Building the prodigy: the basement program

texture · ~late-1950s B.S., Tucson (the nadir)

• When: "somewhere around the nadir of his professional fortunes" (i.e. the Tucson trailer-park years before Winter 1960)
• What: The E.T.A. history records the decision that produces his son's first career: at his professional bottom, the failed actor "apparently decided to go down to his Raid-sprayed basement workshop and build a promising junior athlete the way other fathers might restore vintage autos or build ships inside bottles, or like refinish chairs, etc." — and the child in question "proved a withdrawn but compliant student of the game and soon a gifted jr. player" (scene 020). The monologue itself shows the program's economics and setting from inside: the "glorified trailer" with the shared garage, the five-dollar court fees agonized over ("Ten total dollars for an intensive weekend"), the laundry basket of old balls kept "by the propane torches" for practicing serves. The Raid detail meshes with the spider-obsession of event 3 — the man de-spiders even his workshop. [Attribution note: 020 hangs the whole program on one "apparently"; the monologue never states a program, it enacts one. Both as printed.]