My Mexico City

At the time I’m writing this in June/July of 2012, every muscle of my middle aged body is aware that this is an Olympic year.  Which means that if the TV network that airs the Olympics in the US doesn’t screw it up like in previous years, I will be transfixed and transported in front of the TV again, just as I was when I was a kid.  To me nothing compares to the Olympics.  There is no other sporting event, no post season madness, bowl game, or cup final that compares to the romance, heart and drive the Summer Olympics have for me.  It’s where I learned things that school would never teach me.  Sitting in front of my black and white TV as a 10 year old in 1968, I was there.  The glow of the cathode ray tube may have been in South Philadelphia, but in ‘68 my soul was in Mexico City.

I lived with my mother and maternal grandparents.  My older sister lived there too, but by that time she was either off at college or working somewhere.  And since my mother worked two jobs to support us all, I watched all TV, including the ’68 Olympics, either by myself or with my grandfather, a former boxer.  Whenever boxing was on, Olympics or not, and especially when there were black boxers fighting, like the then 19 year old George Foreman who won the gold medal that year fighting a Russian, my grandpop watched.  And during the middle of that James Bond / Man From U.N.C.L.E., cold war era of ‘68, as George stood tall, my grandpop cheered, even though he could barely see the bouts.  My grandpop was then blind in one eye and had bad sight in the other, so he watched our TV with his face inches from the screen.  And still he couldn’t see clearly.  Watching boxing with grandpop sounded something like this:

   “Hey, is he black?”
   “Yes grandpop, he’s black.”
   “And what about that guy?”
   “No he’s from Poland – not black.”
   “Are you sure?  Play with that knob on the side again.”
   “I can play with the contrast knob all day grandpop, but the Polish guy is not black.”

Even though my Mexico City Olympic experience was seen from an acute angle in order to see around my grandpop, whose forehead kissed the screen, I was still transported.

Jim Hines winning the 100m dash.

To this day three images from that time stand out for me.  Images that have been circulating in my mind since before puberty and will hang with me until the day I stop competing in this sprint called life.  The first image is that of black men flying across our TV.  Now I loved to run when I was small and I knew I was fast.  But what I saw in ’68 were men my color, who went to college, flying around a track.  I saw them muscling around curves and down straight-aways, not as if they were getting away with something, but like they owned the track.  Go to college, run track, be the best in the world.  Oh ok. That’s the sequence?  Got it.  My ten year old mind had a model to follow – go to college, compete, be the best.  OK.

And that other guy?  Australian Peter Norman won
silver and on the podium wore the badge for the
Olympic Project for Human Rights.  He was left
off the 1972 Australian team.

The second image is fists in the air. Tommy Smith and John Carlos, after winning gold and bronze in the men’s 200m dash, made their awards ceremony a salute to the struggles of kids like me and a protest visible enough to wake up the world.  The ’68 Olympics were the first real televised Olympics for Americans.  Just south of the border, we didn’t have the time zone issues of Rome or Tokyo in ’60 and ’64. It was a live televised event.  So the live black power salute during the national anthem also served as a wakeup call to Americans who wanted to believe that trouble makers like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X could be contained within our borders, and were never - never in a position to represent our flag like Smith and Carlos.  It was a lesson in how national policies of ignorance, like racism, represent our country just as much as national athletic pride.  Smith and Carols were champions who wanted everyone to know something about the competition they faced off the track everyday.  And at 10 years old I learned that sometimes to be the best, you have to stand up, even if no one else is standing.

The third image is of the water, in an event that according to online records, never actually took place at the ’68 Olympics.  Yet I have this memory and it is vivid.  Perhaps what I’m remembering is something from the very popular ABC Wide World of Sports, since ABC was the network that aired the Olympics in the US that year.  Perhaps when I was home from summer camp and watching ABC in preparation for the Olympics, which actually took place in October, ABC featured a sport I had never seen before.  What I remember is men standing tall and powerful on the craggy peak of a cliff, high above the water. [Image: cliff diver] The backdrop behind them was more cliffs and the expanse of the ocean.  Below them were waves waxing and waning, as each man chose his moment to gracefully leap, the camera following them all the way down to a tiny splash, just feet away from the rocks below.  I had never seen cliff diving before.  It was hypnotic.  The divers would just stand there for who knows how long, waiting for the water, that appeared to be about a mile below them, to be just right.  How could they even see it?  These guys – and they were all guys, who on our black and white TV all looked like they had that George Hamilton 60’s TV California tan, though I’m likely remembering the Mexican athletes – these guys stood on cliffs!  First off, I didn’t even understand how they got up there.  It’s like an Olympic event to haul their ass up to top of a death defying piece of rock.  But then to stand there like a Rio de Janeiro Jesus and jump – and make it beautiful!?

