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Both my mother and father were graduates of Bucklin High School. As were both my brother and I. Dr Ebert, an Osteopath, delivered both Max and I in the north downstairs bedroom of the home place, Max in November of 1926 and I in May of 1930. He called us Max and Climax. 

But he was a pretty good guy anyway, except he left town shortly after I was born. I have never believed  the story that because I weighed 12 pounds at birth and was almost a month late in arriving had anything to do with his escape to Oswego to establish his practice.
   

The above facts really don’t have anything to do with today’s story, but I wanted to shed a little more light on my very early days and surroundings.
  

My dad was a pretty good athlete.  He played a tough game of football, and was an excellent softball 2nd baseman, a game he played during the dusty days on one of the town’s league teams.  But his best sport in school was Track.  He was only 5’8″ tall and was very proud of the fact that he never weighed more than 162 pounds in the winter nor less than 154 pounds in the summer.
   

Dad’s specialty in Track was the relays, but especially the 440 yard dash, now known as the 400 meter run.  As I recall, his best time in high school was 52.8, certainly not record setting by today’s standards but very good in 1919.  He ran anchor in most of the relays and accumulated many ribbons, medals, and trophies, some of which are still in the family.     
   

And so when Max and  I were growing up, pressure was applied to run the dashes. Neither one of us made any headlines in those events, although both of us were out for Track all four years.  I think my best time in the 440 was something like 58.8, which was sometimes good for 5th place if I was lucky.
   

My best efforts were the field events where I pole vaulted and threw the javelin.  My best vault was an inch or two above 11 feet, but we didn’t have one of those “catapult” type of poles like they do now.  My best javelin throw was just a bit over 170 feet.  I would later become very happy when grandson Daniel beat my best height by several inches in the pole vault, and grandson Andrew out -threw me in the javelin, also by several inches.  Can’t win ’em all!
   

When Max and I were growing up on the farm, we built a pole vaulting standard by setting two 2 by 4’s in the ground after pounding several nails in the side of each so that the crossbar would stay up.  The pole we used was a discarded piece of wooden well rod like those used with windmills.  The crossbar was an old bamboo fishing rod.  We would spade up the ground behind the standard for a safer landing, although it probably wouldn’t have been necessary when you’re falling only 5 or 6 feet.  I remember that in high school competition, the landing area was the same….spaded earth, and not the three foot thick air mattress of today. 
  

We didn’t have a stopwatch, or even a wrist watch, so I carried the family alarm clock with me when running the half mile down to the mailbox, just to see if I could run that distance in less than two minutes.  Inevitably, the time was close to twice that, as near as I could tell.
   

Still, I managed to win a few ribbons in track and field in my high school days.  All of them, plus all my 4-H ribbons, were lost in a house fire that destroyed everything sometime in the sixties.  If you’ll take my word for it when I talk about winning lots of ribbons, I’ll feel a lot better!


Kay Melia is a longtime broadcaster, author and garden in northwest Kansas.