Jungle Jim Loscutoff

Anyone who followed professional basketball in the ‘60s will remember the small forward for the Boston Celtics, Jim Loscutoff.  At 6’5” and 220 lbs of solid muscle. he was an opposing player’s worst nightmare.  He learned the game on the streets of Palo Alto, California and became a legend playing at the University of Oregon.  Jim and I lived in the same fraternity and shared the same birthday (Feb.4, 1930) but he got all the good stuff.

The son of Russian immigrants, Loscutoff was a charismatic figure on the small campus of the university where he acquired admirers for his ability to find where the fun was, whether it was occurring, on or off the basketball court (He once left the bench when pulled from a game Oregon was winning big and went to a hallway hotdog stand and returned eating the weenie).

Jim was a master manipulator of yo-yos and would do pre-game exhibitions of amazing yo-yo tricks.  Those antics, of course, brought the house down in historic MacArthur Court.

And, oh my, was he a hit off the court as Jungle Jim and his entourage roamed the campus looking for the action.  If they didn’t find it, they created it.  One time at a charity auction fund-raiser, Loscutoff and Jack Faust (a talented musician and creative showman) were purchased by the Alpha Chi Omega sorority to do their act which involved Faust singing while strumming his banjo as Loscutoff flexed his muscles and did dance moves.  But shortly into their act, Loscutoff spontaneously leaped onto a chair next to Faust and started playing the zipper of his fly like a musical instrument, up and down in rhythm with Jack’s banjo.  Can you hear the shrieking, stomping, and clapping of the sisters of Alpha Chi Omega? Can you see the sorority house mother  powering her way to the performers, arms waving and screaming for them to leave immediately?

And so the legend of Jungle Jim Loscutoff grew and grew.  Some time later Loscutoff was expelled from the University for another incident, but that’s another story.