The following is a mostly true story of a sporting wager that took place between two young men on the evening of December 31, 1970
Most of us were at least 18 years old on December 31, 1970, and in our hometown of Hastings-on-Hudson, New York it meant that most of us were "legal" by then. This meant we could drink alcohol legally, and drive motor vehicles legally, assuming we had a license to do so, not that we weren’t constantly breaking all kinds of driving laws, like drinking
and driving…
I mention these things because back then a lot of the folks I hung with had been doing both for some time, often illegally and at the same time, but it was a dumber and gentler society 40+ years ago. I didn’t need to drive or need a
lift to my favorite bar. I could walk to the place where a shot of Dewars and a beer chaser cost 85-cents. That was too rich for me – I was into Southern Comfort with my six-ounce draft, which was 20 cents cheaper.
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| A shot of Comfort and a beer chaser was 65 cents |
By December 1970, I had dropped out of college after one miserable semester, and was getting ready to go back to work at what had been my summer job, working for a plumbing supply warehouse. I was planning on joining the union, which would raise my hourly pay from $2.00 to $2.25 per hour, which in turn would raise my take home pay to almost $68.00 a week. I was living back with my parents, determined to save enough money to buy a car so I could get the hell out, to somewhere, and to write.
Scott had decided against going to college in September, and was back living in his mom’s house after having been to Southern California for a stretch. He was on the road, looking for his muse to write, and for a time driving an ice cream truck. It was perhaps typical for Scott to have one of the few jobs in which you could lose more money (having to "lease" the truck) than you made (selling ice cream) in a given day.
Scott came back to Hastings where he found his situation was always a bit bizarre once his parents had gotten divorced. He seldom saw his dad, his mom was fairly loopy, and his older brother had graduated from Harvard and was actually getting paid to write.
Scott and I would too often sit at the bar back in those days, more than a few times when I was still only 17 years old. We’d get drunk and talk into the night, or even into the dawn about important things. We’d get drunk drinking Dewars and Comfort and Schaefer on tap. We’d be brutally honest with one another about women (we loved them), writing (we were sure that we were both very talented), and poetry (his sucked – mine sucked worse); or maybe it’d be music (Stones, Traffic) and movies (preferably with Paul Newman). We could argue endlessly about some things, and agree about almost everything else until it came to a difference of opinion about sports. Then, we could just agree to argue and swear, and hasn’t it always been that way between good friends when they argue about sports?
Scott probably felt that he knew more about sports for two pretty good reasons. The first was that he’d been our high school quarterback for 3 years, and had been an excellent basketball and baseball player too. He’d had a series of nasty of knee injuries while in school, and it seriously hampered his ability to play all sports, but he was a small guy anyway, maybe 5’8", and 150 pounds. It wasn’t as though he had a clear future to play any sport in college, let alone professionally, but a part of what made him good was his knowledge of all the games, and all the sports.
Scott read every great and not so great novel back then. He read popular stuff, classic stuff, and eclectic stuff. He knew everything about sports to the point that whatever it was that was in print back then on any major sport, he’d read it, and he had excellent recall. He was the kind of guy
another guy would call up in the middle of the night to settle a dispute about
which team won what game by what score in what year? Scott always knew the answer.
In 1970 there was no Internet, no Google, and no Bing, unless it was Dave Bing, the great college basketball player out of Syracuse. There was no 1-800-anything, or even 1-799-anything. No, what we had was the
World Almanac that our parents had (hopefully) purchased, and many of us would thankfully take that thick paperback and pore over the numbers and the history contained in that wonderful annual reference book. If you didn’t have something like that Almanac available, you couldn’t really settle a sports argument, unless you knew Scott’s
home phone number. If there had been a 1-800-Ask-Scot back then, he’d have made some serious dollars. Of course, he’d have to be home and answer the phone. Today, after 6 rings the phone would pick up and state "Scott is not in – please leave a message." Today, that would be a "you problem."
