Epic LA Canoe Races | Life in 1972 - 02

Saturday, May 20, 1972 - Page 141

LOCATION: Newport Beach & Los Angeles, California

(12:00 PM 5/22/1972)

Didn't sleep at all Friday nite/Saturday morn. Last time I woke up was noon Friday -- Didn't get to sleep til midnight Saturday. I don't need as much sleep as most people which is good because I'm an insomniac. I got Mom up at seven, and we went to Chunk's at 8 or 8 thirty. I went up to Chunk 'n Winnie's apartment to get him up. While I was waiting, I innocently removed an album from the top shelf of three on the wall. This action disrupted the balance, and the shelf fell down. I put it back up amid a shower of name-calling from Winnie. Thus began the day.

The destruction of the shelf was minimal, and everyone was in oddly amiable spirits. It was a cloudy day, constantly threatening to rain, but never quite getting around to it. Chunk slept in the back seat with the paddles, Mom drove, and I sat in the front. At around 9:30, we reached the site of the "Los Angeles Municipal Games" at Hansen Dam Lake. [I reluctantly agreed to attend this event, and Chuck had been training me for it since May 6] It was at the base of a huge dam, and it was fresh water, though too dirty to drink, and fishermen lined the shores. Chunk & I unloaded the car, and Mom drove away. We warmed up a bit in a canoe we found (there were lots on the beach).

Hansen Dam, northeastern San Fernando Valley, in the Lake View Terrace district of LA (wiki info -- Photo: 2012)

The races were scheduled to begin at 10:00 A.M., so they started at 10:30. Chunk was in the first race -- Senior C-2 M canoe. I watched while paddling the Mucky Mongoose. He came in first, three or four boat lengths ahead of the other four or five k-noes. Luckily I wasn't entered in any races for Saturday, so I just fooled around. However, after the boat race, Chunk caught me to paddle C-1 in case I wanted to enter the C-1 16-17 year old division. I decided against it. I could see there wasn't any real competition anywhere (half the paddlers consisted of kids, or old folks). So I decided I might as well enter the C-2 mixed race on Sunday. A couple of girls won the senior C-2 race, so I asked Susanna (the pretty half of the team, and the bow paddler) if she'd like to paddle C-2 mix. But, alas, she wasn't going to be around on Sunday.

Water-damaged list of events for the 1972 LA Municipal Games

Two years ago [1970], Chunk, Me, Mike McEvers, and Glenn Harris canoed down the Colorado River with a group of girls called the Aquatils (Chunk, of course, pronounces that: Aquatits). Anyway, some members of that illustrious happy-go-lucky group were present at these races. Notably, Jackie ("Mom") -- the congenial but wholesome leader of the gang, Otis -- the cross-eyed co-leader, Tiny -- an elderly giant pal of "Mom's," Kathy -- a buxom Aquatit in her own right whom Mike and me teamed up with two years ago, along with another girl who wasn't at Hansen, and, last but not least, an unofficial member of "Mom's" gang, Sherry, a 25 year old 6th Grade teacher. She was leader of five 16-year-old Girl Scouts who ranged in age from 14 to 20 (from Cheryl to Peggy).

Chunk and I, as old pals of Sherry from "The River," fraternized with the Girl Scouts (I know fraternized is the wrong word, technically speaking). I stayed with Sherry and Peggy and Amalia and Robin and Cheryl and what's her name on the beach as Chunk did his stuff in the water. Saturday he got 3 medals (2 first place, 1 second). Sherry had been appointed as the official slalom timer -- the slalom course consisted of two gates through which contestants paddled a figure 8. Having nothing else to do, I paddled thru it in a minute twenty four, impressing the G.S.s [Girl Scouts] immeasurably due to the fact that older people (who didn't know what the hell they were doing) had done it, and three five was the best they could do. Of course, when Chunk got around to doing it on Sunday, he beat me with a time of 48 seconds.

Superstar Art Vitarelli Takes Down Chuck

Art Viterreli (the extremely good looking super paddler of world renowned fame who lives here in Eye Sore Park and whom I have previously mentioned in this journal (correction -- I din't mention him previously in this journal, or if I did, I can't find it [Found it: My famous Bayshore Park neighbor, Art Vitarelli, is first mentioned in the entry of Friday, March 24, 1972] )). Viterrelli has beaten Chunk in many many races all over the place. He arrived on Saturday at around two with Bob Sutherland (another great paddler) with a wooden K-2, a beautifully designed boat, smooth as glass and varnished like a table-top. He attracted an audience right away. I remarked that his K-2 looked like a work of "Art" (nobody caught the pun however, and it was incorrect anyhow, as I learned later. Art didn't make it, it was made in Denmark).

