Hunker Down with Kes: Hula Hoops Can Lead To Good Health

Life is so much fun. I don’t care where you are on the journey. I was at the physical therapist getting adjusted to my new hip. As a warmup treatment the very nice 13-year-old board certified instructor had me rotating my hips in a circular motion. I was doing a terrible job of it.

Let me make a couple of observations early here. The young lady was undoubtedly a little older than 13. At my age everybody under 30 looks like a teenager. And there is a very understandable reason I was struggling getting both hips to cooperate.

My left hip was doing fine. But my brand-new right hip, well, it isn’t very “hip” at the moment. It wasn’t with me in 1960 when me and Mary Hadley Hayden were twisting the night away with Chubby Checker. My new hip has never done the Mash Potato, Loco-Motion, Watusi, or the Monster Mash. 

Good gracious alive, I’d have to rock ‘n’ roll to 250 hours of Carl Perkins singing “Boppin’ the Blues” to get any new body part up to speed! No wonder I was failing this hip rotation lesson. “You know,” the young therapist was searching with all her might to help me visualize what she wanted me to do, “it’s like twirling a hula hoop around you.”

WHAT?

I couldn’t believe this wonderful young lady, as serious and well-meaning as she was, would possibly know any more about hula hoops than she did about Carl Perkins. The hula hoop craze was certainly WAY before her time. It actually preceded Chubby Checker, Dee Dee Sharp, Little Eva, and Bobby “Boris” Pickett.    

But she did strike a familiar chord. I was in the waning years of my elementary school career when Joe Gooch came gyrating down Stonewall Street with this round, plastic hoop orbiting his body. It was the first one I’d ever seen. We are talking summer of 1958, or maybe ’59.

Every kid in town had two good hips back in those days. And our entire neighborhood gang was young, limber, and so eager for anything new and different; we were hula hooping fools in one afternoon of practice.

Me and Kong King would hula hoop all the way to town in the back of Mr. Roy Manley’s pickup. I’ve seen Brenda Ellis with hoops twirling around her neck, waist, and knees at the same time. Emily Scarbrough, who was more talented than most, could “spin that hoop” while she was skipping rope. 

We had contests to see who could keep it going the longest. We’d also twirl it around our wrist, elbow, and upper arm. We could spin it to music, in the rain, when it was dark, or while we were eating a two pack of Hostess Twinkies. A hoop cost less than two dollars. You could have one in your bedroom, another on the porch, and a spare hanging on the clotheslines. 

And not all hula hoops were black. When folks today think back on the 1950’s they tend to “see” the entire decade in black and white. Black was my favorite, but they had red, yellow, and orange. There were striped hoops. And neon ones. Some sparkled. Within a year or so, it was like Alice’s Restaurant, “you could get anything you want.”

The most fun we had with those things was when the novelty of just spinning it around your body wore off, and our internal entertainment mechanisms kicked in. We began to use them like the old wooden and metal hoops that kids rolled along beside them for centuries.

We’d run to town throwing them way out in front of us with reverse spin and let it “come back” to us. We raced forward to catch it before it fell, and sling it again! David Mark and I cut one in two. Then halved it once more. It was a cross between a limber tree limb and a light rubber rope. We’d back up a step armed with our “piece” and whip the ever-loving daylights out of each other.

Leon had it down to an art. He would tie used hay bailing strings together and fasten one end securely to a hula hoop. He’d make me and Dave “stampede” across the backyard where he would chase after us swinging that hula hoop over his head. I didn’t mind being lassoed with the thing, but that sudden stop when the rope ran out would jerk you off your feet and bring you crashing to the ground.

We learned to live with it. What I couldn’t stand was when he grabbed you before you could get up, rolled you over on your stomach, tied your hands behind your back with another string, jerked your pants down while lighting a match at the same time so he could burn his brand into your backside.   

You know, as I think on this, all the 13-year-old therapist has to do is throw a hula hoop lasso over me and strike a match…I will show her some hip moves that Carl Perkins never even dreamed about….

Respectfully,
Kes
kesley45@aol.com