Summertime of the '70s

Now that summer is officially here, it always takes me back to the summers of my youth. The days lasted forever, and the nights were filled with excitement and anticipation. For the most part, you never knew the date, the day, or even the time. Time stood still, and it was complete and utter joy. No school, no homework, and, at that time, no official team sports or practices. It was, as The Honeymooners put it best, “Good clean fun!”

My friends and I played every sport imaginable—from wiffle ball to stoop ball to kickball. But it always came back to basketball. We played hours upon hours of basketball during the blistering heat of the day, and then by the light of the street lamps at night. Game after game would come and go, but something different happened when I got old enough to go away to basketball camp in the country.

My first real overnight camp was in the mountains of Pennsylvania, where I was fortunate enough to go to the granddaddy of them all: the legendary 5-Star Basketball Camp in little old Honesdale, PA. I shared a bunk bed with Roosevelt Bouie, whom I had seen play in the old Manley Fieldhouse, and I was teammates with Dom Wilkins (which is what he liked to be called back then)—the "Human Highlight Reel." "Surreal" was an understatement. It was totally different from those Hudson County summer nights.

The skies of the country night were pitch black above the ivory-white backboards and the orange globes of the rubber basketballs.

Now, at 65, I am back in the country—this time in the old Catskill Mountains of Sullivan County. I am teaching and coaching young Jewish boys the very fundamentals that I was taught. The nights are just as black, and the sun is still just as scorching, bringing me right back to the summers of the 1970s. The setting is still very much the same, but the lens I look through has changed. The summers continue to come and go, but the world stays relatively constant—it’s just the way we look at things, I guess.

Enjoy the days and the nights; summer is officially upon us.

— OldSchool