shatter proof
These days, my interest in basketball could be described as barely peripheral, confined to periodically reading in the newspapers, about our local high school teams or our college alma maters, during the winter.
I grew up shooting hoops on an infuriatingly netless rim situated in an isolated drier patch of drainfield, the locational upside of which was......... the surrounding soggy ground absorbed errant balls, deadening their wayward trajectory. The rim was attached to a rickety-old green sign for an insurance company, featuring a faux check signed by a John Doe. The backboard was attached to a wooden utility post that would lean just slightly, in later years. The ground under the basket was dirt, but compacted enough to dribble on. Eventually, I got taller and could jump just high enough, that I could barely grab the ten foot high rusty rim with my fingertips, pulling it down. Over the years, I did that so many times, eventually the rim hung down at a 45 degree angle, facilitating slam dunks :-)
Up on the hill, my grandpa had a rim nailed to the side of the barn, right where the cows came out. It was a bad deal when the ball landed in cow poop.
I was never good enough to play on an organized school team but I loved playing the rare pick-up games after school for fun, with equally-untalented friends. We loved playing on the lowered elementary school rims because it meant some of us lead-footed six-footers could slam dunk the ball.
This is a portable hoop in the Montlake neighborhood, down the hill from us. The sky was stormy to the east. That afternoon, I took a lot of pictures with strikingly dark, slate skies. This morning when I rooted this picture out, I could've sworn I'd taken this in April or May, when storms are more common. Interestingly, this was June (of last year). Then again, last weekend we had some stormy weather in town. My oldest son was running some high ridges in the Cascades and got caught in a white-out blizzard!
shatter proof
These days, my interest in basketball could be described as barely peripheral, confined to periodically reading in the newspapers, about our local high school teams or our college alma maters, during the winter.
I grew up shooting hoops on an infuriatingly netless rim situated in an isolated drier patch of drainfield, the locational upside of which was......... the surrounding soggy ground absorbed errant balls, deadening their wayward trajectory. The rim was attached to a rickety-old green sign for an insurance company, featuring a faux check signed by a John Doe. The backboard was attached to a wooden utility post that would lean just slightly, in later years. The ground under the basket was dirt, but compacted enough to dribble on. Eventually, I got taller and could jump just high enough, that I could barely grab the ten foot high rusty rim with my fingertips, pulling it down. Over the years, I did that so many times, eventually the rim hung down at a 45 degree angle, facilitating slam dunks :-)
Up on the hill, my grandpa had a rim nailed to the side of the barn, right where the cows came out. It was a bad deal when the ball landed in cow poop.
I was never good enough to play on an organized school team but I loved playing the rare pick-up games after school for fun, with equally-untalented friends. We loved playing on the lowered elementary school rims because it meant some of us lead-footed six-footers could slam dunk the ball.
This is a portable hoop in the Montlake neighborhood, down the hill from us. The sky was stormy to the east. That afternoon, I took a lot of pictures with strikingly dark, slate skies. This morning when I rooted this picture out, I could've sworn I'd taken this in April or May, when storms are more common. Interestingly, this was June (of last year). Then again, last weekend we had some stormy weather in town. My oldest son was running some high ridges in the Cascades and got caught in a white-out blizzard!