It is kind of hard to imagine today, but when I was a kid, or even 16 years of age, no one ever did any exercising unless they were in school and out for track or some sport. And of course, there were no girls’ sports except basketball. A woman’s place was in the home taking care of the kids and fixing three meals a day. No one ever ate in a restaurant. In the rural communities there were no restaurants open in the evening, and fast food restaurants had not come along yet. The men didn’t exercise because everybody worked. Most were farmers, some worked construction, and a few had factory jobs. Everyone got their exercise at work and never thought anything about it. Matter of fact, there wasn’t much traffic back then, but if you were to take a walk down a road, every car that came along would stop to give you a ride.
When I was 16, I bought an old Ford for $100, drove to Kansas City, and joined a Boxing Club. The most important thing about boxing was to be in shape, which could only be done by running, which back then was called “road work”. I decided to do my “road work” by running around our forty acres where our house was located, which would be a mile. I was going to try to run three or four times around the farm. The first morning I had run around twice when the neighbor woman up the hill from our farm called my mom and said, “There is a crazy man running around your farm. I have seen him go by twice. Do you want me to call the law or are you going to?”
Several years later after I had married and moved to town I decided I needed to get in shape by doing a little “road work”. I started to run around the block when my Aunt Gertie, who lived on the opposite side of the block and was working out in the yard, came running up the road to meet me, shouting, “What’s wrong, Jack? What’s wrong?”
I finally cut myself a trail down by a creek on a neighbor’s farm away from all roads and houses.
Jack can be reached at PO Box 40, Oak Grove, MO 64075 or jackremembers@aol.com
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