language, which was rough. Here goes again: Elon established a FAMILY PASS issued to allow the holder and family members to all home athletic contests. Coach Miller noticed an older man who brought his grandson to a lot of home games. Miller gave him a pass. It wasn’t long before local feedback revealed the new recipient was badmouthing the coach, team, and school. Coach called “GRANDPA JOHN” in for an office visit. Conversation went like this: Miller: “John, you got that pass I gave you?” John: “Right here” and shows him the cardboard slip. Miller tears the pass into small pieces and hands to John. Miller growls: “That ought to be easier to stick up your ass. Now don’t come by my office again, or to one of my games.”
“Maximum Bob” Owens
Bob Owens was one of thirteen, the oldest of seven boys, before there was a girl. Bob’s dad, Jack, was in the Navy in Hawaii. A real hard assed war vet. Bob was 18 years old, an All-American high school quarterback, and due to go to Wake Forest University on a full scholarship.
The night Bob graduated from his high school in Honolulu, Jack told him (1) Here’s $25 and my congratulations and (2) You don’t live here anymore, we need your bed.
Then he asked, “When are you enlisting?” Bob replied, “Dad, I’m going to Wake Forest, I’m deferred.” Jack repeated his question. Bob his answer.
Jack then said, “Bob, your country’s at war. When are you going in?”
Almost immediately upon his arrival in Vietnam Bob was assigned “the point man” on a reconnaissance mission. He stepped on a foxhole with a sniper pointing the gun straight up, shooting Bob point blank in the stomach.
After nineteen months in rehab, this fine young man walked out still with part of the bullet in his back.
I’ve never met anybody who was as “pure good” as Bob Owens. He was to become my assistant coach, a dear friend, and be Wanda’s husband.
Wanda’s 1st husband had been killed in a parachute accident almost the time the twins, Jay and Todd, were born.
Their new father, Bob, brought them, at age 9 ,to our first tennis camp at Elon.
Physically they were identical. Personality wise – opposite. Jay was mean as a snake, Todd – a pussycat.
They commuted to camp, but Jay learned the dorm “residents” were going to have a “water balloon fight” camp’s middle night – Wednesday.
It was Margaret’s idea, and our only water balloon fight ever.
The blond boys approached me about the event, with different agendas. The conversation went like this:
Jay: “I heard ya’ll were having a water fight.”
Todd: “Yeah, and a night tournament.”
Coach: That’s right.”
Todd: “Our mom may let us stay Wednesday night.” Jay: “ Can we be in the water fight?
Coach: “Sure”
Todd: Will you let us play in the tournament?”
Coach: “Sure.”
Jay: “How many balloons do you get?”
Todd: “Will you help us keep score in the tennis tournament?”
Coach: “Sure.”
Jay: “Can you hit anybody you want to?”
Todd: “I’m not positive our Mom will let us stay.”
Jay: “We are staying for this.”
The next year Bob volunteered to work in Tennis Camp. It took half the staff to watch Jay and Todd, so I was delighted.
Bob and Margaret could run the camp. Throw in Kyle Wills and Eddie Gwaltney and our staff made a little needed money, plus we raised our kids in the camp. A court, or gym, is not a bad place to rear a child.
Bob was all work, and kindness. If I picked something up, he took it away from me and did it himself He couldn’t sleep well because of Vietnam, so he’d put ’em to bed, and wake ‘em up.
The first night after a hard day at camp, I told Bob to leave the trash until morning. “Not so, can’t leave after fishing ‘til the boat is clean. ” Capt. Jack” taught Bob well. Oldest of thirteen made managing tennis camp a snap for Bob.
Bob soon became my Assistant Tennis Coach.
Once, after practice, Bob was blowing all the leaves off our 12-court facility. When he circled by me, standing at the fence watching him, he stopped.
“Coach, what’s wrong?” He could see the tears in my eyes. I told him the truth.
“Bob, I just hope there’s not another American young person as good as you, about to be shot.” I was so wrong and am saddened by all the tragedy we are experiencing.
20/20 HINDSIGHT
It is almost 2020. I am almost 80. It is almost Christmas. It is Festivus. Dec. 23.
Junior Johnson just died. That confirms mortality. I met Junior once. And I met Ted Williams, my hero. “First there was baseball”, but “car racin'”wasn’t far behind. We didn’t have pro teams in the South then. We did have baseball and racin’. Basketball was fermenting, but the baseball game of the week and Darlington were staples. Ford or Chevy? Up there with Democrat or Republican?
