Simon and Spitz

In addition to that week-long "frat party" in Montreal there were a couple of other major happenings in the summer of 1967...

First: I went to a Simon and Garfunkel concert... Now - almost all of the major acts stopped in Winnipeg on their tours but most of them didn't 'exert' themselves - some didn't even bother to tune up properly... I'm not going to name names :-)
And when Simon and Garfunkel showed up with no backup band - just two guys and one acoustic guitar - I was thinking "Here we go again"...
But they were beyond amazing! I didn't realize it was possible to be that good with just a PA system and a few microphones... It was every bit as good as their recordings... I was absolutely spellbound - one of the great experiences of my life...
So - after the concert Karina and her friend / folk signing partner (whose name escapes me) decided to hang out by the stage door to see if they could meet "the guys". I was like "Yeah - right... That's going to happen" and grabbed a bus home... Besides it was rather chilly that night - being early July and all :-)
Karina didn't get home until about 3AM - apparently by the time midnight rolled around only 5 or 6 people were still waiting by the stage door and they all got invited in to hang out with Simon and Garfunkel for a couple of hours... I guess they just sat around talking about social issues and stuff... And I missed it :-)

OK - now on to the second topic... Here's a picture from the spring of 1967 to introduce it:

There are a few things to notice here:

Mom painted that picture on the wall. It was a major departure from her earlier work - it didn't have nearly the amount of detail or raw emotion... But it was still nice - and I still have it...

Next - that's a "Gordie Howe" signature model first baseman's mitt on my right hand... (I still have that too.) Gordie Howe was, of course, an ice hockey player. So, why is his signature on a baseball mitt?? I suspect you have to be Canadian to make sense of that :-)

Hmm - we obviously hadn't gotten the new color TV yet. Must have been shortly afterward... BTW - I'm pretty sure that's "Lilly Munster" on the tube... Which begs the question: Why I was wearing a baseball mitt while watching the Munsters? I'm pretty sure it had something to do with my OCD :-)

And finally: You can see a huge boxy building out the window right above my head. That was the brand new aquatic center being constructed for the 1967 Pan American Games...

As it turns out tickets to the preliminary events were not that expensive and mom let me get a bunch of them. That aquatic center was where I watched an unknown 17 year old named Mark Spitz win some preliminary heats... He ended up winning 5 gold medals in those games...

But the thing that really impressed me was the 10m platform diving... Unless you've seen it in person you have no idea just how high that platform is.
You have also have no idea how sick it sounds when a diver screws up and lands flat on his back from that height. The rescue crew had to go in after him - he was out cold... He didn't sustain any serious injuries - but that had to hurt!!
That was also when I concluded that female divers had the most beautiful physiques I'd ever seen :-) Decidedly muscular - but still entirely feminine - the perfect balance...

OK - there was one moment when I was embarrassed to be American... I was watching an early round baseball game between the U.S. and Cuba, and Cuba was on a tear - they'd scored a couple of runs and still had some men on base. So the U.S. sent in this goofy pitcher to disrupt the game... He spent a number of minutes doing nothing but clowning around... The umpire finally told him to pitch the freaking ball - and he threw a potato instead... He was immediately ejected but he had done his job - the Cubans' concentration was broken... I seem to recall Cuba ended up winning the game anyway but that potato routine was not sportsman-like...

I also attended a number of other events - some track and field and even equestrian. And then there was bicycle racing in the velodrome... OK - is that screwy or what? No matter what the length of the race these guys go super slow until just a few laps before the finish and then sprint like hell...
And they call that 'racing'?? I've never seen a footrace where the athletes walk slowly around the track eyeballing each other until the last turn and then sprint to the finish. That would be silly...

But my most enduring memory of the Pan American Games was of all those beautiful young women athletes... They were all over town and in the stands at all the events - usually hanging out with their male counterparts... Some of those Latin American women - OMG!!! ... And they all totally ignored me just because I was only 13 and wasn't a world class athlete... It was so unfair... And I felt so left out :-)

Before I put the wraps on the summer of 1967 I wanted to mention that I spent a quite a bit of time with a kid named Richard Winston. We first started hanging out together at Expo in Montreal. He was a year ahead of me at St. Paul's and was kind of like the big brother I never had...
This one day he fixed me up with a girl from his neighborhood - I think her name was Trudy so I'll call her that... So Richard and his girlfriend and Trudy and I headed for St. John's Park... He had told me beforehand to just follow his lead and do everything he did. And when we got to the park he and his girlfriend immediately laid down in the grass and went into full lip-lock mode... Ummm - have I mentioned how shy I was??? So there we were - Trudy was looking at me expectantly and I was looking for somewhere to hide... She finally said "Well - I can see I'm not needed here..." and left... And afterward Richard was like "Dude! That was a sure thing and you blew it!".

Yeah - I was totally hopeless :-)