My wife, Lyn, and I have been season ticket holders of the Indiana Fever in the Women’s National Basketball Association for about 10 years. It is so much fun getting to know fellow ticket holders who sit near us.

We have great seats, which are near the Fever’s bench. It is a busy area, and it takes several staff members from the fieldhouse and the team to keep everything going smoothly. I sometimes find it interesting to watch the trainers and medical staff as they attend to injured players.

The locker room for the officials is behind us, and they are escorted on and off the court. 

I enjoy watching the coaches and the players on the bench as the game changes and the coaches alter their strategies. I have interviewed some of the players. 

Friday evening the Fever hosted the Los Angeles Sparks, the reigning WNBA champions. The Fever got off to a good start, but the Sparks took over in the third quarter and won 84-73.

There was a special halftime ceremony as Tamika Catchings’ No. 24 jersey was retired. She played 16 seasons in the league, all of them with the Fever. Tamika, the third overall pick in the 2001 draft, played at the University of Tennessee. She was named MVP of the WNBA finals in 2012, the year the Fever won it all.

She was also named Defensive Player of the Year five times and was a member of 10 All-Star teams. She is also a four-time Olympic gold medalist.

Tamika was emotional when addressing the crowd. She continues to reside in Indianapolis and is director of player programs and franchise development for the Indiana Pacers and the Fever.

Her parents and husband were on hand for the ceremony. Her father, Harvey Catchings, played in the NBA from 1974-85. Her husband, Parnell Smith, also a retired basketball player, was a member of Pike High School’s 2001 and ’02 state championship teams. He played at the University of Buffalo and then professionally for several years in Europe.

Former Fever coaches Lyn Dunn and Stephanie White, past players and friends were also present. It was real nice to see them again. Some members of Stephanie’s family had seats near ours. She was named the women’s basketball coach at Vanderbilt last year.

Pokey Chatman is the Fever’s new coach. She was a player and later a coach at LSU. She has coached in Moscow and with the Chicago Sky.

Joining Tamika in the Fever’s operations is the team’s former point guard Tully Bevilaqua (2005-10), who is a player development coach. 

Except for the loss, it was a special evening.
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Shonk is a 1960 graduate of Southport High School, a ’63 grad of Indiana Central College (now the University of Indianapolis) and a retired bus driver from Beech Grove Schools. 

Once again I missed the annual Talbot Street Art Festival, which was held over the weekend. Hearing about the event always brings back a lot of good memories of the area.

I used to live in Greenwood for a few years. When we first moved into the neighborhood a nice lady next door to us introduced herself. She had a boy who was the same age as our son, Mark. The boys were first-graders and rode the school bus together. 

I was traveling quite a bit at the time and didn’t get to know our neighbors very well. I just thought that she was a single mom with a couple of nice kids. 

One day when I arrived home I noticed a rough-looking man standing in their driveway. He sure didn’t look like he belonged there or anywhere in our neighborhood. I was about to make a 911 call when the fellow walked over and introduced himself as Charles Henderson. He was a Greenwood police officer and was married to the lady next door. He explained that undercover police work sometimes meant that you are gone from home for a time. He also told me that he was on loan to the Indianapolis Police Department. He said it was difficult for officers to work undercover in their own small communities, so officers often worked in different cities.

I sometimes was scheduled to do some field training for new sales agents in Indianapolis. I would work with that new agent for a week. A short time after meeting Charles Henderson I was working with a new agent in Indianapolis. One day we were finishing up our morning sales calls and were thinking about lunch. We were near Talbot Street, and since one of my cousins had opened a pizza shop in the area, we decided to give it a try.

While enjoying our lunch, I noticed that Charles was also eating there. He looked rather shabby and was talking to a couple of guys.  We made eye contact but he wasn’t smiling. All of a sudden it clicked ... he was working undercover. 

Luckily, my thoughts all came together before I shouted, “Hey, Charles!” My trainee and I finished our lunch in a hurry and left. Once in the car I explained what had happened in the restaurant.

As I remember, it was a few days before Charles was again home. We had a short discussion about seeing each other at the pizzeria.  

Charles moved up through the ranks of the GPD and was later elected mayor of Greenwood. I think he is retired now. But, if I should see him out and he is shabbily dressed, I’m not going to shout, “Hi, Charles!”

My other thoughts about Talbot Street are about The Black Curtain Dinner Theatre. Southport High School graduate Randy Galvin was the man behind the theater. He started and operated the production house for several years. Randy was one of Southport’s best wrestlers. He was also involved with the school’s plays and theater. It was always a great evening to have dinner and watch a play at his theater.

Talbot Street is a cool place.
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Shonk is a 1960 graduate of Southport High School, a ’63 grad of Indiana Central College (now the University of Indianapolis) and a retired bus driver from Beech Grove Schools. 

