DETROIT:
JUST ANOTHER STEP
July and August 1960
Nothing stirred in the motel parking lot. Even at seven o’clock under the tall oaks and elms, Detroit’s air felt thick and wet and seemed to sway. Walking that morning felt like wading chest deep through a warm green pool, alone, like Rima in the Green Mansions jungle. I found the small diner we’d been to before for breakfast.
“Two soft-boiled eggs, whole wheat toast, no butter, and hot tea.”
“On your own today?” The guy wiped at the counter.
“I’m up early,” I answered, opening my book.
It was good being alone in the morning on race day with a book that took me away, in a cafe where nobody knew me or why I was there. Maybe someone would know my name someday. Maybe tonight after the finals. The endless waiting was almost over.
Competing had been an ongoing performance, not only the race but all the stages leading up to it: the training, the tapering, the previews at development meets. We’d been on display to teammates and parents, coaches and competitors, reporters and fans. All that summer we’d been in rehearsal for this show. Since arriving in Detroit, we’d given a few sneak previews during workouts in short time trials. Joan, Nancy, and I had swum hundred-meter freestyle preliminaries and semifinals, but tonight only I was left to perform for our team. That weight felt as heavy as the air outside. In the cafe, though, no expectations. No one cared.
I tried to read, but my thoughts jumped ahead to the finals and back to everything that had happened so far. Yesterday we’d swum prelims in the afternoon and returned long after dark for the semifinals, the last event of the night—almost midnight. It felt otherworldly to be up so late swimming under lights surrounded by darkness. My qualifying time put me in the lane right next to Chris for the finals. All I had to do was stay up with her—and beat everybody else.
It’s possible, I thought, stirring honey round and round the cup. On Monday Coach had timed my fifty meter in a record split. He actually laughed when he told me the other coaches had checked and rechecked their watches. Driving back to the motel after the semifinals, he’d given me advice. He wanted me to take Chris out fast like I had Nancy Ramey back in January. “Push her on that first fifty. Make her work at the start, and then ride her in,” he said. I liked having a plan.
But first, before the freestyle finals, came the hundred-meter butterfly heats that afternoon. Coach said it would be a good warm-up. He wanted me to swim for place, not for time. “All you need to do is make the finals. Wednesday night: that’s the big one. That’s the one you want.”
I did want it. I’d been waiting for today more than two years. You get an idea about something you want, and you wait years for the chance. Life fills up the time with ordinary things—school, meals, homework, telephone calls and TV shows, books, play, practice. But when the thing you want gets a date—say, August 3, Olympic Trials hundred-meter freestyle final—time becomes stretchy, changeable, surging forward and then slowing to an ooze.
After breakfast, the day crawled toward noon, and finally we left for the butterfly heats. When we returned Joan was awake and ready with her razor and shaving cream. None of us had ever “shaved down” before, but we’d heard that Santa Clara was doing it for finals, even the boys—to reduce drag. I’d been shaving my legs for two years but only up to my knees, exactly where Chris stopped her razor at midkneecap. I wasn’t sure how to begin a full-body shave.
“What should I do?”
“Start with your legs like always, I guess, and keep going all the way to the top,” Joan advised.
I spread the lather up my shin and thigh, but the razor, soon filled with long blonde hairs and soap, pulled and yanked. It hurt. Joan suggested I clean the head and use more lather. When I finished, my legs felt bare and skinny.
“Now your arms. ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear.’ ” Joan teased in a singsong voice, pinching at my long forearm hair. She helped lather my arms and stood behind me to draw the razor up from my wrist to my shoulder. When she finished, I felt stark naked. There was nothing to do but wait some more.
I’d hardly seen Mom and Dad since they arrived four days after we did. Coach didn’t want us talking to anyone, not even our parents, but Mom had brought me a pile of letters from friends back home wishing me well. She’d waited until Coach was out having a beer, and she didn’t stay to talk. She and Dad waved and cheered from the stands at preliminaries and semifinals along with Marthadent Schollander and the other MAC parents. It seemed weird being kept away from everyone, like we were in a movie and they a distant audience. At some point that evening, Mom and Dad both stopped by the room to wish me luck before they drove on to the pool to watch the events scheduled before my final.
“You can do it, sis. We know you can,” Dad said. He took my shoulders and turned me around, massaging my muscles. “Nice and loose,” he said.
Mom stood a bit behind him smiling. “I know you’ll do your best, honey. We’ll be watching.”
