Shorty

In Quitman County, Miss., where the rich black earth grows tall corn and bumper crops, there lives a Brobdingnagian boy. He stands 7 ft. 7 in his socks, sleeps in a 9-ft. bed, and picks as much as 300 pounds of cotton a day. When he isn't farming, 19-year-old Max Edward Palmer, wearing a little toothbrush mustache, is a freshman at Walnut Consolidated High and plays forward on the basketball team. Last week, he scored all of Walnut's 24 points in the first half, against bewildered Friars Point High. Earlier in the week, he scored 78 points in one game.

It was just like putting nickels in a slot machine. Max stationed himself under the opponents' basket and stood there unmolested and unreachable while his four teammates hustled around the court. Whenever his four little helpers captured the ball, they heaved it down to Max, who grabbed it in his great leathery hands and dumped it in the 10-ft.-high basket (he could jump to reach 11 ft.). It didn't seem fair, and after a while the crowd began to boo, even though most of them were Walnut fans. The coach took Max out for a quarter to give the other team a chance. In the final quarter, Max missed one basket. Said he, afterward: "I had a bad night." Final score: Walnut 53; Friars Point 14.

It had been that way all season. In 13 of the 14 games that Walnut had won, Max's height had dwarfed all competition in Mississippi basketball. Max ("Shorty") Palmer was six inches taller than the tallest known college basketballer (Boston College's 7 ft. 1 in. Elmore Morgenthaler). An average student, he is physically clumsy and slow--but that didn't matter. College scouts were on his trail. The University of Arkansas seemed to have the inside track. Until two weeks ago, he played in stocking feet, or leather shoes. Arkansas won his friendship by finding two pairs of size 16 tennis shoes for him to wear.

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