The Point of Life

By Scott Jameson Sanders

Set in the early 1980s, The Point of Life is the story of a young man from a small town in Kansas named Endicott "Endy" Mason. After being raised in a small farming community, a teenage Endy moves with his family to the big city of Indianapolis, Indiana. Feeling insecure about his upbringing, Endy develops goals for his life that include rising high in the corporate ranks and making a lot of money.

While on the high school baseball team, Endy pitches a no-hitter, and this helps him gain popularity in his class along with the attention of a teammate's wealthy father who offers to assist him in gaining a scholarship to a notable college program. Endy's newfound popularity also earns him the affection of Stephanie Plum, the prettiest girl in the school. The relationship goes well at first, but when Stephanie goes off to college, Endy betrays a good friend and cheats on her, effectively killing his first real relationship.

Vowing to be a better person, Endy strikes up an unlikely friendship with a fellow college teammate named Dez, who is Black. The two become very close over the years, but a tragedy ends their friendship at a pivotal time in Endy's life. He is about to get married to a very wealthy girl named Layla whose family is not too keen on Endy's good friend being his best man. With Endy's business career in full bloom, he faces other issues that lead him to reevaluate his goals and aspirations. From working for bad managers to being asked to follow unethical decisions, Endy learns valuable lessons about what really matters and in the process influences others around him to see life from a different perspective.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887931005

Scott Jameson Sanders

Scott Jameson Sanders is the author of six published books including "The Box Salesman", "The House of Remember When", "Call Me Cecilia", "Driving Through Shaker Heights" and "The Point of Life". He is a musician and an avid pickleball enthusiast. Scott has worked in the food packaging business his entire career and is the composer of over 200 original songs. He lives in the Cleveland Ohio area and has two daughters and a very sweet dog named Ginger.

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The Point of Life

Scott Jameson Sanders

Copyright © 2023 Scott Jameson Sanders

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88793-103-6 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88793-100-5 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Epilogue

About the Author

Prologue

Part 1

The Point of Life

The point of life is to love one another.

The point of life is to learn to love God.

The point of life is to live honestly and be ready to pass into the next world.

The point of life is to leave a legacy to your children.

The point of life is to achieve your full potential.

Despite my faith in God and a belief in an afterlife, all these statements are secondary to one undeniable truth. Life, whether we like it or not, comes with certain responsibilities. The following are examples:

You have to live somewhere, and that costs money.

You have to feed yourself and your family, and that costs money.

You have to pay taxes to…everyone…and that costs money.

Cars, vacations, furniture, insurance all cost money.

Raising children costs lots and lots of money.

I could add many things to this list, but the point of life as I have learned is this: to make enough money to survive until you die.

I know this is cynical, and I apologize to everyone reading this, but growing up my family struggled financially, and I never wanted that to be the case for me. Some people are able to scale their life to the income or salary they earn, but unless you come from wealth (which I didn't), you have to provide for yourself, your spouse (if you have one), and children (if you have them). My journey toward this realization was early in my life, but I saw that the vital requirement was to progress from where I depended on my parents for things like food, shelter, clothes, and schooling to one where people would be depending on me. Like it or not, I have to do whatever I can to provide for myself and my family.

Chapter 1

The Big City

On that happy note, let me introduce myself. My name is Endicott Perry Mason. The middle name was an unfortunate choice as Perry Mason was the name of a law show from the 1950s starring Raymond Burr. My parents had no knowledge of that show as they were not television watchers, but Perry was my mother's maiden name, and they stuck it in there on mine. I don't tell people my middle name as a result of that unfortunate coincidence. And yes, my first name is a name that has been passed down through generations of my family, but all my friends call me Endy. I spell it that way with an E, so people don't think I am pretending to be Indy, or Indiana Jones, from the awesome Raiders of the Lost Ark movie. Boy, what a good movie that was. I just loved it. If I was being honest, I would say that being an anthropologist or archaeologist really appealed to me (I'm not sure which is which actually), but neither job paid the kind of money that I aspired to make although the idea of digging up fossils and relics from the past seemed to be pretty darn cool.

