Growing up in Michigan, 1949–1974
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God Shoves Me: Growing Up in Michigan, 1949–1974 Robert L. Wardrop June 26, 2014 ii Contents 1 Foreward 1 2 God Shoves Me 3 3 The Child is the Father of the Man 7 4 Genesis: Life on Westwood, 1949–55 11 5 Genesis: Life on Westwood, 1949–55 17 6 Exodus: Arriving on Nathaline Street 25 7 William Harold Wardrop 37 8 Helen Mary Wardrop 43 9 Harold and Helen Wardrop 47 10 Ashcroft Elementary School 55 11 My Father and Sports 67 12 Little League Baseball 75 13 Culture in the 1950s 83 14 My Introduction to Basketball 93 15 Marshall Junior High School 95 16 Girls at Marshall 99 17 Basketball at Marshall Junior High 103 18 Geri Wardrop Pearce 109 iii 19 Teach Your Children 115 20 The 1965 Basketball Season 121 21 Tenth Grade Academics and Life 131 21.1“Dating”....................................... 137 22 Eleventh Grade Academics and Life 141 23 Twelfth Grade Academics and Life 149 24 The 1966 Basketball Season 157 25 WORK! 169 26 The 1967 Basketball Season 177 27 After the Shove 187 28 Adjusting to College: Social Life 193 29 Adjusting to College: Academics 201 iv v 0 Chapter 1 Foreward Reagan remembered three things from childhood: that his father was a drunk, that his mother was a saint, and that his ability to make an audience laugh afforded an antidote to life’s insecurities and embarrassments. So begins Chapter 1 of Reagan: The Life by H.W. Brands, a book I just began reading today (June 13, 2015). Part 1 of this biography, Prairie Idyll, consists of two (unnamed) chapters and covers the years 1911–1934, just two fewer years than I relate in this tome. Part 1 comprises 26 pages of the total of 737 pages in Brands’ biography. My memoirs—whose length remains undetermined at this time, but surely will run well over two hundred pages—is a more nuanced recounting of a childhood than that undertaken by Brands. Obviously, Reagan’s adult life was more accomplished, noteworthy and interesting than mine, although the zero pages I devote to my life after age 25 do, perhaps, miss some fascinating events. I am quite looking forward to reading Brands’ biography of our 40th President. I have read two earlier works of his (The first American: The life and times of Benjamin Franklin and Lone star nation) and find him to be entertaining, informative and enthusiastic about his topics. I have seen him appear in several programs on the History Channel and what sets Brands apart from the other experts is his enthusiasm. I have tried to be enthusiastic in my presentation of the first 25 years of my life, although I doubt that I have achieved a Brandsian level. At the end of the Reagan biography, Brands presents a four page discussion of his sources, 33 pages of chapter notes and a 25 page index. Being curious, I will read about the sources; being forgetful, I will often refer to the index; not being a scholar, I might never check a chapter note. My sources? Primarily my memory and those of my relatives, notably my son Roger and my niece Karen, and my childhood friends, notably my basketball teammates and Jordy Tisdale. The retelling of the basketball exploits of teams are taken from local newspapers of the day (The Detroit News and Redford Observer) and the occasionally conflicting memories of my numerous teammates and myself. These memoirs contain no chapter notes and I don’t plan to create an index. This document is most definitely not a scholarly work, nor is it intended for anyone other than my friends and relatives especially my grandchildren: Skylie Grace, Corbin Grant and Breyton Garrett Wardrop. I have shown drafts of this work to several friends and relatives. My basketball teammates, in 1 particular, have marveled at my memory. But not for long. After a lengthy discussion with, for example, my funniest teammate Roger Steffen, we found that I have a huge number of memories and Roger has a huge number of memories, but even though he was my teammate for four years, our specific memories rarely overlap. The fact that Bob Wardrop scored 24 points in a basketball game at North Farmington High School in 1966 can be authenticated from newspaper accounts, but the huge majority of the tales in these memoirs cannot be verified and, indeed, many of them may be false memories. I don’t worry about false memories. Why? I leave that explanation to a Nobel Prize winning author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who said: The life of a person is not what happened, but what he remembers and how he remem- bers it. 2 Chapter 2 God Shoves Me The best day of my life? That’s easy: June 15, 1972, the day my only child, Roger, was born. The most important day of my life? Tuesday, May 30, 1967, Memorial Day, the day God intervened and changed the course of my life. July 1, 1949, marked the birth of the second and final child to soul-mates Helen and Harold Wardrop, a baby boy named Robert Lee. As they gazed upon the helpless, ignorant child in Helen’s arms, they vowed to raise Bob according to the same four principles they had followed for 5.5 years with his sister Geri: 1. This child will not grow up to be conceited. 