In everyone's life there will be peaks and valleys. What happens when a boy peaks before he has even had the chance to be a man? Can he be content to live in his remembrances of the past even though he seemingly has no future? John Updike's poem, Ex-Basketball Player, suggests that whether happy or not, both the man and the town he lives in need those remembrances. They need them so much, in fact, that the man and town become dependant on each other for reaffirmation of the past.
             The poem is built around the character Flick Webb, who was a highschool basketball star, but is now confined to the monotony of pumping gas the small town where he was born and raised. Updike does not take an obvious "good or bad" stance on Flick's situation, but rather uses imagery to portray a dark, dingy world of the present and contrast it with the bright, shining glory of Flick's past.
             The imagery is evident in the first two lines of the poem, where Pearl Avenue "bends with the trolley tracks and stops, cut off." (2) Already we see that Flick's future has been cut short, like the very road that leads to Berth's Garage, where he pumps gas. In fact, the train even passes by the very high school Flick attended. Like Flick, though the train passes the high school, it does not go far beyond.
             The words "cut off" are the key to understanding Flick's situation. Abruptly, his course was changed. Without warning, his stardom was exchanged for mediocrity. A highschool basketball star's glory days were cut off by the striking reality that he, as the poem suggests, "never learned a trade." (19)
             In the poem's next stanza, it becomes obvious that Flick is out of place amongst the "idiot pumps" (7) with their "rubber elbows hanging loose and low." (9) The imagery suggests that these inanimate objects are as close as Flick comes to any sort of r...