Yes, I'm That Guy: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Character Actor

Chapter 4

SPORTS AND DELINQUENCY

Memphis – 1952

I’m basically a Chihuahua, a scrawny kid who thinks he’s tough. I want to hang out with the pit bulls. So that means playing sandlot football games with some very tough kids in my neighborhood.

One day, I’m settling under a punt booted by one of the high school kids. Mind you, I’m all of eight. As it settles into my arms, I feel my left wrist snap. As soon as no one is watching, I duck behind the bushes and start crying my eyes out. No one can see me acting my age.

I start playing baseball in church leagues as soon as I’m old enough to compete. It keeps me out of trouble. Until it doesn’t. Fortunately, this is a city with plenty of church leagues. I’m being raised Baptist in a city with more churches than service stations.

1958

Size doesn’t matter, I’ve decided. Even six years later, I haven’t learned yet.

I’m running back a kickoff in an eighth grade B-team game when Ceylon Blackwell flattens me. Just lays me out. This is a particularly unfortunate thing, since Ceylon outweighs me by a hundred pounds. The same arm that broke in 1952 breaks again, this time near the bicep. Coach Keith said it feels like buckshot.

This injury sends me to Campbell’s Clinic and forces me to sleep siting up for weeks.

At this point in my athletic life, I’m something of a tackling dummy. But I don’t care. I understand that sports are the ticket to girls and glory, in that order. And at Snowden Junior High, I excel in a way that guys of my stature and weight rarely do. I make up in scrappy what I lack in bulk.

Regrettably, football and basketball aren’t quite enough to keep me from causing trouble. Call it overexuberance. I know the right crowd, but I love the wrong crowd. That leads me one day to the junkyard, where a buddy and I go and steal rearview mirrors from the cars. At least a couple of dozen.

This is one of the few times when Milt behaves like an actual father. He makes me return the mirrors to the junkyard and apologize to the owner.

I’m conflicted. I want to hang out with the athletes and with the guys stealing hubcaps. It’s tough to make the time for both.

1959

Ninth grade turns out to be the pinnacle of my athletic life as well as a key year for coming into my own, as I am starting to overcome my shyness. I also earn my first felony charge.

I make Honorable Mention All-City in basketball at Snowden, which is quite the big deal. There is also the basketball game against our arch-rival Longview. I’m at the free throw line to shoot two shots in double overtime with the game on the line and no time left.

Swish! Swish! I sink them both and emerge a hero.

The father of my pal Charles Burson – a kid who would grow up to become the Chief of Staff for Vice President Al Gore – comes up to me in the locker room to shake my hand.

“Son,” he says to me, “you have ice water in your veins.”

For a while, it’s really, really great to be me. I play first string on the Snowden Junior High Greenies football, basketball and baseball teams. I’m even lucky enough to have the prettiest cheerleader in the school as my girlfriend. And I win the school’s Best Dressed Award two years in a row. The basketball coach nicknames me Little Lord Fauntleroy. I’m a jock and a fashion maven.

Unfortunately, the run of greatness doesn’t last.

The first problem happens on a Friday night when I stop in the Esso service station, as I often do. Some seedy-looking men are hanging around outside. They call out to me.

“Hey kid,” says one, “how’d you like some wine?”

Being a reckless fifteen-year-old with a nose for trouble, this sounds somehow appealing to me. I guzzle down some of the cheap wine they supply me. It’s called Silver Satin, and it’s plenty potent to a kid who would stand as a lightweight even through adulthood.

I stumble into the house, my eyes glassy and unfocused. My father sees this and instantly understands what I’ve done.

“Where’d you get it?” he demands.

“Um, some guys down at the gas station gave it to me,” I reply.

Instead of giving me a whipping, Milt goes after the guys who fueled my delinquency, driving to the gas station to dispense some paternal justice.

Knowing I have to be up at 3:30 a.m. to deliver newspapers, I go straight to bed. And I pass out immediately. When the alarm goes off, I wake up feeling cloudy and off-balance. I manage to pick up my papers. As I begin my route, I notice that riding my bike is more difficult than usual. I almost topple over once or twice while making a turn.

