Playing tennis in Minneapolis as a kid in the 1970s


I feel like a game of tennis. Well, actually I feel like playing an imaginary game of tennis - my tennis days are gone for good I'm afraid, my bad ankle will serve me well enough, but not enough to get back on a tennis court. So let's travel to Minneapolis in the 1970s, and be kids playing tennis.

The only photo that I have of the hill where the tennis courts were (and are) on Bloomington Avenue near the Minnehaha Parkway is from 1936, but it's just like I remember, and it hasn't changed to this day. This neighborhood was built in the 1920s, and it's just an ordinary neighborhood in Minneapolis.

If you've played much tennis, you know that on the top of a hill is a terrible place for tennis courts, because even though Minneapolis isn't particularly windy, what wind there is is at the top of hills. But that's where the courts were (and are). I really don't know when the courts were put in, but they were old when I lived there in the '70s. And unlike the nice level courts that I used to play on when I went to ASU, these were just concrete, with cracks, and puddles, and that was just part of the challenge.

I'll meet you on the hill! I'll bring some balls, and of course my Tony Trabert racquet, that I found. I guess that would make me about fourteen or so. Before that I used a really crappy racquet, but this one is nice. Yes, of course the racquets are wood, aluminum is for pots and pans and stuff like that!

We'll toss for serve. Great, I get to serve. Love-love! My service is the weakest part of my game, I never really got good at it. Double fault? OK, rats! By the way, we play by a couple of basic rules - if you're serving and you don't call the score, you've automatically lost the point, and whether a ball is on the line or not is called by the person receiving the ball. This is a matter of integrity. And oh yeah, no walking over to get a ball, you always hustle - it shows respect.

Love-five! Yeah! Ace! I guess my service isn't all that bad after all. What? Your shoelace was untied? Do you want to play that point again? No, OK, over to the deuce court. Ready? Nickels!

Nice return! Five-thirty! No, over here in the ad court. Dang, the ball rolled over into a puddle, give me a minute to dry it out (slamming the ball on the ground several times).

Nice volley! Deuce! Nice volley! Ad out! Deuce! Ad in! Deuce! This could go on forever! Ad in! OK, here it comes. That was a nice volley! Game! Your serve!

By the way, I played so much tennis as a skinny little kid that I developed kind of a "Popeye" right forearm. I never really got very good at it, and the last time that I had a decent game was in 1982 at the tennis courts on Apache in Tempe where there's now a parking lot.

Thank you for playing tennis with me in Minneapolis in the 1970s.
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