I am the third of six children born to my parents, Delacroix and Margaretta (Perry) Mason. (My mother wisely dropped her birth name and replaced it with Rosalyn. To this day, I'm not sure exactly why she did that. My parents were both the first-born-in-the-US children of immigrant families from somewhere in Europe; Spain, I think or maybe France. They met in high school when they were both only fifteen. They married at eighteen, and nine months later, my brother Wendell was born. One year after that, my sister Magdala was born and then me. Three more babies came after that (Amelia, Ethan, and Bartholomew), and then the children stopped coming. I'm fairly sure my mother had some kind of pregnancy-prevention procedure after the sixth baby. I don't blame her. She was still a young woman at that point, and certainly six children were enough for anyone. It was clear that when Bartholomew, the youngest, was born, that was it for my parents. My mother used to complain to her friends that she should have stopped at three. I was happy, therefore, that I came third. The younger three kids seemed to almost have to raise themselves. That is true of a lot of the later-born children as the adults start relying on the older kids to help take care of the younger ones.

My family is considered to be originally from Des Moines, but we moved to Stillwell, Kansas, when I was six years old. For most of his career, my father ran a farm supply business and owned about sixty acres of land used for growing seed and soybeans just north of Kansas City, Kansas. I was educated at a small Quaker school until ninth grade. This school was so small that we once had to combine the fourth and fifth grades into one classroom since there was only five of us in total for both grades. It was nice and easy small-town life to be sure, but I had no affinity to the simplicity of life in a farming community. I had much bigger dreams for myself when I was young. I wanted to be rich and successful, and there was nothing that was going to stop me.

I sure wish I could talk to that ten-year-old version of me and offer to myself that this success thing is a pipe dream. Success is not what you think it is, and aiming for the world's definition of success is simply futile. Experience will eventually reveal that you will always want more, and someone else will always be better and get there faster. But later, when I was twelve years old, I told my parents that I wanted to run and own my company and make a ton of money. It didn't really matter what I did as long as I earned enough to make me filthy rich. And I knew I needed to go to a really good school to make that happen. To my absolute shock, my parents agreed. But affording a good school for me or my siblings was going to be a challenge with six kids. My father knew that and harkened on a path to find a better earning job in a new location.

Moving a family of eight people was no easy task, but my father started looking for jobs in bigger cities and eventually found a farming equipment company that was located just north of Indianapolis, Indiana. We didn't have a farm anymore. This was a bona fide business job, and my father was so proud to have moved up into a management position. My parents found a ranch-style home in a nearby suburb called Carmel. Yes, the name is spelled just like the more famous city in California, but not pronounced the same. This Carmel was pronounced like the candy. The other Carmel (pronounced Car-Mell) sounds more sophisticated, I think. At that time, Carmel was one of the nicer suburbs of Indy and one where the schools were much larger. I was so excited; I couldn't wait to move to the big city.

One thing that a small-town boy is not going to know when going to a new school is how to meet new people and make friends. Everyone knew everyone and everything about everyone where I lived before in Kansas. My first day at the Carmel High School was uneventful as most of the teachers just talked about their syllabus for the semester and made introductions. In geometry class, each of us was asked to stand and say our name and one thing about us that was unique.

My name is Endicott Mason, and I just moved here from Kansas. Uh…I have a dog named Cooter.

While I thought that name was clever and unique, the class thought it was hysterical, and initially, I had no idea why. There was such an immediate outbreak of laughter that the teacher hit her desk with her fist and yelled for the class to settle down.

I had always thought Cooter was a great name for a dog, and no one in Kansas ever laughed at it. Apparently, in the big city, the term cooter could also refer to a female's reproductive parts. I had never heard that before, and it was a stern reminder to make sure I didn't allow my classmates to think I was just a dumb hick from the sticks. That, I quickly learned, was not going to be easy.

My class at Carmel High School was almost entirely White people. We had two Blacks in the entire tenth grade—a twin boy and girl. One of the not-so-nice guys in my class told me that they were identical twins. For some inexplicable reason, I didn't reason that this was impossible and once asked the siblings what it was like to be an identical twin. They laughed at me, but they knew that the other students had told me this. This was a common type of ruse that was played on the new kids at the school. There was also a Japanese girl in our class named Yamashita. She was also new that year, and you could only imagine the amount of teasing she got for that name. Kids in Indiana could be really, really mean, and I was starting to think that I had made a big mistake going to this big city school.