This was a relationship with water that I knew nothing about.  That one could be on the highest part of the earth, essentially be a part of the sky, and fling themselves elegantly into the waiting arms of the water below.  I know that I could never judge such a competition.  It would be like grading prayer.  How does one measure individual skill, wrapped so tightly in faith, belief and the wisdom of knowing how to navigate so quickly through the worlds of earth, sky and water.  “You get the gold, you get the silver, and you the bronze.”  Yeah, whatever.  At 10 years old in 1968 I learned that success sometimes means taking a leap, falling with grace, and even with a tiny splash, celebrating life.

Our Pool

When I was young, my extended family and I spent one week a year at the Jersey Shore.  My aunt Jane and her family, my aunt Phyllis and her family, my mom, sister and I would all drive to Wildwood, a little south of the more famous Atlantic City.  While the adult males at that time would have strongly disagreed, I grew up in an extended matriarchy.  All the women worked, they saved their money all year, planned and led the vacations.  The dads could show up if they wanted, but the bus was leaving with or without them.  Actually it wasn’t a bus, but more like a caravan of mid 1960’s Chevy’s filled to the gills with luggage and more vacation crap than you could shake a stick at.

For me, Wildwood was about two things, beach and boardwalk. The beach held us in its arms during the day and the boardwalk at night.  The beach was sand, sea shells, sea gulls, ice cream vendors, the hot hot sun that baked us to cinders, and an ocean that didn’t know how to stop blessing me with salt water and waves.  I was there to body surf.  And for this skinny 10 year old kid who loved being in the water, the waves and I danced in and out all day.  It was great.  And every late afternoon when the family would drag itself back to where we were staying, it was shower time.  Because half of the seashore was stuck to our skin and swim suits.

There were a few different places we stayed during the Wildwood years, but mostly we stayed in the attached bungalow of Rose Marie Manor – a small motel owned by a friend of the family. I think the bungalow had 3 bedrooms, two upstairs and one down, plus lots of floor and couch space for various older teenagers. What I had forgotten was that the motel had a pool.  I don’t remember ever going in it.  Why would we?  The beach was just a 4 block walk away.  Of course we walked there loaded down like dessert camels with beach bags, chairs, umbrellas, and the kitchen sink.  We never drove to the beach.  The matriarchs saved all year for the lodging, not the parking.  Please!  “Oh, that’s highway robbery!” my mother would say.

This is a picture of Rose Marie Manor from a postcard I found when going through the old house in Philadelphia.  The bungalow is behind the motel to the right. Rose Marie Manor had a largely black clientele since it was black owned.  It was also probably the only pool in my life where everyone in it was black and not related to me.  That was because our family had a way with pools.  Let me explain.

My mother was a swimming instructor and life guard, my aunt Jane was a swimming instructor, and everyone else in my family swam.  It wasn’t coincidence, it was the law.  Whenever we took any family trip that involved an overnight stay, having a bathing suit was like carrying an ID – don’t leave home without it. Because whichever matriarch planned the trip made sure there was a pool.

My older sister was the first in our family to go to college and for the first three years she went to school in rural PA.  But she spent her senior year internship in Flushing, NY; to which the family response was, ROAD TRIP!  The Holiday Inn in Flushing had an outdoor pool, so when the weather was warm, we were off to visit Sharon.  I don’t remember how many of us were on this trip.  It was probably only 8 – it felt like 80.  I’m sure we had multiple rooms, but I can only remember us in one.  And because it was my family, I know there was a coupon or discount somewhere in the mix.  First day in the hotel, it was time to go in the pool.  We could see it from our hotel window.  There were people sitting around the edge in lounge chairs, a few people in the water splashing and diving.  That’s where we belonged.

Our motley crew arrived down at the pool – bathing suits, towels, two certified instructors and all deep water swimmers.  Everyone turned and looked.  And as we got in the water, everyone else got out.  At first we thought, that was odd.  Where’s everyone going?  It eventually hit us, Oh right, they don’t want to swim with black people.  Oh well… more pool for us!  And then we proceeded to have a good time in “our pool.”  But that wasn’t just a Flushing, NY thing. It happened in pool, after pool, after pool down through the years.  All hotel pools became our pools.  Sometimes we’d just clear the pool, other times we’d take out the entire pool deck.  It was a running joke in our family; “Time for us to go clear the pool.”  And we would, without ever saying a word to anyone.

We got so used to having every hotel pool to ourselves that the first time it didn’t happen, when the white people didn’t get out of the pool when we got in, we thought there was something wrong.  Wait… Hello!… Aren’t you supposed to get out now?  Damn racial progress.

My family is scattered now, so it’s unlikely to see us together at a pool anymore.  But whenever we talk and the topic of swimming comes up, invariably someone says, “Remember clearing the pool?”  Yep, in every place but Rose Marie Manor, just 4 blocks from the beach.