Please indulge me for a bit and let me see if I can bring a twinge of a memory to some of you. Though I am going to speak of a specific place, it could be any place, any time. May be your small community or town; may be your time in life.

    Stoney Fork, Kentucky is in northern Bell Co. which is in the southeast corner of the state. This is where my roots are planted, more spiritually then actually these days. On my return visits I notice the changes that have occurred, some good, some not so good. One thing I've noticed is that you don't see many dirt basketball courts anymore. Oh there's lots of basketball goals, but they're the modern steel and fiberglass types on driveways of cement and blacktop. Thinking back I remember at least seven dirt courts around the metropolis of Stoney Fork. I don't believe there are any now.
    The first one I recall was in the middle of a cornfield. It was a full court, two goals. Actually it was the court for the local school, Ritter Elementary. It was named after the Ritter Lumber Co. which had a mill there until the mid-sixties. The entire community was built by the lumber company; school, store and a church. The school was a four room building, two grades in each room with a pot belly stove for heat. Instead of in the middle of the room they were back in one corner. It got pretty darn cold on the other end. For years the community was often referred to as Ritter instead of Stoney Fork. Find an old enough map and it will probably have Ritter Camp on it. OK, enough historical geography.
    I believe the first real basketball game I ever saw was on this dirt court in the cornfield. I don't have any idea how old I was, but I was probably a first or second grader. I knew about basketball, but that was about all. One thing that stands out in my memory is wondering why one player or team got to shoot over and over until the ball went through the rim and the next time only shot once. Of course what was happening was offensive and defensive rebounding. I was also puzzled by this guy with the whistle who would blow it, stop everyone from playing and give the ball to the other team for seemingly no reason at all. This probably was not my first exposure to basketball, but it's the earliest recollection I have of an actual game.
    Around 1965 some new schools opened and consolidated all these small community schools. That was the end of Ritter. The building is now a store. Along about this time a goal was put up beside the school building, next to the cornfield. I guess the farmer needed a few more rows of corn. This is where I honed my skills as a beginner. It was a nice smooth court, not a lot of dust. The ciders from the stoves had been emptied on that end of the building over the years and they made a surprisingly nice hard surface. You know I never give it any thought before, but someone kept some fashion of a net on that rim almost all the time. I have no idea who though. Ah the rim; it was a rusty brown looking thing. The biggest tube or bar for a rim I've ever seen, it looked like it was ¾"  of an inch or more in diameter. I can still recall the bang the ball made when it hit the backboard and rim.
    We had our routine established, come home from school, may be a quick snack and straight to the basketball court. When it got too dark to see we reluctantly went home. You can imagine our shock when one evening upon arriving we found someone chopping away at the support post. The property owners had decided since they had attempted to turn the school building into apartments, may be the basketball court would disturb the tenants. Who by the way were non-existent and would remain that way. Chopping down the goal didn't put any renters in the units and eventually the store went in. Today a gas station sits on the site. I don't know, I still think that rusty brown rim would look a lot better.

