Whirling, bobbing, weaving, leaping, Bonnie’s athletic and agile body always thrusting forward into the basket, and scoring. She was a thing of rare and natural beauty. Father Hermann had never seen anything even close to Bonnie Texel. His fear was that she would soon discover boys with the move to Anchorage and then her playing career would be over. Except, as I had to point out to Father Hermann, the only black person within fifty miles of the orphanage at Anchorage was Joseph Tough…and there was a mission on which Father Hermann and the staff had set their hearts.
There was a mounting necessity as each day ticked closer to the move to Anchorage for Father Hermann and his newly enlisted assistant, Father Scanlon to recruit a couple of black friends for Bonnie. The word went out over the community that we were in search of a couple of twelve or thirteen year-old black girls in need of a good temporary or permanent home.
We thought this a piece of cake, but to our surprise and consternation there just were not that many families who were willing to let go of their children. Black families had historically raised children that did not belong to the immediate family. Children of white masters, whose own black mothers had been sold to another plantation, leaving the children behind. And later, into the 20thcentury, poor blacks, with contraception unavailable to them and abortion unacceptable, chose to keep the family close. There just were not many black orphans and hence the reason Joe Tough and Bonnie Texel were anomalies for the times.
Our worst fears could not be permitted to happen…Joe Tough was known by the nuns to be sexually aggressive and they would have to put a shield between he and Bonnie. The nuns would have to protect any access to her by Joe…though they knew that he was quite pleasant and unassuming, he would also have several interesting talents to share with Bonnie as related to his incredible brilliance with statistics and his love of sports and most especially the basketball program at the University of Kentucky.
Finally, our intense effort paid off. We were able to locate two teenage children, one in Memphis and one in Birmingham who were in desperate need of a home. The girls were immediately taken to St. Mary’s and given to Bonnie as her special projects to help the girls become familiar with the orphanage rules and to give the opportunity for them to bond.
The job for Father Hermann was to get her focused on the game and her place in it. Obviously the press coverage was great for St. Mary and Bonnie was being compared to some of the greatest names in Kentucky and Tennessee basketball history. At this age there wasn’t a boy who had ever laced his Converse All-stars that could handle Bonnie Texel. She was so totally awesome in her total game that one-on-one, she could not be beaten by any girl or boy her age.
Father was convinced that Bonnie had leveled off in her growth pattern, she was nearly as big as her brothers and each of them stood at about six foot three inches tall and weighed in at about a hundred sixty-five pounds. The father was about the same size as the boys, perhaps an inch shorter. Amazingly, the father had told Father Hermann that his wife who had passed at child-birth, with Bonnie was over six feet tall, so Bonnie had the genetic make-up to be taller.
The other issue, which troubled Father Hermann and myself, was that Bonnie would grow tired of the game because there wasn’t any competition. Every game was a walk in the park for a girl that could nearly dunk the ball in the sixth grade.
He began to research the possibilities of playing Bonnie in the Boy’s League on the Eighth Grade Team. That would give her two years of play before high school and no doubt Bonnie would get a full scholarship at any one of the Catholic Girls high schools in Nashville: Sacred Heart Academy; Assumption High School; Presentation High School. All the coaches came to her every game on Saturday and goggled at her style, dreaming that such a player might choose their program.
But playing for the boy’s team was a secret that only Father Hermann and I would know until the moment to spring Bonnie Texel on the opposition.
Bonnie wasn’t just a natural athlete, she was a paragon of virtue and class. When she walked on the basketball court, she did so with an air of confidence that gave style and dimension another level. Not to mention that she was beautiful as well with long auburn hair, dark brown eyes, full lips and a body on that six-foot frame that would stop any man in his tracks.
Bonnie had large breast as well, but the coach was able to have her fitted for a special bra, which was a rare piece of equipment in 1949…but this young woman was as rare as they come. And come they did, coaches from all over the country came to watch Bonnie play the game that Dr. Naismith invented for the boys. But the game didn’t matter to Bonnie, it could have been Tops, or needle-point and she would have beat the competition because she was just so invincible.
The teams that Bonnie had played on for the last two years had never lost a game and they had taken the League; Regionals and the Championship games for the last two years. Bonnie was selected to the All-Star team each year and was selected as the Player of the Year.
All the press had kept the funds coming in as well for the new wing…so much so in fact that Father was moving forward on the development of a new first class gym to be located attached to the nursery and adjacent to the kitchen. The gym was to be equipped with locker rooms for both teams, a clocker and scorer’s table, bleachers for both sides and on the second floor an apartment for Joe Tough.
Finally, Joe Tough could get out of the laundry.
Historical Review
Together with Denmark, the Nordic countries of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, the Faeroes and Aland form more than a geographical unit. No other such group of European States, constitutes a more organic company-ethnically, historically, politically, religiously, artistically and even temper mentally. When somebody speaks of a Scandinavian, an instant stereotype is summoned into almost all minds.
