Chapter 1: It Had a Beginning

Our start was promising, Dad and I.

Being athletic, organized sports became the soundtrack of my childhood, with my Father relishing his role as conductor. You name it, we played it. All the classic American neighborhood sports. Baseball, basketball, football, soccer, ice hockey, running. Early cross training you might call it. The opposite of specialization. 

 

After school time was pretty simple. If I didn't have a game, I was either in the backyard honing my skills or recruiting the neighborhood kids to our street corner cul-de-sac for makeshift games of every sport imaginable. Me and my buddies, we barely knew the rules, making them up as we went along, but that didn't stop us from competing as fiercely as our local New England sports heroes. Inspired to the point of possessed, we'd play all day and in to the dusk, until the streetlights came on, our cue to wind down the days activities and scurry our filthy young selves home.

Far from a natural athlete, I picked up certain sports quicker than others, something not lost on my Dad. A couple ground balls to the face soured me to baseball. Being small weak and slow made football and basketball inopportune. Running was equal parts boring and painful, and soccer we found downright weird. As my Dad would say, what kind of sport only uses half your body?

But that left ice hockey. If a person grew up in a monastery, they were likely to meditate some. If you grew up in the suburbs of Boston during the 1970's era of Bobby Orr and the Big Bad Bruins, you were going to play some ice hockey. And did our family ever.

The old man loved his puck. During the week he played in several adult leagues. On weekends, he  refereed and coached all sorts of mites, squirts and pee wee teams, all the while taking me and my brothers to every local high school, college, and minor league game within driving distance, with the pinnacle of our boyhood hockey fandom a few memorable trips to the revered Boston Garden to cheer on our beloved Bruins.

On Winter weekends, when a rare gap in our schedules allowed, Dad would pack up the car with our skates and sticks and head out on the road through the Boston suburbs, seeking the perfect frozen pond to skate away the day. And on the rare school day when the conditions were just right, Dad would have Mom call us out sick while Dad would again load up the car with all our gear for an all day family skating extravaganza on some of the most pristine frozen bodies of water imaginable.

As enjoyable as those skating outings were, our real family bonding took place a few evenings a week during the National Hockey League season. At 7:30 sharp, to the living room our family would pour, tuning in channel 38 to listen to famed Boston Bruins broadcaster Fred Cusick announce another Boston Bruin hockey game to all of greater New England. The Buss family, Mom Dad, my two brothers, our two Siamese cats and our prized English bulldog Princess would battle for position in our increasingly cramped living room, convening our own version of church, Boston Bruins hockey style, all huddled around our giant black and white Zenith TV that weighed as much as a car, watching every single game as a family.

Being all of eight years old, I had a bed time that interfered with the game's final horn, especially when my Bruins traveled to the west coast and its middle of the night start times. Undeterred, I would feign sleep in my room, listening to the games on my little Snoopy transistor radio, waiting for the opportune time to sneak downstairs and catch some late night hockey action with Dad. And there I would be, tip-toeing down the staircase, hiding behind the stairwell, listening to the game, hoping Dad hadn't nodded off yet, waiting for my moment. And right when the action got hot and I knew Dad was engaged, I would jump down the final stairs enthusiastically and ask if I could watch.

The plan rarely worked. I thought I was being all covert and sneaky, but my Dad always knew I was there. Most of the time I'd get barked at to get back to bed. But there were those rare occasions when he'd let me come down and watch, staying up late together rooting on our favorite sports team. And there we would sit, together in to the wee hours, just me and Dad, him reminding me to not tell my Mother as we watched the Bruins beat up on the Vancouver Canucks and the Los Angeles Kings and the California Golden Seals, young me trying my hardest to stay awake and not get sent back to room.

 

As the soul crushing New England winters gave way to the equally soul crushing Northeast summers, the skates were put away for more seasonal fare. My folks were members of a club, the Cedardale Swim and Tennis club. Every weekend, we would pack up the car, my parents, my brothers, and myself, bathing suits and all, and set up shop at the pool for a needed break from the stifling summer heat. But before Dad would join us poolside, he always had somewhere else to go first.

Dad, dressed in white from head to toe, would slither away with a couple of vintage wooden tennis rackets tucked under his arm.  He was going to play that other sport, the mysterious tennis, that for some reason he had yet to involve myself or the family in. Within minutes of being at the pool I would get restless, opting to sneak off to hunt down Dad and see what this tennis stuff was all about. 

 

Cedardale was a sprawling club full of terraced clay courts as far as the eye could see, so finding him wasn't easy. On my search, I would pass by court after court, seeing the sport of tennis played for the very first time. Groups of adults, dressed stylishly, swinging elegant pieces of wood at a fuzzy yellow ball, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The sounds, the rhythms, the focus, the movements, the pageantry of it all; I was captivated by tennis' cadence right from the start.

