James Etheridge

Michael David Ham
1954 – 2021
“Hambone”

I first met Hambone when I was seven years old and he was eight. We played on the same Little League team, the Barons. Our teams were named after the teams in the Southern League. We were the Birmingham Barons and wore black and white, just like the big club. Hambone was our catcher. I played left out, due to the fact that I had never played baseball or any other sport before in my life.

Hambone and I became friends and our parents became good friends as well. I played football for the first time that fall and we were on the same team, the Wasps. He and another kid named Wimpy became my best friends on the team. We called him Wimpy because he loved hamburgers. All kids love hamburgers, but Wimpy took it to another level. In high school, Hambone and Wimpy became best friends. Years after we had all finally grown up, Hambone and Wimpy remained best friends and still see or talk to one another on a daily basis. It’s funny how life works out sometimes.

That first season on the Barons turned out to become pivotal in my life and my parents’ lives. A kid named Eddie, who was two years older than me, was on the team. His parents and my parents became best friends. Eddie’s younger brother was named Herb and Herb became my best friend outside of the neighborhood. Our families spent holidays together, went to family reunions together and remained lifelong friends even after we had moved to opposite ends of the Metro Atlanta area.

When my cousin Wayne moved to Gresham Park, his next-door neighbor was Hambone. My mother and Hambone’s mother were in the same Sunday School class and sat next to each other at Gresham Park Baptist Church for years. I remember vividly my mother calling to me in her Texas twang, “Jimmeee! Ah need ya t’ git reddy, weeze a-goin’ over to th’ Hamziz.” My mother’s grammar, God Rest Her Soul, was atrocious.

The first zip line I ever rode was in Hambone’s back yard. It’s actually the only one I’ve ever ridden, which is maybe why a zip line ride is near the top of the bucket list. Hambone’s was nowhere near as sophisticated as the zip lines in the North Georgia Mountains today. It wasn’t even called a zip line. Hambone’s was called the Shoot-To-Shoot and it consisted of a cable that ran from the top of his tree house on one side of the back yard down to the top of the wooden fence on the opposite side. The cable had a six-inch pulley wheel on it. Hambone had cut a bicycle handlebar, put it through the hole in the pulley and attached handlebar grips to each side. You would hold onto the grips, go off the front of the tree house and ride the pulley down to the fence on the other side of the yard. Ever the entrepreneur, Hambone bought a roll of tickets from the dime store. He sold them for a quarter apiece and a ticket bought you a ride on the Shoot-To-Shoot. There were a few mid-air falls and a number of crashes into the wooden fence. Nobody was ever seriously injured and we would climb back up the ladder to the tree house for another ticket and another ride on the Shoot-To-Shoot. Hambone would even ride it hanging from his knees. I never tried that myself.

Hambone had the highest threshold of pain of anyone I have ever known in my life. The inevitable childhood cuts, bumps, burns, scrapes and bruises were of no concern to him. In a football game at Gresham Park, he was carrying the ball and took a pretty hard hit on a tackle. In the huddle he realized his mouth was bleeding and took out his mouthpiece. His front tooth was stuck in the hard rubber. Hambone put the mouthpiece back in his mouth and finished the series of downs. He went without a front tooth for years before eventually getting it capped in high school.

During two-a-day football practices one year, we were going through a coverage drill and rotated from one side to the other. When it was my turn, I lined up against Hambone. Friendship went out the window when you were lined up against one another on opposite sides of the ball. I ran my pattern and the throw was a little high. I stretched out to make the catch and Hambone put his helmet right in my side. It knocked the breath out of me, but somehow I made the catch. I ran back gasping and wheezing and handed the ball to Duke. I bent over in line with my hands on my knees, trying to regain the ability to breathe. One of the guys behind me started laughing. A senior captain looked at him and said, “What are you laughing at? He made the catch, didn’t he?” The guy quit laughing and I began to breathe normally just as it was my turn to line up and cover a pass pattern.

The morning of the first day of two-a-days that same year, a little black terrier mix dog with brown eyebrows was on the practice field. There was also an empty bottle of Jim Beam bourbon on the field. The little dog was there that afternoon and the next morning. He became our mascot and we named him Jim Beam.

