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

23. Cubs Turning into Lions

23 Cubs Turning into lions Thunder is good. Thunder is impressive; but it’s lightning that does the work. —Mark Twain The Cubs kept their promise about building their endurance. They ran and practiced basketball hard all summer long. People in Cuba and in Pilot oak watched with admiration as the boys streaked across fields chasing rabbits. By January 1952, they were actually catching rabbits, some folks said. Many early mornings before school, howie and doodle (after his chores) ran three miles from their homes to Wray’s, where Ted Bradley and Jimmie Webb lived. Then all four of them ran the four miles to Cuba and would be at school before the school bus arrived. every afternoon they practiced in the gym. often in the evenings they ran ten miles to Mayfield and back. and they did all this exercise without any prompting from Coach story. one month before basketball season began, the starters began running up and down the bleachers fifty times and around the gym sixty times a day. Then after school they ran to harper’s, two miles 172 The Graves County Boys round trip from the school. on weekends doodle and howie would be seen running up and down the Murray road every morning and then playing one-on-one in Pilot oak in front of the store. nothing, absolutely nothing, was going to keep them from being stronger and better should they make it to the state tournament that year. They were heading toward the new basketball season with a confidence and enthusiasm that sometimes got them into trouble with their teachers—again. Because of their disruptive behavior, Mr. dowell refused to let them remain in his agriculture class, and he told Coach story one morning in plain english to figure out what to do with “your boys” because he was having nothing to do with them from then on— “basketball stars or not.” For the rest of the day, a grim-faced Coach story went about his work annoyed at being put in such a difficult position. he could not send them to study hall because they needed a credit class, and there was no other class for the boys to take that period and no other teacher available to teach agriculture. The next morning, when Coach story passed Mrs. sandifer, the home economics teacher, in the hall, it dawned on him that he could create a special class that she could instruct. although Mrs. sandifer, forty or so years old, was less than five feet tall and hardly weighed ninety pounds, she was a disciplinarian with absolute control over her classroom. she taught not only home economics but penmanship, manners, and diction as well. no one in her class dared to use such poor pronunciation as “idn’it” or “yesterdee” or “ovair thar.” and no one misbehaved in her classes. Coach story talked to her about his problem and how he wanted to solve it. later that day, he told his wife that Mrs. sandifer accepted the challenge as cheerfully as if she were looking forward to it. The basketball team and a few other students were placed in this special home economics class created just for them. They were all happy, thinking little bitty Mrs. sandifer would be easy Cubs Turning into lions 173 on them, regardless of what they’d heard other kids say about her being tough. at the first class meeting, Mrs. sandifer presented her syllabus and told her students what she expected them to do, and how and when they were going to do it. she left no time for questions and discussion. The moment she turned her back to write on the board, Jimmie Webb, thinking she was funny looking, leaned close to Ted, giggling and whispering to him. Jimmie did not know that Mrs. sandifer’s peripheral vision was as good as, if not better than, howie ’s. surprising the thunder out of him, she reached over and vigorously yanked a thatch of his curly hair and pulled it as hard as she could several times. he thought she was going to keep pulling until she jerked his scalp off. her actions made such a vivid impression on him that morning that neither he nor any of the others gave her any problems after that. That class turned out to be one of the boys’ best, and Mrs. sandifer, their favorite teacher. From...