    Construction began on the Stoney Fork basketball Arena in 1965. The largest made for basketball only arena in--Stoney Fork. OK I guy can dream can't he? We had to have a new court. That's just all there was to it. There was one down on the other end of the "camp", but that was too far away. Actually it was about the distance of 1½  city blocks. So it went up in a field behind my house.
    I remember the night well we put the goal up. My dad and I had built the backboard a few days earlier; well I was there anyway. It was then attached to this huge 8" x 12" looking monster Dad had brought from the mill. Dad and may be someone else got on the backboard end and carried it. I had a coal shovel and the end of the post was set in the shovel and I guided it along as they carried it. Worked pretty well. The shovel slid along quite nicely and I drove it right to the hole. The huge post slipped down just as slick as a whistle and the backboard, post and goal almost stood up by itself.  There was a lot of maneuvering to get it just the right height and my dad ever the particular one had the level out to make sure it was straight. Didn't matter to us, just get the dirt around it and give us the ball. Of course there was a ceremonial thing first, I had to put the first shot through the goal. Things like this are very important you know.
    This court saw a lot of action over the years. Our games improved on this court as we got older. Now this was a DIRT court! No rocks or ciders; when it was dry it was dusty, when it was wet it was muddy. But surprisingly, after about a year or so it turned to a hard clay like surface; simply perfect.
    The rim itself wasn't new, as a matter of fact I don't seem to recall now where it came from, but it was another of those rusty brown looking jobs. Over the years it became bent in a couple of places giving it a wavy look and it was kind of bent down in front. I imagine that bent down front is a familiar sight to many of you. I'd be willing to bet most of you baby boomers played on a goal that looked like that at one time or another. I kept a net on that goal or at least some sibilance of a net all the time. A net's important, as far as I'm concerned, it gives you a little more shooting perspective. There has been many an argument over whether or not a shot went through a netless rim or missed. I used to buy those cotton twine nets. They were inexpensive and didn't last very long either. Those high arching 25 footers snapped those strings pretty fast. You know how us mountain boys can burn it up from long range. That's what caused the drooping front edge too, I suppose. Those bombs raining down from outside had to take their toll sooner or later.
    As nets would start to break we'd get up and tie them together. I've got to admit we had some pretty ragged looking things hanging off there. I even tried to make a homemade net once, it was pretty bad. About the only thing it did was give you that better shooting perspective--if you didn't laugh too much at it and throw your shot off.
    This court lasted till about my freshman year in high school. Then a railroad was built from Kettle Island all the way into Harlan Co. This meant my neighbor's house had to be either torn down or moved. They opted for moving. Well the trip of some oh, 75 yards had to go right across the basketball court. One of the guys with the house moving company was on his little dozer one evening, crawling around the field scraping a little here and a little there. Suddenly with no word of warning at all he raises the blade and shoves the goal post right over on the ground. I can still remember that sinister little grin when he said somewhat sarcastically, "Oops, sorry about that." Another court meets a violent death. Film at eleven.
So, what to do now? Well Dad had built a two car garage since the goal had been put up a few years before, so after a little arm twisting he allowed me to put the backboard up on the front of the garage. I decided it needed a coat of paint even though it had held up just fine for years without any. The only thing around was a light yellow, so we had a yellow backboard. I went the whole nine yards, trimmed the edge in black and put a square above the rim to aim for. My dimensions were a little off, it was tad small. But hey, it looked good.
    I went out and bought a brand new rim. Boy that bright orange rim sure looked different. I even got a nylon net this time. Nothing but the best you know. It was a little funny, when we put the new rim up it didn't look quite right. This one was obviously nice and level, straight all the way around. The first thought was, "It's too high." After lowering it a few times and each time it still looked too high, we finally realized we were just used to shooting on that old bent down rim. It did take a while to adjust, but mountain players can adapt to about any conditions.
    This court probably had the least desirable surface. It was in front of the garage which was not paved or cemented. There was a lane that ran around behind the houses and this ran in front of the garage. There was gravel and so forth in the lane which inevitably got on the court. This really ate up basketballs. But this is where we saw the serious basketball in my life. We were in high school then and for most of us about as good as we were ever going to get. The goal stayed up until I left for college. Then a few years later I gave the rim to some kids that lived up the "holler". Poor boys whose goal had just plain collapsed, so I figured I had gotten my use of it. Next time I'm down I believe I'll take a drive up the holler and see if there's still a BB goal where those boys played. It'd be nice to see it still there.

    Considering the conditions of some of the courts and goals we played on growing up you'd think that we wouldn't be that particular about the other things we used. Now I don't know about you folks but in my youth equipment was very important, not just the type, but the brand. Matter of fact this was probably more important then anything. The basketball of choice around our area was a Voit.  There wasn't 10 different models to choose from then, I think you could buy two types of Voit balls at the Sportmart in downtown Pineville. The Sportmart was where you wanted to buy your stuff because they sold only sporting goods. For you younger folks that was a big deal, you didn't see sporting good stores in very many small Ky mountain towns those days and Walmart wasn't around either. They supplied all the local high schools so you knew you were getting the "real" thing when you shopped there.  So when it said "Official size and weight", by golly we knew it was official size and weight! I don't remember how much those Voit balls were, but both were a little too high for me, especially the more expensive one. But that was the one we all wanted, because it was the model used in the high school games.
    As I said the Voit's were too rich for me, so I had to be content with a clone purchased at the Western Auto Store. Oh I knew I was compromising and this cheap imitation would never be as good, but this was my fate. Of course in actuality that ball held up quite nicely. That ball saw action on all three of the afore-mentioned courts, mostly on court number two. We used that thing until it was so slick you could not see the seams anymore. It never really died, it just got thrown up on a shelf in the garage. May be it's still there---nah!
    As I grew older and more prosperous, I finally graduated up to the coveted Voit ball. Yeah, I went through quite a few of those Voits. Ol' court number three in front of the garage was murder on a ball, all those little gravels and stones ate the things up in a hurry. If I was lucky I could get through a season with a ball, but sometimes I wasn't so lucky. I remember going through two balls in one week. I finally got smart and realized some of those cheap imitations from the Rose's Department Store that had just opened in Middlesboro would do just fine.
    Shoes were the other piece of equipment next on the list, I guess really that was about the entire list. On this there was no compromise, no corner cutting, no imitations; you wore Converse All-Stars, Chuck Taylor high tops. That was that. You just had to bite the bullet and save your money and of course the only place you could buy them was, that's right the Sportmart. On this there really was no other choice, the Sportmart was the only place that had them. There wasn't a plethora of athletics shoes around those days and leather shoes--you did say leather? Didn't exist in my world and we probably wouldn't have been caught dead in a pair.

