Bryan Burwell

POPLAR BLUFF, Mo. - On Wednesday morning, when the rains just kept coming, the countless gentle rivers, placid lakes and trickling streams that normally spread out around the outskirts of this old railroad town like so many benign veins had transformed into a treacherous web of troubled muddy waters. In the flooded countryside in this rain-soaked corner of southeast Missouri, low-lying farmlands resemble rice paddies. On the eastern edge of town, local churches, small homes and feed stores are isolated islands, their parking lots and yards engulfed by muddy floodwater from the swollen and raging Black River.

“Haven’t seen anything like this in 40 years around here,” says Gene “Doc” Hansbrough as he weaves his SUV up and down the small hills and tight back streets, avoiding barricades and flooded streets. He looks out the window and sees an angry sky the color of gunmetal. He points towards an arched footbridge barely poking up above the Black River’s gurgling floodwaters. “Wow, there are basketball courts under that water, if you can believe it,” Hansbrough says. “You can’t even see the baskets, but they’re there. They’re under 10 or 12 feet of water, but they’re there.”

On late Wednesday morning in Poplar Bluff, schools are already being closed, police are putting up roadblocks, climbing in motor boats and evacuating folks to higher land. Meanwhile, Gene Hansbrough is sloshing through ankle-deep puddles outside in the Poplar Bluff junior high school gymnasium, looking for a place for his 13-year-old stepson Logan and his junior-high buddy to play basketball. Like a dutiful postman, neither snow, nor sleet, nor floodwaters can keep the 56-year-old orthopedic surgeon from his appointed rounds.

Gene Hansbrough has spent many of the last 20 years in search of a gym for his boys to play ball. He’s the father of Poplar Bluff’s favorite sons: Tyler, the University of North Carolina’s 6-foot-9 junior forward and national player of the year, and his younger brother Ben, a 6-3 sophomore guard at Mississippi State. On Wednesday, Gene hadn’t bothered to inform the boys of the floods. Their house was high and dry, and besides, the boys had more pressing business to concentrate on, like preparing for their first-round games in the NCAA men’s basketball tournaments. Tyler and the top-seeded Tar Heels defeated 16th seed Mount St. Mary’s in the East Regionals in Raleigh, while several hours away to the west, Ben and his 8th seeded Bulldogs defeated No. 9 seed Oregon 76-69 in the South Regionals in Little Rock, Ark.

“I guess they’ll find out if they watch CNN,” Gene says.

Hansbrough is a familiar sight at the local gyms. When janitors see him and the boys come through the door, they interrupt the mopping and sweeping for just a moment and seem to smile in amusement at the familiar sight. When he reaches the gym door and finds it locked, he reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a big ring full of shiny keys, fumbles around for a bit until he finds the right one to open the metal double doors. But a member of the janitorial crew tells them the junior high gym is closed because they’re busy cleaning a year’s worth of crud off the hardwood floor.

“Sorry Doc,” she says sheepishly.

“That’s ok,” he says, clearly disappointed. Then without missing a beat, Hansbrough perks up and says, “Let’s go to the high school.” He grins as he tosses the keys in his hands. “Got a key to that gym, too.”

If you ever wondered how the expanding legend of Tyler “Psycho T” Hansbrough began, you need to come here to Poplar Bluff to get a better understanding. Come take a tour of the place with the father, who has the keys to the city (or at least the only things in the city that truly matter to the Hansbroughs care about: a key to every public school with an indoor gym; the school superintendent is a close friend and neighbor and provided the keys).

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Better yet, come into one of the quaint joints like Hayden’s Drive-In (“World’s Best BBQ”) where you can hear the locals reminisce about the Hansbrough boys over tall cups of hand-squeezed pink lemonade, chopped barbecue sandwiches stuffed a mile high and the most perfect homemade coconut cream pie imaginable. While Gene Hansbrough jokes with his old friend David Francis about their high school days, Francis’ mother and father sit at a near-by table munching on a fresh plate of barbecue and French fries.

“You should see my wife when Tyler’s games are on TV,” jokes the elder Francis, a tall and fit gentleman with a full head of thick gray hair. “She’s standing in front of the TV and she’s shuffling back and forth, shuffling back and forth, you know like she’s playing defense or something. I’ve never seen her get into sports on television like that except when the Hansbrough boys are on.”

It’s not the first time Doc Hansbrough has heard a story like that. “I meet 70- and 80-year-old ladies all the time who tell me, ‘Sweetie, I’m not all that big a sports fan, but I just love watching your boys on TV,'" he says, bubbling with parental pride.

As you travel around town, you see the giant, 20-foot plywood likeness of Tyler spinning a ball on his fingers, decked out in his old Poplar Bluff No. 50 jersey on the side of a building on West Pine Boulevard. It’s right across the street from the old courthouse next to the “Childress Bail Bonds” sign. In the upstairs window of the bail bonds office, there’s a likeness of Tyler in his Tar Heels uniform, and if you go inside the doors, there’s a shrine to Tyler on the wall. Phil Childress, if you haven’t guessed is a big Hansbrough fan. He has a Sports Illustrated cover on the wall, team pictures of the back-to-back state champs on another wall, and other trinkets that pay tribute to Tyler’s expanding legend.

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