These countries of the north are mostly ungenerous of terrain, mountainous, sparse and forested. Only Denmark and southern Sweden offer rich pasture land, Scandinavians have traditionally been obliged to earn their livings in tough vocations, as fishermen, seamen, lumbermen, or glaziers. Coupled with a paucity of winter sunshine, or even daylight, this has made for those characteristics of strength, taciturnity, introspection and sudden exuberance that the whole world recognizes. Nobody knows the origin of the Sami, or the Lapps, who live in the extreme north of Sweden, Finland and Norway, sometimes nomadically with reindeers. The Finns evidently originated somewhere in the east. The others, however, are quintessentially, Nordic. Except again for the Finns, whose language is akin to the Hungarian, they all s Strange a variety of the same Germanic language. At one time or another most of them have occupied each other’s territories or have formed part of the same State-even Iceland was constitutionally subject to Denmark until 1944-and this has given them, willy-nilly styles of government. The Scandinavian countries (Norway, Denmark, Sweden) have monarchies of the most self-effacing kind, their kings and queens generally preferring populist activities to great parades, and all the Nordic States are governed by staunchly democratic systems. Iceland claims to have the oldest elected assembly on earth, the Altiing, having been in existence, except for a hiatus in the nineteenth century, for more than a thousand years.
A streak of the heroic runs through these societies. This was the homeland of the Vikings, the bravos of medieval Europe, whose trading settlements extended as far as the eastern Mediterranean, who reconnoitered Greenland and North America, and who’s occupation of Normandy (Norseman’s land) led in the end to the conquest of England. The characteristics of a fighting aristocracy are muffled in Scandinavia now, but are remembered always through the great works of medieval literature, the Icelandic Sagas, which record the high-flown pugnacity of the Norwegian kings dwelling in Iceland and the exploits of legendary heroes.
In modern times the States have been among the least aggressive of all the European countries, devoting themselves chiefly to social progress and enrichment. They were relatively unharmed by the great twentieth century wars, and they have b
een famous pioneers of public welfare and successful economic specialist: the Danes as agriculturalist, the Norwegians as ship owners, the Swedes as manufactures of cars, aircraft and machinery, the Finns as lumbermen and shipbuilders. And in the European context they have chiefly been successful, perhaps, in cooperating among themselves. Long before established institutions of their own and had managed to present themselves to the world as a bloc-the first to prove, despite all the historical evidence, that Europeans need not be endemically at each other’s’ throats.
VII
A NEW WING EMERGES
To say that James Clements had a troubled life would be an understatement of a royal degree. He had been in and out of trouble-petty theft, car theft and armed robbery…all before his fifteenth birthday. He was the quintessential juvenile delinquent and since he had “done the crime…you must do the time.”
His time was spent at Ormsby Village, which not so coincidentally was located near St. Joseph Asylum. St. Joseph was located on a gently rolling five-hundred-acre tract in Anchorage, Kentucky. Ormsby Village was operated under the purview of Jefferson County, Kentucky…located on less than a hundred acres and housed some three hundred boys and girls at any one time.
It is said that if you are not a criminal prior to going into Ormsby Village, you are certain to be when you are set free. Ormsby Village represented all the evil things that have been written about the institutionalization of children. In stark contrast to St. Joseph Asylum, the big orphanage with the bad name, about to get bigger with the addition of the girls in the fall of 1952.
James Clements did the time, and learned a few tricks along the way. He was preparing for a life of crime on the mean streets when he ran up against a tough little character in the form of a five foot, red headed ball of fire in Juvenile Court by the name of Ethel Nelson, a Parole Officer representing Jefferson County.
It was James Clements “best day and his worst day.” Through the luck of the draw he had finally gotten assigned to someone who cared about her cases and took them under her wing as though they were her very own little chickens.
But it is pretty hard to hide a six-foot three-inch black man…there was only one way to protect James from himself, and to keep him from becoming the next statistic…unless Ethel Nelson could turn James’s life around he would most likely end up doing time at the big house at LaGrange or the place for lifers at Eddyville, or worse spend his days in forgotten glory pushing up dirt at the Little Africa Cemetery.
After a long talk with James and a great deal of soul searching on his part, which included daily visits from this little annoying red-head… James got the message that she wasn’t going away and she also had some pretty formidable arguments for trying to go straight.
As it happened Kentucky was fortunate enough to locate a work camp called The Whitney Young Center in Shelbyville, Kentucky. A program was starting just as James was assigned to Ethel Nelson and she had gotten a spot reserved for James. Her goal was to get James off the street and into a work program where he could acquire some skills while he was maturing, skills that would make James proud of what he did, with the income to back up the hard work. There would be no flipping burgers or selling dope for this young man. He was going straight at fifteen bucks per hour to start…not bad for a kid with no experience.
At The Whitney Young Youth Center, brackish water met crystal clear water and a true cleansing took place. James began to learn how to operate heavy-duty construction equipment: Bull dozers; back-hoes; graders; jack hammers and the business of working with an engineer to prepare a sight for a foundation. It built a foundation that took shape in the summer of 1950 at St. Joseph Asylum, across the road and through a field to Ormsby Village and bitter memories.
