Driving on Old Montauk Highway Friday, I cut north to head into the rolling moors of the Shinnecock Hills golf course, just for the view, and as I did so I passed that old sheet metal box, the Southampton College gym, where early voting had a line of concerned citizens snaking out the front door practically into the parking lot.
The heavy turnout had lessened somewhat by the time I returned to cast a ballot on Sunday, and this was so much the better, as I could inspect the flooring, apparently unchanged after all these years, striped for play, center logo, and still as tan as any blond wood but of, I’m not sure, vinyl? Or would that be the legendarily durable pad-and-pour polyurethane?
You could almost hear the bangs of bouncing basketballs.
By “all these years” I mean the early 1970s, when my father still taught at the college and as a little kid killing time I took in the mysteriously evocative sound of dribbling from across the gym. You never know what will stay with you.
I wouldn’t return until high school in the mid-1980s, as a benchwarmer on the Bridgies, as they used to be known. Say what you will, what I remember most about that visit was a few teammates from the Turnpike breaking away to brawl with guys from “the Hill or the Rez,” as was once said. More or less innocently, at least by today’s standards, and for sociological reasons I could only guess at. It was like the Jets and the Sharks from “West Side Story.” And then they stepped onto the bus home, seemingly refreshed.
Rodney Harris, a talented guard, only 5-foot-8 or so but bullish of frame, was not one of those guys. But, a year ahead of me, he was the only one I knew of who went on to play for the Colonials. Doing some half-assed Googling, I read in a 1989 issue of The Bronxville Review Press-Reporter how he sank five of seven 3-pointers in the first half of a game against Concordia, another school that would find itself shuttered in the aughts.
“Clippers hit bottom after 90-85 loss to winless Southampton,” read the headline.
How fun it would be to have a college team playing there again.