She always said that. It sounded so stupid, but what else could she say? Everybody’s parents and teammates were probably saying the same things: do your best, you can do it, just go hard, win. Tonight, though, I wanted to show her how good my best could be. It had to be good enough to escape the sightseeing trip she’d planned for us. When she’d let that slip, she might as well have said, “Betcha can’t do it.” If she didn’t think I could make the team, if she was betting against me, I would prove her wrong.
After they left I lay on the bed waiting for Coach and replayed yesterday’s race. I’d felt fast swimming under the bright lights strung above each lane, buoyed by the light that reflected off the bottom, everyone in the stands and poolside invisible. Tonight we’d be swimming under those lights again.
Someone tapped on the door.
Joan asked me if I was ready and got up to open it. Coach stood outside and asked me to come out for a minute, then nodded Joan back to her seat and closed the door. He handed me a cup and placed a small oval tablet in my hand. I looked up with a question.
“It’s niacin and vitamin B. It’ll dilate your blood vessels to get you more oxygen.”
No coach I’d ever had gave us choices. They told us what to do, and we did it. Without questioning Coach now, I swallowed the vitamin he gave me, gathered my gear, and off we went. I had a race plan, more oxygen, and a body smooth as a porpoise. The wait was almost over, my mind already at the pool.
An evening thunderstorm rolled in while we drove the winding drive to Rouge Park, the clouds so black and heavy they practically crushed the car. By the time we got to Brennan Pool, the first splats hit the windshield, and ozone rose from asphalt and dust. We were running toward the pool when lightning ripped the sky and rain pounded in a deluge, the way it rarely does in Portland.
Spectators, swimmers, and officials fled from the stands as swimmers emptied the warm-up pool. “Tonight’s finals will be delayed,” a voice blared from the loudspeakers. “All coaches report to the pool office.”
We huddled under an overhang watching the chaos. My parents and Marthadent scurried toward the parking lot, programs held over their heads, their clothes soaked through. Mom started to tell me to stay warm and dry and to ask how I felt, but Coach ordered me back to the car. Off he ran to the coaches’ meeting, my parents to their car, and Mr. Johannesen and I to ours. We drove round and round the park in the hammering rain until finally it let up.
The officials reopened the warm-up pool after an hour-and-a-half delay. The men’s hundred-meter freestyle final, the first final event of the trials, would begin in an hour. That meant the women’s wouldn’t start until very late, almost midnight. It felt kind of thrilling to have the schedule so upset. Anything could happen tonight, it seemed.
The lights hung over the Olympic pool cast shadows on the warm-up pool. I pulled off my MAC sweats and stuffed them in my duffel. Next came my old lucky Caplan sweats. The temperature had dropped with the rain. For the first time in over a week, it felt cool, almost cold. I curled my toes over the edge and looked out across the dark water, my freshly shaved arms tingling. I tensed and dove. My arms cut through the water without resistance, like hot blades. I felt as sizzling as the dry ice Dad brought home sometimes and dropped in water to make it crackle and smoke.
All the night’s finalists, twenty-four men and eight women, stretched out for a few laps and then bunched up at the shallow end. The California girls complained it was so cold, they had goose bumps. Joan Spillane, the Texan, drawled, “Why don’t they start this thang befo’ we all turn blue?” Donna de Varona began to tell us about some ailment.
Lynn’s advice came back: “Keep your focus. Don’t listen to your competitors before a race.” I dived under the water, sinking and dolphin kicking along the bottom, before I pushed off and launched into a quick sprint. I felt loose and ready, excited and absolutely silent inside, the way you feel playing hide-and-seek when you’re in a perfect hiding place and the seeker walks right past you and you know you’ll beat her back to base.
After a few more laps and a couple of short sprints, five- or ten-stroke bursts, I pulled out of the pool, picked up my duffel, and started to the locker room. Coach Schlueter stepped out of the shadows. “Don’t worry, Woody. You’re completely ready,” he said. “Now go get warm.” He patted my back and headed another direction. He would soon be off to wherever he was going to wait for news.
After a hot shower softened my muscles, I got out, dried off, and changed into my lucky black suit and my old red-and-white cotton sweats before pulling on the MAC sweats. I lay back on a bench behind the lockers, a long towel around my neck, one end draped over my face. I could hear the other girls talking back and forth, but I did not want to join in. Chris would be alone somewhere too, as she had been in Livermore before setting a record. I thought about Coach’s words, “Don’t worry…you’re ready,” and started to hum an old Kingston Trio song and then to sing, louder and louder, crowding out the girls’ voices, filling up the locker room: “It takes a worried man to sing a worried song…I’m worried now but I won’t be worried long.” I wasn’t worried: Not about the late start. Not about the cold night. “Ready or not, here I come,” I said into the towel.