Eventually finding Dad, I would watch from afar, guerilla style, hiding behind a bush or a barrier. If only I had some camo and binoculars. Either I was pretty bad at hiding or Dad had a 6th sense where I was at all times, but within minutes my scouting mission would be foiled, with Dad imploring me to get back to the pool with the others. Dejected, I would slowly march my way back to home base, but not before seeing lots of tennis balls being hit, planting the seed in my young athletic self that tennis was something I might like to try. 

 

One weekend, Dad was away playing tennis at something called a tournament when our phone rang. My Mom answered and within seconds she cried out with joy. "Your Father won, your father won." Not exactly sure what that meant, I assumed anything that made Mom that excited had to be pretty cool.

Hours later, with me, my brothers and Mom eagerly awaiting Dad's triumphant return, he pulled up the driveway and in to the garage. After a brief delay, Mom asked me to check on Dad to see if he needed help with his stuff. As I entered the garage I came upon a scene, my father bent over in agony in his red Datsun 240Z, his body doubled over with cramps.

I approached his car door tentatively to get a closer look. As I neared, I saw tears streaming down my Dad's face. Wait, Dad's cry too? 

 

Frozen at the sight of my everything in so much pain, I asked what I should do.

He handed me an object. "Here, hold this and try to pull me up." And in my hands he placed a trophy.

I'd never held a trophy before. In awe, I stared wide-eyed at a shiny tennis player atop a marble base, with a gold inscription. Men's 35 and over Winner. Was this what winning at tennis was all about, cool trophies and paralyzing pain?  

 

He held out his arm, imploring me to pull as hard as I could. And I would pull and pull, yet his adult body was stubborn. I tried to lift his leg out of the door, only to watch him recoil further, the cramps now incapacitating him fully. My efforts were proving futile. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get him to budge. He was like a burn victim, with my every embrace, the more magnified his pain became.

With the assistance of my Mom and brothers, we eventually got him out of the car and to the house. With Dad stabilized, he went on to detail how his weekend of matches had gone. But my focus remained squarely on the center of our dinner table where the trophy stood. Being so young, I had no idea what it took to earn a trophy, or how good one had to get to win one, or the sacrifice involved in pursuing them. All I knew was that shiny little tennis player atop the marble base was the coolest thing I'd ever seen and I had to have one. And it was that night I asked my Dad if I could play tennis too. 

 

I don't recall the exact moment I hit my first ever tennis ball. I'm sure it somehow involved my Father. Like everyone trying tennis for the first time, I'm sure I was terrible. But something about it captivated me, bringing me back a second time, then a third time... Now a lifetime.

Back in the early 1970's, learning tennis wasn't so simple. There were no academies to be dropped off at, few tennis professionals to groom young talent, no junior rackets, no online courses, and USTA short court green dot tennis was still decades away. Learning tennis back then involved having a parent who could hit the ball a little, with some basic knowledge of how tennis was played.
 

Which described my Father perfectly. My Dad could play a little, had a ranking in the New England 35s. (And a trophy!) More importantly, he was a student of the game. He followed the professional tours closely, knew the players, followed the trends. Additionally, he grew up in Southern California, watching future greats like Billie Jean King, Allen Fox and Dennis Ralston compete, and in the process caught a terminal case of the beauty that was tennis.

 

Tennis got a hold of my Dad back then and never let go. And in the attics of his mind he vowed that if ever were to have an athletic son, tennis would be the sport of choice for his family to be. And fortunately for us, it was the early 1970's, right on the cusp of America's great tennis boom, where opportunities were soon aplenty for athletic kids like myself who weren't afraid to run around some and compete.

  

Around this time a young brash American named Jimmy Connors began dominating the professional tennis world. My Dad became fixated on Connors and how he played differently than the greats before him. He was the original power baseliner, taking the ball early on both sides, hitting it hard flat and deep with a crushing two handed backhand never seen before in tennis. And though my father was a rocket scientist, one needed not be one to see Connors' dominance and the direction tennis was heading.

 

Being eight years old meant learning tennis with Dad's spare racket, a lovely but ungodly heavy Slazenger 4 5/8 gripped wood frame. Let's just say hitting the ball flat back then wasn't as much a choice as a necessity, the wrist strength required to roll such a heavy stick still many years away. As with all small kids back then, I held on for dear life, stepping in and leaning on every shot with every ounce of my being. Flat forehands with an eastern grip, two handed backhands held like a hockey stick, ripped with all my might. In a nutshell, play like Jimmy Connors.
 

Proper equipment aside, the most important aspect of learning tennis in the 1970's involved having a parent willing to put in countless selfless hours playing unspeakably bad tennis with their temperamental child. And that would describe me and my Dad to a tee.

My Father picked up tennis too late to ever be any good, but it became his life's passion, with him determined to make it my passion too. In the endless days of a Northeast summer there was ample time to play. But during the frigid New England winters, finding available court time could be problematic.

So Dad devised a plan.

Dad figured the only way for us to get any tennis in during the week would be very early in the morning, before work, before school, hell, even before the first light of day.

