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
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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