My Basketball Hat

 

The Jone-Zy Roll Up was not nearly as cool as this ad tried to make it out to be.

The Year of the Hat

Once upon a time I owned a hat.

I didn’t want to own a hat. I didn’t wear hats. I still don’t wear hats.

But in the fall of 1962 my father bought me a hat.

Not because he wanted to buy me a hat but because one day I came home from basketball practice with a two page mimeograph headed: “Basic Training Rules for All Athletes of Dobyns-Bennett High School.”

At that time I was an ath-a-lete for Dobyns-Bennett High School. I was a basketball player and a very mediocre one at that.

And my father had to buy me a hat because of Rule 9:

“In cold weather (in season) you must wear a cap or hat to protect from exposure.”

The basketball coach Bob DeVault had suggested a Jone-Zy ™ roll up so I asked my dad to get me a Jone-Zy ™ roll up.

If you Google Jone-Zy roll up, without the trademark symbol, you will find images of “fisherman’s hat” or “bucket hat.” They look exactly like my Jone-Zy ™ roll up, shapeless cotton buckets with the short brim turned down all around.

So my dad bought me a tan Jone-Zy ™ roll up, $2, at Dalton’s Young Men’s Shop (we went to church with the Daltons).

And yes, you could roll it up and stick it in your pocket, so that as soon as you got out of sight of coach DeVault or his assistant coach Whited, you could pull it off and jam it in your pocket.

For three years I looked like a fisherman during the winter, at least when I was in sight of the school.

It didn’t prevent me from getting sick. In fact one memorable Saturday the flu caused me to miss one of Coach Al Wilkes’ all-day practices: arrive at 9 a.m., practice till noon, head over to Minute Market for a nabs and Coke lunch, then practice from 1 till 6 p.m. My dad would literally drop me off on his way to work and pick me up on his way home.

The one Saturday that I missed was memorable because that meant I was suspended for the next game, which turned out to be Science Hill in Sprankle Gym.

I was a bit of a hero to some of my fellow-nerd friends. “You’re suspended? What happened?” I would just brush them away with the flick of my hand. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

 I had violated Rule 7:

“Absolutely no missing practice unless a family emergency arises or unless you have sickness or injury yourself. Your coaches expect to know in advance if you have reason to be absent.”

I didn’t know in advance that I would have the flu that Saturday. So I watched the Science Hill game from the stands.

(D-B won without me.)

How do I remember such specific details, like Rule No. 7 and Rule No. 9?

I don’t.

I just happen to have saved that “Rules for Athletes” from so long ago (59 years this fall).

The Rules sheet was put together by head football coach Tom Brixey with input from the other coaches, most notably basketball coach Bob DeVault.

Rereading those rules – and knowing my teammates and my friends on the football team – it’s a wonder D-B was able to field any teams that year. They were not easy rules to follow.

There’s no date on the mimeo but I know it was from my sophomore year, 1962-63, when I actually was an ath-a-lete.

The rules begin with these slogans: “Do Your Best - Think Like a Champion - Live Like a Champion.”

Those mottos are followed by a quick pitch for team spirit along the lines of the “THERE IS NO ‘I’ IN TEAM” tee shirts favored by coaches today. (My son once pointed out to me, there is ME in TEAM.) 

Coach Brixey wrote, “These sports are team sports. To play on any of these teams you must practice self-discipline and place the team ahead of yourself as an individual. If you can’t do this there is no place for you on the team.”

Next were nine tenets under the heading RULES OF CONDUCT, ATTITUDE AND INTEREST YOU MUST LIVE UP TO AT ALL TIMES:

“1. No alcoholic beverages of any kind.

“2. No smoking.

“3. No eating of sweets or milk shakes between meals.

“4. No profanity will be tolerated.

“5. Proper respect must be shown all Coaches at all times.

“6. No swimming in excessive amounts during practice or playing season. Swimming softens your muscles and saps your strength.

“7. Absolutely no missing practice unless a family emergency arises or unless you have sickness or injury yourself. Your coaches expect to know in advance if you have reason to be absent.

“8. You are expected to be on time (or early) for all practice sessions, games and trips.

“9. In cold weather (in season) you must wear a cap or hat to protect from exposure.”

The boys on the 1946 team didn't have to wear hats.

(I think that is Cecil Puckett third from left.)

There’s nothing really outrageous in those nine rules. No sweets might be a laugher today. And wearing a hat.

