Dukey Meets a Tall Friend

Wilt Towered Over All

Back in 1982 Dukey attended a professional beach volleyball tournament down in Manhattan Beach with the idiots. They were standing on the strand which is a 10- to 15-foot cement walkway that goes along the beaches of LA. when Dukey noticed a person about twice the size of everyone else watching one of the two-on-two matches on the south side of the pier. It was none other than Wilt Chamberlain.  Dukey moved down to the beach and stood directly behind him about 6 inches from his butt and shouted down in front!!! He turned around looked down at Dukey and said, “Excuse me.” and started to laugh.   About a week or two later Dukes friend Lenny Barton, one of the morons, invited Robin, Dukey’s brother Roddy, and Dukey down to Laird Studios to have a quick tour of the facilities. While they were eating lunch in the commissary, Wilt walked by about 50 feet away. (He was filming a commercial with Kareem. (CLICK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL-1MIX4Qso) It just so happened that Dukey’s brother and he were wearing Celtic shirts. So Dukeys stood up and yelled, “The force is green,” pointing at his shirt!! Wilt, as sports fans know, played, for the  Philadelphia 76rs and the Los Angeles Lakers was not big on the color green.  Dukey isn’t sure what his response was, but a little later they were sitting on the front of Dukey’s car, a ’71 convertible Torino, and he walked up to us. He was very personable, and we spent a good 45 minutes laughing and talking. Before he left Dukey invited him to his house down in Redondo Beach for some lasagna that his mother was whipping up, and gave him his number.  As a side note Steve Martin(who was filming The Man That Had Two Brains) happened to be walking by and Dukey asked him what made him so funny and he replied, “The same thing that makes me so stupid.” Dukey proceeded to ask him for a vial of his sweat and he replied a soft, “funny!” A few hours later Dukey was showering in the Redondo house when his mother banged on the bathroom door and told him that some guy Wilt was on the phone. Dripping all over the floor Dukey gave him directions to the house. He never showed.