While in the 2nd grade, my older brother won a Pepsi-Cola contest. He guessed correctly the number of beans in a jar at a Co-Op Super Market. We won 15 minutes of free shopping. The 10 brothers and sisters (4 were not in the D.C. area at the time) and my parents grabbed $11,000 worth of groceries in 15 minutes. In 1995 money that is close to $60,000. We gave the groceries back to the store and took the check. My dad bought a new house in the Virginia suburbs called McLean. We were now into the full American dream.
Our house was always open. There would be several neighborhood kids walking through. My dad came home from work one night and saw three kids watching T.V. in our living-room. He declared, "Are you my children? I don't remember you. What are your names?" They said that their parents did not allow them to watch T.V. at their house. Only guests were allowed in their living-rooms. Like always he let them stay.
The milkman would come twice a week and walk right into our home. He would make room in the refrigerator and load it up with milk. My little brother Fred and I would sneak into his truck and take a box of donuts while he was in our house delivering. The dry cleaner man would walk into our house and take the clothes out of our living room closet and deposit the clean clothes with the receipt of course. Our front and back doors were always open. I have the best memories living in McLean, Virginia. The neighborhood kids would play kick-the-can and multiply tag.
We had a Suarez tradition of the neighborhood paper route for the Washington Post. It started with Xavier and quickly got passed down to Charlie, Mel, me and lastly Fred. Our neighborhood had plenty of federal government workers including the Pentagon and these men wanted their paper no later that 5:30 a.m.. Tough time for teenage kids who normally went to bed at 11 or 12 a.m..
One time Mel was out of town and forgot to ask someone to deliver the papers, He called me and did not know the houses so he said just drop one off at every other house and you will be about 50% correct.
[ Having played basketball all my life and gone to camps all up and down the east coast, I know that 50 % of close games won on the last shot result from a rebounded missed shot. I quickly flashbacked to N.C. State winning the NCAA national championship title on a rebounded last shot in the early 1980's and coach Jim Valvano running up and down the court looking for a player to hug.
I had drilled that concept into my players since preseason. The key was to get the inside position which the opponents would let you have since they did not want you to post them up inside. The second thing to remember was to shoot the ball with 3 or 2 seconds left on the clock so that the rebound and put back would count.]
Many times we would oversleep and wake up late and get everyone's help in delivering the papers quickly. Once in a while the papers got wet. By this time the customers knew our family and our phone number. My mother was drying the papers everywhere possible. She told one of the customers, "the paper in the oven is almost done. We'll get it to you very soon."
One Christmas it snowed so hard that the paper truck could not get through. So we had to deliver three days worth at the same time. My short sister and godmother, Margarita, walked into a snow drift and disappeared. All we could hear were cries for help and finally saw a waving hand.
[ When I first came to Berkeley, I was concerned by the physical fitness of our players. they looked like they had watched too much T.V. and read books all summer. The second head coach at Berkeley since I arrived and my close friend, Steve Kitchens, and I decided that as soon as school started these poor boys were going to have to hit the weights and track. The only way to win in December was to get ready in September. Of course our second goal for the following year was summer camps. I could see that this pre-season conditioning had helped our team because the starters looked fresh and ready to win.
Rebounding was always my special talent. When I was playing in college, we had two seven-footers on the team but I always got more rebounds then they. When I played in the D.C. playgrounds, the players would say, "hey, you jump like one of the brothers!" To this day I am convinced that my jumping abilities came from three years of carrying the Washington Post. On Sundays one paper weight about five pounds. I would carry about 20 at a time. Any child that does that in their growing years will jump out of the gym. I had taught that to my players and made them do daily toe raises before practice.]
I had two very close friends: Richard Strong who is now a forest ranger in Utah and Vinny D'Agostino who still lives in D.C.. We would play a board game RISK non-stop for 48 hours. We were always organizing games like capture the flag and flag football. Richard was into chemistry. He was stirring sugar and warming it up until it becomes an explosive. Sure enough we heard a big bang. Richard came in with his glasses all crooked and shirt with burn holes. That was a sight. He also made lead pipe bombs that were very dangerous.
One night my friends dared me to throw a 10 cent water balloon at a car. There was the normal 15 to 20 kids standing around. I threw a beautiful shot and hit the car right on the front windshield. The car swerved and barely missed a telephone pole. Everyone took off running.
The man got out and started chasing the tall skinny boy, me. I had so much adrenaline that I jumped and cleared the neighborhood fence in one jump. I heard a man give out a high screech and I turned around and saw that he did not clear the fence. He had, in fact, only gotten one leg over the fence and landed on what we call his "gogones." Of course by the time I got home the man was in my living room with my dad waiting for me. I always got caught, everyone knew the tall skinny Cuban.
Another time we were all mad at this man who had twisted my brother's hand behind his back because we had cut through his yard on the way to the ball fields. Everyone knew we were going to get him back. The normal gang of 15 or 20 kids were watching my brother Mel light a M-80 (1/4 stick of dynamite). Mel could not do it by himself so I went up to help. I held the M-80 while he lit it. It started and I asked, "So what I do with it?" He said, "throw it!" I threw it onto the front porch. Everyone ran for their life. A small group stuck together. Nothing. A dud. All of a sudden, BANG! Louder than you could image. We were all amazed. The man came out his house and had a shotgun. He got in his car and came after us. We ran like hell across a field scared to death and we could see his headlights go up in the air as his car jumped the curb. We knew we were in trouble. Everyone split up in different directions. My younger brother Fred got tired and hid behind a wall by the school. Mel and I took off and got away. We waited an hour before going home. Sure enough when we got there, there was the man with Fred and our dad. We were caught again.
