First, I wasn’t hearing it. I had 19 different things on my mind, but then I did, and C.J., it was magnificent. It was genius. He built these themes, and at the beginning, it was just an intellectual exercise, which is fun enough, I guess, but then in the fourth movement, he just let it go. I really didn’t think I could be surprised by music anymore. I thought about all the times this guy must’ve heard that his music was no good...
Jed Bartlet (Martin Sheen), The West Wing, "Galileo" (2000)
There are certainly a few things that focus a person. One of them is to have a nurse hold out an IV bag containing this week's bi-specific chemo/immuno infusion and confirm - "Jim Greer, (birthdate) 71..." One can have nineteen different things on their mind and suddenly eighteen of them are bullshit.
The one thing that does not fade away as the nurse accesses the new "IV Port" surgically implanted in my chest is that the fourth movement has been played, for all of the world to see. What is left is reflection on the themes I have built in my life - bicycles, hockey, police work, family. We are, as Joni Mitchell wrote, captives on a carousel of time.
It's easy to write them in that order, because it's the way I built them. Bicycles were part of life from almost the beginning. Riding around our little neighborhood in Southhampton, PA with friends, tinkering (until she passed in 2015 my mom bought me a screwdriver every Christmas, as a reminder), and exploring ever larger circles of my home town.
We moved to Pittsford, NY in 1964 and had an even bigger, more rural environment to explore. My parents bought me an "English" bike - 26 inch wheels and three speeds in the rear hub. My brother Dave chose a purple Huffy Sting Ray, with high-rise handlebars, a banana seat and a 5 speed derailleur. I loved my new ride but the exposed shifting mechanism on the Sting Ray - there was technology to fire an imagination. It began a lifelong obsession.
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| 1968 Schwinn catalog. |
27" wheels, down-tube shifters, hooded brake levers... There was no place I couldn't go - up hills, long rides in the farmlands surrounding Rochester, to work at Ward's Natural Science in the Village...of Pittsford, near the high school. This was not just useful technology. It was freedom.
I also bought skates, a particular kind. A very special kind.
Western New York introduced us to what actual winter looked like, and with it to skating. And hockey. We grew up on the frozen ponds surrounding our neighborhood, and one winter convinced our dad to build a rink in our back yard. My brothers chose wisely - Dave a forward, Mike a defenseman - the "tools of ignorance" fascinated me and I became a goaltender.
I didn't play organized hockey until, giving in to an insistent father's "suggestions" I tried out for the new high school team, expecting to be an early cut. By whatever fates I'll never know the young volunteer coach, a retired Rochester American professional named Don Cherry (you might have heard of him) thought I had some skills. For the next three years I improved from a fair pond hockey player to an established high school starter.
But, I needed goalie skates. As you can see, they are different than those worn by the other players. They are built lower to the ice surface, and are honed flat. Oh, that big plate on the side? The puck still hurt like hell after a "kick save, and a beauty." This is what they looked like, circa 1970.
Which takes us to a day in the fall of 1975.
My youngest brother was trying out for the new high school team - the Pittsford High I'd graduated became Pittsford Sutherland, his school, the new one, Pittsford Mendon... Named after the streets they were on. My dad - "There aren't any war heroes in Rochester they could name them after, for Christ's sake?"
I took my brother to try-outs and sat down with a book. I was on hiatus - my mom refused to let me say I'd dropped out - from Northeastern University in Boston where I studied criminal justice, preparing for a career in law enforcement. I was working nights as a security guard at Xerox Corp. (1970s Rochester, remember) to make money for the cross-country bike trip I had planned during the Bicentennial summer, which left my afternoons free.
The team's goaltender situation was...fluid. The young coach, in his first years of teaching after growing up on Long Island, consulted with his senior players about how to solve his dilemma. I would later learn the conversation went something like this: "See that guy standing there," one of them said, pointing at me. "He was Pittsford's starting goalie when they went undefeated and won the league championship."
It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship that has outlasted time, distance and difference of opinion. Two and a half years later, in the booklet distributed at the season-ending banquet, I was "Asst. Coach Greer, who rode his bike across the country last summer and will complete his studies at Northeastern University this spring in anticipation of a law enforcement career."
At that point, it was just an intellectual exercise, which was fun enough.
To be continued...
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