More Than the Game

Many of the important lessons my father taught me were never spoken. I absorbed them through the sports we played.

I learned ping pong in the basement of my grandparents’ farmhouse playing on a table my uncle Ross made in his high school shop class. At about age 8, I paddled with him, Dad, and my cousins. The table was shoehorned into a basement corner, and we spent a fair amount of each game retrieving ping pong balls from under Grandma’s ringer washer and the basement sink.

In 1961, when I was 12, we built a new home in Clear Lake, Iowa, and moved from our tiny house (an A-frame with two bedrooms above and the living area below ground) to a three-bedroom rambler. Though it was only 960 square feet, I felt like we had gone from a phone booth to a castle. Dad and I were so eager for ping pong that he built a sturdy, wooden table in the basement where we played as the main floor was constructed.

Ping pong with some of Dad’s friends, 1962. I’m pleased they would let me play.

Dad didn’t provide much instruction; we simply played and had fun while I learned by doing. He was patient, and I got better, so our rallies grew longer and more intense from year to year. I remember the thrill of winning my first game from him. Some winter nights, a few of Dad’s friends would stop by for serious singles and doubles games. When I would come home for weekends or holidays from college, as soon as I walked in the door, Dad and I would head to the basement for a few games. I wish I could have filmed one of our sessions. We usually played best out of five. We would be grunting, hollering, laughing, and then dripping with sweat when we would come upstairs and cool down at the kitchen table to visit with Mom and Sue.

Playing ping pong with Dad in the basement of our home, 1979

During his service in World War II (in Okinawa) and the Korean War, Dad sharpened his ping pong skills. The games must have provided welcome diversions from combat duty. He developed a powerful forehand and a wicked backhand, and he would sometimes hit the ball with such speed that it became a blur. I sported a respectable forehand and a below-average backhand; I kept up with Dad because of my quickness and ability to keep the ball in play. He sometimes would get me running from side to side—first a cross-court forehand to my forehand that I would lunge for and return—then he’d hit one to my backhand, so I’d stretch far to my left to return that one. After some long rallies, we were breathless from exertion and laughing so hard we could barely catch our breath. I can still picture us looking at one another in amazement after a wild-and-crazy point.

If I missed a shot that ended a long rally, I would smack my paddle against my thigh in frustration. So, amid the grunts, shouts, and laughs, there’d be the slap, slap of rubber-coated paddle on pants leg. In the thousands of games we played, I never heard Dad swear (nor did he hear me), we never argued or disputed a call, and we never left the table angry with one another.

Dad’s skills stayed sharp late into his life. I wrote the following note about one of our sessions in 1980: Mom and Dad visited us in Rochester. Dad waxed me in ping pong. I can’t figure out how he stays so good. He’s 57; I’m 32. I hope he beats me forever because it must make him feel young.

I don’t recall when Dad and I stopped playing ping pong. It must have been a sad day, like when he voluntarily hung up his car keys. I have a list of things that I would like to be able to do again if I were magically granted the chance. A best-of-five match with Dad in the basement is near the top.

Last week, that wish came as close to becoming true as it could. Sue is a realtor in Clear Lake. Our old house was on the market, and she invited my wife, Jeanine, and me to take one last look before it sold. I helped Dad move out of his house in 2006, so I had not set foot in it for 20 years. Sue said, “You’re not going to believe this, but the only thing in the house from when we lived there is the ping pong table.”

The ping pong table in the basement of our home in Clear Lake, Iowa

Walking through the main floor brought back a flood of memories. When we went down the basement stairs, opened the door, and saw the dust-covered table, it felt as if Dad and I were about to play another game, nearly 65 years after we played our first.

I had brought ping pong paddles and balls. Sue, Jeanine, and I had a few rallies in honor of good times with Dad. When we finished, I took one last look before we turned out the lights. As we climbed the stairs, I caught myself wishing Mom would be in the kitchen, smiling and asking, “Well...who won?”