I don't recall now how I managed to end up on the basketball team bus from Bartlett, heading to our games with Fayette-Ware in Somerville, but I probably had volunteered with Coach Farley to help with equipment in exchange for being allowed to make the trip. I had always been fascinated by Fayette County ever since I had read a book about it called Our Portion Of Hell by Robert Hamburger, which dealt with the Civil Rights Movement in the county. In Fayette County, the movement led to a particularly-nasty response. People were evicted from their tenant farms for registering to vote, and had to move into "tent cities" on Black-owned land. A Black grocer, John McFerren was boycotted by wholesalers, and had a hard time keeping gasoline in his gas pumps. Nothing came easy in Fayette County, which was 95% Black in those days- not integration of stores or restaurants, not school integration and not voter registration. In 1969, the beating of a Black mother by a white grocer led to a months-long boycott of the square in Somerville. Merger of the Black and white schools led to a near-total white exodus from public education in the county. By 1984, Fayette-Ware High School was all-Black. As for our basketball team, 1983-1984 was not a good season for us. Our men's coach, as I recall, had resigned before the season started, so Coach Tom Farley, who had been Bartlett's head coach when it merged with Shadowlawn in 1970-1971, became the interim head coach. Bartlett had talented players like Bobby "Bebop" Merriweather, Ricky Fields, Darryl Carroll and Coach Farley's son, but the shock of losing a head coach right before the season, and having an interim coach thrown into the mix with short warning took a toll on Bartlett, and as I recall, we lost most of our games. Still, I was looking forward to our trip to Somerville. Wendy Jackson was on the girls' basketball squad, and she had brought a large jam box onto the team bus. This was the era of huge "boom boxes" and the dawn of rap, at least in our neck of the woods. As we rolled out Highway 64, which at the time was a dark, rural, wooded road through sleepy communities like Eads, we were listening to hits of the day, probably on K-97, although I cannot be sure. I do recall that when we reached Oakland, which was also another tiny rural farming community, Run-DMC's "Hard Times" came on the box, and some of our players started chanting the words, as this was the big hit at the time. The game was held at the North Campus of Fayette-Ware High School, which was the former Fayette County High School. (The South Campus was the former Black high school W. P. Ware, at the intersection of Highway 76 and Macon Road. Buses ran students between the two campuses all day long, every day, which further deterred parents with a choice from keeping their children in public school). IT turned out to be Fayette-Ware's basketball homecoming, and the gym, which I remember as being hot and sweaty despite the time of year, was filled to overflowing. Fayette-Ware's drumline was there, dressed in all-Black and ready to perform. At the end of the girls' game and before the boys', they lined up near the north entrance to the gym. The majorettes from Fayette-Ware performed first to a recording from a jam box, but soon the drummers came out and rocked them with a hard funk beat which brought the crowd to their feet. A break-dancing crew followed them before the boys' game tipped off. After the game, I got a chance to meet the drumline captain, Edward Thompson Jr., who introduced me to the other drummers, Vick, Tony, Val, Anthony, Regg and Reynaldo. (I later ran back into Edward Thompson Jr. in my freshman year of college at UT-Martin. He was an excellent set drummer there). All of this made a big impression on me at the time. I honestly think it was my first encounter with the African-American drumming/drill-team/majorette tradition, which later became so important to my way of thinking. It probably also furthered my thinking about the importance of drums and dance in Black American culture, and may have indirectly led to my interest in musicology. But of course I wasn't thinking about any of that as we headed back west on Highway 64 toward Bartlett. I honestly don't recall if we won the game, but we must have, because I recall the ride back being rather upbeat, with Twilight 22's "Electric Kingdom" blasting on the box as we passed through Oakland in the late-night darkness. It's probably not an exaggeration to say that this night changed the course of my life.
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