Benny Jay: Track Talking

Oh, man, life is good. I wake to a bright, sunny day -- a little cool, but not too windy. Perfect weather for the opening of the outdoor high school track season.

Other folks welcome spring with the crack of a bat against a baseball. For me, it's the echo of a starter's pistol -- 'cause I just love track `n field.

I drag my bike out of storage -- haven't used it since November. Stop by the bike store to fill the tires with air, and bike down Lincoln Avenue to Ainslie Street and over to River Park for the Mather High School meet.

It's a big field filled with kids wearing uniforms in all shades of yellow, green, gold, blue and red. It's too warm for my wool cap, so I replace it with a baseball cap and raise my face to feel the rays of the sun.

Right away I'm looking for someone to talk to, 'cause for me half the fun of watching sports -- any sports -- is talking. I don't know if university researchers have done any type of sociological study on this topic, but for some reason track seems to draw the best talkers: Older guys, forty to sixty, standing on the sidelines, stopwatches in hands, talking politics, weather, the Bulls, things we should have done in our lives, girls we used to date, fights we won and/or lost, and, our all-time favorite: Why things were better back in the day.

I spot Alonzo -- pay dirt. In the pantheon of great guys to talk to while watching a track meet -- an illustrious list that includes Daddy Dee, Ray and Lavinia's Uncle John, just to name a few -- Alonzo is right at the top. It would be an interesting study to see who talks more -- him or me. I say me. But, then, I'm biased.

It's Alonzo's first meet of the year -- his daughter just finished basketball -- yet he's already in mid-season form. The truly great ones don't need a warm up. Within a few minutes, we're well into an intricate and passionate discussion about coaching strategies in a girls high school basketball game we saw about, oh, 15 months ago. I'm telling you, this is serious stuff.

While we're talking, the hurdlers take the track. I love the hurdle races at the Mather meet -- it's like a demolition derby. This being the first outdoor meet of the year, a lot of coaches are experimenting, just to see if they have anyone who can actually compete. I mean, some one's got to do it. A lot of these kids have probably never even seen a hurdle in their lives. Coach's fed them a line: "I think you'll be good at -- you got the body for it. Try it, you'll like it...."

The wide-eyed rookies take off with eager determination, running as fast as they can, and then -- wham -- they crash into that first hurdle, hit it hard, cause, let's face it, this is way harder than any coach will tell you. By the time they get to the final hurdle, they're practically limping, ankles and shins screaming in pain, and looking like they can't wait to quit. As in retire from sports, go home, have a cold one and watch it all on TV.

At last year's Mather meet, there was a boy -- I think he hailed from Roosevelt High School -- who crashed over the final hurdle, landed on his face and just crawled off the track. On the sidelines, the other old timers and I were yelling: "Finish the race, finish the race!" As in, back in the day we woulda never have walked off the field. The boy said: "Fuck this shit." Daddy Dee and I busted out laughing when he said that -- laughing so hard, we damn near fell over. "Fuck this shit." What more can you say?

It reminded me of the time I came in dead last in a high school cross country meet. As I came around the back stop, head down, wheezing in agony, for the final fifty or so yards, I saw David Simms, a kid from my freshman algebra class. He had his wry smile, almost a smirk, as he watched, like he was enjoying my misery. Within a week we were best of friends. Later he explained that he had thought I was stuck up 'cause I came from the richer side of town. But after he saw me running dead last, he figured I was no better than anyone else. So you see, there are some benefits to finishing last.

I'm all set to tell Alonzo the story. But we get sidetracked by a coach who wants Alonzo to give some avuncular advise to a great runner who's goofing off in class. The kid comes over and Alonzo -- a former track coach himself -- talks about how life is short and you have to make the most of it and if you have the gift of speed that you have -- well, son, you got to run your race! The whole race -- class work too.

It's a great speech. Has me fired up. Wish to hell I had someone like Alonzo pumping me up way back when.

By then the meet's over and the sun's going down an the wind picks up. Typical Chicago weather, changes on a dime. I replace my baseball cap with the knit one.

Alonzo and I walk over to my bike. We're still talking. His daughter, Ashley, stands off the side, patiently waiting. I can see she wants to go home. Just as I say, "I'll let you go," I remember that I never got around to telling him about running last in cross country. Oh, well, I can save it. We have another track meet in week. I'll get to tell him all about it then.

Benny Jay: A Couple of Old Goats from Gary

It was Milo's idea to get together with Monroe -- I merely set it up.

I've known Milo since forever and I've known of Monroe for at least as long. When I moved to Chicago back in 1981, Milo and his wife, Sharon, lived in the downstairs flat. Monroe was writing for the Tribune.

They both come from Gary, Indiana, which to me was nothing more than a stinky stop on the train going east to Washington, D.C. In fact, pretty much everything I know about Gary, I learned from Milo. He told me all about it, while we sat on the front porch watching the people walk by. He'd be smoking cigarette after cigarette and telling me story after story. He had dozens of stories about Gary's quirky characters and the oddball things they did. I loved listening to Milo's stories about Gary -- though I didn't care for the cigarette smoke. I'd tell you a few of them, but I'll leave that to him. He tells his stories better than I can.

Anyway, Milo wants to meet Monroe, and Monroe's game. So we get together at this restaurant in Lincoln Park. I order chicken -- 'cause that chicken is good. I'm trying to eat slow, to make it last longer. But it's hard to do cause it's so tasty -- all juicy inside. Man, I love that chicken.

Milo's explaining how he went to Horace Mann High School back in the mid 1960s. The school board integrated it when he was a freshmen -- he's not sure why -- and all these black kids came in. There were daily fights 'cause, you know, what else are black and white kids gonna do but fight?

And Monroe says the idea of fighting white people never crossed his mind -- even though he came out of Gary at roughly the same time -- mainly because there were no white people to fight. He went to Roosevelt High School, which was on the black side of town -- across the railroad tracks, the racial line of demarcation. (I guess the Gary school board wasn't about to send white folks into Roosevelt High.) Monroe says he never even saw white people -- at least up front and personal -- until he went off to college.

Somehow or other they start talking about the Patterson sisters. Turns out both of these old goats lusted after them. "The prettiest girls in Gary," says Milo.

"They were fine," says Monroe.

They also discover they both knew another pretty girl -- named Hirsch. I think they lusted after her as well. They also knew Dr. Yokum. They didn't lust after him -- but his brother is a character in "School Boy," one of Milo's finest novels.

"How can you know the same people if you live on opposite ends of town?" I ask.

"Gary's a small town, Benny," says Milo.

Right there and then the whole notion of blacks fighting whites just because, you know, that's what they do, never seemed so strange.

It reminds me of a street party I attended a few years ago at Cabrini Green. A bunch of old gang bangers from rival gangs got together. They called it Old School Monday -- 'cause it took place on a Monday night.

"Twenty years ago we'd be trying to kill each other," they said, as they hoisted beers and listened to Marvin Gaye blasting over the loudspeakers.

The notion seemed so bizarre they wondered why they ever let it happen.