The day I realized the chin up bars had been removed from the Mount Vernon City Park was one that broke my heart. You might not think removing a couple of old, weathered chin-up bars was a big deal, but those bars and I had a long-term relationship. Each year we went home to Mount Vernon for a visit over the last twenty-five years, I would trudge off into the park to do my chin ups. The bars were directly across from my grandparents house on 24th Street, so I often managed to do chin ups and visit them at the same time. Sometimes I visited the chin-up bars more than I visited them.
The bars were on two rectangular wooden structures. One was about 6 ½ feet high. I could reach up and grab it from a standing position, but when I was doing chin ups I would have to fold my legs under me on the downward motion. The other bar was about 8 feet high, but it required me to jump up, grab on, and then maneuver my hands into the right position. When I was in my twenties, I could do sets of pull ups (palms facing out) and chin ups (palms facing me). I usually tried to max out one set of each.
As I got into my thirties, I would have recurring bouts tendinitis in my right elbow, so I would forgo the pull ups and only do chin ups. On some visits I could not do chin ups at all. Some years, the chin ups in Mount Vernon were a way to complement my workout routine that I did at a gym in New Jersey, but there were also several years that my workouts were exclusively chin ups done year round, regardless of the temperature as long as it was not raining or snowing. But as you might expect, a man doing chin ups in his hometown was not just about chin ups.
Even though my grandparents lived across the street from the chin ups bars, I usually parked on the opposite side of the park in the main parking lot so that I would have to walk through the park to get there. The walk over let me go past the playground equipment and see the merry-go-round. I would remember how much fun it was to run around the edge of the merry-go-round pushing it until it was going FAST and then jump on, the centrifugal force pinning you down on the surface so that you could not stand up until it finally slowed down. I would think to myself how sad it is that our society is so safety and litigation conscious that parks don’t have merry-go-rounds in them anymore. I have never seen a merry-go-round anywhere else, not even in New Jersey. The merry-go-round also reminded me that somewhere we have a picture of my Mom and her two granddaughters on that merry-go-round with me pushing them around and around, everyone smiling. I miss her when I think of that photo.
I walk on and see the swings, the leather-strap seats having replaced the hard, flat bench style seats of years gone by. Those seats were heavier--and I’m sure more dangerous--because they allowed the rider to soar high into the sky, feeling as if you were in the treetops at the peak of the upward swing. Sometimes I would fly so high the change would fall out of my pockets. We were young risk-takers back then who somehow morphed into cautious, middle-age people as the years went by. I miss those carefree days of youth.
Sometimes on the way to the chin up bars, I would get sidetracked and wander over past the snow-cone stand and remember that those shaved-ice snow cones are still the best ones I have ever had. If I am in town in the summer, a rare occurrence, I can still buy a Wild Cherry snow cone and it will leave my tongue and lips bright red.
I may wander over to the bandshell, walk on the stage, and recall that this was where my Dad stood in about 1970 when his jazz band came to town and performed. Other visits, I will walk to the north from the parking lot and pray among what’s left of the concrete columns--or what I like to call The Ruins of Mount Vernon’s Roman Coliseum--before I pass by the swimming pool, the place I learned to swim. It is also the place where I did can openers, cannonballs, and even dived headfirst from the twelve-foot diving board into waters where black and white children could swim together, unlike what seemed to happen at other swimming pools in town. The tall diving board is gone, and I hope the “unofficial” whites-only rules are too around town.
Eventually I would make over to the chin-up bars that were one of the stops on Rend Lake College instructor Wayne Arnold’s Fit Trail. In between sets of chin ups I would catch my breath and walk over to look at the opening among the trees where Coach Ellis and Ms. Harre-Blair used to have their cross-country teams run 110-yard wind sprints. If it was winter, I might think about how we organized and played what we called the “Black-White Bowl” in 1981, a sandlot game of tackle football featuring black vs. white teams. Looking back, this seems like another risky move. Yet the game, won by the white team, and the rematch that followed at the fairgrounds, won by the black team, came off without incident although they were filled with tension and some rough plays that left a few players bloodied. I suppose it was a sign of progress in race relations, though, as the children of the busing era had proved that we could all manage to get along.
As I turned 40, I learned about guys who did complete workouts on playgrounds because of the various exercises that could be done on the equipment. Besides, the monkey bars were usually curved and did not put as much strain on the elbow as the straight bars in the city park did. So I stopped going to the chin up bars in the park and started going to elementary schools in Mount Vernon or the Summersville area park. But when I visited my grandparents, I always looked over at the old chin up bars because they were now a fixture in my life.
About four years ago, I stopped by my grandparents house and my Grandpa broke the news to me. “They tore down the chin up bars!” he said. I jumped up to look out of the front storm door.
“Why?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said.
After nearly 30 years of doing chin ups on those bars, they were gone. Like losing a loved one, I felt guilty that I hadn’t visited much in those final years, as if it might have somehow saved them had I kept doing chin ups there. I had only seen one other person doing chin ups there in the last 20 years, but evidence--like white medical tape wrapped on the bar to improve the grip--would appear at times. But to me, this was a tragic loss.
