From Cool Hand to Cosper: 'It All Began in Kindergarten, 1961': Chapter 3

From Cool-Hand to Cosper

(Tribute to the Class of ’74)

Chapter 3

It all started in Kindergarten, 1961

I have read with pride the short memoirs of several of our classmates of ’74. Thanks to all of you for the love shown to Patti and Sherry this past week. Overall, there have been over 250 views on their life stories. Coming up are columns from Jo Wilson Pemdleton and Sandy Lindsey Page. Can't wait!

In the meantime, we’ll add to our “From Cool Hand To Cosper,” and we'll go back together to 1961. Ah, that was a good year!

I said in the beginning I read our friends' stories with “pride,” because there’s a special pride that joins us all together that does not join the average person. Each person in this class, you see, is part of a family, a family we did not choose, just as it is with our blood families. Ours is the "Granger" family. You cannot buy your way into it.

Just  think about it: We really didn’t choose each other, at least not at first. When it came time to go to school – you know, the glory days of kindergarten – we walked through those doors, and – boom! – we see more little boys and girls than we have seen our entire lives! – Eww, girls, Robin’s, Sandy’s, Susan's -- How did Tony, Chris, I and the rest deal with that! Girls!

Of course, at some point, I can’t say exactly when, those ‘ewwy’ girls started looking a tad better, so much so that we could not possibly go up and talk to any of them. Seriously, at our 50th, that’ll be the first time I actually talked to most of them. Way, way out of my league. Our buddy Tony Pippen would be right here with me on all of this, because he and I marveled at the girl mystique since the first day of kindergarten, and we never figured it out.

 For us, it started at Callaway Kindergarten. I say with a laugh that kindergarten was the best two years of my life. Then I remembered (how could I remember this?) that Mal Taylor actually did spend two years either in kindergarten or the first grade. I think first grade. Don’t get mad at me for telling on Mal, because I named my first and only son after him – Steven Malachi Bowen. I told the amazin’ blonde back in 1980:

“Hey, there was a really cool fella I went to school with named Malachi,” and – before you knew it, again, boom! – another Mal was born. However, the real reason Mal Taylor stayed back a year, obviously, was so he could have been part of the Class of ’74. I would’ve done the same, too, although I’m very lucky I didn’t become part of, say, the Class of ’76. I think I would’ve if it hadn’t been for sitting by one of those aforementioned girls and dropping my pencil on the floor so I could peak over on their math papers for the answers to questions, maybe, 7 -26.

Thank you, girls. Sorry I said ‘eww,’ that was wrong.

Yes, it all started at Callaway. I fell off the slide one day in recess that year – which, in a way, was a foreshadowing of a whole lot of our life’s story. You don’t even know –  and I, with all of those newfound five-year-old friends did the coolest thing in the world every day: We dressed up as Indians at Thanksgiving and had the time of our lives, we ate soda crackers and drank chocolate milk at snack time, all that before – get this! – before taking a nap!

Talk about the ‘Nirvana’ of life. Friends of ’74, we reached that pinnacle in 1961, and didn’t even know it. I am sorry I missed that theme in our senior year due to the course life took us – that story I want to tell you soon – but I would’ve walked right up to the Yearbook Committee our senior year and told all of you then that there is no need to look for that "Nirvana" because there is no doubt when it was: 1961. Well, I would’ve walked in, but once I saw the petty girls on the committee, I would’ve chickened out and pretended I was trying to find where they were holding detention.

We’ve loved life since 1961, right?

At least, kind-of.

But we all have to admit life that started unraveling sometime after kindergarten graduation and we’ve been trying to piece it all together since then. One of my very first life memories in life is singing “She’ll be comin’ ‘round the Mountain” for kindergarten graduation, and I cried. Seriously. Maybe I knew back then that life was about to get complicated.

But with kindergarten, there’s not a single care in the world, except maybe if we could dash out the door and beat Tony and the girls to the slide first when the teacher said, “Play-Time.”

I loved Play-time, but I don’t know which one I would choose if I had to between ‘Play time’ or nap time. I might have to go with the latter:  Turning those lights out, lying down on the floor with twenty other Rhode-Scholars-to-be, snickering a little for a while before the pure-tee fatigue of seventy-five slides and crashing-and-burning in the sand sets in and we’re off into dreamland and sweetest dreams ever dreamed.

Even those ewwy girls couldn’t keep us from enjoying that. 

But despite those girls, I must say today – sixty-plus years later – that I am glad I met every one of those young ladies and all of you gentlemen, and that we all grew up together, and we’ve all been blessed by the good Lord.

And it is true—No, I didn’t choose a single one of you back in 1961 when we walked into kindergarten.

But I would’ve chosen every one of you, if I could’ve.

Even the ewwy girls. 😊

Chapter 1

This is one man’s story, one young man from the illustrious Class of 1974, LaGrange Senior High Class of 1974, LaGrange, Georgia, the home of numerous scholars, ladies, and gentlemen, and, of course, me.

There are three- hundred or so other stories, too, if you can imagine. But for now, just this one, representative of all of the others who truly have lived out the proverbial Valedictorian mantra, “We made it” now for these last five decades.

