Field Day

Before I start on the whole Waldron Academy "Field Day" thing I wanted to touch on a couple of topics:

First, I finally found a record of my dad's birthplace. It was Torsza, Yugoslavia (aka Torschau). You won't find it on a map because it was renamed Savino Selo after WWII.
It's a rather small village (pop. ~4000) founded by Germans during the influx after the last Ottoman war (late 1700s). So my father's family was part of a small Hungarian Catholic minority in a German Protestant community. And it looks to be about 60 miles away from Timisoara (where my mother was born). Interesting...

Next - I found a picture of me in front of the lodge at the Apple Hill ski area. (That's the place where I got my tongue stuck to my ski pole):

Note the laced boots (there were 2 sets of laces - inner and outer), the cable bindings and the stretchy pants... (BTW - I have no idea who the dude in the goofy plaid shirt is...) But here's the part that really sucks. I tripped across this recent picture of the inside of the now abandoned lodge:

I know that "time marches on", but I can't begin to express how deeply it hurts me to see this. You can tell from this picture what a neat place it used to be - I can still see the skiers warming themselves around that fire...
It was just a little ski area in an apple orchard with a whopping 250 foot vertical drop, but there were lights for night skiing and even a short but steep expert run - top to bottom moguls - it required significant skills... Apple Hill was just fun, quirky and charming... and it holds a special place among my fondest memories...

Now, on to Field Day:
Athletics were a big deal at Waldron Academy. We started playing interscholastic sports in the 4th grade, including tackle football in full gear.
We had gym class every day. The coach was a former marine drill instructor so I suppose it's not too surprising that gym class was often devoted to marching and rifle drills (with wooden rifles). I still have no idea what it had to do with PhysEd, but it made my eventual real military training much easier.

And every spring there was "Field Day". It was held on Saturdays so families could attend, and every student in the school participated in a variety of track and field events. My dad was obsessed with the high jump (I have the home movies to prove it) - that was his event in high school. I skipped it - the possibility of 'pain' was too high... But here's a picture of me in the (painless) 4x50 relay:

I'm the one pulling away from the other 6 runners like they were standing still ... No brag - just fact :-) And here's a picture of the winning relay team:

From left to right (as best I can recall) are Anthony Colletti, Jay Callahan, Larry France(?) and me. Now here's the irony. (You know I rarely do a post without irony, right?):

This is a portrait of the 4th grade 'Nerd Herd'.
We were all honor students...
We were the 'non-jocks'...
We were the last ones chosen whenever the 'cool kids' picked teams...
The only reason we were together is because nobody else wanted us...
And we completely smoked them!

Some day very soon I'm going to go on a rant about 'cool kids' and how expectations can distort perceptions. It's kind of a hot button topic for me :-)