     As I've told you before growing up at Stoney Fork my friends and I played all kinds of sports, as I'm sure most of you did. During the summer months we played softball a lot. The local Baptist church would organize a team each year along with other churches and we played in a league. Our team was always terrible, but we enjoyed playing anyway. One of the requirements was you had to attend church to be eligible to play each week. Naturally after the season ended a lot of guys quit showing up. So they tried to come up with something else to keep us on the straight and narrow.
     They tried football, but that never got going. The obvious choice would seem to be basketball. You would've thought in southeast Kentucky a basketball league would've been very popular, but it never really took off. I still don't understand why, may be the fact that we couldn't find a gym to use was the reason. Playing outside in the weather wasn't much fun, but we did it all the time.
     We had a team for a couple of years and only played about six games or so. We played the same team about three of those games. The other churches couldn't seem to get any teams organized. We had a high school guy who tried to coach us, but we would've been better off on our own, he knew nothing about coaching a team.
     When I was in the seventh grade we played a team from up the "holler". It was Stoney Fork also, we joked that the head of Stoney Fork was playing the mouth Stoney Fork. Those who have lived or grew up in the mountains will know what that means. What made this special was we were going to use the Red Bird High School gym.
     Red Bird Mission is a special place in the mountains above Stoney Fork. I don't know how long it has been there, it's one of those places you can say is "in the middle of nowhere". The high school there used to have dormitories--yeah dormitories. There is a church and small clinic nearby. The buildings used to be green and white, with stone on the lower half.
     Obviously we were excited about this, actually getting to play in a real gym. We went to school with the guys we were going to play and their minister was going to officiate. We were surprised to hear that any touch on a player with the ball would be a foul. We weren't rough-necks but we figured surely this wouldn't be the case.
     Naturally we didn't have uniforms, but since we were playing in a gym I figured I needed something a little special, so I had my mother sew a couple of red strips of cloth down each side of my shorts. The other guys liked it so well my poor mother ended up sewing red stripes on about six or eight more pairs.
     We played on a Saturday morning. I didn't expect a crowd, but thought may be a dozen or so locals might drop in just out of curiosity. Nope, nobody but us and the other team. This was big time stuff for us though, they were going to use the scoreboard.
     Well sure enough our friends had been right, every time we touched the player with the ball the whistle blew, talk about getting into foul trouble in a hurry. The guy officiated the game fairly I guess, but really we were at a disadvantage since he had been coaching the other team and they had been practicing in the gym. We on the other hand had been practicing on a dirt court behind my house and had gone down to the elementary school a couple of times. There were paved courts there, but as you know outside goals are all different, so while our opponents had the opportunity to get used to the rims ahead of time, we had to adjust during the game.
     I guess the outcome was a foregone conclusion, we lost. I don't remember the score or how many points I had, for some reason 12 comes to mind. I think the minister officiating must have felt kind of bad about the situation. His guys did have the benefit of knowing how he was going to call things and we didn't, so he gave us each an extra foul. Still, all of our good players fouled out, including me. May be we wouldn't have won anyway, but looking back on it the cards were certainly stacked against us, even though it wasn't intentional.
     For most of us it would be as close to playing an actual game as we would ever come and I'd say a few of those guys never played on a gym floor again. It was a long time ago, on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere, but on that Saturday morning for us it was the battle for the Championship of Stoney Fork. In some ways it probably never got any better then that.

