Silver Lake Olympics

We had our own version of the Olympics in Silver Lake.

 There were the Nelson M. archery events, in his backyard and mine, the Alan L and Timmy P. football in the street and my sad attempt at skiing during a very unusual hailstorm.  The skis had been in the garage for almost 20 years and my father had brought them back from Alaska where he met my mother.

After JFK’s fitness push I was forced to hang from those bars in a gym—I never lasted very long --and run through the smog the length of the school.  Taking deep breaths hurt because of the pollution.

We had bicycle races on Panorama Drive and pony rides at Griffith Park. There were sad attempts at cartwheels on the back lawn.   And we had a giant spool that we would try to maneuver like a log-rolling contest.

There were the many laps swum at the Glendale YMCA and the Griffith Park pool; both of which had almost blinding amounts of chlorine in the water.  I once read a Dear Abby where someone wrote about a girl getting impregnated by “loose sperm” in a pool.  That was not going to happen in the pools I swan in.  The chemicals could kill every living thing.   Mainly targeting athlete’s foot.

Now tennis was something I was pretty good at.  I played for several years by walking down to the Griffith Park courts.  I had a secret crush on a boy who was on the John Marshall tennis team.  I continued to play tennis and took my racket with me to Europe.  When I met my husband, his parents had a tennis court at their house.  The asphalt was a bit broken and mossy, but the net still stood, and in summer we would play.  I beat him. 

No gold medals or steroids for the Silver Lake kids.