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Inspiration

When I was 12 years old, the City of Port Chester, New York, ran a summer recreation program during summer vacation. Park Avenue School, the school I attended, was one of the sites selected. I went there to play softball but saw horseshoes sitting in the sandpit and started pitching. I liked it right away. It wasn’t long before I was hooked and started tossing at 9:00 am every morning, continued till 12:00 noon, ran home for lunch, and then returned at 1:00 pm. I’d pitch until 5:00 pm. At home, I found a couple of real horseshoes in the garage with jagged ends that had small rusty nails in them. They had been left there years before when the garage was a horse stable. My father found something similar to metal stakes and pounded them into the ground. I began practicing before and after dinner. At sunset, I’d attach handkerchiefs to the stakes, then played until it was too dark. After two months of practice every shot I made was a ringer. At the end of summer, I signed up for the cities senior horseshoe tournament at the main park. When I arrived, I found that the distance between stakes was further than what I’d been playing, but adjusted immediately. When the games began, I beat every old codger one by one and became city champ. I received a fancy blue ribbon and never played the game again.