Before I Forget

So a few weeks ago my Dad and I put the driveway basketball hoop back up. It had been rotting into our front yard jungle (vines curling through the backboard, a wasp colony taking up a firm and permanent residence, rust spreading freely and with joy) as a physical and obvious metaphor for the past year of every ones lives.

The basketball hoop in the driveway became an ornament the very day my brother died.

When we put it back up the empty shell of a cicada clung to the base, and in the deep summer heat, after we’d fought to upright it (we’d had it laying on the ground for many months), I took a few paces back to see if we had both a stable and laterally even court. And I looked down to notice that I was standing on the white spray-paint of our old free-throw line. After 15-years it stuck stubbornly to our cement after all these brutal years.

The basketball hoops we’ve gone through over the years have warped and been torn down like an old wooden fence in a deep field. There’s been four in my lifetime. Two were cracked in half by hurricanes.

Mike and I watched as Hurricane Floyd cracked one of the hoops during the shaky Rush filled morning when that storm almost came ashore on an abandoned barrier island in the early fall of 1998. Another had gone down during a sneaky and uncalled for tropical storm, although the name of which escapes me.

Another of our vaulted basketball hoops cracked right in front of me after a badly missed jump shot in early November of 2009. It had been creaking, acting generally wonky, and groaning for a few weeks, when one night, shooting alone, one of my jump shots hit the rim square and magically cracked the whole thing in half in one horrifying motion. My neighbors we’re bidding farewell to there relatives across the street, and catty-corner to that a group of teenagers were practicing some half-assed BMX moves when the whole metal and glass contraption came down in the late evening. And everyone turned with their hands atop their heads doubting quickly that anything would have survived that disaster.

And feel it: A 200-pound, 11-foot tall structure collapsing on a solemn Melbourne Beach Sunday night…It was jarring.

If the shot I took had been at close range as opposed to an outside bomb I probably would have been crushed. Mashed up like a stupid snail (hence the collective hands atop the heads). But hell, I’m a stupid snail finding its way out of many dry days.

So after that Mike and I pondered the future of our little driveway court. My Dad had no interest in installing another expensive and difficult to dig quick-concrete basketball hoop (they are a pain in the ass). I was interested in a new one, but fairly impartial to actually doing anything about it.

About a week after the 4th hoop fell, Mike just went ahead and fucking bought a new one. We both knew we needed a basketball court outside our garage equally and purely. We were missing something.

So we assembled it a few days before Thanksgiving, just he and I, reading directions and smoking copious amounts of weed. Metal pieces went here, glass backboards straightened, screws were tightened. It didn’t seem possible when we first pulled it out of the box, but it came together slowly and correctly. We didn’t question why we would bother to put another one of these hoops up even as I approached the middle of the twenties and the beginnings of things that groan and pull.

And when we did finally put all of the pieces into the right place, and under the moon’s vapor glow, pushed the thing into an upright position, we still didn’t appreciate what we were doing: We were making things whole once again. Keeping an important and beautiful stasis.

Mike and I played against each other, one on one, on almost a daily basis, with basically no spectators, for well over a decade. We had the parameters of the court drawn out very specifically, but without much uniformity. The free-throw line was the grass (past the spray-paint), and the 3-point line fluctuated in a way that only he and I could identify immediately. The northern line ran against the garage where time and the heavy drops of rain had created a little white creek about fifteen feet from the hoop. The corner of this shot (the furthest possible from the hoop) was a point of pride; and mastering it was a Holy Grail. The inside corner of The Shot was under a motion detector light that would often come randomly making it next to impossible to drain. You‘d start the shot from complete darkness and watch in horror as the sudden light of your skin would pervert your follow through motion mid-shot. But it was all the more sweet in a game winning make. Plus, at that spot the roof slopes down to its lowest point, making a very limited range to squeeze a basketball past a jumping defender (and Mike took a particular glee in blocking one of those shots like a volleyball over the roof and into the backyard).

