Known as the original Twin Towers, or sometimes the Towers of Power, Gilmore and Burrows had helped Jacksonville obliterate their opposition and had brought them to the Final Four to face St. Bonaventure. As time for the tip-off neared, the excitement was only heightened by the announcers’ predictions about the careers and riches awaiting the two giants in the NBA or the ABA.
As it happened, Jacksonville would win the game and then lose the championship to UCLA after all. And Artis Gilmore would go on to success in the NBA while Pembrook Burrows would be drafted by Seattle before turning to a career as a Florida Highway Patrol officer.
None of that is of any consequence as I’m sitting there, so engrossed in anticipation of the tip-off and so very caught up in the announcers’ hype of both the athletic ability and fortune awaiting Gilmore and Burrows that I say out loud to no one, “Wow, one day those guys are gonna make a million dollars!”
Moms, standing at the ironing board just behind me in the next room, says very clearly, as though she has been sitting next to me the whole time, “Son, if you want to, one day you could make a million dollars.”
Stunned, I allow her pronouncement to seep in, without responding. No response is necessary, as Bettye Jean Triplett née Gardner has gone on record with a statement of fact, not to be questioned, or responded to. It is as factual as if one would say on Friday that “tomorrow is Saturday.”
It was biblical, one of the ten commandments handed down from God to Momma: “If you want to, one day you could make a million dollars.”
All in an instant my world turned inside out. In 1970 the only way a kid from the ghetto like me had a chance to go make a million dollars was if he could sing, dance, run, jump, catch balls, or deal drugs. I could not sing. I am still the only black man in America that cannot dance or play ball. And it was my Momma who’d set me straight about becoming Miles Davis.
“Chris,” she had said after hearing me say how I was going to be him one too many times, “you can’t be Miles Davis because he already got that job.” I had understood from then on that my job was to be Chris Gardner—whatever that was going to entail.
