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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 10, 1981)
Page 6 Portland Observer, December 10, 1981 OBSERVATIONS ROASTS FROM THE SIDELINES B Y Kathryn H all Bogle Three old friends got together re cently over at Pat Patterson's house. Some people call Pat " C h u c k " — his parents and Social Security call him Charles Ivan Pat terson. Everybody knows Pat as the outstanding early basketball athlete at University o f Oregon. These old friends were Pat him self, Howard Hobson, the renowned basketball coach o f thirty or fo rty years ago at Oregon and George Yerkovich, now Portland's City Treasurer and long-time sup porter o f sports. They got together over a pot o f coffee (they told me to say that) to talk over old times—the good o l’ days—when we though it was rough going while we were struggling so hard. EEF CHUCK Morrie Huiser, Barney Woldt and C liff McLean all in play at Cen tenary. We had a good team and each one o f those boys won " A l l C ity " places that year. Times were tough and though I had my masters degree, I was calling on Junior High schools to coach. Money was so tight nobody was hiring a coach— and th a t’ s how and why General Science became my specialty all o f a sudden one day. When I nailed down the job as a science teacher, I soon had 250 boys running up and down on track.” "L e t’ s get to the good part,” Pat said. "The part when 1 played under you at Oregon. Those were the days when it was O .K. for me to travel with the team, but there was no place for me to stay. I couldn’ t even get a haircut in Ashland—when for a short while 1 attended Southern Oregon College down there. 1 had to go 325 miles to Portland to get to a Black barber to cut my hair. And once in Grants Pass down at South ern Oregon, Hobbie checked us all out o f the hotel because they w ouldn’ t let me, a Black player, sleep in their hotel. Hobbie told me (and the team) that we had to leave because— get this—the beds were too short.” Hobson broke in: “ This was back in 1936— about 18 years before Jackie Robinson When I got the job at Oregon, 1 knew you were a good player. You were a good boy, a good student, and a good ball player. The other coaches in the conference complained to me be cause Pat was Black, but 1 was coaching and that was that.” "H o w about Denver?” Pat asked. “ In Denver, they took me in the hotel to sleep, but when Hobbie made arrangements for the team to eat, the restaurant wouldn’t feed me — because I was Black. And remem ber when we played in Moscow, Idaho? The team had hotel accomo- it was the recent banquet honor ing Dr. W alter C. Reynolds that sparked the conversation. Howard Hobson had attended that banquet as a speaker praising the athletic prowess o f the guest o f honor. In pre-med school then. Reynolds had made the varsity basketball squad and had won his letter playing under Coach Howard Hobson. As they each had a second cup o f coffee, George said, "Remember when somebody put ice-water in the locker room bottle o f rubbing al c o h o l? " When the laughter died down a little, Pat said, “ —And re member when somebody mixed in a little glue with the vaseline a guy was using for his hair?” Basketball brought them together and for them it remains a favorite topic. George graduated from Washington High and Pat was at tending Benson before they got ac quainted with Howard Hobson. “ I coached at Benson,” said Hobson. “ I had been at Kelso, but then I came to Portland and I met Pat at Centenary W ilb u r Church where they had something good going for all groups. There was Pat, Howard Hobson, former University of Oregon basketball coach, Charles “ Pat" Patterson, and George Yerkovich discuss the “ old days" of basketball. dations, but there was no place to stay for me. 1 would have been out in the cold, (and it was cold), i f a Black fam ily, the Jordans, had not taken me in. 1 rejoined the team the next day.” Hobson, recalling other Black players he had known, mentioned Ralph Holmes as a “ football great” and Ted M u llin s as a star tra c k man. Hobson and Patterson then dis cussed the non-existent basketball budgets o f those days. Patterson posed fo r art classes at the then Portland A rt Museum school for a little extra money. Then he asked Hobson (as i f he d id n ’ t know the answer) why his basketball shoes had a size-11 for his left foot, and a size-12 for the right foot. Both hurt his feet, he recalled plaintively. Hobson laughed and poured a lit tle more coffee. “ That’s because,” he said, “ I d idn’ t have money for suits and shoes for the team and I had to scrounge fo r every item. Your shoes came from a box o f salesman’ s samples that a store let Cell Talk BATH TISSUE me have. There were no mates in the box. Just single shoes. “ I hustled for funds. 1 visited all the merchants, fro m bankers to butchers, to get $5.00 or more if I could. “ I went to the A shland D a ily Tidings when 1 was coaching at Southern Oregon, to see about get ting p u b lic ity fo r the team. The paper had no reporter to send to cover the games and they told me to write it myself. I did. And it was the best (bleep) p ub licity a team ever had!” Yerkovich is still employed. Pat terson has retired from his years as a tax consultant for the State o f Ore gon. Hobson too, has retired after completing his coaching career at Yale. Hobson lives in Portland and is w ritin g a book. On what? You guessed it. The history o f Basketball at the University o f Oregon—begin ning in 1901. Hobson remembers every game he has coached. He remembers every player, the posi tion the player played, and every important play o f every game. His memory and notes arc as sharp and clear as yesterday. The book should be a duzie—if you arc a basketball fan. 89* PT5 SH O P IE N O W S I 41 ron B R A M O S y«ta k n e w V A R IK T IK S y o u lib « SIZES y o u w o o l *•4 1 1 I I • !