But I’m only beginning. Next up is the section titled CURFEW TIME, DATING AND SOCIAL LIFE. 

“Any night prior to a school day you will be expected to be home and in bed at 10:00. This includes Sunday night.”

This one was enforced. I can remember being dragged out of bed to the phone to tell Coach DeVault that, yes, I was in bed.

“Friday nights after a ball game curfew time shall be 12:15.

“Saturday night curfew time shall be 11:45.”

The Friday night exception was so we could go to the Frolics, a dance held in the Civic Auditorium after every Friday home football game. The Frolics ended at midnight. That fifteen-minute cushion gave you time to take your date home, if you had one, and then race home yourself and jump in bed so when Coach DeVault called you could say truthfully that you were in bed. 

It is the next section of rules that modern athletes may find funny:

“It is not the desire of the coaching staff to make any boy abnormal in regard to his association with the opposite sex but it has been proven that social life is not in the best interest of a good athletic team. We feel it is necessary that your social life and association with girls be held to a minimum during the athletic season so that it will leave your mind clear to do the best job possible in school and athletics.

“Athletes are free to date on weekends within the curfew hours. Special conditions apply to after-game situations. During the week on school nights, dating is not recommended but will be permitted one night under limited conditions which include curfew hours and being at church or at home. (Not in movies, drive-in movies, drive-ins, or other places in or out of town.) Athletes are expected not to be standing or walking in close association or conversation with girls in the halls between periods and at other times and locations between 8 a.m. and 3:30 p.m.”

On my mimeograph copy of the team rules I circled that last section about standing or walking in the halls with a girl. Forty years later I don’t know if I marked it because Coach DeVault stressed it or if it was more wishful thinking, that some girl would want to stand in close association with me in the halls.

After a couple of rules about representing the school at away games, the mimeograph gets around to behavior:

“Any misconduct or childish, destructive behavior will be dealt with severely. Athletes should be, and are expected to be, the outstanding boys in school in attitude and conduct and self-discipline. You must be polite, not doing things to show off or attract attention. In the halls you are expected to avoid all horse-play and loud show-off actions. Your style of dress should be neat and appropriate, not the show-off type.”

A few years ago I passed these old rules around a few of my classmates from long ago. They remembered well the regulations about girls. They all remembered being dragged out of bed to tell Coach Brixey or Coach DeVault that they were in bed. But they were all stopped cold on the style of dress. What was “show-off type” clothing in the fifties and sixties? The only thing we could figure was a turned-up collar.

Jim Beck, a basketball teammate of mine, chuckled after reading the rules. “I think (our star running back) broke every one of these rules.” The Star Running Back was a football player who shall remain nameless since he later became a minister.  I’m sure he broke almost every one of the rules, too. He just didn’t get caught. But I know he wore a hat in public. Otherwise Coach Brixey would have made him watch a few games from the stands.

Which is what happened to me during that long-ago Science Hill game.

The Star broke every rule and never missed a game.

Me, I wear a hat and avoid girls in the hallway (or maybe it was the other way around) but I break one rule – and I had a good excuse; I was sick – and I get suspended.

 

 

 

 

Coach Al Wilkes’ Worst Team

Front row, left to right: Stephen Burns, Tim Thayer, the late Carlos Courtney, Dommie Jackson, the late Gary Kilgore, Charles Worrell, Jim Barker, Jim Beck, Joe King, the late Coach Al Wilkes.

Back row, left to right: David Foulk, Bill Worrell, Vince Staten, Mack Williams, Robert Bruce, Danny Olinger, the late Charles Housewright, Flip Gilmer, Joie Kerns, the late Don Robinson. (not pictured: Sam Beford and the late Robert Strang, who also played on the varsity).

We all wore hats in season. Good luck finding a picture of any of us in a hat.

I had the privilege that season of playing on Coach Al Wilkes only losing team. Coach Wilkes coached the D-B junior varsity team for almost forty years and in all those seasons he had one team with a losing record. My team. We finished 8-12 and he always blamed it on the fact that our two best players, Sam Bedford and Robert Strang, split time between the B-team and the varsity, which limited them to only two quarters in each game.

He was probably interviewed about that losing team dozens of times over the years and he never once mentioned another possible reason for that losing record: I missed 5 of the 20 games. I missed the first four games of the season recovering from a high ankle sprain (it was in a cast for four weeks) and then I was suspended for the Science Hill game.

The team really missed my 2.1 points per game.