1. From a Freezing-Cold Night to a Dusty Film Room, or How I Discovered That I Was Meant to Be an NBA Player You can still see the bump on my forehead. It was January 30, 1973, the middle of the night in the middle of winter in Detroit--which means it was damn cold--and my mom started feeling things. She already had three kids, so she knew what those feelings meant. But unlike with those previous kids, she didn't have a husband to get her to the hospital. She'd gotten divorced, and the father of this new baby was nowhere to be found. So she called her brother, my Uncle Len, and told him she needed a ride to the hospital. Two quick things about my Uncle Len that make him a good person to call in that situation: one, he is as cool as Marvin Gaye under pressure, even if you wake him up in the middle of the night; and, two, he has always had a lot of automobiles. Everyone's into cars in the Motor City--we care about our cars as much as we care about our houses. Len was a mechanic, and for this particular urgent voyage, he chose the 1970 Fiat, which could go for a month on six dollars of gas. Len lived about ten minutes from us, but the hospital my mom wanted him to go to, Botsford General Hospital, was miles away, in the suburbs. There was a hospital in our neighborhood, but my mom was smart and knew the difference between city hospitals and suburban hospitals. Botsford General was going to be cleaner, with better doctors, better nurses--better everything. Still, there was a problem: I was coming out fast. The Fiat could weave through traffic pretty good, but Uncle Len didn't start actually running reds until after her water broke. When he pulled into the driveway, he was honking his horn nonstop for the emergency room staff to run out. They rushed over with a gurney, but it was just a little too late. When I came out, with my mom still halfway in the car, I basically fell out onto the street, on my head. It sounds worse than it was, because the only souvenir I have from the adventure is that small bump on my forehead that never went away. We lived on the west side of Detroit. When I was real little, our house was a two-family home right off 6 Mile and Greenlawn. The room I shared with my brothers Bill and Kev was upstairs, down the hall from my mom, and my sister Tam lived downstairs with my grandmother. Tam was the princess, with her own room, decorated all in pink. Bill, Kev, and I were stuck in the slanted attic. They had the bunk bed; I got the mattress on the floor. Bill and Kev are both ten years older than me, so when I was little, they were already off at school, doing their own thing. The task of watching me basically fell to whoever was home, which meant my mom and my grandma were like tag-team wrestlers, coming in and out. Mom worked days at Chrysler as a keypunch clerk, and Grammie worked the graveyard shift as a nurse. And the truth was, if they weren't working, they were often sleeping, because when else were they going to do it? So I was left to figure out things for myself, even when I was as young as five or six. That certainly wasn't my mom's or my grandma's fault. They were doing everything they could to make sure we had that roof over our heads. We never struggled to the point where we didn't have a roof, but we sometimes had to eat popcorn for dinner or mayonnaise sandwiches for lunch. And sometimes we didn't have hot water for showers, or couldn't pay for our heat in the winter, so we had to sleep in hoodies and skullies and socks. And at one point, my mom had a car that had a hole in the floor--if you removed the mat, you could see the street going past. Looking back, it wasn't exactly pleasant. But at the time, as a young kid, how did I know any better? I still have a Thanksgiving card that I made in school for my family when I was young. I glued a family portrait to the paper, and in crayon I wrote, "From Jay. To My Pretty Family." And I meant it. Furthermore, my mom wasn't the kind of person who complained about what we didn't have. She had far too much pride, and far too much confidence in herself that she would figure something out. When she could, she worked a second job as a waitress at a bar called the Chez Beau over on Livernois Avenue. When no one else could watch me, I'd have to go over there with her. I'd play pinball, drink some Shirley Temples, even try and help my mom by making jukebox runs. Customers drinking cocktails and smoking cigars would give me a coin to play the Spinners, the Four Tops, the Isley Brothers, whatever. It's how I first got into music, and it was a good way to hustle a few extra dollars in tips. The Chez Beau wasn't exactly a club in South Beach, but it was a popular place for a while, and at some point or other, it became clear to me that it was where my mom had met my dad. I guess technically, Kev and Bill and Tam are my half siblings, but I've never thought of it that way. Even though I knew I had a different father than they did, it's not like their dad was ever really around much either. My mom's ex-husband is actually where we all got the name Rose. With no dads around, I think we all just became hardened by the situation. My brothers didn't talk about it, I didn't talk about it, and my mom made clear those men were not worth talking about. Honestly, I don't even think I ever asked her about my dad until middle school. Not one question. I had plenty of adults in my life setting me straight anyway. My grandma is ninety-seven years old, and I'm still afraid of her. Grammie's philosophy has always been simple: You own the things that don't cost anything. You own your pride, your dignity, your self-esteem. Those things, no one can take away from you. She's the kind of neat freak who always covers her sofas in plastic, saves her food in the refrigerator in ziplock bags (once you open something--it goes in a bag), always makes sure there's a napkin under the glass on the coffee table. And growing up, you knew not to mess with that. With her working nights, she'd usually sleep during the day when I was at school and take me on errands with her in the afternoons. I remember one time she went into a store and left me in her car, and I got thirsty. There was no water in the car, so I went into her purse and took a bunch of pieces of Clorets gum. When she came back, I freaked out, nervous she'd get mad at me with a mouth full of her gum. So I quickly rolled down the window and tossed it out. Well, a few minutes later I stuck my hand out the window, and I'll never forget the feeling of that gum, stuck on the side of the car, right where it left my hand. I tried to rub it off, peel it off, do whatever I could. We got home, I got out and took a look, and that gum was still all over the side of that car. I tried to stand there and block her view, but she was waiting for my help with the grocery bags, and about ten seconds