The Graves County Boys: A Tale of Kentucky Basketball, Perseverance, and the Unlikely Championship of the Cuba Cubs

21. Pride before Another Fall

21 Pride before another Fall of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable. —Plato The Cubs opened the 1950–1951 season with two big wins: one over lowes, 81-48, and the other over Cayce (again), 75-36. as juniors with an enviable reputation, they were preening like rock stars the night they were scheduled to play at lynn Grove, a nearby small, poorly built rural school. although they had not forgotten the Cayce game the year before, their memory of it had dimmed some. on the day they were to play lynn Grove, they did not see any harm in having a little fun. For days before the game, the southern end of the county had been hit with a torrential downpour. The day of the game, rain still poured steadily in opaque sheets. The gym at lynn Grove had been built on ground level without a foundation. in hard rains, the water seeped through the gym floor and washed across it. Knowing the conditions of this gym, and believing they were far superior to their Pride before another Fall 159 competition, howie, doodle, Joe Buddy, Ted, and Jimmie Webb decided to dress for the occasion. They never had practice on game days, just skull sessions during which Coach story would talk to them about plays. as soon as he dismissed them that afternoon, they changed clothes. They put on bib overalls, straw hats, and green rubber hip boots (the ones they wore duck hunting). With black shoe polish, they painted “Cuba” all over their hip boots. outfitted to mock their opponents, they piled into an old 1936 Model a Ford that doodle had borrowed from his brother Bill. The car had a ’38 transmission, a ’42 motor, and mechanical brakes that had been changed to hydraulic ones. The original seats had been replaced with seats from an old couch. The front of the car was all exposed; it did not have a hood. The muffler had gone out, and so Bill had taken a weld pipe and bent it to meet the curvature of the axle. That way, anyone riding inside the car could not hear the awful noise it was making, but people for miles around sure could. as they were driving along the country road making a tremendous racket, they were confident and happy, singing, irene, goodnight, irene, goodnight, Goodnight, irene, goodnight, irene, i’ll see you in my dreams. sometimes i live in the country, sometimes i live in town, sometimes i have a great notion to jump into the river and drown. irene, goodnight, irene. i’ll see you in my dreams. Without a doubt in their minds that they could conquer the world, they were simply unable to resist an opportunity to show off their power. They stopped at the store in lynn Grove to buy soft drinks, 160 The Graves County Boys and doodle immediately made himself the center of attention. Chewing on an unlit cigar, he strutted around, greeting the customers and the store setters. To one of the old guys dressed in obviously new denim overalls and a red plaid shirt, doodle said that he looked like a third-Monday mule. They all laughed. That remark was a genial expression, a compliment of sorts, said among the old-timers to a person who was dressed nicely. The expression stemmed from the time when farmers went to Trade day in Mayfield on the third Monday in March. some farmers claimed that a few dishonest traders were skilled at doing cosmetic work on their mules’ teeth before they attempted to trade them. usually, a good mule trader can estimate an animal’s age by examining his teeth, but not always. as one of the farmers said, it is as difficult to no player captured the crowd’s fancy the way doodle did. irrepressible and irresistible, he loved to make people laugh, and his brown eyes sparkled with mischief. (Photo courtesy of Charles Floyd.) Pride before another Fall 161 tell a mule’s age sometimes as it is to tell a pretty woman’s. he went on to explain that a few of these traders could make an old mule’s teeth appear somewhat like those of a younger animal, and they earned good money doing it. an old mule that had been allowed to rest a few days and had had his teeth cleaned would look pretty good...