Life on the Run Read Online Free PDF Page B

blinking outside a cheap hotel.
    “Only 18 more,” says DeBusschere.
    “Not so soon,” I say. “Too early to start counting.”
    On and off, shining and dull, light and dark; off to another city. Travelers in the dead of night.
    At the entrance to Newark Airport stands a young Marine with his head shaved, his shoes spit-shined, and his hat tilted over his eyes. He rests at semi-attention, perhaps expecting the military bearing to conceal his human fragility.
His
team makes uniform dress a part of its overall discipline. My team emphasizes individuality in dress. Yet we both work to achieve disciplined cooperation. It occurs to me that he might be going home tonight; unprepared for a life without the platoon-certainties both he and I have come to depend on.
    On board there is the usual struggle of a late night flight. We are tired but can’t sleep. Card games start. One is going on in the seats in front of me. I sit next to Jerry Lucas, who sometimes keeps the card game results in his head; when each player wants to know if he is ahead or behind he can ask Lucas, who reports for instance that Barnett is $268 behind for the year and $18 ahead for the evening. The team calls Lucas “The Computer.” Tonight he does not keep score but concentrates on a piece of paper (the card players will have to settle up when the plane lands). About halfway through the flight, he looks over at me and says, “I just made a million.”
    “How?” I ask.
    “This puzzle I just figured up. I’ll sell it to Mattel or Cross and it’s bound to market like wildfire.”
    Jerry Lucas is an eternal optimist. If twenty people before him had placed their hands into a basket and had been bitten by a snake, Lucas, the twenty-first, would be sure he could hypnotize the snake with his fingers. His positive approach to life meshes well with his quest to make millions overnight. When I met him, I was a junior in college and he was a successful pro. He spent two hours telling me about some children’s games he had designed which were going to be big national sellers. He reasoned that because Kroger Inc. was located in Cincinnati and he was then a hero for the Cincinnati Royals, Kroger would love to market his games in their stores.
    After playing at Middletown High School and Ohio State, and starring for the 1960 U.S. Olympic team, Jerry Lucas was the most famous basketball player in Ohio history, even more famous than Oscar Robertson. He was Phi Beta Kappa—a straight A student in marketing. Handsome, with thick black hair and perfectly formed teeth, he was every mother’s hope and every coed’s dream. The national press pictured him as an All-American boy who drank postgame milk shakes, married a barber’s daughter at age 20, and knew where he was going in life. Important things always took priority with Jerry. When he and a few other Ohio State seniors (including John Havlicek and Larry Siegfried) barnstormed the state, Lucas apparently was careful to announce to his teammates that since he was the star attraction his share of the gate would be 50 percent. The other four players divided the rest.
    For Lucas basketball could never satisfy his thirst for activity or wealth. During his fifth year with the Cincinnati Royals, he started a restaurant business. Bringing in some of his teammates as investors, “Jerry Lucas’ Beef ‘n’ Shakes” prospered. According to Lucas, in 1968 a prospective buyer offered him $1.5 million, which he turned down because he wanted to maintain control and was convinced that an even bigger payoff would come in the future. Besides, the buyer demanded that Lucas quit basketball to manage the business. Jerry refused because he knew he had some good money years left.
    Lucas took a set of expansion plans for his company to various banks. One gave him a verbal commitment for financing, and he began extensive construction. During the recession of 1969 the bank canceled his credit line. In 1970, Jerry Lucas declared