The other three point line defined our physical lives. From a certain crack in the driveway cement that ran across the expanse, and then past infinity, was a three point worthy shot. Anything could happen past that line.

Let’s divert quickly as my heart slowly leaks and talk even more technical. When I say a three-point shot, I don’t mean it. Mike and I played games to ten by one. And two points was counted and called a three point shot. First to ten, no make-it-take-it bullshit, no winning by two: just the first of us to hit ten.

The games started only with the sound of a ball bouncing. That’s it. You’d be sitting around watching television, or reading, or playing a video game, and then you’d hear it….an audio-acoustic challenge. One of us would just start bouncing a ball on the driveway and wait.

We didn’t have to come out. But it was understood…a one-on-one had been called. If it was a lazy Sunday afternoon this process could be drawn out; I could bitch about a sore leg or too much humidity. Mike could be busy with The Xbox or a problematic (or unproblematic) girl. When we were kids there would rarely be a delay in the acceptance of a court challenge.

And, in fact, whereas our games became intense but playful in our 20’s, when we were younger they were just intense. Arguments over fouls, disputes over traveling, intentional low blows…Brother Stuff. Mental perspiration from the effects of minor irritation combined with mutual dependence.

As we got older, and the differences in our ages made less of an impact as the quality of our ability and the actual size we’d grown into, games could go one of two ways. One, Mike could just mow me down. He was to strong for me to stop from getting to the basket and to relentless for me to get separation from if he really wanted play defense. Mike made the Hoover basketball team; I wrote for the Hoover Hawk. Actually, I don’t even think I started walking until I was about 15. If he just wanted to win, he could, and he did.

And yet, sometimes, I’d get him. He’d get a little overly confident and let me open for a few easy threes. Or maybe I’d get into his head with a few rib pokes and perhaps pass some checked balls back that I’d roll away from him. It was generally easier for me to sneak up on him though; to lull him into a boring game where I’d shoot goofy ridiculous shots at first, but then slowly provoke a real game. Sometimes he’d let me get a little to close to ten, and pay for it. I could inch a game to 8-9, say, and then all it would take would be one off-balance fall-away from distance. Hell, sometimes I’d just play a good game and he’d be off (pretty rare).

Our games (plural) were actually a best of three series set. An extremely high percentage of the time he’d win the first one, and both of us could usually judge from there if I would have any real chance in the deciding second game. Some first games were very close (especially if I could get a few shots to go); some were blowouts. And some game three’s were very exciting. Of course we were the only ones watching or keeping score. But still, nothing would drive him crazier then me sliding a weird series win past him (cracks me up to type that now, but it was true, it genuinely upset him).

Sometimes we were just tired, or hung-over, and we’d toss shots off from around the front lawn counting points occasionally. Sometimes we’d invent trick shot games with odd titles, and sometimes we’d just pass the time. I can’t remember if I ever witnessed The Surf Road shot go in.

So Mike would almost always win…but we were actually both pretty good on that driveway, and that driveway very particularly. We both knew which direction the other would like to go from the top of the key, which fall-away shot was favored, which of us was really invested in a game. It was all feel. Days and summers; nights and winters. Midnight games played under the bright red reflection of Christmas lights. For years and years.

I’ll miss those hours as much as anything else. And I still can’t believe we’ll never play again.

The basketball hoop is still standing. And I’m glad it is. Patched up and swaying unsteadily in every wind; home to new colonies of Florida insects and lizards. The cracks in driveway haven’t changed somehow. The playing field itself changes remarkably little. But I don’t find myself shooting around that often, and not nearly as often I used to. There are no games to prepare for. No one on the other side of the ball. The street has lost its persistent bouncing echo of competition and love. The cars are never moved to make room for a serious game. The sprinklers are never turned off for interfering with series. No one is keeping score anymore. There is no field of dreams.

Facing east at every hour another hoop still holds firm. But I can’t say for how much longer.