Take your time and think this through. He heard himself say. Plan a few moves ahead, he told himself. Finally, somebody – other than everybody else already – had said it. The old man was capable of sudden movement. He just didn’t make any.
They said we didn’t have a chance. Here it is June and I am still standing, he heard Bernie Sanders say. The guy quit but he didn’t stop.
The old man was in the kitchen making a brunch of cottage cheese and blueberries and almonds, supposed to be good for your brain. The old man heard the space between the words of Bernie’s address to the Washington masses.
You can hear it in his voice. I may be old but I am tough and there is still fire in the furnace. Onward.
The old man was watching the NCAAs, the National Collegiate Championships of Track & Field. He was watching carefully. He recognized the stands, of course, the track, of course. Wish they’d show the Men’s room under the East Grandstands. He recognized the dorms and the streets and the trees. Sun rays through cloudy skies. The weather, ninety degrees one day, in the sixties a couple days earlier, recognized that, too. The old man knew the pollen. He could almost breathe the same air through the screen. Oregon is home, regardless how long he’d been gone.
The old man had once lived in Eugene, once had a lovely office above the Willamette River, immediately adjacent to Pre’s Trail. He had run on that track, he had clocked his fastest marathon at that finish line. Saw his first Olympic Trials in Eugene in 1976.
Remember Rick Wohlhuter winning the eight hundred meter race , think a half-mile, in one minute and forty-five seconds. 1:44.78. Here’s the memorable part. A reporter sticks a microphone in the athlete’s face moments after he completes a four-year-long quest for a berth on the United States Olympic Team. How does it feel?, she asks excitedly. The old man was just starting out then, too shy to ask his own questions. But he remembered thinking how stupid that was, how does it feel.
Like the question is in perfect diametrical opposition to the achievement. How does it feel?
Obviously, that reporter was not an athlete. They had those back in the day, news gatherers who had no idea what they were watching. Wohlhuter busted his ass for four years every day, every day, for this one race. Four years. This race. How does it feel? He can’t yet catch his breath and he feels real good about winning.
The last memory of those ’76 Trials. Seems like it was dusk. The old man could stand all day back then. He’d just seen a new world record in the decathlon and as he headed to the parking lot, there was the world’s greatest athlete jogging like he still needed to prove he was a man.
Forty years later. Dwight Stones opened the festivities from “the legendary hallowed ground of historic Hayward Field.” He forgot ‘mecca.’ Sounds like bullshit. Unless you have been there and watched the best of this nation and the world battle one another to see who is the greatest today, this evening, this afternoon. Now. The old man had crossed that finish line once. Cheered and clapped and stomped himself silly in the stands too many times to count.
The kid sets like four records and the reporter asks, what were you thinking? Hold on, hold on, hold on. What will you take away from this? I’m just thankful.
New drinking game. Every time Dwight says legendary or historic, take a swig. Every time Larry Rawson tells you how many strides between barriers, take another swig. Any time anybody says Bill Bowerman, offer a toast and finish the can.
The old man was watching a semi-final and a carefully coiffed reporter asks the panting winner how she’ll prepare for the finals in a couple of days. What do you need to do?
Oh, to be that young again. The winner replies, “Recover and think positive.” Recover and think positive. Isn’t that what the old man was always saying? Recover and think positive.
Then she added, “Get ready to attack.” Sweet young woman said that.
Recover, think positive and get ready to attack.
The old man headed for the bathroom just as an Uber ad came on.
Make extra money. Meet drunk strangers.