Northampton, Massachusetts

Seven years ago we visited the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.  It was a wonderful facility that gave a sense of the history of that great sport.  Every inductee into the Hall of Fame had a bronze bust with a list of his accomplishments.  It was a moving testament to the national pastime (even though football has actually eclipsed baseball as our national obsession).

So it was quite a thrill when, on the way to our next campground, we stopped for lunch in Springfield, Massachusetts and saw across the street an impressive building housing the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

The timing was amazing in that it was just the night before when the Golden State Warriors, based in Oakland, my favorite sports team, had won the 2018 NBA championship.  That's their third championship in four years - a remarkable accomplishment - and Nancy and I are both huge Warriors fans.  I literally watch every one of their games during the.season on our motorhome's TV (thanks to the DirecTV dish on our roof).  And of course the playoffs, which go on for almost two months, are even more must-see events for me.

To illustrate the extent of my obsession, we've been in the eastern time zone for several months now, and Warriors regular season home games begin at 7:30 PM Pacific time; that's 10:30 PM Eastern time.  So the games end well after 1 PM, and I even watch the post-game shows.  Plays havoc with one's sleeping habits.

Unfortunately, the Basketball Hall of Fame was something of a disappointment.  The standard set by the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame was not even close to being met.  Naturally there were some historical details about the invention of the game by James Naismith, and photos and descriptions of the early years of the sport, the college game, and the NBA.  But there were no busts of the Hall of Fame inductees, and I couldn't find anything about the recent exploits of the Warriors.  In Cooperstown there had been a whole section on the recent World Series winners.

There were just a few statues of basketball stars.  This is Larry Bird, a great player of thirty years ago.

The most popular section of the Hall of Fame building was a large basketball court in the center, where kids could shoot some hoops.

Our current campground is next door to Northampton, Massachusetts, which is the hub for four colleges, including Smith and Amherst.  Northampton's downtown reminds us somewhat of the Santa Cruz Pacific Garden Mall.  It's a little hippy-dippy, a college town, with panhandlers, crystal stores, massage therapists, and psychic counselors.  But it doesn't have anything like the beauty and class of Santa Cruz, so we're not tempted.

Northampton is the site of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library.  Unlike the official presidential libraries we've visited, this one is literally in a public library building.  It occupies only a large room on the second floor, where Coolidge's papers have been collected and stored ever since his presidency.

We learned a bit of history in talking with a docent there.  Coolidge, a Massachusetts politician, was vice-president under Warren Harding and assumed the presidency when Harding died in 1923 and was re-elected in 1924, serving until 1929.  He seems to have been a decent person and an okay president, balancing the budget in every year of his term in office.  However, the 1929 depression began shortly after he left office, so his legacy is not unblemished.

None of the NBA Hall of Famers have busts to honor them, but Calvin Coolidge does.