James Clements had been accepted, on a probationary basis to work on the new wing at St. Joseph Asylum to become St. Joseph/St. Mary Orphanage. More essential, James Clements was running a back-hoe on the day the tunnel caved in on Buddy Quinn.
When the nuns came for him, there was no panic…James knew instinctively that there was no time to loose…what he did in the next few seconds would mean life and death for the little boy trapped beneath four feet of dirt. James didn’t stop to question, he grabbed a spade and ran for all he was worth.
James discovered that two other boys who were about five feet tall each, had been trapped momentarily behind Buddy Quinn but they were able to get out. This told him that Buddy was about ten feet from the opening to the tunnel. James did the math in his head… and figured four feet was better and quicker than ten feet, so he began to dig immediately at a perpendicular line to the tunnel, there was no time to get a piece of construction equipment to the site.
Morris Nix another worker came soon after James started digging and he began to dig in unison with James…as one shovel withdrew another was digging, and as they dug they began to hum…just as the Gandy Dancers had hummed as they drove the spikes and straightened the crooked rails of the mighty railroads:
“If I’d known the captain couldn’t see…
I done left work at half-past three!”
The Gandy Dancers were a part of the American experience. They were teams of twelve black men…six on each side of the rails…each had an iron pole, seven-foot-long with a sharp end, this end would probe into the rail and on a specific count…usually to the beat of a catchy tune, they would thrust the iron pole against the rail, pushing it into place…thereby straightening the rail. This scene of the twelve black Gandy Dancer walking along the tracks, from damaged section to damaged section, singing their rhymes as they worked… was visible throughout the south until the late fifties.
The job which James and Morris were now attacking was made easier by the fact that the dirt had not been compacted, hence the reason for the ceiling of the tunnel to cave in.
James mounted the crest of the dirt mound as though it was a giant Brahma bull in a rodeo…he took on the shoulders of the bull…planting his feet hip wide and began to attack.
James and Morris worked and hummed…you could hear the shovel strike the dirt, and the sound gave background to the humming…‘schuuk a schuuk’ went James’s spade…and behind him Morris came…‘schuuk a schuuk’…and soon progress could be seen as the dirt piled up behind them like a dog digging out a varmint.
“we are coming to get you now…we are coming, we got no plow! Just got these muscles and a broken spade, and we goanna get you and get you aid.”
James and Morris sang the impromptu verse, certainly the predecessors of the modern rappers… and with each shovel of dirt they came closer to freeing the little boy. It didn’t matter to them that he was white, it was a dark place where he resided.
“Schuuk a schuuk!”… sung the spade… and piles of soil it had made, and closer now… they had come to the boy in the tunnel, for whom they sung…they would free him of that they knew. But would he live a day anew, would there be time for him to pray.
James and Morris never stopped to take a breath…their calloused hands would not rest, they strained muscles in arms and legs…the sweat running off backs and necks into the hole were a tiny face sought to breath a breath of fresh air…and in only moments they were through, James reached with Morris and pulled Buddy to freedom.
James took the boy, quickly cleaned the passage in his mouth and then he placed his big lips around those of the small boy and pushed a mighty flow of air into his lungs…then James pulled the boy to him with his big hands on the boys back…once, twice, three times he huffed and puffed life-giving air and the boy coughed…chocked and looked up at the big chocolate face before him…it wasn’t Joe Tough.
Then Buddy Quinn reached up with his small willowy arms and hugged James Clements and the same for Morris Nix.
Ethel Nelson did not need to be told of James’s deed, she knew he was a hero in the making…all he needed was for someone to believe in him and push him to do the right thing. It had worked for James and when the time came…he stood tall…like a giant oak tree li
fting a tiny acorn to the sky.
Historical Review
Of course Buddy Quinn was just one more in the long line of cavemen, cliff-dwellers…men who sought shelter for families in naturally designed enclosures in the mountains. But there is a substantial difference between a caveman and one who tunnels.
Buddy was a tunnel aficionado…he liked the feel of dirt beneath his fingernails…and he enjoyed watching the progress made each day as the boys took turns retrieving buckets full of dirt from the tunnel to nowhere.
There have been many historically documented tunnel projects. Since we are discussing European history as a Historical Review at the end of each fictional chapter, it might be well at this point to discuss the great Channel Tunnel across the English Channel to the coast of France at Calais.
It was technically possible to build a channel tunnel for well over a century before it was actually built. Why then wasn’t it built?
Two centuries ago, the idea of a road tunnel was suggested to Napoleon during a brief peace between France and England in 1802. But war soon broke out again and the questions of peacetime activities were once again thwarted where tempers and cost soared.
There were suggestions that a road could be built beneath the English Channel with cartoonist depicting Napoleon’s army marching beneath the sea or flying over the channel in a hot-air-balloon, which had first occurred in 1785. Both schemes existed only on paper. They lacked the technology to overcome the problems, and did not have the necessary geological knowledge. They guessed that the chalk of Cap Blanc Nez ran under the sea all the way to the White Cliffs of Dover-no one really knew. They imagined horse-drawn carriages driving down a wood-propped tunnel like mines of the day, lit by candles.
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