Apparently the man had caught Fred and put him in the car and told him we were all going to jail. Fred sang like a canary. We had to buy the man a new front door and paint his entrance way. But it was worth it. I always thank God that no one was standing behind that door because they would have gotten seriously hurt from the flying splinters.
I had many jobs while growing up. Cutting lawns in the neighborhood, washing cars, working for rich families who lived near Robert Kennedy, and working at gas stations. I was working at one in McLean and the favorite trick was to give truck drivers wrong directions. We would get them on the off ramp to Dullas Airport. Once on this ramp it was 10-15 miles there and another 10-15 miles back. One day a truck driver came back and had a crow bar in his hand. The worker who gave him the wrong directions hid in the bathroom. We buzzed for the police. The driver saw the man run into the bathroom and followed him. He started banging the door down with the crow bar. Thank God the police got there in time. When we finally opened the door this poor man was drenched in sweat and had gone to the bathroom in his pants. We all learned a valuable lesson that day.
I got my friend Vinny D'Agostino a job at this same gas station. One day Vinny came to work on his dirt bike. He was popping wheelies and showing off. We were all sitting in the waiting room that had glass walls so you could see the cars drive up, Vinny came right at us and popped a wheely. Unfortunately the bike slipped on an oil spot and came crashing into that waiting room. We all dove for the door. There was glass flying and the motorcycle rotating out of control on the floor knocking over chairs and a coffee table. After Vinny got stitched up, we spent the entire night watching over the station until the glass wall could be replaced.
(I will need to come back here to put in more stories. Bill Hamm's gas station.)
One time a customer asked me where my head was. I pointed to my head and said, "right here, sir." He said, "no, your head!" I said, "I think it's right here." He said, "no, your shit hole." (Head was a military term for bathroom.)
I once pumped 20 gallons of gas into a man's car that had only a 15 gallon capacity. The man accused me of stealing 5 gallons and trying to charge him. The manager could not figure it out. He asked the customer to open the trunk of his car. Sure enough five gallons spilled into the trunk. This was a very important lesson. No matter how things look, there might be a good explanation.
[ I always found out in coaching that the players always had a good idea when they did something stupid on the court. Like calling a time out at the end of first half to set a last second shot. They had seen that on T.V. where the NBA have many time outs to burn. Not so in high school. You save the time outs for the very end of the game. They showed they had learn this lesson because we had saved that last time out to set up this last play.]
I worked at a 24 hour station and one night a man in a nice tux came walking up and asked for gas. I told him that our five gallon container had not been returned. He pulled a plastic gallon jug out of the trash and said fill this up. I said the law does not allow us to pour gas into a plastic container. He pulled out a little gun. I said I have to go ask the manager (no one was there except me). I went into the office, locked the door, pressed the police button, and I got under the desk and prayed it was bullet proof. I do not remember hearing the sirens but the next thing I know the cops are at my door and asking me to come out. They asked why I had pressed the button and I told them about the man in a tux with a gun. They found him and brought him back and wanted me to press charges. I would not because I knew he was just desperate after walking several miles. The police did charge him with concealed weapon.
There are a lot of great memories about the McLean house. We use to play "wolf". My brother Charlie would blindfold himself and we had to tie our shoes together and hop around. All the lights would be turned off and the wolf would try to capture you. If you got caught, you would have to go to jail, the bathroom. We would have great jail breaks and trample Charlie as we hopped down the hallway. One time Mel was on top of these shelves and the entire structure collapsed. No one stopped playing, we all just hopped around the mess.
My dad liked to work on cars. One year Mel took a car apart and left for college before putting it back together. The downstairs playroom had a million parts all spread out. I spent the fall trying to help my dad put the car back together. Another time a transformer exploded on the electric telephone poles. Our neighbor came running over because he thought the car had blown up on dad. My dad would smoke a cigar while working on the cars. One time the engine caught on fire. He was trying to put it out with a blanket and that caught on fire. I ran in the house an grabbed a box of detergent and pour it all over the place. I thought I had saved the day only to get yelled at for putting soap all over the engine.
We had motorcycles. Fred and I once took Xavier's bike without his permission. We were riding it all over the fields. The next thing I knew we were airborn. Fred went flying and landed on his butt. I stayed with the bike and racked my balls. I learned another important lesson about checking out the terrain before riding all over it.
[ I have watched many films of basketball games. I'm always especially intrigued about last seconds games won on the last shot. I always knew that some day this homework would pay off in a real situation.]
One time I was riding another bike and I got pulled over. The officer was really nice until he realized that I had broken many laws including: too young to have a driver's license, we had painted 1968 over the 1966 year on the license plate, I was speeding, the inspection sticker of course was expired, I had no helmet on, and the list goes on. I've always said that I was lucky we were in the suburbs because the police officers would always just take us home rather than book us.
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