After yesterday’s post, James mentioned the time my brother Ken and I raced to Joaquin Miller Junior High School on our bicycles. On the route we were taking that morning, we would enter the school yard through a small gate designed to pass one person at a time. We were “neck and neck” all the way, and in the last hundred yards we really poured on the heat. Pedaling as fast as we could and threatening each other all the way, neither one of us was willing to back down. Consequently, we reached the gate at the same time. The bicylcles wedged into the opening and came to a sudden stop, sending us both over the handlebars. I still say I won that day by at least half an inch, but Ken thinks otherwise. Maybe I should challenge him to a rematch.
My cousin LuAnn’s comment is referring to the time my father opened the show for Nat King Cole at Harrah’s Club in Lake Tahoe. Dad was a talented Tap Dancer and always kept his tap shoes with him in a little brown satchel. Nat invited talent from the audience to open for him and dad was there and ready. As kids, we never really appreciated his talent and he would embarrass the hell out of us whenever we went to Shakey’s Pizza in Sacramento. He would invariably get up and put on a show for everyone, much to the delight of the proprietors and much to the embarrassment of his own kids. Dad was still tap dancing into his eighties, albeit a little subdued. I think my sister Lil still has his shoes.
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