After the men’s two-hundred-meter breaststroke started, an official came into the locker room to announce: “Ladies. Time to report to the clerk of the course.” Outside, the crowd cheered but from far away. She led us to chairs where we waited for the men to finish.
Time jumped, and suddenly we finalists stood on the starting platform. The lights strung over each lane pierced the water, highlighting the wide black line on the bottom. Everything disappeared except the lights, the lanes, and the timers huddled behind each of us. Detroit’s air had an edge to it, all the thick roundness gone. We stood above our lanes on the long wooden starting platform, shivering now in our thin nylon suits.
The starter commanded, “Take your marks.” We slowly bent forward together. This is it this is it this is it, I thought. But Donna de Varona rolled through her start, jumped the gun, and brought all of us with her. The water bit hard. I popped up and shook off the cold, turned around and sprinted back to the wall. We waited for everyone to climb out and get set again. The stars from California, Texas, Florida all moaned. “Damn that wind,” Shirley Stobs muttered.
She thinks this is a wind? I thought. Ha! It was probably still seventy degrees, cool compared to the humid eighties and nineties, but hardly cold. I thought about our mornings at Jantzen Beach, the east wind blasting down the Gorge, the filthy, turbulent, cold Jantzen pool where I’d spent two summers training. This was nothing. I’m not cold at all, I thought as I looked across the field of competitors. I’ll beat every one of you.
The first fifty felt like Monday’s time trial. The lights lifted and propelled me. I went into the turn right with Chris; coming out, my vision seemed to extend in all directions through the water. She pulled ahead around seventy-five meters, but something kicked in for me. I felt buoyed again, on top of the water, effortless and fast, closing the gap, not even needing to breathe, just speeding toward the wall, hitting it, and rolling onto my right side. Chris’s arm still seemed in motion, but nobody else was near the wall. We looked up at the timers huddled around their watches.
Chris reached over the lane line and pulled me close. “I think we’re on. Nice race, Woody.” Voices blurred along the poolside. I lay back on the water, my face burning, not daring to celebrate, hoping. We had to wait for the official times, the turn judges’ reports, and the final judges’ decisions. I swam back to the wall, shaking out tension and fatigue. Bob Burke’s voice boomed from the deck, “You’re on the team, you brat! You’re on!”
Lynn ran over and crushed me in a hug as I climbed out of the pool. “You almost beat Chris. You’re going to Rome, blood sister.” Still, we didn’t know for sure.
Finally the announcer made it official: “Chris von Saltza and Carolyn Wood are the first two members of the 1960 Women’s US Olympic team.”
Everything got fast and confused after that. George Haines, Santa Clara’s coach and now the Olympic coach, handed us official team certificates, and reporters asked questions. Somehow my parents got on the deck, found me, and wrapped me in hugs. Mr. Johannesen, Marthadent, Donnie, and the rest of the team crowded around. Everyone except Coach. People handed me programs and asked for my autograph. It was crazy all around, but inside I felt calm, as if I had known all along what this moment would be like. A kind of nonchalance replaced all the anxiety and wondering that had been my companions. I stepped into a familiar pose—cool, sure, inscrutable. It was the way I’d played Tarzan when I was nine and Mickey Mantle when switch-hitting in backyard baseball. It was the way great athletes behaved.
Even so, what I wanted most was to tell someone back home that I’d made it. From a pay phone by the pool, I called Patsy Walsh collect. Her dad answered and refused to accept the charges. Before the operator disconnected us, he said to try again in ten minutes. When I finally got through, she screamed, “I prayed and prayed for you.”
“Tell everybody” was about all I had to say.
“You’ll get to see Pope John,” she said as I was hanging up.
The next morning bouquets of roses and about twenty telegrams arrived. Dad’s sister’s came first, The tree is proud of its twig, and then one from Tye, Take the butterfly. They came from swim team friends, church friends, my parents’ friends, neighbors, aunts and uncles, and two from Mr. Perry, who surely had forgotten his threats to suspend my MAC membership: Knew you’d come through like the champ you are, and, Just announced our new champion on Club House speakers. You should have heard the cheers.