He became part of the team that day and Hambone took him home. Beam went from being a homeless stray to living like a king overnight. He was never fenced and attended every practice. He sat on the sidelines on Friday nights at Panthersville Stadium and rode on the bus with the team to away games. Hambone brought him to school on football Fridays. He went to class with Hambone and had free roam of the gym during the pep rallies. He loved the attention and never acted out, although there was one incident involving a member of the drill team. The Royalettes were performing a routine at a pep rally and Beam must have decided that one backside was shinier than the rest. He jumped up and nipped it and the owner of the backside let out a shriek. She was mortified, to say the least.

Jim Beam was our mascot for that year only. He was mysterious in how he appeared and how he departed. After each game when the team bus returned to the school, we all left for our after-game dates or social gatherings. Hambone took Jim Beam by his house and let him out as he had done all season long. When he came home that night Beam was nowhere to be found. We never saw him again. He showed up the very first day of the season and left on the very last night. Jim Beam was a magical part of not only the football team but also the entire school that season. There are even two pictures of him in the yearbook. One is of him standing on the bench during a football game. In the other he is sitting in class and the teacher is petting him. I hope that he is waiting on The Rainbow Bridge for each and every Warhawk. I know that he is waiting for Hambone.

Hambone loved animals. He had a horse throughout his childhood and teenage years and has owned horses for most of his adult life. One Sunday afternoon I was riding down Bouldercrest Road from East Atlanta and just as I rounded the big curve before Walker, there was a rider on a horse galloping full speed down the road. The rider was wearing a white Walker football jersey. Then I saw the familiar #32 and realized it was my buddy. I slowed way down so as to not spook the horse. When he slowed from a gallop to a trot I eased around him, stuck my hand out of the open driver’s side window and waved. Hambone gave me a thumbs up and we both continued on our way.

As fearless as he was on the football field and on the wrestling mat, Hambone was just as fearless on a pair of water skis. His girlfriend’s parents were members of a club called The Gresham Park Boating Club. They would travel to Clark Hill Reservoir in east Georgia for weekends of camping, boating and fun in the sun. Hambone liked to finish off a skiing session with a flourish by jumping outside of the wake, letting go of the rope and riding the skis onto the shore where he would step out of them and walk to the picnic table. The adults warned him against doing that but, as is usually the case with teenage boys, their advice fell on deaf ears. Sure enough, he misjudged his speed on one occasion, hit the beach full speed and went through a thicket of trees before coming out on the beach at the other side. Everyone ran to see if he was okay and he told them that he was fine. What he didn’t tell them was that he hurt like crazy but, as he said, “I couldn’t let them know that.”

A friend of ours named Digger bought a ski boat the summer after we graduated and we began to take skiing trips to Lake Lanier. They were usually day trips, but on one occasion Digger, Hambone, a guy named Zeke and myself went up on a Friday night. We camped out and skied all day Saturday. Upon arrival on Friday night, we decided to indulge in a little nighttime skiing. We doubled up with two ropes on the back of the boat and Hambone and I were the first two to go. Digger had a spotlight on the boat and while he drove, Zeke kept the spotlight on us skiing. Hambone jumped outside the wake and Zeke followed him with the spotlight. If you have ever been on a pair of water skis in the middle of Lake Lanier when it is pitch dark, you know that it can be pretty unnerving, even if you are eighteen years old, fearless and know everything.

Hambone shares my love of Volkswagens. He had a beige mid-Sixties model Bug he drove in high school. Hambone and the Bug were involved in a fender bender and the front fender was replaced with a blue one. He spray-painted the other fender, the hood and the two front quarter panels blue as well. It looked kind of weird, but when you saw it coming you knew it was Hambone. He now owns two convertible Bugs and a VW bus that is painted psychedelic. It has the Sgt. Pepper’s logo on the front and is appropriately called The Magic Bus.

A pillar of Gresham Park, Coach D. of the DeKalb Yellow Jackets passed away and many people from the community attended his funeral. Hambone drove up from Ft. Myers, Florida and arrived just about the same time as the wrestling coach and backfield football coach at Walker, Coach G. There was lots of hugging, handshakes and laughter. That was what Coach D. would have wanted. At one point there was a group of us standing in a circle. The group included Duke, Hambone, Harry, Coach G., Stan and myself. We all had been on the wrestling team, the football team or both. “Well,” somebody said, “here we are. Full circle.” We all looked at one another, smiled and laughed. Friendship and brotherhood. The memories are there. They always will be.

– From “A Time And A Season” by James Etheridge. Published by Amazon Books ©2018