later I got busted. She marched right past me into the house to her room to grab "the strap," which she always kept wrapped around the doorknob of her room. And with Grammie, the neat freak, it was always sort of a sloppy, wild whipping--anywhere she could get you: head, face, body. And you'd get it in the exact spot wherever the crime had taken place. So that time she just came back out and whipped me right there next to the car, and kids from the whole neighborhood could see me getting it as they were walking home from school. I remember my sister coming home and yelling, "Leave him alone, Grammie!" and me hollering like she was killing me. Because she was. Bill and Kev were characters, too. We used to say Kev was like J.J. from Good Times, always finding things. He'd come home with these random stray dogs that would become pets for a few weeks or months. I remember we had a German shepherd named Champ, and a Doberman named Capone. I also distinctly remember the garage being stacked high with hubcaps and car emblems. Who knows where they came from. Bill was always more of the workman, headed toward a nine-to-five lifestyle. I was eight or nine when they finished high school and Kev went off to the army and Bill went off to work, leaving just me and my sister in the house. Fortunately, there was a big village around me to make sure I learned the rules of the world, and of the street. And at the time, the rules of the street were a lot more important. Jalen was a name my mom came up with on her own. She liked the name Jason, but she wanted something more original. The Ja is for James, my dad, and the len is for my Uncle Len, who (almost) got me to the hospital when I was born. Twenty or so years later, my uncle was in a mall in Detroit and heard a mom yell after her kid: "Jalen!!!" He went up to her and asked how she came up with the name, since he'd never heard it anywhere else before. She said she'd heard it on that basketball player at Michigan and liked it. I've always had a lot of pride about being named for Len. Len worked as a mechanic for Pontiac for decades, and he did well. Like I said, he always had at least a few cars, including a Corvette, a Bonneville, and that little Fiat, and he had a nice house on the west side a few neighborhoods over from us. He had two daughters, my cousins Traci and Tonya. We used to have Christmas at Uncle Len's, where there was a piano in the living room, and where I got my first glimpses of what being rich looked like. Len and my mom were the two youngest children of Grammie and my grandfather, who everyone called Big Daddy. By the time I was old enough to know anything, Big Daddy and Grammie had gotten divorced, and he had moved back to his hometown of Bainbridge, Georgia. He'd worked at Ford for years but then moved south and opened a convenience store, Hicks Grocery, right next to his house. (His last name was Hicks.) Big Daddy was the first vision of cool I ever got: always immaculately dressed, with a peacoat and a hat. He called me Long Boy. "Hey, Long Boy," he'd say to me. "Don't smoke Kool. Be cool." Even though he'd moved away, Big Daddy would come up for a month or so every year, to make sure everyone was doing all right and give out some cash to those who needed it. And then in the summers we'd all get in a car and drive down to Georgia to spend a few weeks there, hang out, barbecue, all that good stuff. It was a long drive--we'd leave in the morning and get down there at night, though there was one time when we got lost and it took a full twenty-four hours. At the wheel that time was the man who was named for Big Daddy, his and Grammie's oldest son: the one and only Paramore Hicks Junior. In Detroit, my Uncle Paramore is unquestionably the most famous member of my family, far more famous than me. When I'm in town, and I'm at a game, or a restaurant, or a store, people come up to me all the time and ask how my uncle's doing. He's battled some health problems over the last few years, but once you sit down and get him talking, you'll discover it hasn't slowed him down on the inside one bit. Back in the day, people had no trouble spotting Uncle P. wherever he went--first off because of his car, which was always filled to the brim with what looked like all of his possessions. He looked like a man who'd just been kicked out of his house. But my Aunt Barbara wasn't ever sending him anywhere--it was just the way Paramore liked to roll. And he rolled everywhere: to the community center, where he was always involved with kids; to the bowling alley, where he ran like four leagues at once; and to work at the Ford plant, where he was a leader in the union and was known across the company for his art skills. Uncle P. wasn't strictly an industry guy, making his money in the factory. He was a hustler. Like his dad, Uncle P. has his own signature saying: "Have mind, will create." If you talk to him long enough, and there's a pen and paper around, he'll sketch a portrait of you in about ten minutes. Years ago, you'd also be able to find him downtown, drawing pictures of people's faces for a couple of extra dollars. In his working days, when someone famous, like Jesse Jackson, came to visit and give a speech at the factory, Paramore would do a sketch on a big Styrofoam board and proudly present the portrait to the subject in question. Retiring executives would get the same treatment. At family parties, Uncle P. would break out one of the hundred magic tricks he knew, dazzling the kids, and a few adults, too. He'd shave his head in the summer, nice and clean, before a lot of people did that, and then charge kids "a nickel to touch, and a quarter to smooch." Then he'd use the money to take all of us to a baseball game or something. He was kind of like our family's version of Muhammad Ali: always entertaining, always the center of attention. If it sounds like I look up to Paramore, it's because I do. Oh, and then there was the time he saved my life. Back in the day, the pool in Paramore's backyard was where everyone in the neighborhood learned to swim. (The pool is now his botanical garden, filled with plants and trees.) Every summer, kids would come over for lessons taught by the pool owner himself. The only requirements were to bring your own towel, and a cup of bleach that he'd toss into the water as some sort of chlorine substitute. And if you weren't clean, which he'd determine by looking at the insides of your wrists, he'd get his hose and rag and rinse you off before you jumped in. The rest of your body could be full of dirt, but for some reason, your wrists had to be clean. He was happy to teach you, but you weren't getting into his pool with dirty wrists. Excerpted from Gotta Give the People What They Want: True Stories and Flagrant Opinions from Center Court by Jalen Rose All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
