Knoxville Remembered Series: Sports or The Curse of the Flying Ball

Copyright 2008-All rights Reserved

When I was growing up, there was one pool in Knoxville where Black people could learn to swim—on the west side at Edward Cothren Pool. In summer, Mama sent me to learn. Janice was usually there too. And Calvin, who eventually became her husband. Easy swimmers, I called those two. They stroked the water like they lived in it. I wasn’t an easy swimmer, but I loved being in the water, and so swimming became something special to me—something I could do well and loved.

One of the reasons I took to the sport of swimming, I think, was I considered it something all my own. Let me explain. Both my parents made their living as gym teachers and when I was growing up, people just expected me to be good at sports. Why? Because they assumed that the whole family would be good at sports. Like it was in the blood, so to speak. It wasn’t. Truth be told, Mama was really an English major in college. The only reason she had this job as a gym teacher because that was the only opening at Austin when she applied, and, thanks to old Jim Crow, Austin was the only high school in Knoxville where you could teach if you were Black. And that was really how sports came to be what she did for a living.

As for me, I was not good at your everyday sports. “Not good” is a kind understatement, “lousy” is a more accurate description. As a kid, I longed to be able to jump rope, my playmates singing chants to keep time while the rope slapped the ground. Didn’t happen. They’d be swinging the rope, I’d jump in, get tangled up, and fall. And forget Jacks. No matter that Evelyne tried to teach me how to play this game where you pick up as jacks as possible before the little ball hit the ground. No way. I could never master it.

I was great at climbing trees, at the swings, and at hand-walking Jungle Gym bars, but those weren’t group games, which I just couldn’t seem to pull off. Swimming, though, that was a different thing. I took to it like a natural. Not like me and softball. Not like me and volleyball. I have to admit that it was a point of pride with me that I could swim fairly well when most Black people in Knoxville didn’t know how to swim.

Even Daddy couldn’t swim. And he was Mr. Sports personified— the revered coach and gym teacher. The reason he’d never learned goes back to his mother who’d dreamed, one night, that he drowned. This scared her so badly that she’d warned him never to go into the water, and he never did. At first, Mama couldn’t swim either; she learned to swim along with me, but I was better at it because I got to spend more time doing it than she did. I can tell you, the best things about swimming, to me: number one, there were no balls that I had to hit or catch; number two, it didn’t require the kind of hand-eye coordination that was my nemesis; and, number three, it wasn’t a team sport.

Unfortunately, at Vine Junior High, I was faced with having to take gym, and those group games I was so bad at playing came back to slap me in the face, reinvented with a new name: team sports. This time, I couldn’t avoid them. Everybody had to take gym every year. And to make the situation even worse, Mama was my teacher.

In autumn, Mama had us playing volleyball. That was unfortunate because when I played volleyball, my feet inevitably tangled up as I looked up, reaching, with both hands, for the volleyball coming my way. My feet would tangle and that’s when I’d fall on the player in front of me, or I’d collide with the player next to me. The other team loved it. My teammates did not.

In winter, Mama had the class playing basketball. She’d point to a couple of girls to be opposing captains, usually somebody like Pansy or Rosalyn or Janice or Judy. Then, the captains called out the names of girls they wanted on their team. Do I need to tell you that I was always one of the last chosen? Always last—after Charlene and Bea. It was excruciatingly embarrassing, and I got fed up with it, but I couldn’t really blame them. Who’d want somebody playing guard position who was so scared of fumbling and falling that she hardly ever moved around on the court? That meant girl I was guarding always got to make a lot of baskets when I was on the floor. My teammates, of course, didn’t like that.

Even the other losers in class who couldn’t play well enough to save their souls got disgusted with me. Folk got real savage about winning the game, you see. So, I resolved to do better next time. Next time came and I found myself guarding Juanita who was moving all over the court like a jackrabbit. I gritted my teeth with resolution, determined to do better, and desperately tried to keep up with her. She faked to her left, and darted forward. At that moment, I lunged at her, heavily off balance, tripping myself up and lurching into her.

Of course, Judy, who was refereeing the game, had to call a foul. She sighed and gave me one of her Judy-looks that said: "I want to cut you a break, but all you seem to know how to do is throw a wrench in the works." After Juanita got her free throw, scoring off my foul, we began again with her moving this way and that way, and me lunging around like a lumbering cow. It was beyond frustrating to me to try to guard somebody darting around on the floor. Why didn’t she stop moving so I could do my job?

