Archery at the Olympics & Old Memories

ARCHERY AT THE OLYMPICS AND OLD MEMORIES

I'm looking forward to watching the archers compete in the 2004 Olympic games in Greece. It brings back many memories of long ago.

When I was very young, (about 7 years old) before World War II, my father became interested in Archery. It still being during the Great Depression, he couldn't afford to buy the equipment. So he bought wood and made his own bows out of lemon wood. He also bought dowels, tips and turkey feathers to make arrows.

It was my job, down in our basement, to find the dowels that were perfectly straight. My father made a hot wire form in the shape of the required feather arrow fin. He glued the feathers on to the dowels. I had the smelly job of turning the dowel's feathers in the hot wire form to burn off the feathers to make the perfect shape. I can still smell burning feathers in my memory.

My mother then became interested in Archery, too, as did my 4-year-older brother. To make a long story short, over the next three years, my father became the national men's champion, my mother became California women's champion, and my brother became junior champion of all the states west of the Mississippi. All of my family belonged to the Greenwood Archery Club, which practiced on a green across the street from the banks of Lake Merritt in the center of Oakland.

We used to practice archery after school in a vacant lot next to our house. There were six huge Eucalyptus trees along the back of the lot. My mother hated those trees because you couldn't grow anything under them. But they made a great place for my father to hang an old 9 x 12-foot rug behind the archery targets that kept any stray arrows from shooting pedestrians and motorists driving by. I'm sure this kind of activity would not be allowed today.

In 1939, my family was invited to put on archery demonstrations at the World's Fair in San Francisco. Our entire family participated because my younger 7 year old brother and myself, now 10, were all archers. We were known as the Bay Area's Archery Family. We would drive across the brand new Bay Bridge to Treasurer Island every weekend and demonstrate archery to huge crowds. I think part of the attraction was that the film Robin Hood with Errol Flynn was in theaters (with Howard Hill doing the archery shots for Flynn.) The most famous shot was the splitting of the arrow in the target bulls eye with Robin's arrow; Hill really made that remarkable shot. My father had competed with Hill many times in tourneys in California.

As I grew older and my strength increased, I progressed from a 20-pound bow to 30 pounds. In my last year of archery, I learned to use a 40-pound bow and hit the target at 60 yards---but not for long. At age 12, I just didn't have the upper body strength to pull that weight for very long. Then World War II came along and the archery club members disappeared into the ranks of the military and defense work.

As I watch Olympic archers today, I marveled at the equipment they use. They have bows and arrows made of fantastic metals. The bows are equipped with sights and arrow "steadiers". As I marveled at the equipment, I wondered how we managed to make all those bulls eyes and win competitions with homemade lemon wood bows, my stinky turkey-feathered arrows, and homemade leather finger and wrist guards that my mother cut and sewed? I had bow string burns on the inside of my left arm and wrist for years until I put my quiver of bow and arrows away for good.

To think I gave it all up for boys. Sigh!

BumbleBeeBoogie