Don't Bullshit Me Johnny

Jon Ferguson was born in October 1949 in Oakland, California, into a devout Christian family, much like his favorite philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. In fact, as a child, church services were held in the family living room. At age 17, his passion for sport was almost usurped by a keenness to save the world when he enrolled at the Mormon-owned Brigham Young University. Little by little, though, he realized that if Jesus couldn't do it, neither could he. His faith in divinity began to crumble. With an adieu to the US academic world where he'd been immersed in anthropology and philosophy - and with a desire to engage with the world at large - Ferguson hopped on a plane in 1973 and by chance ended up in Nyon, Switzerland where he was soon playing basketball in the top Swiss league, becoming a key player in what fans consider to have been the golden age. Ferguson writes:When I left America I had my lifetime savings in my front left jeans' pocket - $200 - and I didn't speak a word of French. I didn't know where Switzerland was. I didn't want to look at a map. I had not read anything about the country before leaving America. I wanted to discover a new part of the world from scratch, with no preconceived notions. Yes, thanks to the pictures I had seen as a kid, I thought Switzerland would be all chalets, geraniums, cows, and mountains. Of course that was all bullshit. Well, not really, because there were chalets, geraniums, cows, and mountains...but there was a whole lot of other stuff, too. The ten-minute bus ride from the airport to the train station in downtown Geneva, told me how misleading all those pictures had been. Geneva was - is - a modern city with a lovely "old town". All the big Swiss cities are like that - Bern, Basel, Zurich, Lausanne, Lucerne, St. Gallen. They are all beautiful and the land around them is beautiful...mountains, valleys, vineyards, lakes, rivers, farmland. And they all have picturesque "old towns". I was immediately struck by the overall charm of the Swiss world. I was also impressed by how hard the people worked and how proud they were of their country as a whole and their streets, gardens, balconies, and private dwellings in particular. Over the years people have often asked me why I have stayed in Switzerland instead of going back to America. The answer always comes quickly and is two-fold: Because of the quality of life in Switzerland, and because I think the life I have lived in Switzerland could not have been possible in the United States.Half a century later he is now just as well known for his writing (eighteen books published in French) as for his coaching (thirty years' worth). He won more games than any coach in Swiss basketball history, but he likes to remind people that he lost more than everyone else as well... He has written over twenty novels and a book on Nietzsche, Nietzsche au Petit Déjeuner ("Nietzsche for Breakfast") and a book on the history of Swiss basketball,Of Hoops and Men. For twenty-five years he also wrote a bi-weekly column in the Lausanne newspaper called "Ainsi Parla Schmaltz". His novel Farley's Jewel (Cinco Puntos Press, 1998) won a Barnes & Noble "Discover Great New Writers of America" prize.