Finally, in a reckless attempt to do better for my team, I simply snatched the ball away from her. Well, I can tell you that didn’t go over well. Not with Juanita, who started shouting at the referee to do something. Not with Judy, who was blowing the whistle at me in a long, aggravated screech. Not with my groaning teammates. Not with my mother, who looked at me like I was an idiot. In the end, I ended up on the bench for the rest of the period.

Come springtime, it was softball that was my nemesis.

Once more, I’d always be the last one picked for a team since it was widely known among my classmates that catching the ball was simply beyond me. Because it would have been plain foolishness to put me on one of the bases, I was always assigned an obscure outfield position.

One fine day, after they’d put me out there, Pansy made a hit that stopped both teams cold. Everybody watched the ball go up, up, up into the blue, looking as if it would outrace gravity and never come back down again. Eventually, gravity snagged it; and, slowly, it began to curve down to the ground. Down, and down, and down, it sailed, coming into the field area where Judy, Charlene, Beverly, and I were positioned. As I watched the ball, it suddenly occurred to me that I might be expected to do something... to-- Ohmigod!--catch this thing.

At this revelation, I looked to my right. Judy was running, eyes up tracking the ball as fell downward, her hands out to make the catch. I looked to my left, and there was Charlene, who, like me, lacked the athletic prowess to catch anything--there she was, caution thrown to the wind, making tracks for the ball, too. Behind me, deep in the outfield, Beverly was coming up, full steam ahead, legs pumping, dust flying, looking like the Roadrunner. I looked up at the ball again and trembled. What was I to do? This one, I calculated, was coming in like a cannonball—picking up speed as it dropped, so it would hit somebody or something—hard!

Here was my problem. Flying balls terrified me. I had gotten hit so many times when I was little, standing on the sidelines as my parents’ basketball teams played, that now, the moment a flying ball came my way, I froze, not sure whether to run, put my hands over my face and head, or try to catch it.

Staring up at the ball, I decided right then, it wasn’t going to be me trying to catch this thing that could maim me for life. Let the others come and get it. Let them get knocked senseless. There’d be no more flying balls going upside my head. This ball was not going to make me its target. Not today.

And I stepped back and out of Judy’s way. She caught the ball in a fluid, one-handed jump that was a beautiful thing to see. Her catch won us the game. Our team was still cheering as Mama sent me to the showers. And believe me, I was glad to go.

It makes for a funny story now, but back then, I wasn’t going to risk life and limb for a flying ball. Not then, and not now. No, sir. Not me. So, you can see what I meant when I say I was lousy at team sports.

But I’m not at lousy at swimming.

In the pool, the green-blue water laps at my arms; the smell of chlorine is strong and clean in my nostrils, and the feel of the water on my legs is like luxurious silk. I’m the only one swimming in the regular lane for lap swimmers.

No team members here. No group games. And no flying balls either.

Thank you, Jesus!

(end)

L.A.Observations 1: Swimming at Bally's

Copyright 2007-All Rights Reserved

Bally’s, the gym I used to belong to, has a pool at its facility on the west side of Los Angeles. I started going there regularly in 2000. It was a long drive from where I lived, but I like to swim better than I like using the treadmill or the cross trainer. At this point in my life, I had/have to do the aerobics, you know. Get the heart rate up. Keep the muscles from going on strike. Chase away the cholesterol blues. Get rid of couch potato-ism, stress, and too many other risk factors that I don’t want to know about. But, forgive me, I’m obsessing. Which I tend to do at times.

When I was going to Bally’s, there was always an interesting show at the pool. Covertly, I watched the old White men in swimming trunks roaming about as I swam my laps. And that’s all they seemed to be doing—roaming, not exercising. Why were they here? I would wonder. Doctor’s orders? To get away from the wife? To meet and greet? To recapture youth? To score … catch … fake it til you make it? Who knows? Some would bunch together at the benches near the swimming pool; others would drift over to the whirlpool. It’s the bellies that drew my attention straightaway. Rotund bellies—fully packed after years of gobbling down thick steaks, potatoes swimming in sour cream, and hard crust breads.

