It started early in life. Paul and John competed, and occasionally fought, as did Robbie and I. My father nailed a backboard with an attached hoop to the backside of the house. The driveway was dirt but smooth enough to dribble on. There was one drawback: right next to the basket, the house angled back to the garage. Someone driving for a layup, if not careful, could run into a sharp corner of the house. Robbie, my friend Ron Stevens, and I were playing there one day, alternating one-on-one. Robbie was older, bigger, and a better athlete than Ron or I. He was outscoring us and elbowing, pushing, and knocking us around. Angry at losing and taking a physical beating in the process, I let him drive past me for a layup, and, just as he started up to take it, I shoved him from behind, right into the corner of the house. He hit it hard, bounced off, and fell heavily to the ground. I immediately regretted what I’d done and, thinking he was seriously hurt, started toward him. Just before I got to him, he jumped up and came at me, swearing and swinging. His first punch hit me square in the face and knocked me backward, over a low wire fence that separated the driveway from the garden. He jumped over the fence, landed on top of me, and started slugging away. Fortunately for me, Ron began yelling, “He’s killing him! He’s killing him!” My mother ran out of the house and pulled Robbie off me, thereby saving, if not my honor, at least my teeth.
The competition continued in other ways, and in most of them Robbie scored heavily. We were close in age, born just twenty months apart, separated by one year in school. We grew up together, he the older brother who was a prominent athlete, who always had money and a girlfriend, I the younger, frail brother who was not good in sports, hardly ever had a date, and worked for him to earn spending money. In his senior year Robbie led Waterville High School to the state title in basketball and was voted the Most Valuable Player in the championship game. In my senior year I was unable to make the varsity team. That accurately summed up the difference in our status. Yet I loved and admired him.
While still in high school he was already a successful entrepreneur, engaged in several business ventures. On most afternoons and evenings during the school year we and many of our classmates went to the Boys Club to play, mostly basketball. One evening Robbie approached me with a proposition. He said he had gotten “the concession” to do the janitorial work at the Boys Club; if I were willing to help he would split the fee with me. I didn’t know what it meant to get a concession, but it sounded important, so I quickly accepted his offer. I had worked for Robbie before; he was a good source of spending money. At nine o’clock, when the Club closed, he handed me a broom and told me to sweep all of the floors, dust the desks and chairs, empty the wastebaskets, and clean the bathrooms. While I was working he went into the director’s office, sat in the director’s chair, put his feet up on the director’s desk, and talked on the telephone with Janet Fraser, then his girlfriend, later his wife. When I cleaned the director’s office I had to be quiet so as not to disturb him. At ten-thirty I reported to him that I had finished. He said good night to Janet, hung up the phone, and we went home.
At the end of the first week he paid me $2.50. I thanked him and thought about how lucky I was to have such a smart and generous brother. A few weeks later he told me he had gotten “the concession” to do the janitorial work at a small office building next door to the Boys Club, and he offered me the same deal. I couldn’t believe my luck. I already had two other jobs, delivering newspapers in the morning and washing cars at a used-car lot in the afternoon, so with this new job I would be earning over $10 a week—an incredible amount of money at the time. I had been at it long enough to be able to clean the Boys Club in an hour; the office building took another hour. So Robbie talked to Janet on the phone for two hours every night. I couldn’t figure out how they could see each other at school every day and still find something to talk about for two hours each night. I suppose it beat cleaning the bathrooms.
This arrangement continued for several months. I then learned, by accident, that Robbie was being paid $15 a week for each concession. That meant he was paying me $5 a week while keeping $25. And I was doing all the work. That didn’t seem right to me, so I screwed up my courage and confronted him. He calmly explained that it took a lot of knowledge and effort to get a concession; if he hadn’t done that there would be no jobs for me and I would not be earning $5 a week. He then used a phrase I’ll never forget: “I’m management and you’re labor, and management always gets paid more.” I was still troubled, but I couldn’t think of any rejoinder, so I left and continued the arrangement. But I recall thinking, When I grow up I want to be management, like Robbie.
Robbie was more than a brother to me. Although close in age we had an adult-child relationship. He got his first real job at the age of six. By the time he was in high school, besides the janitorial services, he had developed and was operating a golf driving range. He also bought a cotton candy machine and promoted entertainment and sporting events in Maine. He hired me and Ron Stevens to run the cotton candy machine. He rented a pickup truck and carted the two of us and the machine to several of the fairs that blanket rural Maine in the summer. He would drop us off in the morning at a space he had rented at whatever fair was taking place that week. We spent the day making and selling cotton candy, lots of it. Each night he picked us up, took the cash proceeds of the day, and paid us each $2. Once, after a particularly busy and productive day, Ron asked for more than $2. Robbie patiently explained that he had to pay for the cotton candy machine, for the pickup truck, for the gas, for the booth at the fair. He concluded by saying, “Now that I think about it, I may have to cut you guys back to one dollar a day.” It had the predictable effect. He then gave Ron his management-labor speech. After Robbie left I said to Ron, “You’ve got to admit, he’s a really smart guy.” Ron agreed. We left, each to go home to bed, elated to be $2 richer but exhausted from a long hot day at the cotton candy machine.
Among the many events Robbie promoted, two stand out in my memory. He brought Emmett Kelly, a nationally known circus clown, for a performance at the field house at Colby College. It was well attended, though not sold out. As always, Robbie griped about the expenses, especially the $5 he paid Ron and me for our assistance in organizing and running the event. In the spring, after the basketball season was over for the colleges and high schools, Robbie hired well-known college players to barnstorm across Maine, playing against local semiprofessional or pickup teams. (Johnny, the real basketball star of the family, had done that the preceding two years.) The most notable player Robbie got to play was Walter Dukes, then a star at Seton Hall University, later a professional in the National Basketball Association. Dukes, an African American, was seven feet two inches tall. He was scheduled to take the train from New York to Portland, where Robbie and I were to pick him up and drive him to Waterville for the first game. I was with Robbie when he telephoned Dukes the day before the event to confirm the schedule. Dukes was concerned that we would have trouble finding him when he got off the train in Portland, so Robbie told him to wear a red rose in his lapel. After Robbie hung up I told him that we’d have no trouble recognizing Dukes and that the red rose was unnecessary. “I know,” he replied, “but he’s never been to Maine and is probably thinking about a big crowded station like New York City. He wants reassurance, and we should give it to him.” The next day, when the biggest man I had ever seen stepped off the train in Portland, he was wearing a bright red rose in the lapel of his blue suit. On the drive to Waterville I sat in the backseat and listened in awe as Robbie and Dukes swapped basketball stories as though they were old friends.