Been on vacation, in case anybody missed me. Got to spend a few days at a casino hotel in a big luxurious suite with a wet bar and a jacuzzi and terrycloth bathrobes. But it's not every day you mark 25 years with the love of your life, so it was perfectly appropriate.
Unlike last year's vacation, I didn't break any bones this time. But I did watch both the men's and the women's U.S. Open finals while we were there, and tennis will always be associated in my mind with fractures.
In the summer of 1959, when I was 13, my mother signed me up to take tennis lessons at the municipal park. She was always on the lookout for activities to occupy my idle summers, but I am sure that she also saw it as an opportunity to channel my athletic enthusiasm into a sport she considered acceptably ladylike.
I remember my folks driving me to a Mages sporting goods store in Chicago where they bought me a Spaulding racket, a can of balls, and a press. Tennis rackets were wood in those days, and you had to sandwich the head between two wooden trapezoids with wing nuts when not in use to keep it from warping.
Tennis balls were white then. They came vacuum-packed in tall tin cans that opened with a key just like a coffee can. When first opened, they hissed and whooshed like a coffee can too, except tennis balls don't smell as bad.
For a long time I had a helluva a time finding anybody to play tennis with, but after the tennis craze of the late 60's, I found more players. The last time I played was on June 1, 1978. I lost my balance going after a little drop shot. I was afraid I was going to fall and scrape my knees, so I reached out and grabbed onto the top of the net, but the angle was freaky, and the result was a multiple fracture of my right arm.
But my knees were completely unscathed.
And about 10 days later, you and I had our first picture taken together... cast and all!
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