The Basketball Court

1989

I can count on three fingers the number of times I've done manual labour.

The first time was in 1966 when I took a job as a dishwasher in the Valley State cafeteria as my sophomore year there was starting. Oh vey that was hard work and it started dark and early. Not for me. I quit after a week.

The second time was in 1969 when I was recruited to do construction schlepping on a new house in the Hollywood Hills overlooking the San Fernando Valley. I was traumatized within minutes when I realized I was doing the same work as the slaves in The Ten Commandments movie. Not for me. I didn't return for a second day.

The third time was in 1989 when my wife left me at home for ten days and took the kids to Vancouver leaving me one small job which was to supervise a father and son handyman team, Rocco and Serverio, putting up a pole and basketball net beside the front walk of our annex row house. She left on the Friday before the July 1st weekend. I was looking forward to having the pole in the ground and the basketball net up by noon the next day followed by nine days of peace and quiet having accomplished the one item on my ‘Honey do’ list.

Within minutes after arriving Rocco, the son, and his father, Serverio, let me know it was dumb to put the basketball net where we planned. After surveying our lot they suggested replacing the grass in our backyard, a 30 by 30 square behind a spacious deck.

They said the right way was to cover the grass with paving stones, and while we were at it we should redo the 3 foot wide lane between the next house and ours and our front walk. We'd save on the cost of the bricks and they had the time over the two weekends. If karma was on our side we'd finish before my wife got home. And, oh yeah, I would have to help with the schlepping.

I had to say yes immediately so they could get started and buy the paving bricks before all the suppliers closed for the long weekend holiday.

That was a challenge which I gladly accepted and made even more interesting by deciding to go ahead on my own authority. I learned long ago that surprise is one of those loving strategies I should use to keep romance in the marriage.

Rocco and Serverio were both stocky and muscular from doing lots of heavy labour. Serverio was maybe five six and Rocco was a handsome five eleven. They were entirely industrious. That is they were wound up tight so when they started working they just kept going. There weren't rest breaks to take a breath or wipe sweat off the forehead. They just kept going. They arrived at 8 a.m. from Woodbridge and except for lunch worked straight thru till five. Lunch was a production of its own. It was a huge bread and cheese sandwich that took exactly 30 minutes to eat. I supplied a coke and water at other times during the day.

Once the paving stones were delivered the work was to dig up and smooth the areas where the paving stones were to go, then there was the carrying of the stones to the various places they were to be laid, the laying of the stones including cutting many to fit in small places and finally filling in the small spaces between stones with sand.

We included a free throw line in the design which seems simple but when you think of all the stones that had to be uniquely shaped ours became one of the most expensive free throw lines in the western world.

The pole to hold the basketball net was a lanky twelve foot tall four by four piece of lumber to which the backboard and net would be attached. Easy peasy except for the cutting of more stones to accommodate the square bottom of the pole.

Now let's talk about me, the forty one year old barely in shape advertising executive doing construction work for only the second time in his blessed life.

Well I'm here to tell the story but at the time I struggled mightily to keep up with Rocco and Serverio. I couldn't quit because I had committed to work with them. In truth they gave me some slack to overcome my occasional bouts of exhaustion and mistakes made due to my dwindling mental acuity.

Since we lived on a street of row houses the neighborhood was a close community. Some of the homeowners who lived nearby were interested in the unscheduled and rather extensive landscaping project. I, of course, was more than happy to talk with any nosy neighbor. It was an excuse to stop digging and schlepping and have a rest.

The neighbors were divided on my decision to authorize the work on my own. Generally the wives admired my pluck to show initiative while the husbands were concerned that I had raised the bar to a place they didn't want to go on the independence and manual labour scales.

The way Margie tells the story is that when she arrived home late on the second Sunday evening exhausted from 10 days with the kids and a long flight there were neighbors standing around our front lawn waiting to greet her, to see her reaction and to give her a divorce lawyer’s card.

She immediately noticed that the expected basketball net beside the front walk was missing. I told her it was in the back and took her around the side to the back. I don't think she noticed the newly paved walk but when she saw the basketball complex I had constructed at the back of our backyard she was momentarily nonplussed but soon very happy realizing that our home would be a destination for our son and his friends, something we agreed was good.

What can I say? How about mission accomplished.

November 23, 2018

January 10, 2019