Chasing Indiana’s Game: The Hoosier Hardwood Project by Chris Smith & Michael E. Keating

Author:Chris Smith & Michael E. Keating
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2020-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

Left: Newspaper clipping from the Versailles Republican. 2016

Right: The South Ripley Raiders celebrate their 2A sectional championship, Versailles. 2017

MICHAEL E. KEATING PHOTOGRAPHS

Paul Strader and his son John take turns shooting at a backboard and rim attached to a small barn in Solitude. 1976

I began this journey, without knowing it, more than forty years ago, while on assignment for the Washington Post. Tasked with photographing the southwest corner of Indiana during America's Bicentennial, my focus was on the small, unincorporated town of Solitude, platted in 1815. Solitude sits on the north bank of Big Creek, just off State Road 69 in Posey County, and at one time was a railroad stop and grain depot. But by 1976 all signs of commerce were long gone. Occupied by little more than a few houses, mobile homes, and reconstructed log cabins, Solitude suited the Post's calculated headline that framed it as “A Town in Name Alone.”

The published piece would include my photograph of Paul Strader and his son John trading shots at a plywood backboard and rusted rim hanging from the side of an unpainted wooden barn. This scene would be brought to mind years later by David Halberstam when he wrote of “fathers nailing backboards and rims to buildings” in his 1985 Esquire magazine essay about basketball in the Hoosier state. Little did I know the lasting impact that single photo would have on my photographic life.

Following a forty-year newspaper and freelance photography career I welcomed the opportunity to document Indiana's game—a project more rooted in passion than profit—and before long my thoughts turned to Cannelton, my hometown. Located on the north shore of the Ohio River, with a population hovering around 1,500, Cannelton was the seat of Perry County before losing that honor to its northern neighbor Tell City and was known mostly for the Cannelton Cotton Mill (a National Historic Landmark) and the Cannelton Locks and Dam.

What I remember most about my hometown is the Community Building. A center for the town's many activities, the Community Building housed the high school gymnasium upstairs and the volunteer fire department, two-officer police department, and public library downstairs. I played grade school basketball there, helped set tables and chairs for my church's Turkey Bingo, played keyboards in a garage band at sock hops, starred in school plays, and, most importantly, received my high school diploma on that parquet floor. Because the Community Building was also home to our volunteer fire department, it was known that ball games could possibly be paused when firefighters responded to a blaze, leaving the station below with sirens blaring.

In 1960 the gymnasium became a temporary morgue when a Northwest Orient Lockheed Electra, en route from Chicago to Miami, Florida, crashed nearby, killing all sixty-three on board. The original gymnasium flooring was damaged during that time and later replaced with a new parquet floor that Joe Hafele, a Cannelton basketball legend and former teacher, described as “being like the one the Boston Celtics have.” Unfortunately, that new parquet floor, like much of the surrounding community, has also fallen into disrepair.

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