Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Prizes from the Police Academy

We used to love using a wringer that was mounted in the mens' locker room at the Los Angeles Police Academy pool.


Dad would take us on Saturday mornings and we'd swim in the pool for a couple of hours it seemed like.  I never wanted to leave.  I enjoyed it because I could practice my dives that I'd learned from Keith Larsen.  He taught me how to do a 1 1/2 and a Jack Knife and other dives.  I never wanted to leave the Police Academy.  I had too many of my dives to work on.  And I could tell that the few onlookers were impressed.



I enjoyed watching the water being wrung out of my trunks as I cranked them through.  It was a novelty for a kid to admire the technology of my folks' days.


We had some pretty terrific moments at the Police Academy.  It would be our pregame before we drove over to Dodger Stadium to watch Ron Cey, Steve Garvey, Davey Lopes, Bill Russell, Steve Yeager, and others destroy their opponents in the 1970s.

The Police Academy was its own institution.  I remember attending a dinner at the Academy banquet room.  I remember the cubed butter and rolls on white saucers sitting on a white table cloth.  Mom and Dad had attended these before I was of age.  So did Charlen and Dan.


One event that will forever remain among many was the time that I won in a potato sack race. I hopped my way to the finish line and won a pair of compact binoculars that were quite in vogue at the time.

I referred to these as mini-binoculars in a 1960s compact case.  But I think that they really are theater glasses, for folks watching an opera from a distance.

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