The Southsider Voice sponsors cruise-ins on the first Friday of each month from May through October. Stuart, my therapy dog, and I always enjoy attending. It’s fun to walk around and look at the cars, visit with the owners and connect with friends. 

Stuart and I had a great time at the June 2 show. We visited with longtime friend Bob “Bikini” Keeney. Bob’s father was a magician. He had given Bob lessons, and Bob was becoming a pretty good magician. We attended Edgewood Grade School at the time, and Bob was already mastering the skill of pinstriping.

He has pinstriped and painted cars for many years. He was also involved in cleaning up, painting and striping race cars that were being stored at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in preparation for the opening of its museum.

He was one of the speakers several years ago at the Perry Township/Southport Historical Society’s program on the Indianapolis 500.

After visiting with Bob at the cruise-in, I started thinking about my first car, a 1952 Ford, which I purchased from Dr. Moriarity. The doctor, whose practice was at the corner of Madison and Dudley avenues, was one of my father’s customers at his Sunoco Station on Madison. 

I had my money saved up, and we made a deal. It was cool to be able to drive to school and to work at Dad’s station. 

I was thinking about this car a few weeks ago during the Indy 500. Just as it is now, the race was not shown live on television back then. I would set up a radio outside and clean and wax my car.

A few months before Dr. Moriarity decided to buy a new car and sell me this one, he purchased a full set of new tires from us. A few months after I purchased the car from him, he stopped by the station for gas.
 
We visited briefly while he looked at his former car. I noticed him inspecting the tread on the rear tires before saying, “I don’t think I’ll be buying anymore Kelly Springfield tires. The tread doesn’t seem to last very long.” 

I made no comment. I was pretty sure Dr. Moriarity understood that young male drivers liked to accelerate quickly on occasion and that was hard on tires.

At some point later, Bob Keeney started lettering names in the rear fenders of cars. It was important to some of us that our vehicles were given names. Bob set up shop in the Standard Gasoline Station just south of the Tee Pee Drive-In restaurant on Madison.

I saved up some cash and made an appointment with Bob. He lettered my car’s name – Beetle Bomb – on the back corner of both rear fenders. 

I have given names to a few other vehicles. For a few years I drove a charter bus – Old Gracie – around Indianapolis on a part-time basis. When I started driving Bus No. 5 for Beech Grove Schools, I named it Ursula, which was named Ursula Mayes, the model who carried briefcase No. 5 on the TV show “Deal or No Deal.”

Even some of the state police who performed the yearly inspections on school buses knew her name. I was walking behind a couple of them one day and heard one explain that they were going to visit with Ursula, whom I sometimes see when I stop by the school’s transportation department.

My first connection with the 500 Festival Parade was when I was 20. My father had started a small fleet of school buses that were contracted to Perry Township. He was asked to transport the Southport High School band to the parade. It was going to take several buses to do this.

At that time school buses didn’t have any extra storage areas for large instruments or other equipment. One bus was to be used just to transport all of that extra stuff. My driver’s license at that time only allowed me to operate a bus if it had no passengers, so I was to drive the one with the equipment. 

On the day of the parade I was placed at the rear of the buses, and we headed to the parade. Once we got to the starting point we unloaded the equipment, parked the buses and waited for the band to finish.

Once the parade was over, it got crowded and crazy in the bus parking area. We helped the band members get their instruments and all the equipment put in the proper cases and boxes. The bus I was driving was loaded with all the large stuff, and all the band members and adults got on their buses.

Back then school buses did not have radio communication with the schools or one another. When we were on our routes we were on our own. So when we got a wave from an official that it was time to leave, we all starting pulling away.

I was still in the last school bus in our line. We were pulling away slowly when I heard someone pounding on the back emergency door. I stopped and opened the front door and waited to see what was going on.

I looked in the right side mirror and saw someone walking toward the open door. Southport High School band director Bill Schmalfeldt stepped up onto the bus. He had been talking to someone when he glanced up to see all the buses pulling away. Because none of the buses had radios, the drivers thought Mr. Schmalfeldt was on a different bus. 

As I remember, he wasn’t happy. I was also in a quandary. My job was to transport large instruments and equipment, not humans, but I couldn’t contact any of the other drivers to allow Mr. Schmalfeldt to transfer to a different bus.

I will always remember him as the first rider that I ever transported on a bus. We returned to Southport High with no problems. I don’t remember if he was ever told that my bus was only supposed to transport large instruments and equipment or that I was only licensed to operate a bus with no passengers.

That changed when I started driving my first route in September of that year.
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Shonk is a 1960 graduate of Southport High School, a ’63 grad of Indiana Central College (now the University of Indianapolis) and a retired bus driver from Beech Grove Schools.