All politics are local and so was racin’. Our small town changed it’s name twice and wound up being called after the mill owner, “Robbins’. Pure mill village, labor and management the dividing line. The minor league baseball team was named the “Robbins Robins”.
My teenage years coincided with the deification of the automobile. We proved you do need a seatbelt. And it ain’t smart to drive drunk. But once they let you have the car keys you could go any where you could make it home for check-in. Drink figured into the equation and we had some peculiar laws there. Our dry end of Moore County meant nightly reconnoitres to Pinehurst, the rich and “wet” end of the county. Bring me a six pack of PBR! No mixed drinks, only “brown bagging”
Moonshine and North Carolina are synonymous. The best recent book on the combination of cars, moonshine,NC and Nascar is DRIVING WITH THE DEVIL by Neal Thompson. Driver, promoter, and mechanic. Began in our hills but soon got to the flat lands (Percy Flowers ruled the Piedmont).
“Moonshiners put more time, energy, thought, and love into their cars than any racer ever will. Lose on the track and you go home. Lose with a load of whiskey and you go to jail.” —Junior Johnson, NASCAR legend and one-time whiskey runner.
We have just added a traffic circle at now home , Emerald Isle, NC. And it trigged some nostalgia (more later). The first circle in our Robbins neighborhood in the 50’s was, you guessed it, in Pinehurst. We accepted it as an in route challenge to our cars and driving skills. Beer in hand, how fast could you drive around the circle? In 3 trips? First to pass someone in the circle? Record for number passed per lap? First ticket? First ticket with no license?
Sadly, but inevitably, the causality and severity of a mistake stunned us. Tex Graham was first, a football player who sang 16 tons (“…you load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt”. ) RIP, Tex.
Less severe but notable early scenarios include Ben Brady’s solo trip to “the Pines” in his 53 pickup, stopping in front of the police station, Blowing the horn till the puzzled officers came out of the station. “You can’t catch me ” was Ben’s challenge, whereupon he patched out at top speed. Sadly Ben flipped her and wound up under the truck, specifically the red hot muffler. Burn city.
Lenonard “Urd” Benson drove his Studebaker into a ditch that was roof high and Studebaker wide to the “war eagle”. It happened on Prom night. We abandoned the dance to laugh at Urd, and walk across the car.
Next up Glenn McCaskill, didn’t make the sharp curb at Aberdeen lake. Don’t remember if he made the lake, but do remember that a week before he had driven the same route with me and nine others in a sedan to a little league baseball game.
“And my friend Brian Temple
He thought he could make it
So from the third story he jumped
And he missed the swimming pool only by inches
And everyone said he was drunk.” FAMILY RESERVE (Lyle Lovett).
NC 705 from Robbins to Seagrove is 13 miles. I know it well because I tried to thumb back home one midnight. Walked the whole 13, never saw a car.
“Heading down south to the land of the pines
I’m thumbing my way into North Caroline
Staring up the road and pray to God I see headlights “.(WAGON WHEEL by Dylan),
NC 705 intersected with NC 220 which led to Level Cross, NC, home of the Pettys, Lee, Richard, Kyle and such. Not only that, 705 had about a 3 mile stretch or “the straight” that had not a bend and not many laws. Drag racing with the family vehicles blossomed. Lore galore. Races followed by, or including wrecks, fights, bragging rights. Soon word drifted down that the Pettys had a great quarter mile drag track just up the road. Locals just snuck on at all hours, uninvited. I had a classmate who was a “management’s child” and thus wealthy. Upon his 16th birthday he was given a new 56 Bel Air Chevy, with all gadgets, plus two four barrel carburetors. Ripe.
The kid missed school one day and showed up the next with a God All Mighty depressed look on him. He said there was no need to try to hide what happened. He felt obligated to try the 56 on the Petty fast track. By cover of darkness he idled her on –then pedal to metal.
He acknowledged the saw he 3/4 inch cable strung between two sawed off telephone poles at track’s end: ‘But hell, she was wide open and nothing left but to hit the cable head on, head light high. “Car is in the shop already.”
I guess a lot of small NC towns had driving tests. We had several. One road was called “the rough and crooked”. What was your “top end” on the “rat path” or the tree lined back road from West End (now Seven Lakes) to the crossroads? In the other direction , toward Highfalls,NC, there was a prolonged curve. Severe, dangerous and the perfect for locals to declare their “personal best”– screening around on two wheels. Somehow the most difficult one got pushed backed in my thinking, yet crept into mind one recent day in mid-Emerald Isle circle. Like many county seats in NC, Moore County’s courthouse was located in the roundabout in Carthage, NC. While it was a longer way home it offered a challenge. Between the drug store and the sidewalk’s end there was a 2×2 foot brick column. From column to store the width was almost 4 inches to spare for vehicles of that time. Tight squeeze that only the best could navigate. That didn’t stop the amateurs, whose cars wore scars on their sides to the indignation of miscalculation.
