Although many years have past, Stephentown, the wee hamlet in New York State where I spent my teenage, growing up years, maintains an abiding grasp on my memory. Strange the reflections, the echoes which remain…
From the headlands and coves of my adolescence comes this remembrance – my room.
There came a time in my life when, being the oldest of three sons, I was awarded my own bedroom. It was the original ‘Man Cave.’
One of its features I best recall were all the pictures – torn out pages from sports magazines of various athletes accomplishing feats I could only dream about: sprinters, football, track and field, and the like. It should be noted I had no pictures of Erasmus or other scholars with their faces set to a resolved dedication to solving quadratic equations or calculating the value of pi.
In those years, I guess I felt a pole-vaulter scaling a bar set at sixteen-plus feet, or some muscular fellow hoisting four hundred pounds over his head to be far more engrossing than a scholar lost in thought. My values have changed quite a bit since then; but then most early-held values do.
These pages were stapled to the wallpaper and strange to say, Dad didn’t mind. Now there was to be no taping used in the hanging of these feats of athletic prowess; the damage to the wallpaper when said pictures were finally removed being obvious. But he didn’t mind staples since, once removed, no trace was left behind, much like a tiny wound sustained years ago, the scar of which is now invisible.
The urge for increased physical strength flourished within me – to be possessed of a stockyard strength, full of riot and vigor. The mounted wall images afforded testament to this urging. Although I cut, hauled, split and stacked more firewood than was seemly. I would have had to join a gym to get some rest – assuming for a moment there had been a gym in Stephentown – or if there had been, that anyone hauling in hay in the hot sun all day, or rising at four A.M. for milking would see the need of it. Nevertheless, all the harvesting of firewood did nothing to quell this fire inside which consumed me.
So, why was I so riveted with the idea of becoming stronger? Perhaps it was hormones, the desire to impress my Dad, a need to feel less vulnerable which compelled me; perhaps a mixture of all three.
Lacking barbells or dumb bells, I found an old bowling ball with which I adapted a series of strength inducing exercises, said exertions dutifully written down and checked off at the end of my ‘workout.’
As a part of the drama club at our high school, imagine my delight in finding a pile [125 #] of barbell weights under the stage one day as I went prowling about looking for props for an upcoming play.
Believe it or not, every Friday, in addition to my school books and volumes obtained from our school library, I drug [dragged? Whatever…] those 125 # worth of plates home. Every Monday, I hauled them back. Dad helped me fashion a bar and collars so I could work on being a strong man at home after my chores were done.
Feeling this was not sufficient to enable my dreams, I built a small, make-shift gym in the upper story of a little hay barn nearby our home. It was a disgrace: a bar for chin-ups, raised blocks for push-ups and the like. It was quickly abandoned.
After forty five years of exercise and strengthening routines, I’m glad to be shed of that phase of my life. Oh well, all of life is cycles; and this was just one of mine. I’ve come full cycle. Starting off not that strong, becoming strong, only to have the years take it away from me, I have arrived, it seems, where I began.
Glad? Yes. My aches and pains from aging and all those workouts abide with me yet. And besides, all that exercise was getting quite boring.
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