When A.V. arrived, Chunk had just beaten a hot kayaker whose name was Bob. Bob wanted to race Art, so he and Chunk teamed up, borrowed a K-2, and they raced. Viterrelli and Sutherland beat Chunk by 500 meters (it was a 5,000 meter race), and both teams lapped a third contender. After beating Chunk, Art took his Gold Medal, packed his kayak and left.

[Side Note: Art Viterreli was a good neighbor, a friend, a brilliant business man, and a consummate athlete. Lest you think he was acting cruel and arrogant toward Chuck on this day, I would like to offer a different opinion. Art was intentionally providing Chuck with vivid MOTIVATION that would carry him forward in his career and propel him to become a superb Olympian. Thanks, Art, for kicking Chuck's ass. That's exactly what he needed when he needed it. See my brother Chuck's life story HERE.]

You might think this is a lot of text to fit on a single page of a diary. Here is a photo to show you how TINY my handwriting was to get it all in. I actually needed a magnifying glass to read some of this. The entry for the following day looks like this too.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE...

The races for Sat. ended at around four, so Chunk & I found where Sherry and Co. was camping, and threw our junk nearby. We lit our gas stove and heated a can of beef stew. It practically exploded. The G.S.s borrowed our stove when it was decided their little burner wouldn't work. So they had a few cans of Spaghetti-O's. They cooked them in a pot (Chunk & I cooked our B.S. in its can -- that's why it almost exploded).

A Hilariously Hazardous Football Game (fortunately, no one was killed)

A football game was in its embryonic stages, and Chunk and I filled it out to give it birth. Teams were chosen -- Chunk captained one team, Richard led the other (Richard is a tall person who is also Jackie's son). I was on Richard's team. Kathy was on Chunk's team. Each team had about seven people each, but that number fluctuated as people joined, and others were carried away. The teams were mostly female, but each had its predominant male players. Chunk and Wayne Walters on one, Richard and me on the other. I knew what kind of game it would be when, after the first play, I had to abandon my glasses. They had become bent and sat upon my nose askew. The ground was sand that was coarse as gravel, rules were non-existent except for the notion that it was two-handed touch anywhere on the bod, and the field was largely undefined. No one escaped injury of some sort. I tore my pants clear through to my knee, scratched my hands and arms on the gravel, and nearly broke my nose on Chunk's arm. A girl on our team -- Carol -- was fantastic at passing, receiving and making touchdowns. It was mostly her fault that our team won (42 to 28, I think).

Kathy Delmar was injured when she caught the ball, and I ran her down. She is strongly built, however, so she survived the collision, but that was the last time she played. She got out of the game for first aid. Sherry attempted a few plays, but she didn't last long because of a foot she broke while skiing. The cast had been off for only a day. Richard was disenchanted with Chunk when he noted his bulldozer attitude. One time he said to me "Your brother's out for blood. He just picked that guy up and threw him away." I was constantly trying to keep Chunk at bay so our team could score. There was one hapless kid who centered for our side -- after he hiked the ball, Chunk plowed into him, and I plowed into Chunk. The center was stuck between us as Chunk and I charged each other over half the field. Other times I would notice Chunk absentmindedly looking around after a play with a member of our team dangling from his arm, feet above his head. Once I was running after Chunk when a recently dispatched teammate fell in my path. I ran into him when he was on his back and his feet were in the air -- my stomach slammed into the sole of his shoe and the momentum flipped me five feet, ending in a scratchy somersault. I was afraid I might have busted his leg, and he was afraid he might have broken my ribs. We both remained fairly healthy, however.

The game stopped at sundown, and I went to the Aquatil camp to get a couple of band-aids. To my delight, Chunk was limping. At nite the boating gang had a fire-side sing-in, B.S.A [Boy Scouts of America] pack skits, and a long long movie about a trip down the Grand Canyon. Chunk and I sat with the Girl Scouts, and discretely drank wine from glasses replenished by a gallon jug. I told them it was grape juice, and they had a great time guzzling it, until Sherry told me to stop circulating it. So me, Chunk, and Wayne drank it up. Sherry & Co. played their guitars in front of the campfire, and I rounded up a lost paddle I had found. I watched the movie from the back of the crowds, and when it was over, Chunk, Sherry, and Wayne had finished the whole gallon. So Chunk limped and staggered at the same time. I wandered into Kathy and her gang, and she asked me to team with her in C-2 mixed on Sunday. I fraternized with that gang for a while (the Aquatils were going to sing "Pink Panties" at the camp fire, but Jackie called it off because it was too risque. I listened to an exclusive performance of it). I left them and joined our camp with Chunk, Wayne, Sherry, Peggy, Amalia, Robin, Cheryl, and what's her name. Kathy and a girlfriend joined us later.
[Continued on next page -- Sunday, May 21, 1972]

For more like this, go to  Top 20 Entries from 1972
ALSO, see Life in 1972:
Whitewater April - 01, Oxnard/Newport June - 03, 18th Birthday July - 04