Spinning the Globe
The Rise, Fall, and Return to Greatness of the Harlem Globetrotters
Chapter OneThe Garden
This story begins with a song.
A pure sound of joy. One person, sotto voce, whistling a simple little melody: twelve notes in all, repeating rhythmically up and down the scale. And behind the whistle, carrying the beat, a lone, mysterious percussionist -- it could be fingers snapping or rhythm sticks, but it's actually bones, a pair of flat rib bones from a cow or a hog, clacking together, driving the tune.
The song wafts across the arena where we are sitting, waiting eagerly for what we know will come.This scene could be happening in any of a hundred arenas in a hundred different towns, from a high school gym in Sheboygan or the Boilermakers Union hall in Yakima to the Cow Palace in San Francisco, but we are actually in Madison Square Garden -- the old Garden at Fiftieth Street and Eighth Avenue -- in New York City.
It could also be any year of the past seventy-five, but tonight is January 1, 1950. New Year's Day. The beginning of the p ... read full excerpt from: Spinning the Globe ebook