Scott and I weren’t best friends at the time, but we were pretty tight. I knew a lot about sports back then too, and I would often take him on in an argument, and once in a while we’d bet money on something. If it was a really big game, why, we’d bet upwards of $3.00, which was a pretty big bet back then for two guys who could
both get hammered for 10 bucks. One night, half-drunk, we decided to hitchhike the 15 (or so) miles down Broadway into downtown Manhattan on a Friday night, with about $4.38 between us.
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| Best damn hot dogs in the world |
Yeah, we got dropped off around 125
th Street, and then spent half of that $4.38 on two hot dogs smothered in that crazy and delicious New York City mix of steamed onions and red sauce. Another 45 cents for a pack of Marlboro, and over to Broadway around midnight to continue hitching, and three (much bigger and much older) guys from the Bronx picked us up in a
titsed out Chrysler Imperial. They told us that they’d just saved our worthless lives, getting our white, hippie asses out of Harlem before we would’ve surely gotten ourselves killed over two bucks and change.
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| The Imperial |
"How fucking stupid are you two assholes, anyway?" Too dumb to answer that question.
The car radio was blasting, and Little Peggy March came on to sing "I Will Follow Him," which had been a screechy, strident hit in 1964 or so, and the guys asked us to sing along to the song, which we declined to do.
"Sing it!" Outnumbered and out-manned, we sang:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JVhbusBDi4
"I love him I love him, I love him,
and where he goes
I’ll follow, I’ll follow, I’ll follow,
he’ll always be
my true love, my true love, my true love,
from now until,
forever, forever, forever,
I will follow him…"
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| "I'm stalking, I'm stalking..." |
It was just a small part of another chapter, and we both thought we were going to take these idiotic experiences and become writers back then, and I guess we did become writers, though not in the ways we had figured. We were like two guys from some novel
Jack Kerouac had never written while he was stoked on meth. I think we were trying to inspire one another to be the kinds of characters someone
would write a story about, and hopefully, it would be us?
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| A Dharma Bum |
My girlfriend was a beautiful and intelligent young lady whom I’d been with for some time. We were in love, and in lust, but she couldn’t figure out the fascination I had with Scott, and once said to me that I’d rather spend time with Scott than her.
There were times that I couldn’t argue that point, and didn’t, as it was often true. Love and sex will take a guy just so far before he’ll want to laugh and drink and argue and talk about sports. Scott was almost always enormously entertaining in so many ways. He was a very intelligent, endlessly funny, and thought provoking guy.
So, back to December 31, 1970, and there was a party a short walk up the hill from my house, but I wasn’t there. My girlfriend and I, along with another couple headed for a party in Riverdale, and I missed the party at my buddy Elmo’s house that evening.
Elmo’s 1970 New Year’s Eve party -- Scott was there, and Al was there.
Al and Scott were best friends at the time, and they were an amazing duo, feeding off one another’s energy from completely opposite places. Scott, the free wheeling child of divorce with little guidance or parenting, at all, and Al, coming from a conservative Jewish home with huge restrictions on freedom of any kind due to what I’d describe as
oppressive parenting by Al’s father. In some magical way Al and Scott connected and established a friendship that thrived in a way that only two 18-year old guys can make one thrive.
Al soon became (and remains) one of my closest friends, but back then we were just starting our friendship. More than anyone else, Al became
the one person I would always go to if I had some really important decision to make about my life. He was crazy and funny, but he was also logical and very, very smart. He only had one fault, and that was his weakness for gambling or betting on the wrong person, place or thing.
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| Before the big white stars |
Al had worked a job through much of high school, and had saved enough money to purchase a dark blue,
Ford Econoline Van. That big blue van was a beautiful thing, and very cool, when Al painted big white stars all over it and drove it down to Jackson, Mississippi to visit a (black) friend from high school was maybe not so cool? This was only 18 months or so after Kent State, Jackson State, Easy Rider, the Chicago Democratic Convention, and Tricky Dick Nixon becoming President – but Al survived all that on his trip to Dixie, and still had the van that New Years Eve.