This is my first hangover – and my last Silver Satin.

Another time when Milt rises to the occasion follows the most serious infraction of my youth. Stupid doesn’t even begin to describe it.

I get in with this gang of would-be criminals who think it’s a terrific idea to hotwire cars and go joyriding. And not only do they think it’s cool; they think it’s cool enough to make it a ritual. I’m right there with them, following a ringleader named Bobby.

On the fateful day when it all goes horribly wrong, I’m driving our seventh stolen car – a crime we liked to call “borrowing,” since we weren’t really keepin’ ’em.

Anyway, the fact I’m driving this Ford should be a tipoff for just how nuts it is. It’s a stick shift, and I haven’t the first clue how to work a clutch or stick. So much for our brilliant idea.

“How do I work this thing?” I ask Bobby, panicked.

“I don’t know,” he replies, “just drive it.”

“But I don’t know how!” I blurt.

Bobby obviously isn’t getting that this is about to go south very quickly. We’re heading down Cooper Street when the best method for stopping dawns on me: Ram it into the nearest and highest curb. Fortunately, that’s also the same moment when I lose control.

Bam!

The car is banged up. No one gets hit. Nobody gets hurt. I figure my best option is to get out of the car and run like hell, hauling ass north on Cooper.

We escape for the moment. But when Bobby gets caught without me a few weeks later, he implicates me, because there is evidently little honor among fifteen-year-old thieves. I find this out the day that police officers enter one of my ninth-grade classes and place me under arrest right then and there.

In one fell swoop, I’m fired from my paper route and charged with seven counts of grand larceny. Bobby, snitch that he is, gets sentenced to reform school. I’m incredibly fortunate to receive a suspended sentence and probation by the judge. But I also have to spend five nights in juvenile court, which scares me off of my delinquent path, at least temporarily.

This prompts one of my teachers, Mrs. Riley, to tell a classmate, “Bill is either going to prison or he’ll be a big success.”

Milt steps in to help me get rehired for my paper route but also forces me to honor the probation, giving me a 9 p.m. curfew that entire summer. He also makes me apologize for slugging a popular Safety Council boy in the face after I see him flirting with my girlfriend.

Unfortunately, Milt doesn’t carry the same moral standards for himself. That same year, he takes to staying out at the bar every night while I field phone calls from his adulterous women at our house.

One afternoon, I pick up the ringing telephone.

“I want to speak with Milt,” slurs the woman on the other end.

“Who is this?”

“Just tell him I called.”

“Well, wait. What about me?”

“What about you?”

“Wanna meet me somewhere?”

“What, your dad’s getting some so now you want some?”

“Yeah!” I snap, hanging up the phone.

Some nights when I’m in high school, my father doesn’t bother coming home at all. It makes me seethe with anger for what he’s doing to Lib.

High School – 1960-62

My three years at Central High in Memphis are a comparative breeze and relatively uneventful after the growing pains of junior high. I start hanging with a better crowd, which makes my life significantly easier. The only heartbreak is the realization that size matters more in high school sports than in junior high.

I still manage to letter in basketball at Central but can’t play football. I’m just too damn small. The pretty cheerleader crushingly leaves me for a linebacker. I run cross country and track, but it’s not the same. The thrill is gone.

My career as a jock somewhat stunted, I turn my attention to the world around me – or at least the surrounding city. It’s now the early 1960s, and I’m noticing the class struggle and the racial prejudice in the South that would soon spawn the civil rights movement.

I’m also surprised that at least one of my teachers suspects my acting-out behavior stems from family issues.

“I think you have problems at home,” my Spanish teacher says within earshot of other students.

“No, I don’t,” I lie. “My home is perfectly fine.”

Inside, though, this gets me to thinking, “Wow, someone understands.”

Being raised poor begins to take more of a toll in embarrassment. I can’t afford a car, and when my friends give me a ride home, I ask to be dropped off a few blocks from our apartment so they won’t see how I live. Without sports to level the playing field, as it were, I struggle to branch out and measure up to my...