Bill Keyes Fires up the Way Back Machine

Getting in the "WayBack" machine sans Mr. Peabody (and no Sherman, either), we go back to late June, 1969, two weeks after graduating from high school. Thru the previous 2 1/2 years I had lifted in my parents garage and/or the weight room at my high school.

My parents had sold their old house and the new one wasn't ready yet which is why I was on the look out for some place to continue weight training as I was supposed to play football in the fall.

The area we are talking about is Sunnyvale,CA, now the heart of the Silicon Valley. In those days, however, you could count the total number of gyms from Mountain View to San Jose on the fingers of one hand. Mountain View had one, Sunnyvale had one, Santa Clara had one, and San Jose had two. (Since then I learned there were others, but they didn't advertise in the Yellow Pages.) I checked them all out. Four of the five were left over from the Vic Tanny era -- lots of chrome, mirrors, carpeted exercise areas, nothing heavy.

The fifth was the Central Y in San Jose. I took one look and was absolutely hooked. The building was a large beige cinderblock edifice surrounded by large trees and fit surprisingly well among the stately old homes along The Alameda in "old" San Jose.

The weights were stuffed into a 30 x 30 room off the corridor which led to the Olympic size indoor pool, the huge basketball gym, and the locker rooms. No ventilation outside of some louvered affair along the top of the exterior wall. The whole place smelled like chlorine from the pool which also made it very humid. Olympic-style lifting was very popular in the area at the time, and the San Jose Y fielded a very good team. Upon entering the room, the first thing that drew one's attention was the lifting platform in one corner. The second thing that caught your eye was the Record Black Board above the lifting platform that showed all the weight class records for both Power Lifting and Olympic Lifting. I later found out that it was placed so high (needed a ladder to get to it) so that people couldn't put up phony numbers.

All the equipment was rough, primitive, heavy, mostly made by the lifters themselves. The men who lifted were pretty much the same way. Professionally, many of them were policemen and firemen who lifted hard and heavy to let off steam from their pressure-packed jobs. The day I joined ($35 for students for an entire year) the membership guy was extolling the virtues of the volleyball and basketball programs. When I told him I was interested primarily in the weight room, his attitude changed from effusive to dismissive.

I walked down the hall to enter the weight room for the first time as a new member with my towel and notebook. As I approached the door, I could hear all kinds of muted commotion coming from within. I carefully pushed the door open to avoid hitting anyone and stepped inside. For a count of 2, the place became immediately quiet, then the noise level resumed as if on cue.

I took a look around, found the single bench press rack (surprise, surprise), loaded the bar and started lifting.

As my summer job didn't get underway 'til 3 pm, I became a regular at the gym at 10 am. Within a week I was "Hey, kid, how ya doin'?" A week or so later, it was "Hey, ya want me to show ya how to really do those?" By the time I toddled off to college in mid-August, it was hard to believe seven weeks had passed. I had gained a huge amount of size and strength (which I desperately needed) as well as knowledge which was freely given by the other members.

I continued lifting there over the next several summers, watching, listening, learning, growing. The next year the weight room expanded to a second space upstairs. The upstairs had some new machines, lighter dumbbells, set barbells, store-bought benches, pulley apparatus'. The old room remained strictly heavy duty, neanderthal, if you will.

The upstairs was nice and I used it for different things, but my heart was downstairs.

I went back there once in the mid-80's, but everything had changed. The old place had been remodeled and was now a yoga room. The upstairs had been expanded and all the home-made equipment existed only in the minds of those of us who had reveled in it.

Time marches on.

Bill2

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