Stitched Together

by Bob Thompson

  I was the point guard of my class on the Ragland Bulldogs teams up through the seventh grade, but school consolidation had disastrous ramifications for my basketball career. In its wisdom, the board of education moved the seventh and eighth grades from Ragland up to Heath High School, where I was an unknown. A different coach, a different system, and an established team with more wannabe players than slots on the team meant less coaching development time. I was lost in the shuffle and my playing time was relegated to the end of hopeless or blowout games. I didn’t care for the coach’s demeanor or methodology and it wasn’t long before I left the team. It broke my heart.

  In rural Kentucky, basketball has for decades been the one common thread uniting generations. On winter nights, my father and I would sit by the radio in the back of the country grocery store, hanging on Cawood Ledford’s every word as he relayed the progress of Rupp’s Runts. As a high school sophomore it took months for me to get over the national championship game loss to Texas Western in 1966.

  After two years of pre-engineering studies at Murray State University, I transferred to the University of Kentucky the semester after Dan Issel graduated. With student tickets I watched Kevin Grevey at Memorial Coliseum and, after a summer wandering around Europe, came back to a job with the university.

  My first project as a young engineer was to complete construction of the new football stadium in time for the first game in the fall of 1973. Contractors were nearly finished with their portion of the work, but because of the political sleight-of-hand necessary to get funding from the state legislature, only the barest of essentials were included in the original cost estimates and contract. Some of the infrastructure of the open-ended stadium—stands, seats, lights, parking lots, signage, fencing, bathrooms, and locker rooms—were all nearing completion, but the press box, coaches’ offices, interior finishes, and most important the end-zone bleachers were left to the Physical Plant Division to be completed under “small-project” funding (less than $3,000). I had dozens of such projects with an estimated price of $2,999 that needed to be completed with the hundreds of carpenters, plumbers, electricians, upholsterers, and tinsmiths under my direction.

  The coaches’ offices and interior fit-ups could wait till after the season, but the press box and the end-zone bleachers had to be done by September. The original stadium design wasn’t a complete bowl as it is today; its ends were open, like the old stadium. The last item on my punch list was to disassemble the wood and steel endzone bleachers from the soon-to-be demolished Stoll Field, reconditioning and reassembling the pieces at the new stadium before the first game.

  I would have been totally overwhelmed if not for corporate guidance and project management advice from the old guys in all the skilled shops under my control. Beecher Jones was one of the best carpenters I’d ever been associated with—to this day, every time I hang a door I think of the lessons with chisel, hammer, saw, and project management he taught me. As a Seabee in the Pacific during World War II, there wasn’t much he hadn’t seen or couldn’t do.

  In his soft way Beecher said, “Bob, you’re the engineer and you probably know more about this than I do, but if I was going to do this, I’d take all them old two-by-twelves off that steel structure first. Just put them on a truck, bring them over to the new stadium, get them in the dry, and sort them out—separate the ones that we’re gonna reuse from the ones that have a little bit of rot on ’em; that way we can figure out how many new boards we gotta buy and have old and new painted at one time.

  “Then I’d take the steel structure and have it sandblasted and painted while we lay out where the steel feet are gonna set and level those spots up with solid concrete blocks. Then we can set the steel and put the boards back on. But that’s just my thinking. You’ve probably already got all that figured out and got a better way of doing it, ain’t you?”

  Laughing out loud, I said, “Naw, Beecher, that’s pretty much the way I’d figured it too. I’m glad we see eye to eye on that!”

  As the plan was being executed under Beecher’s watchful eye, I was back at the office catching up on paperwork when I got a call from my secretary, who said, “Bob, can you take a call from Mr. Rupp?”

  “Mr. Rupp?”

  “That’s what he said,” she responded.

  I picked up the phone. “Bob Thompson, Physical Plant,” I said.

  “Bob, Herky Rupp here. I understand you’re in charge of the stadium?”