***RECENT STATISTIC: “When a second teenager joins a teenage driver, the chances of an accident increases 4 times.
Emerald Isles’ circle was controversial, yet has worked out well. A bar with an open air view of the circle that has probably been a disappointment. No accidents have been reported. There is a hint of scandal no one talks about. Some odd variables have yet to unfold. The circle’s appearance coincided with Hurricane Florence, whose fury left the island with damage beyond the work forces ability. Tough on people, particularly town management and workers. The town manager, already beloved, emerged as a local hero of no small proportion.
So it shocked the town when this valued servant announced he was moving to another town. Why the puzzled populace wondered? Word on the street concluded that the work load of more frequent future hurricanes was frightening.
That became somewhat the main story, Yet I wondered about the Heron? Was the town manager responsible for the new circle sculpture. It was a puzzle to me, but local insiders said the manager was too busy with the storm and assigned the sculpture project to a local women’s garden club. Said manager actually had a snicker over the birds, upon his departure.
It wasn’t the quality of the two heron’s portrayal. However the positioning of the two, so like the fowl deed done ” a tirgo”, could hardly go unnoticed.
If that project had occurred in our neighborhood in our time, Jack Hussey would still be circling, looking for a an opening around anything that wasn’t clocking a good time. Plus the heron would not have gone unnoticed.
I’ll get crap about this but it’s too funny to ignore. Plus during this Christmas season someone ordered the circle’s Christmas tree to cover the birds. Garden Club?
Any way the heron have some privacy. And THE EMPEROR WEARS NO CLOTHES.
Why Teach and Coach?
When I became Director of Athletics the first thing I did was book an hour with five different athletic directors I admired.
Dylan said you had to get up close to the teacher if you want to learn anything.
You never know who you’re influencing when you coach. The same was true for teaching in college. Formal classroom or just talking to kids.
A basketball player named Damian Carter appeared in my doorway one day at Elon. He said he rode up and down I-85 often and had planned to stop by many times.
He was in his forties, had been a pretty solid player at Atlantic Christian, having transferred from UNC-Wilmington. At Wilmington he hadn’t played as much as he wanted. The same was true at ACC later on, and he found his chances of pro ball weren’t going to materialize. He was about to quit college though his grades were good.
I don’t remember the specific conversation with Damien, but it was one of fifty I’d had with basketball players.
It went like this:
- Are you the first from your family to go to college? Often the answer was yes.
- You’re not going to make $100,000 playing pro ball, you understand?
- You can get your degree and get a very good job. People are looking for athletic people with degrees.
- Your job is to elevate your family and its expectations one generation. Put your money in compound interest, and expect your children to go to college.
I agreed with Damian that was the gist of what I advised the “first kids.” Damian smiled and added, “Coach, my two daughters have college degrees, and I’ve got a million bucks in the bank!” Compound interest.
GRANDPARENTING
We got married a little later than average. Our children came a little late, too. And they,too, were “mature”. We did have a grandson to brag about, and have done our best.
However, we have not had a fair chance with some of the early birds and more prolific. Not till 2015.
Surprisingly and with great joy we now have two more grandsons. Infants, and months apart.
Everyone is gaga as we share pictures via technology. Skype, Facetime, Videos.
The first child of my youngest Son got the usual treatment of first time parents at Christmas: A picture with SANTA.
Actually not a picture, but a string of about twenty rapidly shot options, exhibiting lots of opportunities for grandparents.
Typically we let the comments fly:
“…look at his eyes. Just like his Fathers!”
“…he is a big boy!”
“…and his red velvet suit, trimmed in white fur collar”
“…his hair looks a little different here!”
“…yes, that changes in young ones!”
Like said, ours was a big child (now referring to it “ours”).
This one was big too. But about the 12th frame down something caught
my eye.
“Margaret–that ain’t “our child! That child is a girl.”
A big girl, but a girl. The give away came with a posture shift
that revealed white leggings, also trimmed. I knew MY son would not
allow his boy so photographed.
Grandma said “…maybe its just cold and she wanted him to be warm?”
“Nope. Scroll down!”
Sure enough, there he was. Looked like he was dressed in camouflage. Almost square.
“…well, my,my. Look at his hands. How sweet!” (she)
“..’our’ boy is a stud!”(me), etc.
Merry Christmas
The Little Green Book of Tennis 