Those basketball seasons…

Palouse was the easternmost team in the Whitman County basketball league.

We usually ended up as one of the top teams in the league. Colfax, the county seat, and the largest city in the county, was often the leader. So when Palouse played Colfax it was a big deal.

Other teams in the county included St. John, Pine City, Steptoe, Garfield, Oakesdale, Rosalia and Lacrosse.

Steptoe’s gym was not regular size. The out-of-bounds line was against the wall at court side. They allowed one row of chairs on the floor and you had to raise your feet when players were at the edge of the court.

That wasn’t the strangest thing about Steptoe’s gym. What regular seating there was was on a balcony on both sides of the gym floor. Better get there early if you wanted a seat. The odd thing was that the ceiling was so low that quite often the visiting team’s shots hit the ceiling. The locals were used to this and adopted a flatter approach to their shots.

At Pine City one year, there were only four boys in high school and the league had to allow an eighth grader to fill out the team. Those farm kids were scrappy and it was a test to play them.

Lacrosse was tougher in football than in basketball. LaVern Torgeson from there played for the Cougars before being drafted by Detroit, and he played in Detroit and for the Washington Redskins for seven seasons.

I met LaVern on a Whitman County bus of potential draftees in 1950 when the government was frantically trying to find men for the Korean War. There were over 30 on the bus, and LaVern and I were the only ones turned down. He had had several knee surgeries from playing football and I had a sickness at the time.

I liked it when we played Garfield and Oakesdale. We could take the train to and from the games. At the time, the Northern Pacific left Palouse and would get to Garfield or Oakesdale in time for the game. The train ran the other way, so we could take it back about three hours later. The train times didn’t work for Rosalia.

I recall one game at Colfax. We loaded up one car, a Reo, with kids. We had two flats going and two coming back. Those were the days when you pried the tire off the rim and put a patch on and then pumped up the tire by hand pump.

St. John was always tough. The town has a vital spirit. I was going through the town and noticed a bunch of pickups and cars at a vacant lot in the middle of town. I stopped and asked what was going on and was told that the people were building a pocket park. When I retuned through there the next day, the park was finished.

That was the kind of spirit you find in farming communities.

Palouse was competitive in basketball, but not often the county champs.