•• •» • )S»K A ! • • • A w A s »»4« • • I 2 Jnd A N I O I- M « • • N l« * U r d O o ««l«y « JJrA • M illo « t« b « • l | ) Á 4 * t l W v is M « • H i« v A ll A M I U tB M M b A • I O iviU A R A Awrv»S»Ae O o w *f« N I S ' • C ity • O « b O*ww« 0M0BM« on waoiftR r * x t e i together, we can change things. by Asmar A bdul SeifuIlah - These lines and passages concern the prisoner and his prison. The day to night repetition o f confinement and the solitude that slowly destroys ; the soul o f the man in the cage. ; The ultim ate accomplishment ‘ would be to paint word pictures that shade the bars and transcend the walls that hold men captive or to take the sound o f clanging doors and ringing bells and put it on pa per. Perhaps in a great moment a valid description could be given about the sensations that assault a man the moment before he is sen tenced. But what relevance would that have unless you could hear and feel the fall o f the gavel, unless you became a prisoner, a number, a faceless lump o f convicted flesh, in a sea o f statistics and projections. You can't understand the pain until you become the smile that doesn’ t turn up, the tear lost in timelessness, the dream metamorphosized into screaming nightmares o f masturba tion and homosexuality. At this point it can safely be said that the society we live in molds our opinions and attitudes. The daily media, television and radio are aimed at conditioning public re sponse to any given question. The color o f the news is determined by the politics and economics o f the corporate order. I f at some point it’ s decided that sex is desirable, the media floods us with images that evoke sexual response. Our senses are assaulted with a barrage o f se ductive subliminal orgasms. When law and order are marketable we see countless police oriented pictures on our television sets, the newspapers attack us with stories o f crime in the streets and the local politician sud denly becomes a law enforcement candidate. Little is ever said about the cause or real source o f criminal behavior. The public is cleverly moved from one response to another but the problem o f crime and the criminal persists. A ll the emotional shuffling in the world won’ t erase the social conditions that create crime in our com m unity. Classes o f people are victim ized, become villains and crim inals all because the white media hasn’ t had the inclination to finger the real criminals in our so ciety. Countless Black men and women sit in ja il cells all across the country—victims o f a social system that has more or less dictated their path to crime. Criminal Justice is a question that concerns every Black man, woman and child in the community. It is an albatross that has hung around the neck o f the Black community for countless years. It has effectively been used to regulate our struggle against oppression and has created a negative image o f Blacks that fu r ther alienates and prejudices whites. The Fat Cats that legislate laws and administrate Corrections have made a real money maker out o f Criminal Justice and it ’s all been done on the blood o f Black folks and the poor. Can you imagine how much money is tied up in Criminal Justice, how many white Americans are depend ent upon law enforcement as a livli- hood. A tremendous amount o f rev enue is generated through locking people up or not locking certain people up. The biggest lie ever told was that crime doesn’t pay. The point is that the social condi tions that exist in the Black com munity, on reservations and in bar rios across the country are created and maintained by white America. These conditions relate directly to pro fit, they create crime within the community and justify the mainten ance o f a system o f justice that makes every Black man, woman and child a potential prisoner. I chal lenge anyone to dispute the fact that Blacks and other ethnic groups have not been greatly abused by the Criminal Justice System in America. The statistics prove discrimination but what I find appalling is the fact that the Black community has slept through the raping o f young Blacks in the courtroom . That the Black community has never marshalled an effective movement to administer justice to its own. We don’ t sit on juries, we don't police or judge or defend or even prosecute. We have no say whatsoever in a system that controls our destiny with every rise and fall o f the gave. Note: there has never been a Black jury foreman in the history of Multnomah County! Crime is a serious problem to us and for us and I ’ m not sheltering the fact that many Black lawbreakers probably didn’ t exhaust all their op tions before the commission o f their in itia l crime but it's also apparent that the underlying or contributing factors to crime in the Black com munity are deeply embedded in the economics o f Criminal Justice. I t ’ s the money brothers and sisters, coupled with the fact that the Fat Cats have created social conditions that force many o f us into crime. Remove those conditions, unem ploym ent, m iseducattion, drugs, prostitutions, moral depravity, un fair housing and the countless other ills that infest our community and perhaps Oregon State Penitentiary wouldn’ t be getting Blacker by the day! E X O D dirca/ten a / a m / U S i / m s n / fy r n /s e 1639 N.E. Alberta PORTLAND. OREGÒN 9721 1 294 7997 From the Front Door by Tom Boothe From the Front Door, on Thursday evening, December 17, 1981 at 7:30 pm, members of the Exodus Clean Team's performing group, along w ith other Exodus personnel and friends will be presenting a show entitled ''In Search Of Pride.'' This perform ance consists of music and songs, short skits, m onolog stories, poetry and dance, all of which is original material composed and de veloped by members of the Exodus Clean Team. The show will be presented in the Exodus Auditorium located at 17th and Alberta Streets in Northeast Portland. The children of the Exodus Clean Team, along with the Exodus Staff invite you the Public as neighbors and friends to come and enjoy their perform ance, as their Christmas treat to you. Come out on Thursday evening and accept their gift to you, while they re ceive from you, your vote of confidence. R O S E CITY APPLIANCE U S E D A P P L IA N C E S Pick-up and delivery arranged on repairs buy - SELL - •Ranges • Refrigerators •Freezers Open 10 am 6 pm Mon-Fri Sat 10 am-3 pm TRADE ALL MAJOR A P P LIA N C E S •Dishwashers •Washing Machines • Dryers t e e me DEHUM 2S3-3472 Repair all major appliances Interested in current nooks about Civil Rights? Visit: JOHN REED BOOKSTORE In the Dekum Building 519 S. W 3rd Avenue Sixth Floor Presented at a community tervee by the House o( Ewodut Or call 227 2902
