Once he left the house, he never looked back. His rhythmic stride gliding down the snowplowed streets of "The Wicks" to the syncopated beat of Marvin Gaye’s ‘Can I Get a Witness,’ playing inside his head. It took him less than 15 minutes to get from his house to the main road, where the snow had already turned to slush and the cars and trucks were doing close to the speed limit. Thumbing to Richie was an art form. His friends marveled at the speed at which he could get around the township on his thumb. His secret sauce was that he always had a prop: a football for fall, a glove (not a bat) for spring and summer, and a basketball for winter. Even if he wasn’t going to play a sport that day, he brought the seasonal prop along for effect.
Crossing Wood Road, he positioned himself on the right side of the street, basketball under his left arm, and his right hand pointed in the direction of his thumb trip. Within a minute of staking out his road position, the third car that passed his thumb stopped on the shoulder of the road about a car length in front of him. It was a 1963 Buick Special Station Wagon, with chains on the tires, driven by a middle age woman with two kids, under ten, seated in the backseat. She leaned over and slowly rolled the passenger side front window halfway down while Richie ran up to the vehicle and looked in.
“Where you headed?” She asked?
“ Junior High gym, to practice.” He held the basketball in plain view to reinforce his intentions.
The young mother looked at the ‘Thumb Traveler’ closely before saying, “Practicing on a day like this. I'm impressed.” Then she turned her head around towards the two young boys in the back seat, and stated, "See what it takes if you want to be good!"
Having made her decision, she asked, ‘We’re going all the way down Wood Road; I can drop you off at Wood and Highland. That work?”
Flashing an engaging smile, he quickly answered, “Sure does,” which was immediately met with a hand motion by the female driver to get into the car. Without hesitating, he opened up the front passenger side door and jumped in. Then, upon entering the Buick, he nonchalantly said, “Think fast,” as he flipped a no look basketball pass over the two tone grey and black front seats to the surprise of the young occupants in the back: his thumbing streak still intact.
Richie got out of the Buick, thanked the woman for the ride, and looked towards the junior high. Until 1959, the imposing edifice used to be the high school, whereupon student enrollment demanded a newer school with triple the square footage. The junior and senior high schools were collocated, offering the township’s growing adolescent population the opportunity for a quality education within the two structures. Putting the collar up on his pea jacket, Richie shivered as the temperature dropped, acknowledging to himself that it was a ten-minute walk from where he was to the back of the gym. The sidewalks, much to Richie’s chagrin, were not plowed; shaking his head, he begrudgingly respected the “Home Warden’s” edict to wear snow boots as he navigated his way through the pristine snow.
The destination gymnasium was built in 1937 out of brick and mortar and had served the township and fellow students well over the years. The interior brick walls of the junior high gym were painted maroon and white, the colors of both the high school and the junior high. Though the architecture was uninspired, it’s one redeeming structural feature was its spectacular glass windows, which were situated on the east and west sides of the building between the roof and the brick walls. Perfectly positioned, the windows gave the former high school gym its natural lighting.
Also separating the school’s basketball arena from other, more mundane sports venues was the hardwood floor; the stylish geometric flooring was divided into four small basketball courts, and one main court that cut across the smaller courts. The “piece de resistance” was the main basketball floor, which had glass backboards and a parquet floor like the NBA’s Boston Garden. This is where the men’s and women’s junior high varsity, junior varsity, and seventh grade teams now play their conference games. The wooden stands, which were rolled out for assemblies and basketball games, only held 1500 students; Richie’s junior class, alone, was now over a thousand students, which is why the new high school and athletic facilities were rushed to be built, and why every school board in the Delaware Valley had to find an answer to the continuous migration of families to the suburbs, and its impact on the suburban public school systems.
Richie headed towards the back of the gym, knowing that the door on the northwest side would be propped open. Before he reached for the handle, he could hear the resonating sound of a spherical leather ball bouncing on the hardwood floor. Upon entering, Jimmy was at the far end of the main court executing a cross dribble against an imaginary defender as he drove towards the glass backboard. At six feet one and 190 pounds, his athletic skill was housed in a well-proportioned body. Playing a combination of shooting guard and small forward, the senior had played with his practice partner since eighth grade. As Richie observed Jimmy’s on court presence, he realized that he knew his Negro teammate’s features almost as well as his own. The color of his skin, eyes, and hair was a light brown. His ears were close to his head and perfectly shaped, unlike Richie’s. Just shy of being handsome with his high cheekbones, Jimmy had a solid chin line, broad nose with nostrils that were neither too large nor too small, and kinky hair that he cropped short. But it was his brown eyes that set him apart. They were alive and inquisitive. Whenever he looked at you, you knew that Jimmy was taking in everything you said and the nearby surroundings in which you said it.
