Sixty inches high, a couple dozen inches around and if her weight is north of 100 pounds, it only is because she is practicing her next career as a bricklayer.
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Far right in this scene of the victors, UPCC President Steve Levin and Scott Kecken. Second from left, front row, Jeannine Wisnosky Stehlin. — Fiesta photos by George N. Laase
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Can you tell Laura Chardiet has won?
The quintessence of entertainment at the weekend’s 61st Fiesta La Ballona struck at 2 o’clock yesterday on a remote but humanly crowded patch of Vets Park.
School Board member Laura Chardiet, whose appearance did wonders for magnifying glass stock, was matched against courageous, tall and slender Caroline Quinn.
From the eastern sideline of the roped-off ring, this was not the stiffest competition of Fiesta. Inarguably, though, it was the most flexible, a continuing carnival of contortionism.
A dozen bending, twirling, ducking, flying, ground-bound bodies wearing powder blue PTA tee-shirts – including Ms. Chardiet – faced off, grimacingly, against a dozen recruits from the new mamas-and-papas union, the United Parents of Culver City, including Ms. Quinn.
Eight separate, imaginative forms of competition devilishly were concocted as a highlight of the third and closing day of Fiesta by Leslie Gardner, Maren Neufeld and Ms. Chardiet, all of whom successfully fought off their inherent shyness for a cause with not only merit but the potential for numerous future renewals.
Dental Finals: A Tooth Test
Screaming was as passionate and as partisan as it is at a Culver High-Beverly Hills football game.
Both women gritted their teeth so firmly friends feared their upper and lower molars would be permanently locked inside a keyless world.
Since matchups hardly ever are physically fair, Ms. Chardiet would have needed a ladder, with an extra hinge, to reach Ms. Quinn from ground level.
Odds were the strained rope would break before either mother gave in.
This was Superman against Superman, and if off-field wagering had been permitted, City Hall could have closed its budget deficit in less than an afternoon.
Blowing the Whistle
Referees Jim Clarke and Jerry Chabola signaled the start, and then deftly stepped aside with impressive swiftness.
Jaws set but feet fluid, as if skating across a rink, Ms. Quinn and Ms. Chardiet were pulling, yanking, jerking and heaving with heaven-level mightiness, on the bravest, most endangered, rope in Culver City.
Ms. Chardiet did not attain unique administrator status with LAUSD or her less-than-a-year-old seat on the School Board by shrinking behind a blanket of bashfulness.
By the time cheering had sapped the fast-ebbing strength on both teams, Ms. Chardiet, Mighty Mouse, stood, or at least sat, her ground and won by stubbornly refusing to bow or budge before evidently superior strength.
“I was shocked by my strength,” Ms. Chardiet said afterward. “I guess I have a bit of a competitive streak.”
As the arch-organizer who defied motion sickness, the ubiquitous Ms. Chardiet surfaced in numerous parts of the pitch, as they say in soccer, sometimes simultaneously.
She was encouraging School Board teammate Kathy Paspalis, excited Mistress of Ceremonies at the play-by-play microphone, she was at the north and south ends of the field keeping both the PTA and UPCC apprised of the order of events, arranging the equipment, visiting with fans, and in between, competing ferociously.
Over Easy, Please
For old-fashioned enjoyment, the best interlude may have been the egg-in-a-spoon race through a confounding obstacle course without dropping the egg or having the eggs knocked out of carefully cradled clutches by impressively aimed water balloons.
Both Ms. Neufeld of the PTA and Lance Johnson of UPCC, the balloon pitchers for the rivals, probably will have to sit out the rest of the baseball season. Tired arms.
Hardly anyone was able to walk the plank, circle a wading pool several times, step through a series of hula hoops, weave in and out of a half-dozen construction-style orange cones – and then repeat the accomplishment in the opposite direction on the first try – without losing this or her spoonfed egg. Or breakfast.
“It was my brainchild to do the relay competition in the park with the PTA vs. UPCC,” Ms. Chardiet said, a longtime PTA leader.
“Leslie, Maren and I came up with the general activities, and then I added the twists.”
No mystery why the eight matchups between the new and the traditional –ending in a 5 to 3 UPCC victory – were fired with roaming imagination. “Being from a large family with limited resources,” Ms. Chardiet said, “fed my creativity.”
The hour-long games provided an exquisite dessert to a magnificent weekend of both family-style and couples-geared entertainment that happily married the old-fashioned with the modern-as-tomorrow, with food booths from two countruies still to be invented and irresistible, head-tapping music for geezers, geeks and couples who prefer swaying to becoming titillatingly airborne parallel to a dance floor.
Crowds were huge, happy, better fed than farmers a hundred miles from the nearest town, and fully deflated well ahead of the curtain-closing 6 o’clock hour.