The lot falls on me, I suppose, to tell the story, which isn’t my story at all, but ours, all of ’74, as evidenced by the title, “From Cool Hand to Cosper.” In case you are new to these parts, when I speak of Cool Hand Luke, we’re talking about the silky-smooth LaGrange High shooting-guard from 1972-74, and then there’s ‘74’s Mike Cosper – Mighty Mite, I called him – a young man who was small in size but big in heart, a young man who had the unenviable pleasure of strapping on the boxing gloves in Mr. Sanders’ P.E. class with the one who writes this story still with a slight, hardly even perceptible, twitch in his left eye.

Okay, sometimes I make things up, but I think I that little twitch did last through two report cards and the same number of “U’s” in conduct.

But, friends, if you knew these two heroes of LHS – Cool Hand and Mighty Mite – then you have no choice but to read on.

I laughed the other day when our fellow-scholar Rick Davis posted a picture of a group of ’74 who were students who were lined up like a chorus, all decked out in tuxes and their Sunday best. I recognized immediately many of these individuals and soon found that they formed a group of “Senior Superlatives”:

There was Gary Whitfield, Zach Taylor, Ann Gaylord Badding, Phil Langford, and a litany of other distinguished students. I looked hard at that picture to see if I had made the cut there but, alas, the boy with a joke a day was absent. I told Rick they must’ve have taken it before detention-hall let out that day, which, also, may explain the occasional “U” in conduct.

My absence notwithstanding, I must lay aside my envy and say ’74 was filled with a number of what-I-would-call rock stars, for sure. I mean, the group of twenty-something in that picture went to college at Georgia Tech, Georgia, Auburn, and they went on to become professors and doctors and men and women of renown in many fields. For me, well, hm, I kind-of spent ten years in a junior college and almost got the gymnasium at San Jac Junior College in Houston named after me. I might’ve, too, had it not been for the 'professional student' who just refused to leave. Come on, man, graduate already.

Oh, no, I really do recommend junior colleges and am proud of those years – for me these were years of being newly married, being a father –twice – and in both blissful hours not knowing whether they would be a boy or a girl until the doctor came out to the waiting room and told me, (No, thank you, those were not the days, my friend, when fathers frequented the delivery room. We didn’t have the stomach for it), then working through school with bricklaying and figuring out what I would do the next forty years, which would be to teach English and coach high school basketball and write and preach and go on to get another degree from the UH at Clear Lake by 1989, which concluded with a thesis that holds the distinction of being our first novel and big writing adventure. More on that later, I’m sure.

By the way to all my Bulldawg fans, etc., the University of Houston’s basketball team right at this moment is #1 in the country and probably the hardest working team in America and has as good of a culture as you’ll ever see, led by the truly great Kelvin Sampson. A little tidbit of history here, too: During my UH days – 1980-1984 – I walked the halls with the likes of Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler, superstars of what became known as the Phi Slama Jama, and the unfortunate authors of the biggest sports heartbreak I have ever had, at the very last second at the hands of Valvano’s Cinderella North Carolina State Wolfpack.

So, while I did not stay back home where my Southern roots grew deep, that blue-collar, grass-roots, working-by-the-sweat-of-your-brow mentality traveled right along with me and all my ’74 friends who were making their way in the world just as I, at the very same moments, each of them building their legacies hour by hour.

I doubt any of us had it easy. I mean, we didn’t even have cell phones or emails. Life was tough, rugged. The amazin’ blonde (whose hand I would take in ’75) and I wrote love letters. She even wrote me a Dear John letter. If you haven’t ever received one of those – well, you really haven’t lived. Nowadays folks do that by email – instant heartbreak, you see – but my heartbreak took two long-hard-tortorus days to get to me. In fact, we talked on the phone while it traveled from her Houston to my Dallas home, and she asked me if I got her letter. I said “No,” and she said it should be there soon. She didn’t tell me the pitiful contents, because, I guess, you just can’t break up on the phone. It has to be in a letter. That’s why it’s called a “Dear John” letter. Whoever heard of a Dear John phone call, or email, right?

I wonder how many of my friends of ’74 ever wrote or received one of those? You see, so many untold stories. Out of three-hundred or so of us, I am pretty sure there were 275 such letters. I mean, at least.

Then read the P.S.

P.S. You always have my love.

That’s right. “You always have my love.” Who does that?

Of course, you all know life’s final P.S. has a happy ending for the amazin’ blonde and me, for which we're happy.

As you can see, our look at life in this “From Cool Hand to Cosper” will take us all across any number of continents, genres, motifs, and rivers, and there is no chance in the world that we will ever cross the same river twice, as my friend and fellow teacher, writer, and preacher Roy Deering told me as we crossed a river in Wyoming’s Yellowstone in 2021. I expect you’ll hear a bit about that, too, before we lay the pen down.

We have a story to tell – a hundred of them, in fact – but, remember, as our story unfolds, be sure to glance down South to my Homeland. Look at those friends of '74 walking, still, on that red clay and looking up at those tall pines that hover above like thousands of guardian angels, and remember that their stories are unfolding, too.