All that was true for me until basketball season started. I was an okay athlete, but I was in great shape from the rigors of living in a farming community. Our Kansas farmhouse wasn't close to anything, so I was constantly walking, running, or riding my bike to a store or a friend's house or even to school. We all know the line older people say about walking to school in their day. My grandfather would seriously convey that, in his day, he walked several miles uphill to get to his school and that they wouldn't let them go to the bathroom the entire day. I doubt that any of this was true, but he said it like he really meant it. In Kansas, this was almost true of my walking commute to school. For some reason, I hated taking the same path to and from the school, so my younger brother and I often made our way through the woods and even part of a sewer system each time we walked home. That's right. We traveled through human waste tunnels on our knees. We didn't think anything of it, and my parents had no idea.

After a few weeks of basketball tryouts, it was clear that I was going to make the team. The coaches loved my hustle, and I had a rather good knowledge of the game. In Kansas, you played basketball, or you were not going to be very popular. And our coaches were basketball purists. While most of these Indiana kids played a pick-up style of ball, I knew the fundamentals of blocking out and man-to-man defense. Never let a guy go baseline on you. Always follow your shot. And either you hustled or the coach would pull you out and yell at you in front of everyone in the gym. Those were rules that we lived by in my old school, and it allowed me to develop into a darn good basketball player.

Hey, Endy-fuck, a fellow Carmel sophomore named Peter Brown said to me while walking across the court toward me, how'd you learn how to hoop like that? Didn't you just milk cows and chop heads off chickens where you lived?

While this was completely insulting, I knew that Peter was trying to be nice. It was a compliment after all, except for added fuck to my name.

We had a decent team at my old school, I said. The varsity actually won the district title in 1984. I didn't play much, but I would probably have been a starter next year if we…had stayed in Kansas.

Did your family grow pigs?

I did not want to answer that question as I knew it would not help my image at Carmel High, but the truth was that we did have a potbelly pig named Curly. Curly and Cooter actually were best friends, and the smarter of the two animals was clearly the pig. While Cooter was a sweet mixed-breed dog of about fifty pounds, Curly was a forty-pound dynamo who never seemed to run out of energy. He could run Cooter in circles until he fell over. He would often distract the dog from his food by acting like someone was coming into the house. Then he would run over to Cooter's dog dish and eat the remaining morsels of Cooter's dinner. Curly could understand about anything you told him, and eventually my father relented and let them both sleep inside the house on rainy or cold nights. They would always cuddle up together near the fire, and Cooter would lick the dirt off Curly's pink skin until they both fell asleep.

Uh…no, we didn't…uh…grow pigs.

I lied about that, but the truth was, I missed Curly. We let the owners of our old house keep him. My father rightly assumed that an Indianapolis suburb was no place to have a pet pig. I think Cooter was devastated when we left without the pig. Even dumber dogs had instincts about these things, and Cooter just never seemed happy in Indianapolis. Instead of having a huge yard to run about in, we had to walk him on a leash. He hated being tied up, and despite being only nine years old, he passed away in his sleep on the floor of the den one night. I was the one that found him, and I was unprepared for how awful I would feel. When my father loaded his dead body into the back of our station wagon, I cried uncontrollably. Cooter was mostly my dog, and I felt like I had somehow let him down. To this day, I tell people that dogs can die from broken hearts just like people. I still miss him.

So you think you will make the team? Peter asked.

I don't know. What about you?

I think so. I almost made it last year as a freshman, but the coach likes tall players, and neither one of us is very tall.

The truth was, I was five feet, ten and half inches tall, which was taller than average man back then. Peter looked to be a good two to three inches shorter than me.

I hope we both make it, I said with a smile.

Peter put out his hand for me to slap it. It was the thing to do in those days before we went to high fives and fist bumps. I slapped his hand, and we had been friends ever since. Fortunately for our friendship, we both made the team, but I saw a lot more playing time than Peter in games. Our school was in the Northeastern Indiana Conference, and we played other schools that were much larger and drew from a more diverse population. Our tallest player, Edward Simmons, was only six foot four and he was just a horrible athlete. The coach, just as Peter suggested, played him a lot, and it was often hard to watch whenever he got the ball. It was like he was holding a bomb in his hands, and he would either pass it wildly or shoot a pathetic hook shot that never came close to going in.

