I no longer recall the genesis moment of my life in tennis. There were no summer parks lessons in grade school or PE courses in junior high despite four crumbling courts on campus. My parents never introduced me to tennis. But one day, there I was in junior high, with a cheap wooden racket, hitting balls against the backboard at Rivercrest Park because none of my friends played. That all changed when my dad took up the game and that became a major part of our social time together once my parents separated for good when I was 12.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I suspect now my interest in tennis\nbegan while watching the Grand Slam tournaments on television. It was\nthe golden age of American tennis, the mid to late late1970s, the\nStudio 54 days of fiery golden rivalries between Connors, McEnroe and\nBorg, when the Rolling Stones played, when super models played, when\nVirginia Slims cigarettes sponsored the women’s pro tour, when the\nNew Yorker<\/em> routinely ran long fact pieces on tennis, when 35\nmillion Americans played tennis with mostly wooden rackets, making it\nthe number one recreational sport, when cities around the country\nbuilt thousands of public courts (many lighted) to accommodate the\nboom, when parks and recreation departments (even in rural areas!)\nstaged clinics and tournaments for all ages on lazy summer evenings.\nAmericans moved a lot more back then, and tennis was a game of\ngraceful movement, conversation across the net, and mingling. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n And there I\nwas in Oregon City, entering high school, and about ready to live the\nmost unlikeliest, preposterous American tennis story of all time!\nMan, that high school tennis team<\/em>\u2014my four years as a\nvarsity member. There is a novel there, the great laid-back American\ncoming-of-age tennis novel for an uptight nation that doesn’t play\ntennis anymore. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Where to\nbegin with team?<\/p>\n\n\n\n How about\nthis crazy story from my first year. We had one player on my team, a\nkid named V, who had never picked up a racket in his life before\ntrying out his senior year on a lark. The interesting thing about V\nwas that, infrequently, he would practice naked (before the coach\narrived from his teaching job at a junior high across town). There V\nwas, on the courts at Gardiner Junior High, dinking forehands with a\nJack Kramer Autograph, rushing to the net, chasing down lobs, slicing\nserves, while the junior high boys and girls track team’s distance\nrunners would jog around the courts and act as if a senior boy\nplaying tennis in the nude was a perfectly normal thing to do in\n1979. No one ever said a word and the coach never found out. We were\nall loose and undetected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In my freshmen year, Oregon City\nbelonged in the Wilco League with schools like Lakeridge, Lake\nOswego, and Tigard, some of the best white collar tennis schools in\nthe state. There was really no such thing as a best blue collar\ntennis school. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n These rich schools had the best courts\nin the state, all newly surfaced with crisp nets. All their players\nwere club members and played year round with professional coaches,\ntraveling to matches around the region. All their players had\nmultiple rackets and wore the finest Fila and Rossignol European\napparel and tennis shoes. They had harems of girls at their matches,\nwhere they routinely defeated us 6-0, 6-0 in 45 minutes or less, and\nthat included the warm up. Once, the number one player from Tigard\npulled up in a convertible sports car, an MG I think, and left the\nmotor idling outside the court, won his match in a matter of minutes,\nand then drove away with his blonde girlfriend, his feathered hair\nsomewhat blowing in the breeze. He didn’t take off his warmups or\nbreak a sweat. He didn’t even take off his sunglasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a peculiar feeling getting your\nass kicked every match, right out there in public, inside a\ngalvanized fence. I did cry after one particular humiliation. There\nwas just no way to beat them, let alone compete. They had it all and\noften laughed at us and our cheap gear and terrible form. I mean, we\nhad one player who routinely whiffed first and<\/em> second serves\nfor the strangest double faults in tennis history!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, divine intervention came from the\nmerciful Gods of Tennis who wore nothing but all white. They surely\nsaw us suffer and moved heaven and earth to alleviate our pain. Their\nleader must have been Arthur Ashe, the compassionate graceful black\nGod, not the other white American tennis assholes of my youth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Note to reader: It is my wish that the\nreader will support the idea that Pioneer Pride<\/em> is a \u201cbook.\u201d\nIt is also my wish that the reader consider \u201cbuying\u201d the book as\nit rolls out in installments. A purchase supports an author and\nfuture literary endeavors by Nestucca Spit Press. To purchase, look\nto the right on the blog to use Paypal or contact me to make other\narrangements.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I no longer recall the genesis moment of my life in tennis. There were no summer parks lessons in grade school or PE courses in junior high despite four crumbling courts on campus. My parents never introduced me to tennis. But one day, there I was in junior high, with a cheap wooden racket, hitting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5849,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,942],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-oregon-city","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5918"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5920,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5918\/revisions\/5920"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}