Old gym smells like quaintness

The NBA opens another season tonight, with games in Miami, Cleveland and Los Angeles. On Wednesday, there will be nine more games, weather permitting, in Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Phoenix, Portland, Toronto, New Orleans, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles.

Almost all of these games will be played in modern, monolithic arenas that seat a minimum of 17,188 spectators. None will be played in an armory, unless the Sheboygan Red Skins are brought back at short notice.

The Red Skins were a charter member of the NBA in 1949. They played their home games at the Sheboygan Municipal Auditorium and Armory, which still stands. I've never been to Sheboygan (though I had a buddy who went to college there). My guess is that the Municipal Auditorium and Armory is quaint, and smells of an old sneaker.

A few weeks ago, while on assignment for another story, I literally stumbled into the old gymnasium at the Boulder City Recreation Center on Arizona Street - it was dark in the early morning, and I tripped on the top step. You could almost smell the quaintness. You could not smell the old sneakers, because on this day, the gym floor was sporting fresh varnish.

This old gym now has glass backboards, which look terribly out of place. But there are wooden backboards on the far wall, minus their rims. This looks totally accurate. The old gym at the old community center where I shot baskets after school had backboards like these. When the rims broke, they would hang askance, sometimes for weeks, because the handyman at the old community center was older than Dolph Schayes.

There is a stage on the far side of the old Boulder City gym, like the bandbox gyms in "Hoosiers." There is a pool table on the stage, and a foosball table, and a vending machine; on the back wall of the stage, there is a painting of the solar system done in bright blue.

The bright blue paint and the rings of Saturn throw off the ambiance a bit. But I once sat on the end of the bench in a freshman basketball game (at East Chicago Roosevelt, in the industrial part of Indiana, undefeated 1970 Indiana state champs) at a tiny gym that had a playing floor on an elevated stage and turned loose balls into risky adventures. At least for those not warming the end of the bench.

Within five minutes, I had memorized the planets in their correct order, including Uranus and Neptune; which, for me, was always difficult, like dribbling with my left hand.

Patty Sullivan, the recreation program coordinator for the City of Boulder City, told me the old gym was part of the old Boulder City Elementary School, before it was turned into a rec center. Sullivan's mother grew up just up a few blocks east, at 609 Avenue L, in the first privately built home in Boulder City that went up in 1932.

I asked Sullivan if she ever hit a game-winning basket at the old gym. She said she had not. "I did plays and trampoline," she said.

Although Sullivan knew a lot about Boulder City, she did not know what year the old gymnasium opened. They started building the dam in 1931; so it was sometime after that, because the men building the dam probably needed a general store before they needed a gymnasium, even one as quaint as this.

I was told to see Shirl, who works the front desk at the Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum on the second floor of the historic Boulder Dam Hotel. If anybody would know, it would be Shirl.

Shirl is Shirl Naegle, a Boulder City old-timer with a thick shock of gray hair, who pulled out the history books and said the old gym must have opened in 1941. I asked Shirl, who is tall, if he ever hit a game-winning basket at the old gym. "No, I was a wrestler," he said.

And then Helen Cooley, 77, who was visiting from Salt Lake City and overheard the conversation, said it was, indeed, 1941, because that was the year she went to first grade. Helen Cooley was Helen Rose then, and she never hit a game-winning basket, either. But she remembered, vividly, being in a Christmas program on the stage in the gym and that it was 1941, because World War II was raging, and that was why she dressed up like a nurse instead of an elf or a snowman.

The "No Dunking" sign probably wasn't there in 1941, though. Guys didn't dunk much during World War II.

In addition to the end of the bench upon which I sat and memorized the planets in their proper order, there are seven more rows of wide wooden bleachers. These were great for making out on during the dances that were held in these little gyms after the games, after the side baskets were rolled up to the ceiling with a pulley.

In the northwest corner of the Boulder City gym, there's a crow's nest, where the official scorer and timekeeper sat. The ceiling consists of the original tongue-and-groove planks; the playing surface is solid applewood, also original; the exposed girders have been painted orange. The lights hanging from the girders have protective metallic covers, and sometimes they would get in the way of a heave from three-quarters court at the end of a quarter. Then the lights would swing back and forth, and the dust would fly.

The windows behind the baskets have been plastered over. Roger Hall, the longtime director of the parks and rec department, said the windows let in too much light and made it hard to sink long shots at certain times of the day. So now there are just blank walls with window frames; this is where they would hang the picture of the overachieving 1952 state champions, and the sectional and regional championship banners.

Everywhere you walk, something creaks.

When you lean back on the wide bleachers and close your eyes, you can almost see somebody chucking up a two-hand set shot; cheerleaders with poodle skirts and megaphones; kids with buzz cuts in satin trunks and black high-tops running the three-man weave, and The Picket Fence. You can almost hear a pep band playing off-key.

You can see a county road in Indiana, with autumn leaves blowing across it.

And when the women in the new gym finish their aerobics and you listen some more, you can almost hear the sound of the Hickory Huskers' bus rolling into town in the fading light.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.