Not the Same Old Song and Big Dance

Even after uprooting his family to the green acres of Sebastopol, Calif., where he ran a small farm with chickens, rabbits and a 2,000-pound bull, Al Davison was a gripman on a San Francisco cable car. For close to 30 years he rode up and down the hills, ringing the bell and singing for the passengers, not unlike a Venetian gondolier.

When the woman who worked at Macy’s jumped aboard, day by day, Al became so smitten that singing someone else’s song seemed inadequate to express what he felt. That is why he composed one just for her. He called it, “Got to Find Love on a Cable Car,” a tune he gladly performed in private and public, even once on television’s “Sesame Street” (as Al the singing cable-car man), before and after Judy agreed to marry him.

Should they show Al Davison on TV tonight, watching his son, Bennett, play basketball for the University of Arizona in the national championship game, chances are he will not be singing. More likely, Al will be crying. He is an emotional fellow whose own 21-year-old kid has to remind him once in a while to calm down, to not phone so much, to enjoy this moment of theirs near the top of the hill.

Long before he grew to be a 6-foot-8 junior who starts at forward for a top college team, Bennett Davison was a preteen boy who would duck into a Denny’s in the wee hours of the morning for a hot chocolate, then ride with his dad on those little cable cars, halfway to the stars. Maybe he should have been in bed instead, but Bennett felt they had a lot of catching up to do.

Not quite 3 when he had to leave his city-by-the-bay birthplace, Bennett found himself on a remote six-acre spread just outside Santa Rosa, in a town everyone mispronounced. Sebastian Pool, Seb Stoopl, you name it, he has heard it. When asked inside the RCA Dome here Sunday how he would describe Sebastopol to anyone who had never set foot there, Davison said, “It’s about 10 times smaller than the Superdome. You could fit the whole town inside this dome.”

Pretty small.

“Yeah, but a couple of years ago we got a theater,” he mentions proudly.

Rural life in Sebastopol was not all peaches and cream. As the serenade that brought Al and Judy Davison together did a fade, they divorced. His mother moved Bennett and a sister to Santa Barbara, where, by his own admission, Bennett became something of “a problem child.” He remembers himself as a good kid who did bad things, nothing against the law, but fighting in school and such. His father eventually drove down from the farm to help straighten Bennett out.

And then, around age 10, “He came back into our lives.”

Some families are not so lucky, but the Davisons reconnected. Mother and children moved back up north. Judy got a job teaching school. A cousin, Jerome Davison, played college football at Arizona State and later briefly for the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams. And once again Bennett spent time turning out cable cars with his father, who divided time between that job and the farm.

“The first time he came to Santa Barbara to see me, they say I jumped into his arms. He came back to be there for my mom, and for me,” Bennett says, and then adds, with mischief in his voice, “ . . . and for my sister, who’s a little goody two-shoes.”

Al the cable-car man, who retired a few years ago, is not the only character in the family. His son inherited a sense of frivolity and fun. For example, during a recent Arizona road trip to Oregon for a game, Bennett and his teammate, senior Jason Lee from Irvine, were dared to ride the baggage carousel. It was after 11 p.m., the Eugene airport was quiet and the Wildcat players offered $2, $5, even $10 to anyone who would become a human suitcase.

Lee began to, but chickened out, Davison says. But he climbed aboard, like on his father’s trolley. Everything was fine until some officious baggage handler turned up, barking at the basketball player that he was breaking the law, punishable by a $10,000 fine.

“The worst part is,” Davison says, “nobody paid up on the bet. I only collected about two bucks.”

Wildcat players use this story as more evidence of how loose their team is, despite tonight’s circumstances. According to Davison, the team just had a food fight. The coach, Lute Olson, openly needles Davison about his no-show in Saturday’s 66-58 victory over North Carolina, in which foul trouble forced the forward to sit out all but 10 minutes. Olson called this Davison’s secret plan to keep fresh for the Monday championship game, joking, “Bennett thinks way ahead of the rest of us.”

A rebounder and defensive standout who doesn’t score much, Davison didn’t bloom as a player until he went to a Saratoga, Calif., junior college. Current teammates such as Miles Simon and Michael Dickerson spent last season battling UCLA, Michigan, Kansas and Syracuse. “Bennett’s big game a year ago,” Olson loves teasing him, “was against Ventura Junior College.”

Experience comes in many forms, however.

Davison’s bumpy ride with his father was such that he says if Arizona teammate Mike Bibby ever cared to discuss his own strained father-son relationship, he would happily oblige. Otherwise, he would rather not meddle. For now it is enough to have Al the cable-car man nearby, usually crying, and forever ready to sing his song at the drop of a hat.

Go find him, Bennett says.

“He’ll sing the thing for you. All you have to do is ask.”