Some of them looked like pears, ripe for the plucking; others reminded me of pregnant women about to break water. More than a few sported handlebars of fat clinging to their sides like inner tubes. None of those golden boys had waists anymore; their behinds had gone bye-bye too.

Since they didn’t have the de rigueur L.A. buff bodies to show off, they put their jewelry on parade. A couple of them flashed big, pinky diamond rings. Others adorned their sunken chests with huge gold chains—some with medallions studded with diamonds. This affectation told me, one more time, that almost every popular fashion trend in America nowadays comes out of the Black neighborhood. Somehow, though, I was rather surprised that the golden boys had taken to this kind of jewelry. It’s tacky looking. Way too wannabe pretentious, if you ask me. Could it be that these old Beverly Hills-Brentwood boys still needed validation that they’d made it?

One day, one of the gang was dressed in drop-dead, orange trunks. Both of his big, drooping, womanly breasts displayed blue tattoos. The designs ran down both his arms—covering and smothering the front of his chest like Ray Bradbury’s “Illustrated Man.” His face reminded me of the guy on the old Smith Brothers Cough Drops box. Some might say he was more of a bald Santa Claus type: Bushy, long, white beard with a moustache decorating his top lip. It was a strange look, a combination of a 19th century face sitting on top of a twenty-first century body adorned with tattoos—tattoos being a fad straight out of the ghetto and the barrio.

Beside the tattooed Santa Claus was a white-haired poseur with long, Elvis-style sideburns. He had on white, almost see-through trunks, pulled down below his waist in hip-hop, gangsta style. I could see the crack of his ass just peeping above the elastic. Between his “walking” laps in the water, he strutted and posed, laughing with great animation at some remark that Santa Claus made from time to time. There were a couple of women lolling nearby the two old men. One was an older woman, in fairly good shape, smiling hugely at something one of the old boys had said. Another was young, sleek looking, an athlete by the look of her. Santa Claus leered from time to time. Elvis took great pains to loudly explain the benefits of “walking” laps as opposed to “swimming” them. Santa Claus kept leering and nodding his head. The women politely listened though their attention was plainly wandering after five minutes of Santa’s lecture.

Elvis suddenly hoisted himself up out of the pool and did a half-assed dive, despite the posted big “No Diving” signs all around. Apparently, some people think the rules aren’t for them. As Elvis came up for air, sputtering, I took note of the lane they were in—the sign said: “Loafers and Slow Walkers.”


Some of the Slow Walker men wore their gold-rimmed glasses. Water splashed on one old man’s specs. He didn’t bother to try to wipe them. Droplets ran down the lens and he just stood there looking at himself in the mirrors on the far wall. I find it very, very strange that you would get into a swimming pool with your eye glasses on. I wear glasses too, but not in the pool. Another old codger made his way down the lane, clinging to the lane’s marker. His eyes fascinated me. Nothing was behind them. No sign of life at all. They were light blue, so light that they were almost silver gray. His face, too, was void of expression. As though he was in shock. Maybe he was. Maybe. Because one fine morning he woke up and found himself a senior citizen…an old man, a has-been…spent, worn out, no longer useful…disrespected. Found himself an old codger who still leers at young blondes, brunettes, and redheads on the street. Found himself an old man whose reflex habit of a lifetime is still to stare, lick his lips, and wonder about how good the ride might be on that young thing. Maybe he was in shock because he woke up one fine morning and finally found himself a man—old…bitter … blue.

And that’s how life goes. But not in Los Angeles. In L.A., aging is taboo. Here one is supposed to be eternally young. Eternally. These old men were clearly chasing Youth as it receded into the distant horizon. I wondered what their reactions would be when they woke up one fine morning and realized that Youth had left them in the dust. Would they still come to the pool and pose? Still come to fake it, floss, and strut?

I turned away from them and focused on doing my laps. Youth was not what I was after. But I understood the bewilderment you feel when you wake up one day and look in the mirror only to find that the face staring back has changed. That time has changed it. And that you can’t call time back because it’s doing a double-quick march on down the road. Aging is a shock, I grant you. But it ain’t fatal. It’s only another rise in the road with more adventures out of sight beyond the hill. And I look forward to them.