Frisbee
A practitioner’s manual and definitive treatise
Johnson
1975
This book purports to be “the” book on Frisbee. (Quick, run over to the 700s and check your Frisbee collection!)
From my own faulty memory of the 1970s and early 80s, Frisbee started getting “serious” with the sporting aspects, including competitions and performance standards. Click here to read the Wikipedia article on the generic “flying disc”. Just about everyone had a Frisbee within reach when I was in high school and college. (My mother was appalled that during my college graduation, Frisbees were flying around during the ceremony.)
As a collection item, this one fails on condition. Although, considering the age of this paperback book, it looks like it was well used and loved. I doubt it would be a hot item for a modern collection in sports. Toy collectors and other nostalgia buffs over the age of 50 might find the info interesting, but I doubt it. For my fellow baby boomers out there, enjoy this commercial from 1966, bell bottoms and tube socks are optional.
Wham O!
Mary
A book with pictures of people playing Frisbee…oh the times before the internet….
Cue gratuitous shot of model in full hair and makeup wearing heels and a short, lowcut dress.
I remember loving this book in the ’80s – I still remember all of the grips, throws, and catches that I learned from it. One interesting aspect is that it’s filled with descriptions of various games to be played with Frisbees. At the time, the big game played in clubs was called “Guts”, which involved teams facing off against each other and throwing the disc as hard as they could. (It’s mentioned in the captions of the photos above.) Nowadays the dominant two games are Ultimate and disc golf.
Dr. Johnson was such a Frisbee enthusiast that when he died, he wanted to be cremated, and to have the Wham-O company put his ashes into the plastic mixture to be made into several dozen white Frisbees, which would be given away at his funeral. The last page of the book has a letter he wrote proposing this plan and a reply from his mortuary saying they wouldn’t be able to do it.
I’d love to get my hands on a copy – a family member had one, but it’s long gone.
What’s so appalling about throwing Frisbees? Seems like when *anything* is popular with the youngsters parents think it’s evil.
Ironic twist: when my mom graduated from college in the 70s…the year before or after I did…her ceremony was disrupted by a streaker!
I don’t think anyone is saying anything against Frisbee–just that competitive/recreational Frisbee has changed over the years. Unless you’re referring to something in the excerpts I missed…
They probably thought it wasn’t solemn enough for a graduational ceremony.
I think the problem may have been that flying frisbees at a college graduation is not very dignified for such a supposedly serious occasion.
Mom was fine with Frisbees and she certainly doesn’t think they were evil, she just didn’t like them during a supposedly solemn ceremony. Her gripe was that the students were hardly dignified. She said it looked like a sporting event.
When I first saw the cover & before I scrolled down the website and saw the book’s copyright date and ’70s-era pictures, I thought this book was much older than 1975, and was most likely published in the 1950’s or early ’60’s!