"Ex-Basketball Player" [by John Updike]

 

Pearl Avenue runs past the high-school lot,
Bends with the trolley tracks, and stops, cut off
Before it has a chance to go two blocks,
At Colonel McComsky Plaza. Berth’s Garage
Is on the corner facing west, and there,
Most days, you'll find Flick Webb, who helps Berth out.
Flick stands tall among the idiot pumps—
Five on a side, the old bubble-head style,
Their rubber elbows hanging loose and low.
One’s nostrils are two S’s, and his eyes
An E and O. And one is squat, without
A head at all—more of a football type.
Once Flick played for the high-school team, the Wizards.
He was good: in fact, the best. In ’46
He bucketed three hundred ninety points,
A county record still. The ball loved Flick.
I saw him rack up thirty-eight or forty
In one home game. His hands were like wild birds.
He never learned a trade, he just sells gas,
Checks oil, and changes flats. Once in a while,
As a gag, he dribbles an inner tube,
But most of us remember anyway.
His hands are fine and nervous on the lug wrench.
It makes no difference to the lug wrench, though.
Off work, he hangs around Mae’s Luncheonette.
Grease-gray and kind of coiled, he plays pinball,
Smokes those thin cigars, nurses lemon phosphates.
Flick seldom says a word to Mae, just nods
Beyond her face toward bright applauding tiers
Of Necco Wafers, Nibs, and Juju Beads.

Comments

[Charles Coe]

One of my favorite poems. So much unsaid...

[Sam Gwynn]

A great piece of Americana, with a lot of details that will be lost on today's students: bubble-headed pumps, full-service gas stations, inner tubes, lemon phosphates, et al. In one of my anthologies, I finally decided to add a footnote to a poem explaining who Mickey Mantle was. History moves on.

[Stacey]

When I was in highschool, this poem was paired with A.E. Housman's "To An Athlete Dying Young." https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/46452

[Stephanie Brown]

I've always loved this poem.

[The Best American Poetry]

Updike is a seriously undervalued poet. Snotty reviewers perpetuating conventional wisdom have put him down, overlooking or downplaying his rare ability to write lyrically and well about such authentical blue-collar things as athletics and filling stations. An added pleasure, for me, in reading this poem is the suspicion that this represents Updike's road not taken. This is how he sees himself if he hadn't the blessings of the muse and the elegant persistence of the ideal courtier. -- DL