Pitching 'Shoes With Bob Sollima

August 12, 2005

    Bob Sollima’s time-honored horseshoe tournament is back, and for horseshoe pitchers like Big Rich and Linda Lockwood, that’s just about the best news they’ve had in a while.
    “It’s informal, but it’s the funnest tournament there is,” said Big Rich in a telephone interview from his San Diego home, “and the chow is first class. Bob makes all the food in Dutch ovens, and two or three times a day. He’s constantly cooking, so when the chow bell rings, everybody runs.”
    Said Linda: “I can’t wait. We’re planning to go up early.”
    The invitation-only Horseshoe Classic, this year on Aug. 26-28, used to be a mainstay event at Reds Meadow Pack Station, but when Sollima, the winter caretaker, left Reds Meadow three years ago, the Horseshoe Classic went into hibernation.
    This year—it is the 20th iteration—the tournament is scheduled for the meadows at Sherwin’s Folly (the old Equestrian Center), and will be accompanied by a music festival and the usual “Classic” insanity, such as the spectacle of the “pit babes,” water hose jump roping, the “biker babes” on mountain bikes and conviviality all around.
    “It’s a contest, sure, but it’s also become a family reunion,” said Sollima, the affable and iconoclastic Mammoth stoneworker whose signature rock facings appear all over town.
    “It’s the only time we get to see each other.I like to think of it as Woodstock and Christmas combined, and the barbecue is probably as big as any you’re going to see. It’s 12 courses, all cooked in Dutch ovens in the fire, feeding 125 people, and that’s about the best I can do.
    “I love every minute of it. It’s my calling in the horseshoe world.”
    The Classic started in 1980 in a small, remote area of Old Mammoth, down by the creek, called “Moleville.”
    Sollima, who turned 60 in June, said it was begun by Larry Eastman and Dave Carroll.
    “We barbecued, drank beer and pitched shoes,” Sollima said. “We had event T-shirts and the first handmade ‘Classic-style’ trophies. Somehow, it just fizzled out, and that ended the Moleville Annual Horseshoe Classic.”
    Having signed on at Reds Meadow in 1982, Sollima said a perfect convergence made it possible for him to revive the Moleville tournament.
    “During the summer of 1984, the Matsu softball team won the championship,” Sollima said. “Rex Reyes, Matsu’s owner, to honor his team, wanted to have a barbecue, pig roast and pitch some horseshoes. We figured Reds Meadow to be the perfect spot.
    “The pig was artfully baked in the ground by ‘Jumpin’ Jon Eisert and Dan Bridger using Ilima Kalama’s magic rocks. I decided that I should make some horseshoe trophies in the ‘Classic’ style and have a small tournament, naming it the Reds Meadow Annual Horseshoe Classic.”
    The Lockwoods, meanwhile, started coming to Mammoth from San Diego to do a little bit of fishing and visit their nephew, Jesse, currently living in Hawaii.
    “On our way up here,” said Rich Lockwood, 59, “we’d stop in places like Lone Pine and Bishop and find some horseshoe pits and pitch some ’shoes to break up the monotony.”
In those days, Linda, 58, would walk the horseshoes back to Rich, and one day he said, “Why don’t you just throw them back?”
    Said Linda:
    “So I said OK, and when I threw them back I found out I could get ringers. Then I got really good.”
Having met Sollima at Reds and helped him in the kitchen for years, Linda took to the pits and won the whole tournament in 2001, the last time the Classic was held at Reds Meadow.
    “The men didn’t like it that I won the whole thing,” she deadpanned.
    She now is the California State Champion in her class and was a seeded participant in the World Championships in Bakersfield July 18-30.
    For a number of years, Big Rich and Linda got the trophy for coming the farthest to participate in the Classic, but this year the competition is going to be tough, Sollima said.
    “Ponytail Jim” Johnston and Jill Catino were planning to travel from New Hampshire, Sollima said, while others were planning to come from as far away as Hawaii and Alabama.
    To Sollima, it’s not that big of a surprise. There’s the reunion aspect of it, yes. But in the end, the appeal is even more obvious.
    “Horseshoes is the only sport I know of where you can pitch with one hand and hold a beer with the other.”