In 1989, Syracuse Herald Journal Executive Editor Bud Poliquin went to California to interview Syracuse University legend and Pro Football Hall of Famer Jim Brown to speak about his life and profession prior to the publication of Brown’s second autobiography, “Out of Bounds.” Here is an element considered one of the series which resulted from that interview.

Part II: In talking football, race, women and his image, Jim Brown made his voice heard (from the archives)

JIM BROWN: VIEW FROM THE MOUNTAINTOP

FORMER SU, CLEVELAND BROWNS FOOTBALL STAR LOOKS DOWN ON LIFE FROM LOFTY PERCH

Published on Sept. 3, 1989

By Bud Poliquin Executive Sports Editor of the Herald Journal

To get to the person’s castle, which stands guard high above the smog, the ocean and the burrito stands on the side of a mountain overlooking Hollywood, you’re taking a right off of sunset boulevard and head . . . up.

You go around and around is what you do. You twist this manner and that. You wind and switch and climb some more. And all of the while, you don’t worry an excessive amount of about changing gears.

Jim Brown’s house? Six days faraway from the beginning of Syracuse University’s a hundredth season, consider where he took the sport of football starting 35 years ago next month, when injuries to others finally allowed him to interrupt into SU’s starting lineup as a boot-tough sophomore of 18. Go ahead. Risk a case of eye-rolling vertigo and picture those heights:

The two,091 yards, 25 touchdowns, 5.8 yards-per-carry average and Cotton Bowl berth while at SU. The 12,312 yards, 126 touchdowns, 5.2 yards-per-carry average and NFL championship while with the Cleveland Browns.

Now, put a palace, complete with a view that rattling near goes all of the approach to Japan, somewhere in that realm beneath the California sun, find the driveway with the gate that is nearly never closed, and ring the bell. And wait to be received.

“Why don’t you walk through the lounge and sit on the deck near the pool?” says the sanctuary’s current lady, a 19-year-old drop-dead beauty named Brandy. “Jim might be right with you.”

It shouldn’t be an extended wait. A matter of minutes, really. But there’s time enough to understand the majesty of this domain, which could easily fetch $2 million in barter, that James Nathaniel Brown has called home for 21 years now.

Because it seems, though, it barely suits the lord of the manor himself, for when he appears, armed with a glass of orange juice and a bowl of cherries — and with just 4 more kilos than the sculpted 230 he carried during his nine ferocious seasons with Cleveland — a way of royalty descends concerning the grounds.

Yes, the calendar swears that Jim Brown is 53. However the marble body, a stonecutter’s dream tightly wrapped in a black T-shirt and a pair of black athletic shorts, swears just as persuasively that he shouldn’t be. And never mind the flecks of gray within the goatee. Or the reading glasses which are positioned on his nose as he scans the day’s edition of the Los Angeles Times.

“If a young man walks out here, he higher not make an assumption, because he’s not going to mess with me mentally or physically,” Brown says. “The 53 doesn’t come into my mind. In the event you grab me, I’m not going to get drained real quick, you understand? You’re into something here that has been conditioned to take care of you.”

It has been written in context with Jim Brown that you just don’t blame a lion for being a lion. One quickly comes to know that it’s an commentary that matches.

Because it seems, we’re all soon to be reintroduced to Jim Brown, who left Syracuse for the NFL over three many years ago, who left the NFL in his prime on the age of 30 for big-time roles in the films over twenty years ago, and who left those big-time roles in the films for high-minded social pursuits over one decade ago.

Indeed, his second autobiography, the searing “Out of Bounds,” might be on the shelves of local depositories any day now. And Brown’s tome-pumping, book-signing, national publicity tour, which is able to include a stop back in our town Oct. 12-15 — or the weekend of the SU-Penn State game — is nearly able to start, as well.

As such, this fellow who just is likely to be essentially the most awesome athlete sport has ever seen — and, too, its most difficult to penetrate — will come alive for each those that can have forgotten and those that never had the possibility to recollect.

“I made a decision the time was right to do a book,” Brown said of “Out of Bounds,” which might be reviewed, with accompanying chosen passages, in Monday’s Herald-Journal. “And I needed a special publisher. I needed a hands-off policy. I wasn’t going to fight other people’s opinions or be bothered with their conservatism. The concepts I take care of within the book are mine they usually are uncompromising.”

Jim Brown and uncompromising. Soup and sandwich. Horse and carriage. No difference. None in any respect.

Pick a subject, any subject. Football. Race. Sex. Marriage. Syracuse University. Throw a dart at any of them and more. And Jim Brown will reply to it as he once did Sam Huff. And, like Sam, the listener will little question almost at all times walk away a bit dazed.

“Go ahead,” Brown said as he methodically picked cherry pits from his mouth and flicked them over his right shoulder and down the hill from his deck. “Ask your questions.”

And for 2 hours after which some, questions were asked. And never considered one of them — as will be determined by the gathering of the person’s observations printed elsewhere on this page — was dodged. So, who is that this deep-into-middle-age Jim Brown? That’s, what has he change into since stamping himself, perhaps without end, as the best running back the sport of football has ever known?

The Los Angeles police, with whom Brown has feuded for years, will surely draw one portrait; the parade of pretty ladies, mostly — and even now — of their late teens and early 20s, who’ve passionately enjoyed his company in any respect hours in every single place would surely provide one other. Clearly, Jim Brown is considered one of those types who can encourage a curled lip, a fluttering eye or a quivering hand depending upon the speaker.