  “Yes, sir, I am.”

  “That’s what I heard. Well, me and my dad have been wondering what you’re going to do with those old two-by-twelves from the Stoll Field? Now that Dad’s got more time on his hands, we’re giving more attention to our pig farm outside Cynthiana and we’ve got a problem with the pigs rooting out under the fences. We figured to lay some boards down along the fence to stop ’em. Bob, what are you planning to do with them old boards and what do we have to do to get ’em?”

  It was news to me that Adolph had a son or a pig farm, but I believed him. Who would be so bold as to fake something like that? I said, “Well, Mr. Rupp, actually, I don’t know, but I’ll find out. Can I call you back?”

  What I found out was that the university had a stringent policy on surplus materials. I would have to advertise in the newspaper and go through a bid process, but digging deeper I found that if I declared them scrap there was a less complicated and shorter process.

  My fourth semester at UK in 1972 had been the last of Adolph Rupp’s forty-one seasons as head basketball coach, and I knew it had not been a voluntary or smooth retirement. Everyone in the whole state knew the story. He hadn’t won a championship since 1958, his teams weren’t that competitive outside the Southeastern Conference and, most important, he and the conference had dragged their feet on recruiting African American players. I was all too familiar with the fact that his all-white 1966 team losing the national championship to the all-black Texas Western team was a seminal moment in American sports history. Calls for him to step down had reached such a pitch that when he reached the mandatory retirement age of seventy, the state legislature refused to consider a waiver for him. He had often said, “If UK retires me, they might as well take me out to Lexington Cemetery.” Everyone knew he was bitter about his “forced” retirement.

  But to me he was the winningest college coach of all time and a hero of my youth. I decided to do what I could for the old man. I called Herky back: “It’s going to take me a couple of weeks to do this, but yeah, I’ll get it done for you.”

  I pulled strings, filled out paperwork, pleaded my case, and finally was able to declare the material scrap. I could give it to whoever I wanted, just so they’d haul it away.

  I called Herky. “Okay, next week can you have your farm truck come over and pick it up?”

  I gave Beecher the time and date we’d agreed on and told him to have a couple of people ready to let Herky in the gate and help load the truck.

  I was sitting in the office when the call came from Beecher, “Bob, you’d better come over here!”

  I got in my car and hurried over to the stadium. There was Mr. Rupp’s farm boss with a helper and they had already loaded the big farm truck with a huge stack of my brand-new two-by-twelves. Even back then, they were worth nearly $50 apiece, and they had $10,000 already loaded up!

  After conferring with Beecher, I walked over to the farm boss and said, “Those aren’t the boards we agreed on. You can’t take that load outta here.”

  He said, “That’s not what I was told.”

  “Look, I don’t care who told you what. You can’t have those new boards.”

  He got back in his truck and started talking on his CB radio as Beecher and I made sure all the stadium gates were locked.

  When I came to the truck, I was suddenly face-to-face and toe-to-toe with “the man in the brown suit,” my childhood hero. I hadn’t realized it till then, but Rupp was a tall man, at least a couple of inches taller than my six-foot-one. He was glowering down at me like a Marine
drill sergeant, throwing invectives and names at me that would make a sailor blush, better than I’d ever heard on the front porch of Granny’s store. I’d heard that he was legendary at dressing people down and now I understood. He went on and on and on, basically regurgitating what I’d read in the papers: “I give forty-one **?##** years of my **#@?** life to this **##** university and they kicked me out, gave me a **##** gold watch, and now all I want is a few **##** measly boards and some **##** young whippersnapper that wasn’t even born when I won my first national championship is telling me I can’t even have a few **##** boards!”

  I stood there in the blast of the furnace for a while and finally, when he paused to take a breath, said, “Mr. Rupp, I’m sorry about what happened to you. I didn’t have anything to do with that. All I know is that if I let you out of the stadium with that truck full of boards, we’ll both be out of a job, and I need mine.”