   I have talked about the variety of surfaces we "played" on growing up such as the gymnasium at Red Bird High School, well I failed to mention we played on another wood "floor". It was out doors and was a bit different then the floor at the Red Bird Gym. Actually it was the floor of an old wood shed. When Ritter Lumber Co. built all the houses at Stoney Fork they built sheds behind each one for coal, wood or what ever. There were four sheds all built together as a unit and they sat right on the property line between each house; two sheds for each house. At some point in time, long after the mill had closed, someone had tore down the outside shed at one of the houses in the community, but left the floor for some reason. Their kids put a basketball goal up on the side of the remaining shed and used the floor to play on. It was not very wide and you couldn't play an actual game on it, at least not if you were older then 10 or 11, but it certainly was great to just mess around on.
   The goal was only about 8½ or 9 feet high, so we would go down there occasionally and it's rather strange but we never thought of dunking the ball. The one thing that I believe most of us would love to experience at least one time and we weren't interested in that; we wanted to goal tend! We would leap up and try to swat the ball away or stick our hand up through the rim to slap it back out. Looking back on that I wish I would have just once took one of those Dr. J leaps for a one-handed windmill jam, but in the '60's we hadn't heard of that kind of stuff. I guess one of the reasons we were not interested in dunking the ball was, as I recall dunking was not allowed in college at that time, so we hadn't been exposed to those daring feats.
   We liked to go down there also to dribble on the wood floor. To be honest with you it was probably not as smooth as the dirt court we were playing on. You would sometimes have the ball stolen from you by a loose board, how many times have you had that happen to you. I imagine we were a lot like other kids, we figured any hard surface was better then dirt. We would play a keep away type of game on the lane that ran behind all the houses. It had been given a coat of tar every so often to keep the dust down and over the years in spots it had hardened and was just like asphalt. During this period I was about 10 or 11 and we would play this game of ours which was basketball without the goals. I don't know what the object was except to keep the ball from the other team, there was no scoring involved, we played it like a regular game, we just didn't shoot. Boy if we had only had those portable goals back then.
   When the new elementary school was built they had three basketball courts; two were asphalt and the other was dirt, but as you can imagine it was hardly ever used so grass grew over it right away. The school, Right Fork Elementary, has a large field behind it. One of the courts was out in the field about 100 yards from the building and the other was right behind it. The court farther away had wooden backboards painted white and the court was not marked off. The surface was OK, but it must have not been made of really good material because it was a little on the rough side. The other court had a chain link fence behind each end of the court, what we didn't realize though was it was to serve as a tennis court also. We didn't know it but that was the reason for the fence at each end, not to keep the basketballs from rolling away as we thought. No one played tennis around the area, so when we first got on the court we were really baffled by the lines that were painted on it; they made no sense at all. We tried to figure out why the foul line was WAY too far out and there was a stripe down the center of what should have been the foul lane. Two side-lines on each side about three feet apart. Of course this didn't make any difference to us, we just ignored it went on with the business at hand.
   This was the first time we had ever seen those half moon backboards, we immediately didn't like them. They were too small for one thing we thought and they were made out of something weird. When we were told they were fiberglass we assumed they were going to break within a week. As much as we enjoyed playing on a paved surface we hated those backboards and they began putting a sealer on this court, which was the better of the two, so now when you played there you had this black sticky tar-like gunk on your ball. We didn't play on these courts all that often since they were four or five miles down the road. We spent most of our time on our dirt courts around Stoney Fork.
   I had mentioned the court in front of my garage, you remember the one that ate the basketballs up, I was in high school when we played on this court. I was probably about 5' 8" or 5' 9" and I could jump high enough to touch the rim, but that was about it. Still I thought that was pretty good considering my height. One night while playing I was dribbling in front of the goal 12-15 feet out, I faked the guy guarding me and took off around him toward the goal. I jumped sooner then I intended and when I laid the ball in the back of my hand hit the rim.  It surprised me more then anything and try as I might I couldn't get up that high again. I figured it was some kind of fluke and didn't really think about it too much.
   Sometime later I was out by myself shooting around. As I'm sure most of you have done I was driving to the basket and taking shots off the dribble and so on. At some point I jumped from about the same spot I had the night my hand hit the rim and there I was again with my hand right there beside the rim. So I began to look at the court and sure enough it was higher by a few inches about seven or eight feet out. If you jumped at the right spot and could sail far enough you were a few inches higher, so instead of 10 feet to the rim it was like 9' 7" or something. I wore myself out trying to leap from this spot and hold on to the ball and dunk it. Never got it done, came close a couple of times when the ball actually went in, but it bounced up in the air or all over the rim first. By the time I finally gave up I had hit my fingers on the rim so many times and they were all sore; it was a few days before I could handle the ball again. So I never experienced that big dunk.
   The majority of us has never played organized sports at any real high level, but we've played our share on the neighborhood courts and fields growing up, and pick-up games and leagues in our older years. I believe everyone has had that one play or game when you did something that really surprised you, something that still stands out in your memory even if it was on the playground or in a pick-up game. It may not have been in an organized game in front of a crowd, but for that moment you were able to put together a move or a game that you had never been able to do before. No matter where it occurred I think those moments are as meaningful to all of us would be athletes as the real ones are to college or pros.

