In the timeline of our lifes, there are snippets of seconds and minutes and days that are clipped out and pasted away in a part of our hearts and minds and they become the currency we treasure. It is a wealth that cannot be measured with dollars and in our darker hours we cash them in and then begin the search for new moments to restock our inner wealth.  I was one of the lucky ones to experience the absurd filthy riches growing up and though my Dad passed twenty years ago, it is nice to still open the vault and run my minds fingers through the jewels and coins on my youth spent with Dad. I'd like to thank him for dragging me to all those sporting events and not to poetry recitals and EST Seminars. Even though he did hook me on the Kingston Trio.

In the beginning there were George Fox football games. Yep, football. I can remember going to watch the Bruins face the Simon Fraser "Clansmen' back when George Fox had a football program and it was okay to have a mascot named "The Clansmen." It must have been around 1964 when he finally decided I had developed enough of an attention span to go to sporting events. That also was the summer when the Portland Beavers had a pretty good baseball team and we'd go into Portland to watch Sam McDowell and Luis Tiant pitch. Our high school team had a fiesty point guard who I loved to watch, named Rod Rumrey. He turned into a decent football coach. On Sunday fall mornings my Dad would root for the 49er's but I liked Roman Gabriel and the Rams. Still, I can remember that Sunday when even he started rooting for greatness as Gayle Sayers ran the 49er's silly.

If there was a sport that bonded us. it was track and field. Poor Dad never got his growth spurt until after high school. He was only 5'1 when he graduated so he never got the thrill of the gridiron or court. However he sure could run. He was most proud of his 4:58 mile he ran back in 1948.  So even though all my friends were hooked by 'America's Pastime,'  I never caught the bug. Actually, I was terrified of someone throwing a ball at me. So my first year in junior high I decided that pole vaulting was much safer. It was 1969 and it was a monumental year for Dad and me.  

I remember we had three kids out to try pole vault that year. The school record was 6'6 at Renne Jr High for 7th Grade and Dick Fosbury had high jumped a foot higher in the Olympics the previous summer. Our poles were made of metal and the pits were barkdust. So for the first month we itched and scractched and nobody could even get over 6'0. Yet 1969 was magical. Suddenly, a fiberglass 12' pole arrived and we got to put some foam rubber in with the barkdust and that was sheer heaven. The first few meets, none of us could clear opening height of 5'6. My buddy KB was over in the high jump pit jumping 5'2. Then one day we had a dual meet with the Mac Mustangs on one of those Spring Day's you're happy to live in Oregon. They didn't have the cinder track but had state of the art rubber runways and no bark dust but huge pads of foam rubber. It was glorious! The only distraction was the hatch of midges that swarmed on the warm sunny day. With a springy step and warm foam awaiting I finally cleared 5'6 after brushing the bar. Coming out of the pit, I saw Dad walking across the infield toward the vault pit. He worked two jobs and never really had a chance to watch me in sports. Then again, it wasn't like today. Back then very few parents attended their kids junior high athletic events. However, on this day he made a point to come.  I cleared 6'0 and 6'6 on my first jumps tying the school record. It should be noted back in those days, coaches plied us with 'bribes' and a school record meant a Burger Basket at Al's Drive-In in Newberg. As the bar was raised to 7'0, it was down to myself and a couple of McMinnville kids named Jerry Boerr and Tom Cole who watched my PR's with amusement. I'll never forget hitting that first jump at 7'0. It was the first time I felt my pole "bend' and went over the bar with inches to spare and began the long descent down. It felt like I was skydiving from that high up. Freefalling for what seemed in slow motion was pure heaven on earth. Then coming up off the snug foam and seeing how proud my Dad was made that a priceless moment.  

Believe it or not, Oregon State was a happening place for track and field for the Summer of '69. Wayne Valley Field and not Hayward Field was abuzz with activity. The OSAA Track and Field Championships were run on the red cinder of the Beaver's track and Dad and I went down to watch a Newberg kid run the high and low hurdles. His name was John Anderson and he was even smarter than he was a good hurdler even though he won titles in both the 120 Yard Highs and the 220 Yard Lows that day. He was Newberg's Student Body President and Valedictorian and would go on to Stanford. He had a red crewcut and the dorky black glasses. Still, it wasn't him that captured my imagination that day. It was a kid with really long hair running the mile and two mile from Marshfield. My Dad liked this kid too as he was short. Long hair didn't bother my Dad and we stood along the railing on the backstretch and spewed superlatives on his potential and cheered him on as he just creamed a mile field and then lapped everyone but one single runner to win the Two Mile. If you don't know who I'm referring to, you live under a rock and eat lichens to stay alive.

By early June my Dad and I decided to get serious about me continuing a track career and we made a trip into Portland in his 1964 Green Ford Econoline van.  Down on Third Avenue, across from the Blue Mouse Theatre, which just so happened to be one of the first movie theatres in Portland that even had sound, was a sporting good store called Caplans. We broke my piggy bank and he used his paycheck and we bought a 12' SkyPole. Even though there were some sweet Puma's at Caplans, we crossed Burnside to a little 'track junkies' haunt and I bought a real pair of track shoes called Tiger Onitsuka's. To his dying day, Dad swears that a guy who opened a bigger shoe store out in Beaverton was my shoe salesman that day. If you don't know who I'm referring to, you live under a rock and lichens feed off of you. From there, we went to a furniture store down under the Marquam Bridge and bought 120 pounds of foam rubber and packed the van from top to bottom with it and some gunny sacks. If you know the foam rubber salesman who sold us 120 pounds of already rotting foam, please let me know as he never informed us that day that when lit, foam rubber produces a toxic gas.

Now back in 1969, they didn't offer the pole vault in Junior Olympics. I had to find an event where everyone else wasn't way ahead of me in the technique so I naturally gravitated to the '880 Yard Racewalk' and qualified to get to Regionals which was held at Wilson High School that summer on a scorching hot day. The national record was 4:01 to do this 'silly event' of hip wiggling but it was a loaded field that day. Coming down the stretch, there were four of us all knotted up and a judge yelled 'You..in the red shorts. Disqualified!" (If both feet were airborne at the same time you were DQ'd). I was heartbroken as I was wearing those big plastic track shorts which happened to be red. As I slowed, the judge yelled "Not you, Number 357!" The guy I was in a dead heat with was also in red shorts and he was pulled off the track and I came in behind Scott Mauser from The Dalles and a kid from Trout Lake, Washington name Rudy Pearson who would win this race in 3:56. All three of us went under the old national record. I'd never collapsed after a vault but did so after this race and I can remember Dad leaving the crowd and coming at a sprint up the infield as excited as I'd ever seen him. "What can I get you!" he asked as I was so dehydrated and my throat so dry I could only mouth words because of cottonmouth.  As Dad handed me a Coke and a smile (okay, a schmarmy plug) it might have been the last time I saw him extrememly proud of me for many years. I went into that 'teenage' state shortly thereafter where parents 'don't understand' and while we still did things, it wasn't until the 1988 Summer Olympic Trials in Indianapolis we truly came full circle. He would pass just six months after the Trials.

So if you still have a Dad or father figure than shared the ride with you, let him know how special he is. Enjoy this Sunday for the memories you've made together and celebrate life. Afterall, life really is fleeting and can blink out before amends can be made.  For some children and their fathers, its baseball or softball as a uniting force. Maybe tennis or polo in the Hamptons. Whatever it is, take a moment to reflect the good times. Dig your minds fingers through the riches and give thanks. For some the memories will continue and for some there will no longer be deposits but always an account that can acrue interest.