Considered to be the best athlete in his class, he had just accepted a full ride scholarship to play football at the University of Michigan. An honor student and senior class treasurer, Jimmy epitomized the term student athlete. He lived in Montville, a small Negro community that had been part of the township since it was incorporated. Not short on personality, a charismatic though soft spoken leader, Jimmy knew how to navigate the waters in a predominantly white school, where both Caucasians and Negros respected him.
Jimmy retrieved the ball as it dropped through the hoop, then turned and watched Richie walk onto the court, dribbling the ball between his legs in the fluid motion of a confident point guard. Their relationship was built on mutual respect as Richie was considered to be the best athlete in his class.
As soon as Richie crossed the center line, he barked out, “One on one, horse, full court passing drills followed by stop and pop from outside 15 feet.”
“Okay, Coach,” Jimmy sarcastically yelled back, a smile of earned respect appearing on his sweat-covered face. You sure you don’t need to warm up, Richie, I don’t want you whining after I kick your ass that you weren’t loose.” He was spinning the basketball on his right index finger as he said it.
Richie’s competitive juices were flowing, “I don’t need no warmup, youth’s on my side. Let’s play ‘Winners Out.’ We’ll shoot free throws to see who gets the ball first.
“Okay,’ in a high pitch tone, Jimmy responded to the challenge.
For the next two hours, they went at it, neither one giving quarter to the other. Finally, when the second hour passed, Jimmy looked up at the clock on the East wall and said, “I’m done. Old Man is picking me up in 20 minutes, so let’s call it a draw.” Bent over at the waist, Richie’s hands were holding on to the end of his shorts as he reluctantly conceded that he was tired. “Truce” was the only word that came out of his mouth.
They sat in silence side by side on the pulled out bleacher seats, cooling down, then Richie borrowed a towel from Jimmy to wipe the sweat off his body before both changed back into their maroon and white varsity practice sweats. Looking up at the clock instead of at his teammate, Richie asked Jimmy, “You dating anyone?”
With a quizzical look, Jimmy looked back at Richie and at first didn’t say a word. Finally, he responded. “How long have we known each other, Richie? Five years? And during all that time playing two sports per school year together, you have never once asked me who I dated. Why now?”
Richie, having opened Pandora’s box, opted not to close it. “I was curious with all your popularity, especially with white girls, in an almost all white school, if you only dated girls of your race.
Jimmy stood up and looked down at Richie in a non-threatening manner and carefully chose his words. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know, but there have to be some white girls that you would like to date. Right?”
Jimmy glanced at the clock, hoping that time would run out before he had to answer Richie’s question. Uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation, yet curious as to why Richie was pursuing this line of inquiry, he decided to respond to the first question. “Richie, I date a couple of girls from my neighborhood and another girl from Upper Bethel, a similar neighborhood next to mine. Nothing serious.”
Richie didn’t say a word and just waited. About 10 seconds passed as an internal debate was taking place within Jimmy as he contemplated telling the truth or just blowing off Richie’s second question. Finally, in a barely audible voice, he said, “Sally Dill, Nancy Detwiler, and Bonnie Amburg are the white girls that I would date in a heartbeat, if I had the balls to ask any one of them out.” Jimmy waited and watched the reaction from Richie to his deepest secret; However, Richie’s poker face revealed nothing. Jimmy’s anxiety dissipated, and his relaxed demeanor returned, as he looked Richie straight in the eye and asked, “What’s this all about?”
Richie stood up and held Jimmy’s gaze, occasionally shifting his weight from one foot to the next, but didn’t say anything; instead, he pointed to the clock.
“Shit…I’m late, my Old Man will kill me. Turn off the lights and close the door when you’re done.” Then Jimmy grabbed his gear and sprinted in the direction of the exit. As he reached the far end of the court and just before he opened the metal door, he looked over his shoulder, back at Richie and shouted back. “Is this about Estelle? Everyone knows you have the hots for her. Be careful, ‘Forbidden Fruit’…A white girl dating a Negro guy. Only thing worse is a Negro girl dating a white guy,” as the door slammed shut leaving his words hanging in the air.