Elmo’s older brother Bob was at the party too, and Bob was about as ramrod straight as his younger brother was bizarrely wound. Bob ended up in the kitchen of his house too, while Scott was there, and the subject (as it invariably would) turned to sports in general, then college basketball in particular.
The conversation ultimately turned to an argument about which team had lost to UCLA in the 1965 NCAA (Men’s) Basketball Championship. Scott casually stated that it was Michigan but Bob insisted it was Texas Western (by then and now, the University of Texas at El Paso), and not only that, Bob stated
he’d been at the game!
Scott repeated that Bob was wrong. He told Bob that Texas Western had been the team that won the title the following year, but Bob was certain he was right, and he was also getting pissed off that Scott had been correcting him on all kinds of sports related things they’d been talking about. Working into all of this was that some of Bob’s own friends were getting tired of all the BS coming out of him. All of these arguments were being mostly fueled by alcohol, and making Bob pretty edgy. Everyone was pretty high by this time that evening, and the argument escalated, got louder and grew snarly. Bob grew more strident in his conviction, but Scott knew that he was right, and wouldn’t back down. Scott would never back down when he was right, but Bob didn’t know that.
Then, Bob offered to bet money on the correct answer, and Scott accepted the bet.
It wasn’t the
usual kind of big bet for Scott like the Super Bowl, so it wasn’t a $3.00 bet.
Nope,
Bob wanted to bet $50.00 in cash.
Anton Chekov wandered into the room.
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| Wrote about a prior bet |
"You’re on," Scott said. He was getting angry with Bob by this point, as a number of people were, and he and Bob shook hands on the bet.
Bob put $50.00 in cash on the kitchen counter and said, "Let me see your money."
Whoa! That didn’t happen very much back then, at least not in
our world.
Cool Hand Luke had to say he could eat 50 eggs in one hour to get more than $50 bet on both sides of
that wager. Up until he played pool with the
Fat Man, Newman’s "Fast Eddie" Felson had to shoot a lot of pool before he could walk away with any cash close to fifty, and this bet wasn’t on
performing, it was on
knowing. Butch Cassidy would have probably just had the Sundance Kid shoot Bob, and take the money, but this wasn’t a movie.
Fifty Bucks!That was a
lot of dollars for a
lot of folks back then.
On December 31, 1970, you could fill your car’s gas tank, buy a carton of Marlboros, and a six-pack of Budweiser, and still have enough money left from a $10 bill to buy a late night breakfast at the Center Restaurant.
$50.00 was really a lot of money back then, especially to an 18-year old guy, but Scott had about $4.00 in his pocket, and if some folks at the party were willing to stake some of his bet for a piece of the action, well, there’d be some action. Al kicked in what he had, and Elmo put up a large chunk of the stake against his big brother, and that heightened tempers a bit more. About 7 or 8 folks kicked in the dollars needed to match the bet.
Al was there. He was buzzed, but Al knew…
he just knew Scott was right on this one, as he was always right on this kind of thing. Al, who was always right on everything
except betting on almost anything sports related knew his best friend was right. They were going to make some money, and make Elmo’s obnoxious brother look like a bigger jerk off than he’d already shown himself to be.
Al had zero doubt -- not for a second. Al would have personally funded the start up of
1-800-Ask Scot if such a thing had been possible back then, and would have rightly felt certain about making a small fortune.
So, the money was matched.
Great! "Now Bob, lets look up the answer…" in your family’s Encyclopedia Britannica, or
World Almanac, or History of College Basketball, or something…but no, there was no
something in the house, no Google, no Bing, and no 1-800-Ask Scot. No nothing.
There seemed to be no way at that time to resolve the bet until Al stated he was ready to drive to any place where a reference book could be found to settle the matter, and a few people laughed.