    I'm sure a lot of you can identify with me in my situation. Spent my entire life until 16 years ago in a very rural area of Kentucky, living, growing up in the mountains. A part of the country a lot of people see as cut off from the rest of the world. I kind of saw it that way also a few times, but from here on the flat prairies of northern Indiana, those mountains look painfully appealing. I'm sure life is different for the kids at Stoney Fork and other places like it these days. I see them on three and four wheel all-terrain vehicles and motorbikes; with hand-held computer games. I don't see them on bicycles and they don't seem to be interested in exploring as we did. I remember growing up, we were in the mountains all the time. And those dirt courts, well I don't notice very many of those either. I guess on the whole they have a better life and are learning faster and growing up sooner. They have access to things we never dreamed of, but I can't help wondering about all the simple things they are missing. Like bent rims and dirt courts.

     This article is the property of the author. It may be copied for personal use only. It may not be reproduced for publication or distribution without permission.

  Do you have an interesting anecdote or just a fond memory from your younger days of playing basketball? I'd be very interested in hearing from you and would like to add it to my Bent Rims page. Didn't growup in Kentucky? Well, I suppose that's okay, we realize they play basketball in other states; even if it is played better in the Bluegrass. Send your experiences to Tom Johnson.

The following is from Ed Aldridge. I recently discovered that Ed and I attended high school together for a couple of years, but as is the case in large schools we were never acquainted. Ed came across my web page and sent me the following memoir from his days as a youth growing up in Kentucky with the game of basketball. I will give you a bit of background information; the school (Moss Chapel) Ed attended was located on the side of a mountain above US 25E just outside of Pineville, Kentucky. At the time 25E was mainly two lanes and was about to be widened to a four lane divided highway. Slusher Gym that he refers to was the Bell County High School gymnasium, which is the high school we attended.

  In 1965 our principal, Mr. Miracle, called all of us together and announced that we were in our last year as a school. They were putting in the new highway (25E) and the next year we would all be going to Harmony Elementary, Moss Chapel was about to shut her doors. He showed us the old trophy case, which was full of basketball trophies from past years. He explained that we had not played basketball at Moss Chapel since 1959 and that it would be great to revive it one last year. We were all excited. I was the youngest on the squad (5th grade). I can't begin to tell you how proud I was when I was issued my uniform; it was a blank t-shirt and a magic marker! We had to write our names and numbers on these shirts (no budget). I chose 42 because Pat Riley was my hero at the time. We were also told we had to wear black dress pants and BOOTS. And we had to play that night at Slusher Gym! Our game was at 6pm and he picked us all up at 5:30 at Moss Chapel. When we got there and walked into Rupp-I mean Slusher, the place was packed. Someone else was playing and it was like everybody just stopped and looked! We were a sight. When it came our time to warmup we started doing layups and thought we were in heaven UNTIL a very irate gentleman came over and told us to get off the floor with those boots on! Man he was mad! Our principal had obviously never coached before, but rather than forfeit the game he announced we would play in our socks. Big disaster. We lost badly. In fact, we lost 12 more games BADLY before the county tournament. In the county tournament we drew Cubbage. They had not won a game all year either. We were two evenly matched squads; it was a war! We had finally gotten some Chuck Taylors and shorts and some practice time. We were not going to let the proud name of the Moss Chapel Panthers be dragged through the dirt with a winless season. We led 26 to 25 with seven seconds left in the game, but there was a jump ball at mid court. Our tallest guy was jumping against a shrimp and he easily got the tip to one of our forwards who was by himself down under the Cubbage basket. All he had to do was hold the ball! Game Over! Possibly we had a chance at winning the county tournament!! The KOOL-AID would flow after this one!!! But for some insane reason he took one dribble, shot the ball off the backboard and through the cotton netting...goal Cubbage! Game Cubbage! To this day he cannot understand why he did that; no one else does either! Even, with the dismal season we had it was still a glowing, golden moment etched in my mind.