No storms interrupted Thursday night’s hundred-meter butterfly final, and Coach gave me no vitamins. I’d qualified sixth, so I swam on the outside in lane two. As it had the night before, the light seemed to lift and propel me, my stroke effortless. I could see through the water across the whole pool. When I hit the wall, I knew I was first. After everyone had finished, Nancy Ramey struggled in—last. How could the world record holder be last? I wondered.
It didn’t really matter if you were on a previous Olympic team or set records in the preliminaries. All that mattered was what place you finished one time: in the finals of the trials. It didn’t seem fair. Jeff Farrell, the best sprint freestyler in the world, wasn’t on the team. He’d had his appendix out four days before the trials started. All bandaged, he swam the prelims, semis, and finals only to finish third. Maybe he would make it on the relay, but that meant another three races.
I watched Nancy Ramey bob up and down in the water. She was crying. All she had wanted was a second chance at the Olympics, a chance to win gold. Now it was over for her.
We’re on the team! Chris von Saltza, George Haines, and me after the one-hundred-meter freestyle finals, 1960.
That will not happen to me, I thought. No young nobody would beat me off the team. In 1964 I’d be in college and no longer swimming. This was my time. Now.
Water plashed against the wall, mixing with the gasps and pants of swimmers as they recovered their breath and waited for the results. The announcer finally came on: “Carolyn Wood, first; Carolyn Schuler, second.” And that ended the trials for me. I believed that I’d be on the medley relay with Lynn, if she qualified. The women’s hundred-meter backstroke would be the first event the next night.
With all my races over, my parents could finally talk to me. In the morning, Dad sat and read telegrams out loud, chattered about the races, detailed which parents were going on to Rome, and repeated what he’d heard about different swimmers and coaches.
“Tonight’s Lynn’s turn,” he said. We were careful not to be too sure because even though Lynn had qualified first in the backstroke prelim, you couldn’t count on anything until the race ended. We didn’t want to jinx her.
How quickly excitement disappeared and the mundane returned. I’d have liked to savor the victory, wallow in it, but right away the next step rose up: packing.
“Do you think you’ll need two dresses or three?” Mom asked, refolding the red-striped Lanz that hung, unworn, in the closet.
“They’re giving us uniforms. Why would I take dresses?”
“Well, you might have receptions or dances.”
“Dances? This is the Olympics, Mom.”
She didn’t look up from her work. “I’ll pack two, the red one and the blue one.” She placed them in the Samsonite bag.
I watched her busy herself with my clothes. She packed as if I were heading off to college, which was all she could imagine, I thought, because she had no idea. I didn’t really have any idea either. Emotions washed over me, and I didn’t want to think about clothes, I wanted to get back to the euphoria I’d felt the night before. But the adrenaline and serotonin had drained away, replaced by irritability.
Mom filled a little travel kit with Nutri-Bio, toothpaste, shampoo, and a mini-clothesline with pins. She told me to get Lynn to help me with laundry and asked if they’d have washing machines over there. She hadn’t been listening to Dad and me.
“I don’t know. How would I know?” I exploded. “Besides, Lynn isn’t on the team yet.” My voice sounded harsh, but really I felt like there was so much I didn’t know. Like where would we sleep, and where would we eat? What would the food be like anyway? And how would we understand anything when they talked? Italy seemed really far away. I didn’t know a thing about it. How long would we be gone? What about school? My calm center began to slip away.
Mom ignored my outburst and gave me an I’m-sorry look. “Oh, I wish you were going with us.”
“Mom. I’m going to Rome.”
“If we’d known you were going to make the team, we’d have made other plans. Your father wants to be there so bad, but…” Dad slipped outside to have a cigarette.
As I watched her carefully packing my clothes, I might have wondered what she thought of her little Olympian. I might have asked if she was sorry for doubting my chances. I might have told her how much I needed her and Dad to be there to cheer for me. Instead, I still carried that wet towel of resentment, made heavier now with the unknown yet to come.
“Maybe you could buy the Rameys’ tickets,” I suggested offhandedly.
“We already have all our other reservations.” Her voice trailed off.
She didn’t really want to go that far away because it scared her, I thought, but Daddy could go. I’d forgotten that neither of them had a passport; the expense did not cross my mind, nor the idea that they might actually enjoy a vacation by themselves, somewhere they’d never been and had always wanted to visit.
It was all sinking in. I’d made the Olympic team. We were headed to Rome, and we’d be there more than a month. When I raced, no one from home would see. If Lynn didn’t make it, I’d be on my own.
