Features: The Big Acorn by Richard Jaeggi

Remembering the "Working Stiff Olympics"

It was around 10 o’clock on Saturday night when my buddy, Jim, and I decided it was time to head downtown and check out the new Silver Sprung. Walking past Fresh Fields, we were lulled by the mellow mood music emanating from the commercial ether.

I was so mellow that I scarcely felt disappointment that the spotlights were no longer illuminating the sky. The night before, bright columns had appeared as portents, from the vantage of my front yard a mile and a half away. Now, up close, they just looked silly–two oversized Coca-Cola cans sitting darkly on a trailer.

It was only as we approached the outdoor eating plaza next to Baja Fresh that I began to comprehend the new downtown that had sprung from the old Silver Spring. The plaza was filled with people: sitting, eating, chatting. As I looked out beyond the plaza, there were knots of people on the sidewalk, some walking this way, some walking the other, some just milling around with no apparent purpose other than to enjoy each other’s company.

We headed in the direction where the crowd thickened, and approached the fountain at the Silver Triangle. Could this be the same Silver Spring that I had lived in for the last 12 years?

The plaza around the fountain was filled with people–some sitting at tables, some seated on the walls, some, like us, just standing there taking it all in and hardly believing that this was really Silver Spring. There were young people and there were old people. There were white people, black people, and brown people. There were people born in this country and people who spoke foreign languages.

It didn’t really matter that the surrounding architecture was uninspired or that all the elements of the plaza were cutouts from some suburban mall pattern-book. All that really mattered was that there were people, lots of people, sitting outside in the May night air.

We wandered into Austin Grill for a beer. As a connoisseur of taverns, pubs, and roadhouses, I was not disappointed with the Austin Grill. It was just what I expected it to be: a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to drink there. But, hell, the service was great, the food was good, and the beer was cheap. And for every dive-loving snob like me, there are thirty people who like the Austin Grill just fine the way it is. And come to think of it, isn’t that the sign of a well-sprung town: let a thousand bars bloom, and to each according to his tastes and customs.

As the fountain gushed "spontaneously" according to the logarithm of some computer program, we left the plaza and headed down Ellsworth. That’s when my mind finally reached its own state of transcendental sprungness. Pointing into the unfinished gray cavern that would soon be transformed into Ann Taylor’s Loft, I said, "Jim, you know, that’s where the Commons used to be."

He paused for a moment to make the mental gyrations required to grasp this notion.

"You know, that’s right."

It was six or seven years ago when Silver Spring’s second attempt at massive redevelopment, the American Dream Mega Mall, was slowly dissolving into absurdity. The stores on the block between Pershing and Ellsworth had long been bulldozed and in their place was a thick carpet of green grass (or more accurately, tufts of brown weeds that stubbornly defied the arid dirt, red with brick dust).

In a gesture of generosity, or perhaps embarrassment, the County organized residents to fix up the newly formed field as an outdoor recreation spot and christened it The Interim Park; the name, I suppose was chosen to disabuse the public of any long attachment. The park boasted a small playground, a few picnic tables, a petanque lot, and very nice double-wide beach volleyball court.

In a fit of benign madness, Jim and I decided to take it on ourselves to transform the Silver Spring community by means of a series of wacky "happenings," each more daft than the one before. Under the banner of the Red Herring, a giant fish cutout mounted on an eccentric wheel, we set out to be the intangible developers of this star-crossed suburb. Our mission was to show our neighbors that real towns don’t need no stinkin’ wave pool to have fun.

We renamed the park The Commons and began to invite our friends to regular volleyball tournaments interspersed with croquet ball matches on the hardscrabble field.

The first really big event I remember was the "Working Stiff Olympics." Dressed in hardhats and undershirts, we staged the most laborious Labor Day event ever held in Silver Spring. The Master of Ceremonies was a Gene Debbs impersonator who presided over the torch lighting (a Foster’s beer can of candle oil ignited by a butane torch, while the Rocky theme song played in the background).

The events disappointed no one–or at least none of the 25 people who bothered to show up.

There was the "Structural Duct Tape" competition, in which Olympians strove to see who could build the tallest weight-bearing structure out of four two-by-two-by-eights and a roll of duct tape. To claim the prize, the lightest member of the team had to perch atop the structure for 30 seconds. Then there were the "Ben Hur Wheelbarrow" races, in which teams raced the perimeter of The Commons. The primary goal of the "horse" was to avoid an untimely heart attack while the "charioteer" attempted to distract rivals with a water pistol. And who could forget the "How High Can You Get It Up" competition, in which skilled and not-so-skilled constructioneers attempted to outdo each other by extending the blades of their thirty-foot tape measures high into the air.

The last big event I remember was the "Battle of Silver Spring." We sent out taunting invitations to the surrounding suburbarian towns, challenging them to open water balloon warfare on The Commons. Naturally the Merry Springsters held the field–not so much because of our secret weapon, the water balloon catapult (which was equally likely to soak friend and foe)–but because we far outnumbered the yeomen of Wheaton, Kensington, and Takoma Park.

Leaving the heart of Silver Sprung and heading south on Fenton Street toward the less sprung side of town, Jim and I made our way to the rooftop garden of Addis Ababa. Sitting under the night sky by a balcony that overlooked the street below, we listened to the men and women at the tables around us converse and make jokes in a melodious language we couldn’t understand.

Strange that we should feel so comfortable in this exotic spot, and so out of place at the thoroughly sprung Austin Grill. A charming Ethiopian waitress brought us long glasses of gin, tonic, and ice.

Thoroughly relaxed, without the benefit of mood-altering music, we talked between sips about the Silver Spring that was and the Silver Sprung it had become.

"You know," said Jim, "that seems like it was a lifetime ago. This was a wholly different place back then, and we were different people, too. I think our power was that we were too naive to know any better."

A long comfortable pause. "Man, we sure brought a lot of joy to a lot of people."

"Yeah, you’re right," I said. "I can’t believe we did that stuff."

We looked around at our roof top oasis and then out over the unsprung landscape of south Silver Spring. We looked at each other.

"You, know, I’m pretty sure I can get that catapult working again."