In the current heat wave, the only place to get any relief is near a pool, and even those feel like bath water. I go outside and I’m burning up but go inside and it’s freezing. Such is the life when summer is making its last attempt to stick it to us. Still, we seem to be right in the middle of several sports seasons. Baseball teams are making a last-ditch effort to get a wild card, the US Open tennis tournament is in high gear and cross-country runners fly past parents in lawn chairs who are trying to watch their kids play league soccer in the same field.
And in the middle of that conglomeration of sports cornucopia, we’ve got Knee Deep, episode 128. I’m Jeff Bender, bringing you my perspective on athletic achievement, and I’m just going to keep right on talking because you know the drill by now. I say welcome back and you sit there and relax into your coffee and etch out a ten-minute brain break just because you can.
To start with I’d like to ask you what happened to the time when every sport had its own special season?
Now, football season has already started, and a lot of teams began practicing before their school ever rang the first bell. In eighth grade I remember standing out there melting in the heat watching the sky start to spin around. The next thing I knew I had fainted and was sniffing smelling salts and telling some assistant coach that I love him like my brother. That was also my first experience with Gatorade, and I was never able to drink it again without asking for a side order of ammonia.
With all of these sport events triangulating around me at the same time, it struck me the other day with a kind of sadness that I never really did anything outstanding in any sport. I used to look up at the names of past track and field stars etched on a plaque in the gym, noting their record-breaking times from days gone by and think, “Is that name a real person or did some proud dad donate a lot of money to the school so his son’s name could be up there?”
For example, I remember seeing Floyd Hoffman’s name burned into plywood above the basketball goal. He supposedly ran the 220-yard dash in 26 flat in 1955, a time I thought was a total lie. The basis for my skepticism was that as far as I knew nothing happened in 1955 and also came from watching the only other Floyd I knew, the barber on Andy and Mayberry. who could not have run anywhere if his life depended on it. Everything about that Floyd was slow – his speech, the way he cut hair, or the way he pushed his glasses up when they slipped down his nose – so I questioned the ability of Mr. Floyd Hoffman to be able to hold any track record.
I began to think about just what it would take to hold some kind of record, and to have some athletic notoriety. Oh, you and I both know men who love to stand around and wax eloquent about their athletic abilities, the time they hit one at the buzzer or made a TD with a one-handed catch. They are satirically vilified in Bruce Springstien’s “Glory Days,” but I never had such a moment. I was never the stand-out, or for that matter, the stand-in. I did faint on the football field once, but I fell over like a lead pipe, with absolutely no fanfare at all, just a subtle tip to one side, then baloop, over I went into a pile.
Since then, I’ve spent a couple of days going over how I could attain a record of my own, something noteworthy my grandchildren could brag about later. As I was swimming my obligatory laps at my local pool, I continued to brainstorm what it would be like, for example, to be the first in my family to win the National Shuffleboard Championship. But then I started to think bigger… like swimming the English Channel. A bit of research revealed that Otto Thaning was 73 when he swam it back in 2014. I’d have to swim it now if I wanted to beat his record, but then if I finished my swim I would need a ladder to get out, and be stuck out there paddling around. Since France and England never could get along throughout history, my rescue would probably create some kind of embarrassing international event, and nobody needs that.
Yet, an extra-large dose of pool chemicals tipped off another idea. What if went somewhere in the United States that sounded like the English Channel. Technically, I would still be swimming and if the place where I swam sounded at least close phonetically, no one would know the difference. I could go there and dog paddle around for a few minutes, cross it, and come out bragging – a living legend to my grandchildren and a host of bystanders who might be standing around at the time.
Surely as the bunion on my toe, a little more than an hour away from me there is a small town in Indiana named English, and lucky for me, it has some history with water. Back in 1994 the whole town had to be moved to higher ground to escape the chronic spring floods which often turned the local streets into migrant ditches and the occasional roaring channel.