2. This child will not grow up to be lazy. 3. The primary technique for molding this child into the person we want him to be is shame. 4. The intellectual growth of this child will be actively limited. He must always understand that his parents know best on every topic. Regarding the fourth item, as a child, I learned that whenever I deviated from the beliefs or pronouncements of my parents, one or both of them would always have the same response: Who gave you that idea? Apparently, no original thought or notion would ever materialize between my ears. In retrospect, it seems totally predictable that young Bob would quickly develop a love of mathematics. In math, problems have unique correct answers that are independent of Helen and Harold. In math, my responses could not be dismissed for violating the Wardrop doctrine. In short, in math I had accomplishments that could be neither discounted nor denied. Beginning in ninth grade, for four years my life revolved around playing basketball. My bas- ketball career was full of highlights for the first three years: I made the team; I became a starter; and I amassed an impressive list of accomplishments, both as an individual player and as a member of three very successful teams. My parents took obvious pride in my achievements, but could never praise or even compliment my play. Remember rule 1: Bob must not become conceited. Instead, they would constantly criticize our star player, Reggie: “Everybody thinks Reggie is so good. He’s 3 not. He shoots too much.” (Almost 50 years later, Reggie told me that his father would say that I shot too much. But Reggie’s father also praised him.) Before my senior year of basketball, I became obsessed with dunking. The previous year, several boys on our team could dunk the basketball, but all were at least three inches taller than I. I could almost dunk, and my near-misses were respected by my taller teammates. I realized that if I could become the shortest boy, by far, to dunk, I would have a distinction, much like my triumphs in math, that could never be denied. I spent hundreds of hours in my basement, doing toe rises to strengthen my calf muscles. Finally, by the beginning of my senior year in high school, I could dunk a basketball! As I met my friends at Will Rogers Elementary School on Memorial Day, 1967, the weather was perfect. In just a few days I would attend my high school prom and a few days later I would graduate. At my school there was a tradition that on Memorial Day you would go to a beach with your prom date. This begs the question: Why wasn’t I at a beach? My date, Chris, had been my steady for a couple of months until she dumped me for another boy just a few days earlier. Chris, a junior who would have a future opportunity to go to a prom with someone she actually cared for, was a true humanitarian. She announced that she would attend prom with me because she didn’t want me to go through life with the memory of her breaking my heart. These were, perhaps, not her exact words. My friends and I proceeded to play a long game of softball. After the game was over, a few guys went home and five of us headed over to the adjacent basketball court and started shooting baskets. We noticed a group of old guys and their wives and families having a barbecue in a backyard that abutted the schoolyard. They noticed us. Perhaps because they had seen how inept we were at softball, they challenged us to a game of basketball. “Sure,” I said, “Let’s play full-court.” On closer inspection, our challengers appeared to be in their mid-twenties; yep, old guys. There were two reasons I wanted to play full-court basketball. First, we had to be in better shape than our opponents; we would run them ragged! Second, I wanted to flex my leg muscles and slam home a few dunks, which is much easier to accomplish in a full-court game.