HISTORY: Jaycee Park

Well, my first official post on re-writing history is Jaycee Park near my grandparent's old house. My earliest memories of this park were playing tennis with my dad. When I lived in the Heights, I'd often bring Zoe to the park to play in the fields on the way to visit my grandparents.

Thanks to Google Earth, you can see the softball field (which was actually being used on our recent visit), the basketball court, two tennis courts, the kiddie playground and the thing in the middle is the picnic pavilion.

In the past, every time I've been there, there is always a pick-up game of basketball happening on the courts. Several families with small children were making use of the playground, and several punks had used the pavilion as a graffiti target.

The courts themselves are very inner-city, urban with a chain-link net and wooden boards to act as lines in the concrete. The surfaces had various chunks missing and the boards occasionally stuck up or out, which added a bit of randomness to the trajectory of the ball which usually obeyed the laws of physics.

Having my dad teach me tennis was a mixed blessing. He was very good, repeatedly beating me with his old wooden racket. Just to help my handicap, he'd occasionally play with his left hand. I'd still lose. I remember crying a lot. I HATED losing. Still do.

Between playing matches with him fairly regularly and with my step-mom, I actually acquired enough skill to enjoy the game and carry it on as a life sport. I don't play as much now as I would like. The yuppie courts by my house are always filled with over-achieving kids, with whom I am too embarrassed to play next to for fear I'd repeatedly pelt them with my stray shots into their court. Perhaps when I'm a stay-at-home wife, I can join the other neighborhood ladies in their mid-morning tennis league ;)

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: I'm so grateful for my dad for teaching me how to play tennis.