I decided to call them and get more details and was greeted by someone at the Crawford County Recreational and Tourism Board.
“Hello there. I’m calling to ask about crossing the channel there in your town.
“Well, thank you for calling and greetings from English, Indiana,” a kind voice answered. “To answer your question, we don’t really have an English Channel, but in the Spring we do get some ugly flooding and uncrossable streets. Is there something I can help you with?”
Yes, thank you,” I said, trying to sound athletic, “I’m interested in creating a lasting sports memory with my family and wondering where I might best make an English crossing in your town.”
“Sir, you do realize you are calling a town in Indiana, not England.
Yes, but I understand you do have a channel of sorts in the rainy season, right? Can I drive up there and cross it sometime?” I asked.
“Well, generally everyone goes to bed around ten here, but you can come up and cross our town anytime. We’d love to have you.”
“Well, I’m hoping to swim. When is the best time of year for that?”
“Probably May, but you’d have to get permission from City Hall and then watch the weather from the National Weather office in Louisville, Kentucky…but…the English Firre Department does opens the fire hydrant on the 4th of July and you might be able to find a big puddle or maybe a ditch to float around in for a minute or two.”
“Ok,” I answered, and yet, saying my goodbye I had to question whether crossing anything like a gutter or a ditch in English Indiana was all that noteworthy. Perhaps if I could swim the English Indiana puddle by noon, thank my sponsors, sign autographs and wrap up a quick interview, I could, with some careful planning, compete in another even more astounding event that same day.
But what were the options for a non-athlete? I had gone to a survival school when I was younger – maybe those mountaineering skills might lend themselves to tackling the physically demanding two hour half mile hike up Mt. Everett in Massachusetts. Despite my grueling swim that morning, I started to believe that with a few typographical errors and the right connecting flights, I might still have enough in my tank to be the first person to ever swim the English Channel and climb Mt. Everett in the same day. Of course, this would require an entirely set of muscles, and most certainly a wardrobe change, but then, it was for the grandchildren, so why not?
I was on the phone right away.
“Hi, this is Jeff Blunder from Evanspatch Indiana… and…. hello? Yes, Indiana, that is a state in the US. What? It’s over by Illinois, just under Canada. Yes, well, I wonder if you could put me in contact with a forest ranger or nature specialist there.”
“Sir, we call them hike-ographic engineers, but yes, that would be me. How can I be of assistance?
“Wow, you’ve got quite the Boston accent there! I am hoping to hike Mt. Everett in the near future, and wondering if you offer Sherpa snacks and oxygen along the Everett trail?
“Actually, you may be thinking of Mt. Everest, sir. And by the way, here in Massachusetts, we resent any implication that we have an accent. Why don’t you go buy a mountain goat and call it a day.”
Click.
Hmmmfp, I thought. That was some serious attitude. Surely there was a better way to end the day than isolated on the highest phonetically misspelled mountain peak in the United States.
What I needed was to feel some kind of love at the end of long record-breaking day, finish on a high with knuckles and maybe a glass of champagne. Lucky for me, in the heart of suburban Las Vegas, there’s a neighborhood on Tour Street that connects to de’ France Road. With any luck, I could complete a short bike ride straight down Tour Street, turn onto de’ France – to the sounds of cheers of course – then grab a burger at Andre Aggassi’s home, and fly home by midnight Central Standard Time to complete my athletic legacy.
Settling in comfortably on my red-eye flight home, I would probably drift off, exhausted and sore from my once-in-a-lifetime peak performance, the ultimate triathlon, swimming the English Channel, climbing Mt. Everest and completing the Tour de France in just twenty-four hours.
As my plane taxied off the Las Vegas runway and I nodded off, I saw the vision of my miraculous athletic achievement etched into plywood, right there next to Floyd Hoffman’s name at my old school. In truth though, it would probably be too high for anyone to see, and the board would only have my last name on it, with a very small asterisk next to it and a footnote to inquire in the school office if you wanted to know more.