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| That's a bump, all right. |
It was getting later into the evening by this time, and the weather had turned very nasty. A big snowstorm had started a few hours earlier, and it was close to being blizzard conditions by then. The night was windy and glistening with ice, and the streets were just about deserted.
At that point a kid named Beck volunteered that there was a 1967 almanac at his house, which was about a mile away, and Al had his van. A mission was arranged that Al and Beck would go get the almanac, and MJ said she’d come along for the ride.
Snowing like a bitch, hilly and icy roads, and Al driving his high-miles, Econoline van.
Sure sounds safe enough to me, but what did I know? During the summer just past, on more than a few occasions, Al would pile us boys and girls into his van and we’d drive up around Armonk, close to the New York and Connecticut border. After a short walk through the woods we’d come to a lake which was perfect for late night swims, and other healthy youth activities.
Al had installed a luggage rack on the roof on the van, and one night, after a trip to the lake, Elmo, Jake and I decided to ride on the roof rack while Al drove the last 2 miles or so back to Hastings before dropping us off. We were all a bit trashed, but the ride had been pretty exhilarating. After the three of us got down, and yelled our farewells, Al started away and the luggage rack immediately slid off the roof and crashed to the pavement. It may have been the last time I ever thought that there was a God, or the first time I realized that there was a
special kind of God – the one that looked after stray dogs, babies, and drunk 17-year old boys?
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| Weave in and out of these at 45 mph |
I had many adventures with Al in times shortly to come, and a number of them involved similarly safe travels about. For a while, Al had a job working for his uncle as a chauffeur, and often got to take this huge Chrysler Newport home with him, which meant we had some very nice wheels to go to all kinds of places in. One summer night I was in the car with Al as he was driving the Newport on our way back from Greenwich Village. We’d gone to see a midnight showing of the just released (original) "Night of the Living Dead." Al began to do a ‘weave,’ in and out of the posts holding up the elevated train lines in the north Bronx at a
squealing tires rate of speed. Scared me so much I was laying on the floor in the back seat – I was more frightened of watching Al drive than I was of actually crashing. Maybe it was me that was among the "living dead?"
Others at Elmo’s house knew about Al’s driving, but I don’t know if Beck did? MJ did, but she was probably in some other dimension by then, and maybe she could be used as a sacrifice if things got tough? The three of them bundled up and set off from Elmo’s house.
Dashing through the snow, in a very creaky van, down the hill they go…and within a minute, the van slid deeply into a huge round-mound of snow…laughing all the way…ha, ha, ha.
Well, this was serious stuff now, and there was really only one rational choice, which was (of course) to ditch MJ, and proceed on foot. (MJ slogged safely back to Elmo’s)
There was about 6 inches of fresh, mostly unplowed snow on the ground by this time, so it took the boys some time to wade through the slush and ice to Beck’s house, wet and freezing all the way.
They got there, found the almanac, and just as Al had known, Scott was right! Of course it
was Michigan that had lost to UCLA back in 1965, not Texas Western. They had just made themselves a nice little chunk of money! Al and Beck did a little victory jig which did little to sober them up, but gave them enough energy to forgo a phone call. They decided to take the almanac and hike
another mile back through the blizzard, and up the hill to Elmo’s house.
Frosted and exhausted they got back to the party, and didn’t reveal a thing until all ambulatory folks had gathered in the kitchen for the final determination of whether it was Bob or Scott, who had won the bet?
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| There will be an answer |
Al held the $50.00 wager up over his head while Beck read the fateful words from the
holy almanac, and Scott was the winner!
Bob took the Almanac and read the words defining his humiliation and was heard whining "But I was at the game…I was there…" to much slurring derision.
And Scott said to Bob, "Well, now that we have that straight, keep your money."
So, after Al’s freezing round-trip foray through a blizzard, that’s exactly what happened. Everyone got their part of the wager back – no blood, no foul, as we used to say on the basketball court.
Aside from being a great story about faith and friendship, there was
no nothing.
"Yeah, well, sometimes nothin’ can be a real cool hand."
I’ll bet ya.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