I was not on the starting five, but I played about as many minutes as the starters. The coach simply loved my defense, and he knew we were a better team when I was on the floor. I set picks for the better shooters, and despite my height, I was good at going after and grabbing rebounds. I could shoot the ball well and seemed to be more accurate from longer distances than close in. The three-point line had just come into existence back then, and that was the exact distance I liked to shoot from. Getting three points for a shot also made the coach like me more, and I let them fly whenever I was open.

I wasn't the highest scorer on the team, but I usually had about ten to fifteen points in our games, and that was good enough to get me considered for the all-conference team at the end of the year. Not bad for a shrimp, my idiotic coach used to say to me. I hated him for saying that, but he was tolerable as a coach. He just didn't know or understand the fundamentals of the game like I did, and that made it tough when I would carefully suggest things like letting a good dribbler bring the ball up the court. For some reason, he just let the shortest guy on the floor do it. And that was the rule.

Let the Shrimp bring the ball down. He would yell out after a made basket.

I would watch helplessly as the short guy would fumble the ball to an opponent or out of bounds. It was maddening!

The only thing I had a lot of trouble within my game was shooting free throws. For some reason, having the ball at the foul line, with all eyes on me and having no time pressure to shoot, caused me to think too much, and I was woefully bad at making the easiest shot in the game (short of a breakaway layup). I worked on my free throws after practice and vowed never to leave the gym until I could make ten in a row. This could sometimes mean being there another hour even when I was the only one there. The coach admired my work ethic but also suggested that it might be better for me if I tried not to get fouled.

At the midpoint of that season, I was a pathetic two for seventeen at the foul line. For those that don't know, that is really bad. And I was a good shooter too. I knew my problem was mental and not physical as I could shoot that shot blindfolded and make eight of twelve without people watching. I considered all kinds of remedies including just taking a jump shot from the foul line. Not only did I look like an idiot, but I was also not better at this approach. Then Peter suggested something to me that seemed even more stupid.

You should try to shoot the shots underhanded.

What? I replied. I will look like a girl.

No, you won't, Peter continued. Rick Barry of the Warriors does it, and he is an all-star.

He does? I asked.

I was not a fan of the NBA and had no idea who this Rick Barry person was, but I was desperate, and so I tried it after practice. And then the chance came in a game where I was fouled beyond the three-point line. That meant I would have three shots from the foul line. This had happened to me once before, and I missed all three shots. I had nothing to lose except my dignity, so I tried the underhanded style on the first shot. I could hear faint laughter from the stands (from my own brothers, no doubt), but the shot bounced around on the rim and went in. I made the other two free throws and pointed proudly at Peter as I ran back down the court. I was ecstatic and vowed I would never again shoot a free throw any other way. People don't laugh at you when the shots go in.

The season was winding down, and we were playing our last home game of the year. Our opponent was not particularly good, and the first half was pretty much the end of the contest. In the locker room at halftime, the coach recognized the talent differential and announced that the starters would sit out the second half. Since I still wasn't a starter, playing the rest of the game was fine with me. I loved the game back then and could run the court effortlessly without getting winded. And it would be fun to see how some of the other second-string players did on the court. I was especially glad to see Peter get some minutes and not just mop-up time. I intended to get him the ball as often as I could on offense.

In the fourth quarter, as I was dribbling the ball up the court, I noticed a girl sitting in the front row of the bleachers beyond the basket. She was wearing a pink sweater and a red ribbon in her light-brown hair. It appeared as if she was staring right at me, but I was, of course, the one with the ball. I must have taken my eye off what was going on, though, as a player from the opposing team was suddenly upon me and swiping at the ball. I recovered in time to keep him from stealing it, but he hit my right arm with a vain attempt to dislodge the ball from my grip. The referee reluctantly called a foul (as I am sure they wanted this game to be over given the lopsided score), but he couldn't ignore an obvious hack, and he whistled him for the offense.

I walked slowly up to the foul line and again could not take my eyes off the girl. As the players got into position in the lane, I considered whether to continue with my successful underhand shots or to revert