  That took the wind out of his sails as he studied me with his piercing look. I stood firm. Mumbling, he whirled around and walked back to the truck cab where his farm boss waited. “Look,” I called after him, “I’ll get a crew over here and we’ll unload these new boards and load these old ones up. These right here are the ones you can have.” He kept walking without turning around, but the farm boss nodded his head. We unloaded the new boards, loaded the old stack on the truck, and let him go. Kentucky football under Fran Curci had a good year at the new stadium. Later that fall, I got called into the office of Jim Wessel, the director of Physical Plant, and after congratulating me on a job well done he presented me with a set of two basketball season tickets for 1973–1974, center court, in Memorial Coliseum.

  Back in my office I called my dad and invited him to come up from Ragland for his first-ever live UK basketball game. A month later we were at a game, on the way to our seats. Coming through the tunnel, Dad stopped on the concourse, taking in the enormity of the twelve-thousand-seat arena, the mecca of college basketball, before asking where our seats were.

  “We’ve got to go down a little,” I said as I started down the steps. We were in the padded seats in the third row up from the floor, at center court right behind the bench.

  “Holy cow,” he said, smiling.

  Neither one of us had ever been close enough to hear the sound of basketball shoes squeaking as the teams warmed up, to see the beads of sweat, or to hear the coaches talking.

  I was nervous, looking up at the arena, wondering if Mr. Rupp was going to be there and how close he would be sitting. Finally, I saw him coming down the concourse, surrounded as usual by fans and press. He was signing autographs and talking and people were slapping him on the back as I watched his every move, thinking, “Geez, please, God, not here in front of my dad.”

  He came further down the aisle to the end of the row and turned in, making his way down to his seat—the one exactly in front of me. As he surveyed his surroundings our eyes met and he got that “I know you from somewhere” look before he turned and sat down.

  I was miserable during the entire first half, dreading what was going to happen at halftime.

  When the horn sounded Dad and I stood up to stretch. Rupp did too. Finally, he turned around, eyeing first me and then my father. “Is this your dad?” he asked.

  “It sure is.”

  “Well, glad to meet you, Mr. Thompson. You’ve got a fine son here.” Looking at me, he went on, “Son, them old boards worked just fine. The pigs didn’t know the difference.” Then he turned and left.

  My dad looked at me and smiled. “Well, I don’t know how this could have turned out much better.”

  After a few seconds I said, “Well, I still wish he could have seen my jump shot.”

  Treachery

  Charlie, the branch manager and my boss, was a grumpy, crusty curmudgeon who maintained that Herbert Hoover would have turned the economy around if given a little more time and that Franklin Roosevelt had put the country on the path to ruination with his Communistic Social Security program.

  All his relationships were at times difficult, but this was understandable with a man whose only remembrance of physical contact with his father was a handshake the day he left for college. Charlie was not married until his late forties, and his frequently stormy domestic life meant his spacious office often served as overnight accommodations, the leather couch his bed. His life’s history and philosophy could be read in its decorations: a 1950s degree from Vanderbilt, a portrait of three generations of our private company’s family dynasty, a signed photograph of Nixon, and a prominent plaque behind his desk that summarized his creed and management style, “Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.”

  Among his several well-known attributes, Charlie was a longgame strategic thinker with a favored tactic of slowly maneuvering those who questioned his judgment into situations where the correctness of his point of view would be indisputable.

  My first vivid memory of such an occurrence came not long after I transferred to his Louisville office. The company’s salesmen and technicians were furnished vehicles and gasoline credit cards but were expected to forgo the more costly full-service islands, still in widespread use, in favor of the newer self-service pumps. To ensure enforcement, Charlie spent his lonely, often boozy office nights scrutinizing every detail of monthly expense reports. He had repeatedly confronted his pompous young salesman Joe for not strictly adhering to the policy.

