The great Red Klotz died in 2014.
I know what you”re saying. Even the mention of his name brings to mind the days of mourning, the televised retrospectives, the stories shared with family or coworkers and alright, it”s more likely you are saying something like “just who the hell was Red Klotz?”
Sometime around 1977 or ”78 I believe I saw the man perform. It was on the campus of Western Illinois University, where the Harlem Globetrotters yet again embarrassed the Washington Generals, score unknown. If memory serves, such hall of fame names as Meadowlark Lemon, Geese Ausby and Curley Neal took the floor in red, white and blue that night. Klotz, on the other hand, wore the woeful colors of the sidekick squad. I want to say the Generals wore red, but distance has washed away any mental image.
Night after night the Generals left the court with heads bowed, befuddled by the antics of their more celebrated foes. The bucket of water-turned-confetti trick? They never figured it out, even after seeing it turned 500 or so times. Year after year they racked up perfect losing records.
Yeah, yeah — it was all a show. The Generals” roster included accomplished basketball players. But the Globetrotters were ambassadors of a game played in the shadows of football and baseball, from an era when black athletes battled for acceptance. Each year, we expected to see Ausby, Lemon, Neal and their teammates on “Wide World of Sports,” pulling off such unseen things as the tomahawk dunk.
Oh, I guess the ”Trotters are still around. But with the NBA stealing the show with acrobatic dunks every night they seem lost to nostalgia, akin to the rotary dial phone or the horror of a presidential address taking up all three channels.
Gone are the certainties of the past. But they were only certainties in our minds because they occurred.
Which makes me wonder as 2014 winds down: will we someday look back and remember the year”s specifics?
I hate to admit it, but I already find it difficult to fix the year”s big events. Let”s see … it was the year airliners kept disappearing into distant oceans, the year when pretty much everyone called the election results months in advance, the year a nation retreated in wild fear from a disease that existed elsewhere, the year Colbert left the late night lineup, at least temporarily. Was it the year Biebermania finally waned? Can”t remember.
Oh, yeah — there was a drought, but that was also last year, And the year before.
Two events stand out personally. Well, I better say three and include the wedding, if I wish to retain all of my appendages.
When the year dawned a losing bout with a particularly heinous strain of the flu pinned me to the couch for two solid weeks, beginning the day after Christmas. I remember it as my only alcohol-free New Year”s Eve since I turned 21.
OK, since I turned 16.
Midway through 2014, we packed up and hauled stuff, cats and dog from the high plains to Lakeport. The moving van arrived two weeks later. One of my favorite memories of the year was that period where we survived without television, without pots and pans, without utensils, without furniture, exploring Lake County by day and recounting our adventures at night. We “discovered” wineries, the Blue Wing Saloon and a woman who makes tamales by hand. We sampled local wines and olive oil and plotted what we could do with both, if only our glasses and cast iron would arrive.
We fell in love with the area during that spell. I find it difficult to believe, however, that 10 or 15 years from now I will conjure up the brute strength of that nasty bug or hear again the constant whining from pet carriers as we rolled across the west. In fact, I”ll be more than happy if those things disappear into the same mental hole as the Generals” uniform color.
So Red Klotz, founder of the Washington Generals, died in 2014. He and his teammates accepted defeat over and over and over again, because their staged shortcomings entertained the rest of us. His obituary brought back a few features from a date decades ago that I find impossible to pin down. Was it ”77 or ”78? Or possibly ”75?
There is little definitive about a 12 month span. Instead, there are places and moments we fix with meaning. What will stand out, in future years, from the bit of time we knew as 2014? I better memorize one event. Otherwise, there are few certainties. Even the Generals accidently beat the Globetrotters once.
Farewell, 2014 — a year marked by moments great and small, like any other. It was, in other words, a very good year.