  I would like to have a nickel for every game I played on a dirt court. Our basketball court was on the side of Log Mountain, which was above US 25E. When we practiced we had to stage people on the side toward 25E. This was for catching the ball if it bounded in that direction. The reason was if that guy did not catch that ball it went down a steep hill (about 500feet), then it went through a culvert system that stretched underneath 25E and wound up near the Pine Mountain Golf Course in a marsh area! It took one trip for that “Ball Guard” to realize that it would take 15 minutes just to retrieve the ball and he never let that happen again; basically, they became hockey goalies. NO ONE wanted that job. Our court was gravel with a nice goal-backboard mounted on a telephone pole on the right hand side; on the left hand goal (which the opponents had to use...we never changed goals either) was a tricycle rim mounted on three boards nailed to a poplar tree! Like I said we never won a game, but a couple were close because the rim-trike-rim was bent and the ball had a tendency to go halfway down, hit a board and bounce right back out! ……It’s been great relating some of my memories to you.
Ed Aldridge
 

From Bob Schmidt "ukbob"
 I always loved to play. I didn't have the height, but had the shot. I could not make the school team, but always made the team across the field. A dirt court with a dug in foul line. Although smooth, the ball would sometimes bounce as if playing in the old Boston Gardens. The talent was knowing where the bad bounces were. Marty was a 6'3" towhead lefty. He could jump, shoot and was tough as nails. We would side up for three on three or four on four. Everyone wanted Marty. His sweet jumper was awesome and his leaps to the rim made us all jealous.

 I loved to pass fancy and take a long shot. But mostly I loved to rebound. Because I was short, each rebound was a personal victory. I counted them more than the points. The games were long, often until dark. The games were challenged, sometimes resulting in a scuffle. But the games were always played. Every night in the summer. Every weekend. There was no place else I wanted to be. Until one fateful Sunday.

 While at church, Marty's brother approached me and told me that Marty had died the night before. A rare heart condition brought on by exercise. I cried in church and left before the Mass ended. We never played on that court again. We just couldn't. I played in a few leagues at the YMCA, and even got cut from my high school team. However, nothing took the place of the dirt court across the field. I will never forget those days. I will also never forget the Sunday the ball quit bouncing.
Bob Schmidt
 

From Steve Clark; "Saint Wildcat of the Backboard"
I am from Ashland where as a young child I lived next door to the Conley family whose son Larry went on to make a good name for himself. That however is not my story. My family, as all good Kentuckians, were avid UK fans. My father built me a court on the front of our garage when I was in grade school, probably early 60's. This court was used by the entire neighborhood from grade school thru high school and even while I was at UK. I played basketball for Ashland and during the off season this old court was the unofficial practice court for the Tomcats. As all young people must do, I eventually moved off to live on my own. The court stayed with the old wood backboard, rim, and metal net. (We said back then we had to use a metal net because we would burn regular nylon too quickly). One day my mother called and said I needed to come home and look at my old basketball court. She said my backboard had taken on a new personality. On my next visit I had forgot her call, so we sat down on the driveway in front of the backboard and she asked me to tell her what I saw. On the top left portion of the backboard a section of paint and wood had eroded to look exactly like the Kentucky Wildcat. Without exaggeration this was an exact image of the Wildcat head. She even called the Ashland daily paper and a reporter came by and did a story on the court as well as pictures that made the paper. There was even a pickup in the Lexington paper describing the cat head. This cat head stayed on the backboard until the erosion became too much and it was gone. After that I always understood how sightings of saints could be seen over the world. I would like to think that the spirit of Kentucky Basketball looked over that court where so many kids spent hours flinging basketballs at that rim. It was a golden time and I would like to think that the Big Blue Wildcat looked down and smiled on that court for a while.
Steve Clark