THE FIRST TIME I USED COLORED TENNIS BALLS. Kids, tennis balls used to be white. I spent a week at a lake in Canada in 1970 and again in 1971. The lodge had a tennis court attached to it, with a wire fence around it to keep balls from going into the woods. What was unusual was that the surface of the court was of wood. The bounces off the wood surface were good enough considering the lovely setting. There was only one problem. The wood was treated with some kind of creosote, and the balls turned brown very quickly—brown, to the point that it was impossible to see them.
The next year I prepared for the holiday by buying about 50 cans of tennis balls—-all white, of course. To reduce the weight, I emptied the containers and put about 150 tennis balls into a pillow case. The store had some colored tennis balls. I had never seen colored tennis balls, but on impulse I bought two cans of colored balls. I remember that one can was red. When I got to the airport in Toronto and went through customs, the official was suspicious of the pillow case, and asked me about it. As soon as I said tennis balls, he wanted no part of me and waved me right through.
The two cans of colored tennis balls retained visibility for the whole week, long after all the white ones were unusable.
The next year it seemed that all the tennis balls for sale were yellow.
I am reminded of our using neon pink baseballs to play catch in the back yard, as we were often fighting darkness or trying to find them after they’d been dropped or missed in the grass / bushes.