Three times a week, at 4:59 a.m, (for 5:00 a.m. was considered sleeping in) my Dad would quietly enter my room to wake me, from which our morning scramble began. Before heading to the courts, we both had duties to do. Dad would head down to the garage to warm up the car. I would get dressed, venturing out to the driveway to fetch the paper and see if any snow was in need of shoveling. With all systems go, we would roll out of our driveway on to the dark icy roads of a New England winter's morning, on our way to the Reading Indoor Tennis Bubble to hit some balls.
 

Often we would arrive to the bubble early, before it opened. Which meant there was nobody inside yet to turn the heat on. But like clockwork, there we would be, at 5:45 a.m., slowly warming ourselves up as the frigid bubble came to life. 

 

My Father loved being different. He took pride in our being the first ones to the courts those mornings. He used to love to tell me."You're not very good, but you're a helluva lot better than all the kids  sleeping in their beds right now."

Those early morning sessions were tender but also tense. He didn't want to just teach me tennis. He wanted me to get good. So I could play with him. The messaging became clear early on. This had to happen. And he was going exert every bit of his formidable yet temperamental will to assure it. Let's just say a calm bedside manner was not part of my Dad's teaching DNA. 

 

There was nothing high performance about those early morning hits. It was just Dad, me, a couple big old wooden rackets, and a can of used balls. Just one can. Three balls. That was it. And that was how I would learn to play tennis.

What that meant was there were consequences for my making errors, and with me being a beginner, I made a lot. When I would miss, I would run up to the net as fast as I could (walking to pick up balls was unacceptable) often catching a harsh earful of old school Father-son motivation in the process.

Getting yelled at for missing all those shots back then would have turned most kids off to tennis. For me, it had a somewhat different effect. It turned me off to missing. The logic seemed pretty simple. Don't miss, don't get yelled at. The quintessential negative incentive, the kind of stuff highly frowned upon in today's parenting climate.  And though many of those early morning sessions ended in tears, we trudged on, my father and I, doing our early morning tennis dance at the Reading Bubble for several years running.

 

Then somewhere in the middle of it all, I stopped missing so much. With this development, weekend tournaments soon entered the equation. My first couple events I got rubbed out pretty convincingly, but apparently my Father saw enough to elicit hope, continuing to sign me up for more. 

 

And then it happened. Unheralded and unseeded, I mowed right through the draw against older and better players, winning my first ever tourney at the ripe old age of ten.

And what a drive home that was. The two of us in his sports car, beaming, proud, basking in the rewards of all those early morning hits. Myself clutching my first ever trophy, staring at it like a winning lottery ticket, the only time I let go was to slurp down my victory milkshake from the ice cream parlor.

 

Who could ever have guessed that winning tournament drive home at such a young age would be the high water mark of our relationship.

For something happened after that first victory. Tennis all of a sudden wasn't just a game we played. It became an obsession. My Father's obsession. Soon, all our family's resources, financial and emotional, were being fervently channeled toward my quick and sudden success as a junior tennis player.

Normally being the focal point of all my father's attention was something I pined for badly. But spending so much time with my Dad was complicated, for Dad had moods. Cheery ebullient one minute, quiet, sullen the next, with an impulsive booming volcanic temper always looming. 

 

He ruled our house by fear.  When he'd arrive home from work, my brothers and I would stop everything we were doing, snapping to attention to await his arrival. To our respective places we would go, frozen, never knowing what kind of reaction we'd receive. Would we get tickled, yelled at, or just completely ignored. We literally never knew. We were a band of brothers walking on eggshells right from the start, imprisoned in an incubator for high anxiety, amplified ever higher when the beers began to flow.

 

For my Dad liked to drink. A lot. Every day. All my earliest memories involved my Dad and a beer in his hand. There was a pattern to it all. A morose quietness that slowly abated to joviality, full of play and laughter. Quite alluring, always magnetic. The power of his personality, with his booming voice and hearty laugh, would suck us all in. But as the beers continued to flow, the stories would start. The same story as the week before, and the week before that. Did he not know he just told us that story? 

 

Do we dare bring it up?

 

Sometime after the stories the barbs would begin. The sarcasm, the teasing, the digs, the insults, the criticism. There was the four of us to just his one, but we were badly outnumbered, for no one dare interrupt, let alone push back. We just sat there and took it, night after night, verbal beatings cutting to the core of who we were. Helpless hostages in some strange nightly ritual, all fueled by alcohol.

 

Why did he have to be so mean? Didn't he know he was our everything?

 

In time we would learn his rhythms, his timing, the windows when to get up, to make excuses to leave the table or plain just hide in our rooms. My brothers and I just trying to survive, not wanting to be the last one stuck at the table, for these sessions could go long.

 

And now with my tennis seated at the head of the table, those long sessions centered around myself and  my tennis and all I was doing wrong and he had the charts to prove it night after night after night.

And what started out so exciting, getting to play tennis with my Dad every day, soon morphed in to a volatile experiment in human behavior with all the wrong ingredients, with both my father and I ill-equipped and unprepared to manage what lie ahead for us. Little did we know then that the activity my father chose to unite us, the sport of tennis, would become the same activity that would irreparably damage our relationship in the years to come.