Vern Mikkelson

When we were growing up on Westfield Road in Natick, we used to play basketball on Billy Dean's driveway. All of us picked the name of a "real player", and pretended to be him. I always picked Vern Mikkelson of the Minneapolis Lakers.

The Dean's had the flatest driveway in the neighborhood, and his mother, a very nice lady, didn't mind all the noise we made, nor the occasional broken window. They were from Philadelphia and they had that nasally, whiney accent. Billy was kind of a nerdy kid who lived with only his mom. I never knew what happened to his father, and it really didn't matter to us back then. Also, their house was near the railroad tracks and they had a lot of rocks in the yard, so we used an old baseball bat to hit rocks at the trains.

It's kind of funny, I don't remember anything about going to school back then, I've blocked that from my mind. But I can remember the moves I put on Ricky Nation to drive to the hoop, or to get open for my jump shot on that old driveway like it was yesterday.

As for the real Vern Mikkelson, he's still alive today. He was a 6'7" power forward from Hamline University in Minneapolis, who teamed with George Mikan to lead the Lakers to a couple of NBA Championships in the 50's before the team moved to Los Angeles. He played 10 years in the NBA, and was an all-star 6 times. In 1995, he was inducted into the National Basketball Hall of Fame.