Where My Grandchildren Play Soccer

Stunning, is it not? Just at the west side of our fair city, set against the first manifestations of the Front Range. Six well-tended fields, scores of players and many, many parents and grandparents (among them me, on sunny Saturday mornings). I can't imagine a more idyllic and peaceful scene. 

Do Luke and Caleb and Asher appreciate the glory of their situation? Why should they, after all? It's what they've always known; they take it for granted that soccer should be played in such lovely and prosperous surroundings. Later on, they'll come to know more about the circumstances of less fortunate people.  

It's hard for me not to compare Foothills Community Park with the P S 217 schoolyard of my own childhood. Ours was a representative "playground," no better or worse than would be found in any other middle-class or working class neighborhood. No grass, just solid concrete from one chain-link fence to the other. It was where we ran races, played "two-hand touch," flipped baseball cards, played punchball, stickball, basketball, softball, boxball, box baseball, handball, and any other game that could be improvised with a pink spaldeen. There were, as I remember, four basketball backboards and rims, arranged as two full courts. But one of the backboards was missing, the pole having disappeared many years ago and never replaced. Another of the poles had been set in the ground at an angle of perhaps 80 degrees and never corrected. It was useless. And then the two other baskets, on the Newkirk Avenue side, were set in ground that was not level, so that the basket was 9' 6" or so if you shot from the left side and 10" 6" on the right. Maybe this was a benefit; it helped us master trigonometry.

The P S 217 schoolyard was crowded. Various sports overlapped and shared the fields. If you were playing basketball, you had to watch out for line drives off the bat of one of the softball players. This taught us to be alert.

I did not feel at all deprived or "underprivileged" -- it was life as I knew it -- but I'm mighty glad that my grandchildren enjoy the luxury of grass and space and peace. In the words of the great Sophie Tucker, "I've been rich and I've been poor, and, believe me, rich is better."

Comments

[Don Z. Block]

My back is testimony to the consequences of playing on concrete.