Almost a yo-yo Champion!
By Merlin Lessler
I was nervous! As I stood there on the
sidewalk in 1952, in front of Mayberry’s, Park Avenue store on Binghamton’s
south side. I’d made it to the finals in a neighborhood yo-yo contest. Two yo-yo
virtuosos from the Philippines were conducting the event. They’d spent the previous
several weeks putting on yo-yo demonstrations at school assemblies and running
neighborhood contests all around town. So, there I was, on a chilly Saturday
morning, showing my stuff, along with a group of 25 anxious contestants.
The location was an ideal gathering
spot – in front of our favorite penny-candy store, one block from Longfellow
Elementary School (PS-13), at the intersection of Cross and Park, next to the
creek. The very corner I was assigned as a patrol boy, one of the perks of
being male, and in the fourth grade. The kid friendly store had the longest
penny candy counter around and the owners (Mr. and Mrs., Mayberry) never rushed
us as we carefully picked out a nickel or dime’s worth of spearmint leaves,
orange slices, licorice babies, fireballs and the like. It also had a Coca Cola
cooler where the bottles were suspended in ice cold water, a must on a hot,
muggy, August afternoon. Heaven, for 5 cents (plus a 2-cent bottle deposit).
The contest started with simple yo-yo maneuvers:
You had to sleep your yo-yo for five seconds (spin it at the end of the string
before jerking it back into your hand), walk the dog (skid a sleeping yo-yo
along the ground as you took a step or two, as though with a dog on a leash),
then came “Around the World” (cast the yo-yo out in front of you and around in
circle over your head and back into your
hand). These preliminary feats whittled the field down to ten. Then, came the
hard stuff; rock the baby, thread the needle and bite the dog, where the dog (yo-yo)
bites and sticks to your pants as you swing in between your legs and pull it up
behind you. A simple maneuver, but one that was totally unpredictable.
Five of us made it through that stage. I’d
only been this far once. The dog bite trick always did me in. The championship would be determined by how
many loop-de-loops we could do. We all got busy preparing our yo-yos for this
event, winding the string tighter so the yo-yo wouldn’t spin. If we didn’t get
it right, and it started spinning when we threw it out in front of us, it would
be almost impossible to get it to come back to cast out for another loop. Each time
the yo-yo made a loop, it loosened the string. Eventually, it would sleep, and knock
you out of the contest. I hoped I mine was tight enough to avoid that disaster.
The first two kids bombed out after six
and eleven loops respectively. The third made it to 23 loops. The next kid’s
yo-yo spun on his first cast and he didn’t finish a single loop. Now it was my
turn. I was nervous, but confident. I had my favorite “Diamond” Dunkin yo-yo,
the Cadillac of yo-yos, and I’d exceeded 23 loops many times when I practiced in
my driveway at home. My first loop was a little shaky; the yo-yo turned
sideways and I just barely got it under control. But I did, and was on my way:
five, ten, fifteen, twenty. Then came the disaster, on my 21 cast, it spun! I
jerked hard, but it stayed out in front of me, spinning and heading toward the
ground. One last jerk got it back into my hand, but it was encased in a wad of
string. I was finished. Second place earned me a new yo-yo, but I didn’t get
the highly coveted yo-yo championship, sleeveless sweater, that would show the world
I was a champion. After the contest, the yo-yo virtuosos from the Philippines stuck
around and carved palm trees and birds into the sides of our yo-yos. I still
have that Diamond Dunkin, and every time I get it out to see if I can still do
rock-the baby, walk the dog and enough loop-de-loops to beat the guy wearing
“my” championship sweater, I get that same pit in my stomach I got when I
messed up those sixty odd years ago.
Old Coot Today - doing rock-the-baby with diamond yo-yo
Championship Sweater (ALMOST)
