I can remember seeing that they were sponsoring free lessons at the court that belonged to the Hillhurst-Sunnyside Association.
I was a big newspaper reader from when I was very young. I started at the Comics section of the paper and then worked my way back through until I came to the front page. I still do that.
I can’t remember much about the lessons, only that they were free, that they were on consecutive Saturday mornings, and I had to bring their own racquet.
To practise the skills they were teaching, I asked my dad if I could come on his 6 am trips to that same tennis court with Lorne Reed.
The gate was locked, but open wide enough that a person could squeeze through to the court.
Doral agreed to take me.
When I got there, I just practised batting the ball against the practise board outside the courts while the two of them played tennis. At one point Doral came over to me and asked where I had been learning to play tennis. I told him I had been taking lessons through the Calgary Herald. He just nodded. Then he stayed beside me for a while and gave me a few tips and then went back to his game with Lorne Reed. I continued to hit balls against the practise board. I wonder why this memory is so vivid for me. My guess is that now I see I was out looking around the world, doing all kind of things my parents had no idea about. Yes. They let me grow up as a free-range chicken. Not a lot of supervision.
Only slightly relevant, here is a tennis joke from Doral. Quit reading if you don’t like bad jokes. To understand the scoring, if you were to score every point on your opponent you would call out Love, fifteen, 30, 45, game. That is just the way the points are scored. So then Doral would ask new tennis players, “Why do they call it Love?” Then the answer is “because love doesn’t mean a thing”. I know, bad joke. But it just comes to mind when I think about Doral and about playing tennis.
Arta
Loved this post. I really thought it was going to be about chickens, since I have been wanting to have backyard chickens for quite some time now. Many municipalities are doing pilot projects to allow this to happen and see how the community response is. My problem is that I am rarely stationary enough in the summer to take care of chickens -- thought they don't need that much attention.
ReplyDeleteBut back to you post, I jut loved this.
It reminded me of all the cover-to-back reading I did at our house growing up... National Geographic, the Friend, the New Era. I feel like a Time Magazine subscription was in there as well. Though it was often too difficult for me to grasp, there was the Christian Science Monitor and of course the Calgary Herald. I didn't do a lot of complete readings of the daily newspaper -- but the comics were definitely a go to.
Mary, I think you nailed all of the subscriptions that used to come to the house. I had forgotten the Christian Science Monitor, though when you referred to it, then memories of reading it came back to me. When I was young my parents took The Reader's Digest. I went to the comics there first, as well. While I am here thinking about reading newspapers, as I child I liked to lay the paper down on the frontroom floor, spread it out and then move my body back and forth from page to page, kneeling on my knees. Even now it feels good to spread that newspaper out on an empty table and then read every column and ad (except the sports pages).
ReplyDeleteGood luck with finding chickens. I wonder if you can get Moiya to get a start on some out in BC and then you can come and tend them for the summer. But ... will you be willing to kill, pluck and roast them before you go home.
The Shuswap Market News is delivered for free at our home in Salmon Arm. During the week the sudoko is completed, the crossword puzzle is mostly completed, and eventually every column gets read by at least one of us and discussed.
ReplyDeleteSometimes we have a copy of the free paper, The Friday AM, that can be picked up around town. Joaquim is the only person in our household that has written a letter to the editor. His letter was published the next week.
As I child I recall delivering a paper that I believe was similar to these. I think it was called "The Good News." Anyone else remember that?
BTW, I just love reading in your post that you signed yourself up for free tennis lessons and took them. I suppose that is different that signing up for graduation and not telling anyone until the morning of. Another kind of free-range child.
ReplyDelete1. I want to know what Joaquim's letter was about. I suppose I can call and ask him.
ReplyDelete2. A big wow to taking that newspaper seriously. I can't think of a better way to know the culture of the place you live, but joining in on local journalism. My hat (my black hat) is off to you.
3. I only have a residual memory of a local paper. O wonder if anyone else will remember. Right now we have a Banff Trail Newsletter that gets deliver, maybe quarterly. Maybe more. I do read everything, and in this case I look at the ads of the local merchants who support the newspaper.
4. As for raising free-range chicken children? It surely is the unanswerable parenting question. How much freedom to give kids? Wanting to turn your kids into street-wise adults. A hard job. But from my point of view, I was totally comfortable with how much freedom I had, and my parents seemed to act as though that were just normal.
Our school district brought in Lenore Skenazy to speak about her blog and book, "Free Range Kids." Her story, her analysis, and her suggestions gave me the gift of worrying less about my child without shame about my past worry. A powerful speaker and writer.
ReplyDeleteDear Mr. Reimer,
ReplyDeleteI hope you will consider publishing the letter below that I am submitting to FRIDAY A.M.
Sincerely,
Joaquim Camps
Choosing to check the facts
I am writing in response to the letter entitled “Choosing who we allow as immigrants” that appeared on FRIDAY A.M. on August 25th[, 2017]. I will not discuss the opinions of the author. I will simply provide accurate information on the topic. The letter, which starts with “The PM’s decision to permit hundreds of thousands of refugees ‘landed status’ in our country…” may lead the reader to believe that the government of Canada is planning to admit 300,000 predominantly Muslim refugees in 2017. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The government is planning to grant permanent residence to 40,000 refugees in 2017, not 300,000. The quota of 300,000 refers to people to be admitted as permanent residents in 2017, and the 40,000 refugees will represent 13% of that total. More than half of the new permanent residents (172,000) will be admitted based on their professional qualifications (economic category). The second largest group is the family category (84,000), which includes spouses and children of permanent residents and citizens. Many people born and raised in Canada choose to marry somebody from another country and to bring them to Canada. This is a clear example of Canadians choosing who we allow as immigrants.
Between November 2015 and January 2017, 40,081 Syrian refugees resettled in Canada. Almost half of them (18,205) came because groups of Canadian citizens chose to work together to sponsor them, regardless of their religious beliefs.
Joaquim Camps, Salmon Arm
I saw the heading of "free range chicken" but then was confused when saw the image of the tennis ball. I wondered, which came first?
ReplyDeleteSo that made me laugh, Joaquim. I have no clever come back to that. You saw an allusion there which I didn't mean to make, but wish I had.
DeleteI've never been good at tennis, the teachers always act like the racket is more valuable than you and I have always been to afraid to try a risky maneuver out of fear that I would somehow break the racket.
ReplyDeleteDavid, this is making me want to buy you a tennis racquet. A really good one. The really good tennis racquets in our house were strung with cat gut, whatever that was. I knew to protect it with my life and never get it wet or it had to be restrung at great cost. And the racquet had to be stored flat. Just tossing it somewhere would warp the racquet. You were having the right feeling from your teachers. A racquet is valuable, though perhaps not as valuable as a human life.
DeleteBut now, time to break away from caution with the tennis racquet. Try your risky manoeuvers and if your racquet breaks, I will buy you a new one. Just don't get the racquet wet, and store it flat. If not, then you will have to buy your own new racket.
I can just feel the wonderful stretch of a serve. Holding 2 balls in my left hand, tossing one high, then swinging that racquet over my head and that twist of the body to get power out of the serve.
Oh, the joy of playing tennis.