I looked at the “Today in History” note in my morning paper and two old friends jumped out at me. One I knew very well. I never met the other, but he knew me; and every other kid of my generation.
March 2nd is the birthday of Theodore Geisel (1904-1991); better known as Dr. Seuss. On a college application I was asked to name my “most memorable book”. I knew they expected 18-year-old males to respond with Hemmingway, Tolkien, Melville or Salinger. In the seventies they surely got their fair share of Keseys and Kerouacs. Maybe even a Hunter S. Thompson or two. I’m sure they reveled in more ambitious responses featuring Joyce or Milton.
They did not get it from me. The application said “most memorable” and I interpreted that quite literally. I declared Dr. Seuss’s Hop on Pop as the obvious answer. After all, I had memorized it cover to cover by the time I was 5 and could still recite it verbatim as I completed that application in 1977. What could be more memorable than that? From “Up, Pup” on the first page to “Constantinople and Timbuktu” on the last, each silly word grouping remained etched in my memory.
Even if I weren’t a slave to the literal, I believed then, and still believe, that a case can be made that Seuss – and not Melville, Twain, Steinbeck, Hemmingway or Margaret Mitchell – is the “Great American Writer”. We grew up entranced by the world of Dr. Seuss. He didn’t teach us how to read, but he certainly showed us why to read. If you love literature and were born after the end of World War ll, chances are that love began with the good doctor. If you can no longer remember what it felt like when those rhymes rolled off your tongue and in to your ears, consider this quote from Mr. Geisel himself: “Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.”
According to the paper, March 2nd is also the anniversary of the night in 1962 that Wilt Chamberlain (1936-1999) dropped 100 points on the Knicks in the old Hershey Arena. I was only 3 that night; more interested in Seuss than stats. But as I graduated from Hop on Pop and the other Seuss classics to library sports books and periodicals, I devoured the legend of Wilt with an enthusiasm previously reserved for the Grinch and the Whos. It wasn’t just the 100 point game that year. The Big Dipper averaged 50.2 points for the entire season and, most amazing of all, averaged 48.5 minutes played per game (a handful of overtimes resulted in the anomalous 48.5 average).
In the late eighties, through a fortuitous job I held, I became a friend and confidante of the man who hated being called “The Stilt” but was okay with “Dippy”. He fascinated me when we talked hoops (“They made rules to slow me down, they made rules to help Michael Jordan”); lesser sports (he loved track and field, volleyball and tennis), food, wine or current events. He was that much more fascinating when the subject was “Wilt being Wilt” (killing a mountain lion with his bare hands,playing polo, bench pressing 625 pounds, driving coast to coast without stopping and woman after woman after woman).
If Hop on Pop was my most memorable book, Wilt Chamberlain was my most memorable real life character.
As I think back on Wilt’s accomplishments, it occurs to me that he was really Seussian at heart. Dr. Seuss created a world where more than a few giants walked among us. Like Wilt, the Seussian heroes were usually smart, curious, funny and fantastic with a mixture of human characteristics and some talents that seemed otherworldly. No matter what they looked like, they were always endowed with a humanity brought out by the book's circumstances. I think Dr. Seuss could easily have written about Wilt.
"Then Dippy roared out and he called for his ball,
And the Knicks went off running first the one, then the all,
They raced through the streets of the old chocolate town
When the biggest of dippers threw his hundredth point down”
There aren’t a lot of people outside of my family without whom, my life would be noticeably poorer. But I am quite certain that Dr. Seuss is one and Wilt Chamberlain is another. I miss them both. I don’t remember to check “This Date in History” every day. I hope I catch it next March 2nd. Today was a really good day.
March 2nd is the birthday of Theodore Geisel (1904-1991); better known as Dr. Seuss. On a college application I was asked to name my “most memorable book”. I knew they expected 18-year-old males to respond with Hemmingway, Tolkien, Melville or Salinger. In the seventies they surely got their fair share of Keseys and Kerouacs. Maybe even a Hunter S. Thompson or two. I’m sure they reveled in more ambitious responses featuring Joyce or Milton.
They did not get it from me. The application said “most memorable” and I interpreted that quite literally. I declared Dr. Seuss’s Hop on Pop as the obvious answer. After all, I had memorized it cover to cover by the time I was 5 and could still recite it verbatim as I completed that application in 1977. What could be more memorable than that? From “Up, Pup” on the first page to “Constantinople and Timbuktu” on the last, each silly word grouping remained etched in my memory.
Even if I weren’t a slave to the literal, I believed then, and still believe, that a case can be made that Seuss – and not Melville, Twain, Steinbeck, Hemmingway or Margaret Mitchell – is the “Great American Writer”. We grew up entranced by the world of Dr. Seuss. He didn’t teach us how to read, but he certainly showed us why to read. If you love literature and were born after the end of World War ll, chances are that love began with the good doctor. If you can no longer remember what it felt like when those rhymes rolled off your tongue and in to your ears, consider this quote from Mr. Geisel himself: “Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.”
According to the paper, March 2nd is also the anniversary of the night in 1962 that Wilt Chamberlain (1936-1999) dropped 100 points on the Knicks in the old Hershey Arena. I was only 3 that night; more interested in Seuss than stats. But as I graduated from Hop on Pop and the other Seuss classics to library sports books and periodicals, I devoured the legend of Wilt with an enthusiasm previously reserved for the Grinch and the Whos. It wasn’t just the 100 point game that year. The Big Dipper averaged 50.2 points for the entire season and, most amazing of all, averaged 48.5 minutes played per game (a handful of overtimes resulted in the anomalous 48.5 average).
In the late eighties, through a fortuitous job I held, I became a friend and confidante of the man who hated being called “The Stilt” but was okay with “Dippy”. He fascinated me when we talked hoops (“They made rules to slow me down, they made rules to help Michael Jordan”); lesser sports (he loved track and field, volleyball and tennis), food, wine or current events. He was that much more fascinating when the subject was “Wilt being Wilt” (killing a mountain lion with his bare hands,playing polo, bench pressing 625 pounds, driving coast to coast without stopping and woman after woman after woman).
If Hop on Pop was my most memorable book, Wilt Chamberlain was my most memorable real life character.
As I think back on Wilt’s accomplishments, it occurs to me that he was really Seussian at heart. Dr. Seuss created a world where more than a few giants walked among us. Like Wilt, the Seussian heroes were usually smart, curious, funny and fantastic with a mixture of human characteristics and some talents that seemed otherworldly. No matter what they looked like, they were always endowed with a humanity brought out by the book's circumstances. I think Dr. Seuss could easily have written about Wilt.
"Then Dippy roared out and he called for his ball,
And the Knicks went off running first the one, then the all,
They raced through the streets of the old chocolate town
When the biggest of dippers threw his hundredth point down”
There aren’t a lot of people outside of my family without whom, my life would be noticeably poorer. But I am quite certain that Dr. Seuss is one and Wilt Chamberlain is another. I miss them both. I don’t remember to check “This Date in History” every day. I hope I catch it next March 2nd. Today was a really good day.
Thank you, David. I really enjoyed this! Tomorrow I'm breaking out more Dr. Seuss books and reading them to my 4 1/2 year old!
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