July 6 - 12, 2022
The Trussville Tribune
Lifestyle
Page 7
Lass But Not Least: Pickleball is here to stay By Ken Lass
You can run, but you can’t hide from pickleball, that is. I find it everywhere I go. They’re playing it at the Trussville Civic Center, the YMCA, Clay Elementary, and the Trussville Mall tennis courts. It’s even being played at my church. At everybody’s church. The mayor and city council recently stirred up a hornet’s nest by fencing off a section along the Trussville greenway for the building of a pickleball complex. Mayor Buddy Choat told Tribune Unscripted that the location is now “off the table” after a wave of protest from walkers and disc golfers, some
of whom were pretty creative with signs they hung on the fencing. I had no problem with the courts. I did have some concerns about the parking. There’s precious little of it in the immediate area. The Senior Center lot fills up for a good hot lunch, much less a pickleball tournament. Rather than going up the hill to the Cahaba Elementary space, I had this vision of cars parking out of control everywhere on any patch of grass at all angles. Something similar to the parking chaos you see in the sports park on a busy Saturday. At any rate, the mayor and council made the right call to back off. The angst isn’t worth
it. It certainly isn’t going to slow down the growth of this phenomenon. Pickleball was invented back in the 1960s by three guys who had an old badminton court in their backyard but not enough racquets to play the game. So they substituted ping pong paddles. The shuttlecocks didn’t bounce well off the paddles, so they switched to a wiffle ball. After experimenting with rules and lowering the net, voila! A new game was born. Oh, and that weird name they gave it? Turns out one of the co-founders named it after his dog, Pickles. Sharon and I tried playing once, and it really was quite fun. We got invited to play at
the Civic Center. We showed up with no clue and no equipment, just our gym clothes and tennis shoes. The other players couldn’t have been more welcoming and more patient as I staggered around trying to figure out where to stand, how to serve, and how to keep score. It occurred to me that this might be one of the secrets to the rapid growth of pickleball. Those who play it actually want others to learn and join in as opposed to golf, where there is little patience for duffers like me who hold up the show because we are searching for yet another three-dollar ball sliced into the woods. Since there are usually
more players than courts, folks sit neighborly on the bleachers waiting for their turn to play, an excellent chance to socialize and make new friends. We enjoyed it to the point that, a few days later, we went to Academy Sports and bought a couple of cheap paddles and a couple of balls. I figured the least we could do when we return is to have our own stuff. Curiously, the paddles remain unopened in their package in my bedroom closet. Somehow, we never found our way back to play again, and I’m not sure why. Life just happens, I guess. But pickleball is not going away. I don’t think it’s a fad like disco or beanie babies. It’s
going to keep showing up everywhere you look. If you can’t beat ’em, might as well join ’em. Saw where our church is offering a beginners pickleball class. I think we’re going to sign up. What better place to play than at church? After all, I may need God’s help to learn this game that was named after a dog. By the time the city does find a place for those new courts, I’ll be ready. Maybe I’ll see you there. I’ll be the guy with the cheap paddle, trying to figure out where to stand. (Ken Lass is a retired Birmingham television news and sports anchor and Trussville resident.)
Sean of the South: Lake Martin By Sean Dietrich, Sean of the South. Commentary
Somewhere near Eclectic. A small A-frame cabin in the chlorophyll-choked woods of Alabama on Lake Martin. I awoke on America’s 246th birthday. I was lying in a single bed, nestled in an all-wood room with piney walls. The walls were adorned in fishing tackle, and a singular mounted bass about the size of the late Sonny Liston. I could hear the coffeemaker in the kitchen, gurgling its sunrise anthem. I staggered out of bed and glanced out my window to greet the day. The lake outside was the color of a mirror, upturned toward the sky. The pre-sunrise clouds were pink and gray, waiting for dawn. There was a squirrel outside
my window, staring at me with its little shark eyes. Eyes that were saying to me, “If circumstances were different, and if I were a lot bigger, I would eat you.” I went to the bathroom to see a man about a dog. I played Wordle. I got it in five because I’m an idiot. I stumbled into the kitchen. I stood before the Mr. Coffee machine, and my attention was diverted. I saw them. They were on the counter. Unassuming, little crimson tennis balls, stacked neatly in a pyramid. They looked supple and friendly. Because that’s how Peaches from Chilton County are supposed to look. I picked one up. I held it in my hands and used my thumb to test its ripeness. There’s a technique for checking a peach’s edibility.
You use your thumb to apply the slightest amount of pressure. Like probing a fresh bruise. You want the peach’s meat to give a little, but not too much. If your thumb makes a small dent, the peach is ready to eat. If you break your thumbnail, you might want to wait a few days to let it ripen. This one was just right. Which is why I opted against coffee. Since I was 9 years old, I have been drinking coffee every blessed morning. I come from evangelicals who were fueled by coffee and puritan moral disapproval. They drank their Folgers weak and black so they could sip it all day long. Today, however, I got my caffeine from another source. I poured Milo’s tea into a tall, old-timey, green tinted Coca-Cola glass, filled with
crushed ice. The golden sugary drink sloshed around, running over the brim. My cup ranneth all over the place. I don’t know who Milo is, or where he comes from, but he deserves to be canonized in his own lifetime. I left the kitchen with a peach in one hand and Milo’s in the other. I stepped outside into the daylight. The sun was hoisting itself over 40,000 acres that is Lake Martin. Lake Martin is one of the top five cleanest and clearest lakes in the United States. It is like looking into glass. It is a lake so clear you can see all the Natural Light cans on the bottom. I stared across the lake and I was thinking about my old man. He’s been dead for most of my life, death by his own choosing. But he loved peaches. He could eat five or six in one sitting. He always said peach-
es were high in vitamin C, but he was full of beans. Peaches have less vitamin C than a fire hydrant. I bit into my peach. The fruit was soft. The skin was a little fuzzy. The flesh was tender without being mushy; somewhere between a new tomato and a ripe pear. Nectar ran down my chin, dripping along my neck, flowing down the collar of my T-shirt, staining the white fabric. The taste was acidic but not bitter. Sweet but not cloying. Tart but not sharp. And something primal took over within me. I ate another peach. Then another. And another. Pretty soon, I had eaten four peaches. I washed down each bite with swigs of ice-cold Milo’s, a drink sweet enough to rot your molars, but refreshing enough to have its own water-
park in Orlando. And as the sunlight peeked above the treeline, I heard the slaps of distant screen doors reverbing across the smooth lake on a Southern Fourth of July. I heard faraway happy conversations, bouncing off the water. An American flag next door whipped in the easy breeze. The morning air was immaculate. Birds called to one another. Crickets were already complaining in unison about the heat. Across the lake, I saw a young man preparing his fishing boat. I waved to him. He did not wave back. But his radio was playing “My Girl,” and I realized there is hope for America’s youth. “You missed some good peaches,” I whispered to the sky. And I hope someone heard me.
