Street Vault

Every year I do a local five-miler. It's part of a fair in Pemberville, a small town just ten miles outside of Bowling Green. This year I saw in the fair booklet that they were going to have a street vault the next day, so I thought I'd go take a look.

I got into town just as the fair's parade was beginning.

City slickers such as myself might think the whole scene could make Norman Rockwell wretch, but over the years I've come to understand how it's actually honest and real. Small-town people are who they are and don't pretend otherwise (as opposed to modern American suburbia, which is based almost entirely on its inhabitants projecting an image rather than reality). After being briefly sidetracked by my favorite part of any parade,I took a walk over to the "street" vault.

I'd never been to one of these before. Michigan had a big beach vault last month, and there's a whole bunch of vaults like this all over. This one really wasn't a "street" vault, more of a "school parking lot" vault.
When I showed up, the high school boys were at 12 feet. I figured it would just be some local kids and when the bar got up to 13' 6" or so it would come to an end. How wrong I was. It turned out that quite a few top kids came for this. Two were still left at 16 feet, Miek Uhle and Anthony Amore. Uhle made the height:and went on to try a new "state record" of 16' 7" (he didn't make it). Last week Uhle set the record at 16' 6". It won't ever be considered official in any way, but it will appear as a footnote on my state lists.

After two hours of watching this I'd had my fill and didn't stay around for the open competition. It featured college kids, local high school coaches, and even one of the world's best in the 60-65 age group. When I get results, I'll post 'em.