But there are, nevertheless, some lines of definition here:

He’s the president of Ocean Productions, a publicly held company that has been established to supply profession opportunities in film production to blacks. Too, he’s the manager director of Vital Issues, a private management and self-improvement program arrange for inmates and currently operating in 18 California prisons.

He’s an indifferent family man, once married and once divorced and the daddy of an undetermined amount of youngsters, the primary of whom was borne to an old highschool girlfriend during a summer vacation from SU. Asked, as an illustration, what number of little children he has sired, Brown, stunned only a bit, vaguely answered, “About seven.”

He’s a fiercely loyal individual who has claimed that his maid, Gloria, won’t ever fear for employment “so long as I even have a nickel. And my gardener, he’s a helluva man. I’d back him in anything he desired to do. These people have character and folks of character haven’t any problem with me.”

And, amongst many other things, Jim Brown stays, as well, a reasonably trusty SU alum who plays host to a grand party at his estate every 12 months to which all Syracuse graduates living in Southern California are invited. But then, be advised that this nice association together with his alma mater does have its boundaries.

“I don’t really recruit for the varsity,” he said. “That’s too limited. Besides, every university isn’t for everyone. You recognize, a health care provider isn’t going to go to a faculty that doesn’t have medicine.

“If the people on the university ask me to consult with a young man, I’ll tell him exactly what I feel. But I won’t attempt to sell him. If his needs are usually not at Syracuse, I’m not going to attempt to get him there.”

Surprised? Don’t be. Jim Brown — who has driven his 20-year-old automotive since its first month off the assembly line and who hasn’t modified his telephone number since 1968 — is, remember, uncompromising in all that he does and says. And of this, he’ll remind you repeatedly. Furthermore, he can also be easily uninterested in those that insist upon discussing who and what he was 20 and 30 years ago.

As such, there are not any football mementos or memorabilia from his time spent in front of the Hollywood cameras on display in his home. No plaques. No trophies. No awards. No citations. No nothing. A one-time overwhelming athlete lives here. A one-time competent actor with parts in greater than 20 movies calls this place home. But from appearances the home could just as easily belong to some guy stuffed right into a three-piece suit who sits on some fancy board somewhere.

“People say, ‘Why don’t you ought to be an actor anymore?’ ” Brown offered with a shake of his head. “They said the identical thing once I left the NFL. ‘Why is he quitting football?’ I don’t care about that now, do you understand? What’s that crap, anyway? I’m going to sit down around and say, ‘I used to do that?’ Or, ‘I used to try this?’ No, no, no no.

“I’m 53 now. I’m relevant. I’m not talking about being a movie star or a football player. What I’m engrossed in is that this: Being a full-blown, free American citizen. That, and helping Black Americans take part in the system on some sort of equal level.”

Syracuse and its university? The university and its football program that refused to supply him a scholarship out of Long Island’s Manhasset High School, then tried to show him right into a lineman and punter, and eventually, grudgingly, anointed him because the team’s fifth-string halfback?

Simply, on the entire, the town and the varsity are regarded by Jim Brown as fondly as are his trophies. Which is to say, casually.

“I don’t wish to get an excessive amount of into that as a reference point because that was a unique time in comparison with where I’m at now in my life,” he said. “A lot water’s gone over the dam.”

But . . .

“They thought I must be appreciative to be there and all that sort of crap,” he said of the oldsters back in Syracuse and at SU. “You recognize, all that weak stuff about pale skin. But I wasn’t appreciative to be nowhere with no person. I used to be there to make a contribution and if I couldn’t, screw it. I don’t owe the university anything. I don’t owe anybody anything.”

It’s with that attitude — proud or boastful, take your pick — that Jim Brown looks down from his mountain retreat where he spends a lot of his time working the phone, receiving various guests, spending time together with his women of the moment, being relevant.

He’s talking, in fact, more lately than he has in years. Perhaps ever. Later With Bob Costas. The Today Show. Geraldo. A newspaper guy from Syracuse out on the pool deck. There may be, in spite of everything, a book to plug. And, too, there are philosophies, some never before revealed, that he believes have to be disbursed.

And so, the newfound openness from the distant man so long closed off up on high.

“A number of us understand life,” he says as a Pacific zephyr blows to the accompaniment of chirping birds beneath the early-afternoon sun. “You sit here and take a look at the simplicity of this example, the principles of God and nature at work. I even have flowers here, flowers there. I even have quite a lot of ferns. I do know all of the trees, all of the animals, all of the flowers. The peace becomes a component of all of it.

“You’re taking my daughter over there,” he says of the visiting Kimberly, aged 7, and the product of a long-since dissolved affair with a Cal State-Northridge student. “She’s my heart. I even have an exquisite relationship along with her.”

And as he tenderly watches the kid walk into the home — yes, bad Jim Brown will be tender — you possibly can’t help but imagine him. You wonder, though, why he doesn’t know of course just what number of brothers and sisters the little girl has.

MORE ON JIM BROWN

Legendary Syracuse running back, Hall of Famer Jim Brown has died at 87

‘A real pioneer and activist’: The sports world reacts to Jim Brown’s death (what they’re saying)

Jim Boeheim remembers Jim Brown: ‘A legend. At all times might be’