A Paragraph for You

Good writing can make you hang in there for descriptions of things you don't care two bits for. I find tennis boring and boring, but the chapter on it in George Howe Colt's The Big House had me captivated. Here is a paragraph from that:


As I listened, I would try to guess which tennis court the sound was coming from. We had no court of our own. But we had permission to play next door at the Benedicts', on a rosebush-enclosed clay court they rarely used, or at the Hallowells', a sailing family who owned an ancient clay court the color of old bricks. I loved the forgiving softness of clay--actually a mixture of clay and sand--on which the gradual accumulation of sneaker prints documented the story of each match. (Clay also left its mark on the players; by the end of the match, one's shirt and shorts were usually well smudged, making tennis appear rougher than it really was.) I even liked the postgame sweeping and rolling, a bit of ritual housekeeping that brought opponents together and wiped the slate as clean as an Etch A Sketch after a vigorous shake. It took two children to get the heavy iron roller moving, its clapper gonging mournfully like the bell buoy in Buzzards Bay.