I don't know about you, but for me, Thanksgiving evening was always the loneliest night of the year. Now that doesn't make sense, does it?
After all, Thanksgiving is the one truly American holiday and it's all about success, whether of harvest or anything else for which we should give thanks. But somehow, after all of the homecomings and special events, the bottom of Thanksgiving Day was empty.
Of course, what's empty for one person is not for another. We in Indiana Harbor were spoiled, in a way, because it was a 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week town. The mills saw to that. We were constantly busy with something.
The reason we were so active was, believe it or not, because of the churches. At least the Protestant churches. I'll give you a few examples from my church, the First Baptist Church of Indiana Harbor.
On Sundays, there was Sunday school, the big church service in the morning, a meeting of the BYPU (youth group) in the afternoon, Sunday evening services, and a respite with cakes and tea and sometimes the preacher. And then it was off to bed.
In our church, which was physically the largest in town, we had an auditorium in the basement as well as the sanctuary upstairs. In that basement, we were very big on plays. In fact, we had a playwright and a director in the church membership. So Monday evenings were often taken up with rehearsals or performances.
Tuesdays were for "game night." We had a small gymnasium in the basement, so small that when one took the ball out of bounds, he put one foot on the wall. We also had organized games.
One of the tricks I learned that served me well elsewhere was that ping pong would be set up as a pyramid. Everybody who was part of the ping pong group had a little round tag with his name on it. He or she could challenge someone from the layer above. The game would be played and, if the challenger won, he moved up a layer so that over a period of time he could work his way up to the top spot.
Other more sedate activities included checkers, shuffleboard, etc. But the real action took place in the gymnasium.
That's where volleyball teams competed with each other and got to be quite good. Another popular sport introduced was one that I had never played before - badminton. And since I knew next to nothing about the game, I would get together with Richard Carlson and we would find our way into the church during dead time and practice badminton.
If you've never played badminton before, this was competitive badminton, and you have no idea how hard a sport it is. That shuttlecock seems to hang in the air and you have forever to get under it and hit it. And that applied to both players.
Actually, it was tremendous exercise. I eventually got so good at badminton that I once beat a former city champion before I lost in the final game to Wilber Clark. And this is just Tuesday. The week is young.
Incidentally, over time I learned that any sport worth doing requires a great investment in time and energy. There are no minor sports.
The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
