STORIES FROM THE STEPS, VOLUME 3, CHRONICLE 2: Let me tell you a story about an 11 year old with a bookie & what that boy learned 52 years ago today & offer a slice of ‘70s life.
      I got baptized in betting & a glimpse of the darker side of that  life during Super Bowl VIII (as we are 4 weeks away from the big game unifying our country in its inability to read roman numerals, that’s an 8), a game  played on the 13th day of January 1974. Completely without advice or $5 parlaying into $200 of free bet incentives from a celebrity hawking a sports betting app. Still one year away from a 3 year crush on the NFL Today’s Phyllis George & two years away from the my generations sports app, “Jimmy the Greek” on set with Phyllis, & Brent, & Irv armed with his check marks & street cred for picking Broadway Joe & the Jets in SBIII (that’s a 3). The Greek also introduced the word “intangibles” into the sports minded preteen male lexicon.
      Armed with only my Street & Smith’s Pro Football yearbook with Dolphins cover boy Larry Csonka & my gut instinct, I was unaware of what the term “money line” was. Summoning all my 6th grade chutzpah after a post recess climb of those concrete steps that had yet to become a muse & taking my window seat in class, I laid my bet. My entire weekly lunch budget, 50 cents for Sealtest chocolate milk. Milk money to wash down a peanut butter & GRAPE jelly sandwich because any other flavor is wrong, Golden Flake cheese curls & a Little Debbie oatmeal creme pie. Milk money on the Minnesota Vikings to take down the Miami Dolphins like Hemingway took his whiskey, straight up.
      As the sun set on that January afternoon, with the Dolphins 24-7 victory secured, my first lesson into why it’s called gambling & not winning & why Las Vegas has really big buildings was received. I dressed for another sure bet of 1970s Baptist life, the Sunday night service (*). Dressed knowing this particular week, given the game result, I was going to use God, like a lot of church folk, the way a Saturday night drunk uses a downtown lamppost, for support rather than illumination because it’s exceedingly unpleasant for an 11 year old to explain to his father he has a bookie & owes him a week’s wages. As one Opie Taylor so eloquently stated to Andy & Barney in the Mayberry courthouse adorned in torn denims & a black eye after he lit into his milk money extorting foe like “a windmill in a tornado”, from Monday, January 14th to Friday, January 18th, I sadly learned why a PB&J “sure tastes a lot better with milk”…

(*) Other sure bets of the 70s Baptist walk of the 11 year old with a bookie were scoreboards hung near the front of the sanctuary noting attendance, budget needs and/or collections. Possibly the number in the hymnal of the songs we’d be singing that day & it was a sure bet we’d sing the 1st, 2nd, & last stanzas or 1st, 3rd, & last but never all 4 as the composer intended. If you’re still with me & under 40, the hymnal is the white book in the pew rack that’s been replaced, according to some, with a laser show & rock concert. There were responsive readings & often, an assembly of the entire Sunday School prior to 9:45 Sunday School. Another ironclad bet, at halftime of the 11AM service after visitors were awkwardly identified & between the congregational singing of 3 of 4 stanzas & the preaching sure to garner an amen from the guy in the leisure suit stage left, a bass singer from the choir in his robed glory there was a soprano in a beehive ‘do or a lady real good at making a joyful noise but not needing a solo microphone to reveal that talent to the world, waiting to sing a “special”.
      The special came after ushers dressed in suit & tie, not slacks & a sport jacket & for heaven’s sake not the shorts & chacos I donned this summer during my turn at collectin’, because somewhere the Lord decreed the same black & navy suits & somber faces of a pall bearer in those that collected tithes. Tithes collected with jackets buttoned & ties knotted even though Jesus & his 12 man posse strolled the shores of Galilee in the original Chacos & togas. Offering plates passed to the givers giving cheerfully & the not so cheerful giving their watch a glance as they plotted to beat the other Protestants to Morrison’s Cafeteria in Eastgate Mall. All this not to mention that Baptists cared little how others voted, cared a lot if one took a nip for other than medicinal purposes, & preferred the more lukewarm option of float as the waters of Roe v. Wade were initially navigated. Those same congregants were certain to enter the building in a cloud of smoke like The U entered the Orange Bowl in the 80s & 90s as the menfolk lit up their Salem’s & Winston’s & Camel’s while the wives were inside gossiping about the scandalous pantsuit Cheryl Jean was wearing.
      In other news from ‘74, my dad would give me 4 quarters after church & we’d stop at the Post office & buy a 50 cent Sunday copy of both the Chattanooga Times (for those that liked news with morning coffee or leaned lefty)& the Chattanooga News-Free Press (for those political swingers in the right hand box or liked news with after dinner coffee) because my dad thought it good to get both sides of politics & our town was a good two paper town for that & he knew I’d devour both sports sections.
      The Fonz & Fred G. Sanford invaded our TV sets. Nixon, the second most morally bankrupt president of the 11 year old with a bookie’s days, resigned on TV that August. Resigned to the 11 year olds disgust, right in the middle of the brand new World Football League’s 5th national broadcast. The Hammer hit 715. The Celtics took down Jabbar & the Bucks in the NBA but Kareem would get his R-E-V-E-N-G (for those true believers that watched Andy Griffith reruns afternoons in ’74 after the Little Rascals, IYKYK) & win later in LA. Round red “WIN’ buttons debuted but didn’t help Ford win in ‘76.
       TSOP brought us disco, Elton introduced us to Bennie & the Jets & Lynyrd Skynyrd rocked “Sweet Home Alabama” & Maynard Ferguson sold an 11 year old on jazz. Meanwhile, Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots rocked the toy store with Evel Knievel’s Stunt Cycle while Evel failed in his Snake River Canyon stunt.
        And since this tome began with sports, as Casey Stengel said, “you can look it up”…