By John Grindrod
Guest Columnist
Had you told me when I was a teen that someday I’d be 72 years old, I’d have been very skeptical. Even in my teens, I knew enough about my family history to realize that while my maternal and paternal ancestors may have been known for a variety of things, one of those would certainly not have been longevity. Of my four grandparents, one died before I was born, another, before I was 2 and a third when I was 6. As for my parents, well, I’ve outlived both, my father by 14 and my mom by two years.
As the great Tolstoy once said, “Old age is the most unexpected of all things that can happen to a man.”
Now, I did have some curiosity as to how the world might look through elderly eyes when I was younger. And, now that I’m in that phase of my life, I know in many ways there’s still quite a bit of kid that still exists within. This becomes clear to me on a pretty regular basis as I go about my daily routines.
For example, as many men my age, I have fond memories of my days of play, especially unsupervised outdoor activities, has become an anachronism. With each changing of the sports calendar, we played sandlot baseball and Whiffle Ball, directed our basketballs rim-ward and tried to throw our footballs like Johnny Unitas, run like the great Jimmy Brown and tackle like Dick Butkus.
I think about those wonderfully youthful and playful days. They were days when I had far more stamina, far more foot speed and far sharper hand-eye coordination than I possess now. And, if I dwell on that thought too long, a certain melancholy creeps over me. In that sense, I know I’m not alone. Former athletes far more accomplished than this sandlot kid have spoken of the sadness of looking back on those times when they were so athletically elite.
One of those who indeed was gifted is my friend Duane Reynolds, a sweet-stroking southpaw basketball standout on the LCC basketball teams of the late 1960s. I’ve known Duane since we both sat before Sister Joseph Andre in a second-grade St. Charles classroom. By the fourth or fifth grade, in Catholic schools, my mates and I in the winter were all about CYO basketball.
If I close my eyes and squint, images come into focus of an 8 or 9-year-old Duane, often all alone practicing his shot on that combo cafeteria and basketball floor at St. Charles, where he so often could be found, in season or out, whenever he could get his hands on a basketball. Although he was the same age as we, ours were set shots hoisted with great effort while his were jump shots released at the apex of a vertical ascension with the flick of a downward wrist.
Decades later, I interviewed Duane for a magazine feature I was doing on his senior LCC team. In one of this region’s truly iconic high school basketball games, an overtime 101-100 win over Delphos St. John in the sectionals in ‘69, Duane filled those rims that night for 28 points. During our interview, he admitted to me how often he thought of those days when he and his talented teammates could snatch a rebound off the glass, fire an outlet pass, fill the lanes and finish with a layup at the rim. And, there was no shame in what Duane told me when he told me that he had to listen for that internal timer to go off and stop those memories and return to present-day realities lest he cry. As most who’ve lived long will attest, sentimentality is so often a daily companion.
I still keep an eye on my horizons, searching for that perfect outdoor court for a three-on-three game, one that features enough room on the sides for corner shots farther back than five feet, which was often a problem in the mid-60s single-car driveway venues where my mates and I often played.
Yes, indeed, I’m well past the age when I’m physically able to shoot a jumper, run a pass pattern or send a deep fly down the line, yet I still remember those days and I still scan my horizons looking for perfect places to play, almost as if there’s a Peter Pan still somewhere within me, one that defiantly sings, “I won’t grow up!”
John Grindrod is a regular columnist for The Lima News, a freelance writer and editor and the author of two books. Reach him at [email protected].