A person’s relationship with their hometown is, at least in my case, one of counting losses. I think we mostly notice what is gone. We miss family members or friends who have moved away or died. But we also miss things that were part of the landscape of the life we once knew. Homes, buildings, ball fields, or parks that served one generation are torn down as another generation configures the landscape to their liking. Someone decided that those chin up bars did not belong there anymore, and few years later Someone decided my grandparents did not belong there anymore. I realized all of this as I walked through the park on a chilly December day.
The bars were on two rectangular wooden structures. One was about 6 ½ feet high. I could reach up and grab it from a standing position, but when I was doing chin ups I would have to fold my legs under me on the downward motion. The other bar was about 8 feet high, but it required me to jump up, grab on, and then maneuver my hands into the right position. When I was in my twenties, I could do sets of pull ups (palms facing out) and chin ups (palms facing me). I usually tried to max out one set of each.
As I got into my thirties, I would have recurring bouts tendinitis in my right elbow, so I would forgo the pull ups and only do chin ups. On some visits I could not do chin ups at all. Some years, the chin ups in Mount Vernon were a way to complement my workout routine that I did at a gym in New Jersey, but there were also several years that my workouts were exclusively chin ups done year round, regardless of the temperature as long as it was not raining or snowing. But as you might expect, a man doing chin ups in his hometown was not just about chin ups.
Even though my grandparents lived across the street from the chin ups bars, I usually parked on the opposite side of the park in the main parking lot so that I would have to walk through the park to get there. The walk over let me go past the playground equipment and see the merry-go-round. I would remember how much fun it was to run around the edge of the merry-go-round pushing it until it was going FAST and then jump on, the centrifugal force pinning you down on the surface so that you could not stand up until it finally slowed down. I would think to myself how sad it is that our society is so safety and litigation conscious that parks don’t have merry-go-rounds in them anymore. I have never seen a merry-go-round anywhere else, not even in New Jersey. The merry-go-round also reminded me that somewhere we have a picture of my Mom and her two granddaughters on that merry-go-round with me pushing them around and around, everyone smiling. I miss her when I think of that photo.
I walk on and see the swings, the leather-strap seats having replaced the hard, flat bench style seats of years gone by. Those seats were heavier--and I’m sure more dangerous--because they allowed the rider to soar high into the sky, feeling as if you were in the treetops at the peak of the upward swing. Sometimes I would fly so high the change would fall out of my pockets. We were young risk-takers back then who somehow morphed into cautious, middle-age people as the years went by. I miss those carefree days of youth.
Sometimes on the way to the chin up bars, I would get sidetracked and wander over past the snow-cone stand and remember that those shaved-ice snow cones are still the best ones I have ever had. If I am in town in the summer, a rare occurrence, I can still buy a Wild Cherry snow cone and it will leave my tongue and lips bright red.
I may wander over to the bandshell, walk on the stage, and recall that this was where my Dad stood in about 1970 when his jazz band came to town and performed. Other visits, I will walk to the north from the parking lot and pray among what’s left of the concrete columns--or what I like to call The Ruins of Mount Vernon’s Roman Coliseum--before I pass by the swimming pool, the place I learned to swim. It is also the place where I did can openers, cannonballs, and even dived headfirst from the twelve-foot diving board into waters where black and white children could swim together, unlike what seemed to happen at other swimming pools in town. The tall diving board is gone, and I hope the “unofficial” whites-only rules are too around town.
Eventually I would make over to the chin-up bars that were one of the stops on Rend Lake College instructor Wayne Arnold’s Fit Trail. In between sets of chin ups I would catch my breath and walk over to look at the opening among the trees where Coach Ellis and Ms. Harre-Blair used to have their cross-country teams run 110-yard wind sprints. If it was winter, I might think about how we organized and played what we called the “Black-White Bowl” in 1981, a sandlot game of tackle football featuring black vs. white teams. Looking back, this seems like another risky move. Yet the game, won by the white team, and the rematch that followed at the fairgrounds, won by the black team, came off without incident although they were filled with tension and some rough plays that left a few players bloodied. I suppose it was a sign of progress in race relations, though, as the children of the busing era had proved that we could all manage to get along.
As I turned 40, I learned about guys who did complete workouts on playgrounds because of the various exercises that could be done on the equipment. Besides, the monkey bars were usually curved and did not put as much strain on the elbow as the straight bars in the city park did. So I stopped going to the chin up bars in the park and started going to elementary schools in Mount Vernon or the Summersville area park. But when I visited my grandparents, I always looked over at the old chin up bars because they were now a fixture in my life.
About four years ago, I stopped by my grandparents house and my Grandpa broke the news to me. “They tore down the chin up bars!” he said. I jumped up to look out of the front storm door.
“Why?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said.
After nearly 30 years of doing chin ups on those bars, they were gone. Like losing a loved one, I felt guilty that I hadn’t visited much in those final years, as if it might have somehow saved them had I kept doing chin ups there. I had only seen one other person doing chin ups there in the last 20 years, but evidence--like white medical tape wrapped on the bar to improve the grip--would appear at times. But to me, this was a tragic loss.
A person’s relationship with their hometown is, at least in my case, one of counting losses. I think we mostly notice what is gone. We miss family members or friends who have moved away or died. But we also miss things that were part of the landscape of the life we once knew. Homes, buildings, ball fields, or parks that served one generation are torn down as another generation configures the landscape to their liking. Someone decided that those chin up bars did not belong there anymore, and few years later Someone decided my grandparents did not belong there anymore. I realized all of this as I walked through the park on a chilly December day.