Page 52
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This page argues that basketball teaches a form of intelligence about the universe that formal schooling cannot fully match.
With the noisy ending restored, the page becomes more direct: the speaker rejects the crossed-out claim of simply being smarter and instead says others `wernt EvEn thINking / About the universs.` Fouls, the line, the basket, and the remembered back-side pass all become ways of understanding pattern and consequence. The final `dicided to let them / in on it` turns basketball knowledge into something the speaker wants to share.
Starting from team arithmetic - 'dealing with ten and hopefully four are thinking just like you' - the page argues 'basketball is closely watched because very few can play it'. It then drops into childhood memory: the first time at the basket, when 'I turned and in the air gave it over my back side sholder', the handwritten insertion carrying the move. The close makes the game a private cosmology others miss - 'They wernt EvEn thINking About the universs, so I dicided to let them in on it'. Source spellings 'sholder', 'wernt', 'universs', 'dicided', 'schooll' preserved; crossed-out lines were omitted, so the lower section stays slightly provisional.