They are our friends of ’74.

Scholars they are, lovely Southern belles and refined gentlemen.

And me.

Chapter 2

The ‘Professor’

Sometimes, fellow writers, the pen stalls because its writer hits a wall and has nowhere to go.

Sometimes it just has too much to say and doesn’t know where to start.

The latter has me in limbo right now.

After all, where do you start in telling the story of fifty years? We will get around to it all in due time, I am sure, so – as I’ve told students a thousand times – you just have to start. Start somewhere, stop looking at the blank page. The blank page is the scariest sight to a writer – the wide, empty spaces, the endless expanse covering miles and miles of a white page that is as wide as the ocean, high as the sky, and as long as eternity, which precisely is how long you can sit and think and tap your pencil on the desk and look out into space. In the eleventh grade, Ms. Long saw me do that for hours upon hours. Sorry, Ms. Long, I know I've tapped this eraser on my pencil until it is nothing but a stub; but you’re expectin’ too much. I'm not Sandy, Ruth, Robin, or Patti. This blank page can be a scary, scary thing. Please don't send me to the office.

Now, I guess the tables may be turned a little. Those trips to the office must've had their desired effect. I have an idea many of my ’74 friends are tapping their erasers on the desk now as they are preparing to write their memoirs assigned to them by the “Professor,” a title my epic coaching friend Randy Weisinger coined many years ago. More on that in a moment.

I just can’t wait to hear all of their stories, to hear how many rivers they have crossed and how many mountains climbed and children raised and awards received and, most importantly, how much their faith has grown, a faith that must have been like nothing more than a mustard seed in 1974 but now has skyrocketed this half of a century. Ah, I want to hear all of the stories.

Regarding that “Professor” title, here’s a side note, which will take us all the way to 1984.

I worked in the beginning of my basketball coaching career at North Shore High in Houston, the school my amazin’ blonde attended. I saw Randy Weisinger play high school ball there after I was newly married and had moved to Houston, and we played ball together at the nearby Y during those years, too. We weren’t really friends then, just competitors. He is about five years my junior. I tell him that I abused him on the court in those days like he was a younger step brother, posting him up at will, taking him off the dribble or whatever I wanted to do. It was hard to watch, I’d say. Truth is, I can’t fully remember all that, but don’t tell him that.

Randy was a great shooter and a good ballplayer, and he went on to play college ball in Waco and eventually came back home to coach at his alma mater North Shore. It was during my first year teaching that I went into the gym to play at the school one day, and there he was, wearing his Alief Hastings black coaching shorts, shooting three’s (the 3-point shot had recently been installed, about a decade too late for me).

He had coached a couple of years at Hastings for another great basketball coach, Rick Shirley, and then hired as the varsity assistant at North Shore. Being my first year – 1984 – I was not coaching, just teaching English after I took over for my student-teaching teacher at mid-semester after her husband got sick and they moved to Arkansas. Randy and I quickly got reacquainted, played pick-up ball together after school and that first summer, and started becoming true friends.

The second year, he got the head coaching job there, and I started helping him coach his freshmen. He hired a big 6’ 8” ex-Rice University player for his assistant, Robert Shaw, and the three of us grew close. My freshmen would practice in the morning, so I would go in the afternoon and watch the varsity practice and learn the system. I was pretty overwhelmed with teaching three English preps at the time – although I had the dual major of English and Physical Education – but I knew I would coach at some point.

One day after school that second year, I gathered all my English books and stack of ungraded essays in a big brown briefcase that looked more like a suitcase, and I walked on down to the gym as always, dressed in my coat and tie. When I walked in, Randy and Robert Shaw were at the far end talking, and when they saw me I could tell Shaw said something, and both Randy and Shaw laughed. When I got to them, my ‘suitcase’ still in hand, I snapped,

“What are you girls laughin’ about?”

“Oh,” Randy said, laughing, “When you came in Shaw said you looked like an encyclopedia salesman walking into the gym.” I just shook my head, trying not to laugh myself.

We spent many years coaching together, never had a cross word in all that time, and Randy and I still talk about every week, here forty years later. I don’t know if it was the suit and tie, the briefcase, or the encyclopedia salesman comment, or what exactly, but somewhere along the line Randy started calling me the “Professor.” It stuck.

“Hey Professor,” he says in kind of a raspy voice every time I answer his call.

It’s a welcome sound and brings back many good memories and hours together on the hardwood.

Randy went on to win over 500 games in his career, most of them in the tough Houston region. Having learned a great deal about coaching and the game I would go on to win a few myself, both during and after my time with him.

He finally retired after a couple of trips to the state tournament, one with me by his side, and today he is a legend in Texas basketball.

As for me, I never made it to being a legend, except maybe to one legendary coach who knows me as the ‘Professor.’

P.S. “’Professor,’ this is Ms. Long. I’m going to need you to stay on topic.” Here, Glenda, Melanie, would one of you girls please come over here and help this young man out? And, please, sir, stop tapping that pencil.”😊