  Joe had responded to Charlie’s accusation with the argument that he was a professional who daily called on other professionals—engineers and architects—and company policy also dictated that he wear a business suit and tie. It was his contention, borne out by experience, that it was impossible to pump your own gas without winding up smelling like a gas pump, which directly reduced projected sales.

  The old manager and young salesman had monthly heated conversations on the topic with no acquiescence on either side till finally, after the December reports were turned in, Charlie became uncharacteristically silent. In late January, more than two months since their last disagreement, Charlie called Joe into his office and ominously shut the door.

  Addressing Joe across the big desk, Charlie acknowledged the fact that the two of them did not always see eye to eye on things but admitted that Joe was an intelligent and successful salesman, one who had considerable advancement possibilities within the organization and as such, it was incumbent on Charlie to aid and facilitate that advancement. “You may well have an office of your own to run someday and so from now on, I’m occasionally—on a confidential basis, of course—going to ask for your input on some of my stickier management decisions. It’ll be a win-win situation. You’ll get to be familiar with what’s required of management, and I will have the benefit of your input.”

  Joe was like a petted puppy dog, excitedly licking up the compliments and wiggling in his chair. “Yes, sir, yes, sir, of course, please, anytime at all, sure, love to, please, thank you for the confidence, you won’t be disappointed!”

  In the days after the meeting, Joe strutted around the office like he was already in charge, acting even more condescending than usual to his fellow employees.

  Charlie let it simmer for a couple of weeks before calling another closed-door meeting. “Joe, I have a situation, an employee issue that I need your help on.

  Joe eagerly sat down and in his best contemplative managerial pose said, “I’ll be glad to help. What is it?”

  Charlie opened a desk drawer and pulled out a manila folder. “The long and short of it is that I have an employee who is not a team player. Despite there being a reasonable and long-standing company policy that is adhered to by every other employee, I have one employee that refuses to comply.”

  Thoughtfully, Joe paused before speaking. “Well, I guess the first question would be is the policy written and well documented?”

  “It is.”

  “Next, has the employee received warnings about the issue?”

  “Repeatedly and without effect!” Charlie went on in h
is most earnest voice, “What should I do, Joe?”

  Joe leaned forward, considering deeply. “Let me see. It is a written company policy and he’s been warned multiple times?”

  “Yep.”

  Joe, pausing to add gravity to his words, said, “I don’t think you have any choice. You have to terminate him if he won’t comply.”

  Smiling, Charlie leaned back in his chair and said, “Thank you. That’s the same conclusion I came to. Joe, I’ll give you three options: start pumping your own damn gas, get out of the vehicle program, or find another job!”

  Questions buzzed around the office as to why Joe had suddenly decided to forgo the economically advantageous company car plan and start driving his wife’s car, paying his own increased insurance and getting reimbursed on a per-mile basis. Details of the affair soon surfaced in the office, further enhancing Charlie’s reputation and giving me food for thought.

  It was common practice at the end of the work week for a few employees to enjoy a small wind-down debriefing in the office kitchen/break room before going home for the weekend. Since there was no official company policy forbidding it, someone would invariably go across the parking lot to the drugstore and get a few beers to aid the salesmen, technicians, and office staff in their storytelling.

  Unfortunately, one evening a technician who’d had a beer or two at the office and then stopped for a few more on his way home was involved in a traffic accident.

  The following Monday morning we read the inevitable memo from Charlie prohibiting the possession or consumption of alcoholic beverages in or on company property at any time.

  Knowing that Charlie kept an ample supply of bourbon somewhere in his spacious office, I wondered if the new rules also applied to him. A covert scouting foray into his large closet confirmed that he felt himself exempt.

  A week later, I purposely worked late on Charlie’s regular Wednesday afternoon golfing day. In my briefcase, I had a couple of boxes of black tea and a small funnel. Making sure the building was empty, I started pots of water heating on the kitchen range before going into his office to retrieve several partially consumed quart bottles of Early Times bourbon.