... when I was a kid ...
February 7, 1999
6:24 a.m.
My beloved Cardinals are free to play in the post season! LISA: (in deadpan voice) Woo Hoo ...   When I was a kid, I used to ride my bicycle. I would get a group of friends--usually Scotty McDonald and Alan Hardesty and, of course, Jeff--and we would ride around the entire neighborhood. There were two small grocery stores in the area--one on Pindell, and the other one a ways away on Hess Lane. They were local places owned by the guy who lived in the attached house rather than one with a big lit-from-behind sign outside its warehouse-like building. There were treasures at both of them, I remember. Cokes in glass bottles, and peppermint chocolates, baseball cards with thick sticks of gum that we would push endlessly into our mouths until it looked like we were chewing tobacco. It would always be really hot, and the air would smell of gravel, and maybe the exhaust of a car idling outside while someone zipped in for milk or bread. We sat on concrete steps outside and traded the cards, all of us talking in one big jumble: "Swap you Yazstremski for Schmidt." "You gotta be kidding me?" "Come on, Schmidt's a weenie boy." "Yeah? Then why do you want him?" "What about Ron Cey?" "Hey, I got a Willie Mays." "He's too old." "Bobby Tolan's better." "What about Roger Metzger?" "No bat." After stoking up on suger, we would clothespin one of the cards into position to slap against the spokes of our wheels, and we would roar off down greenup hill, listening to the fresh ta-ta-ta-ta-ta of cardboard on metal. We would usually end up at Scotty's place because he had a huge field in his back yard where we could play wiffle ball. Scotty and I would bat left-handed so that we wouldn't mess up our right-handed swing for Little League baseball. Sitting here, I can hear the warbling, plastic whine of a hollow curveball, and the sharp crack of the bat on the ball. I remember jumping over fences for home run balls (anything we caught was considered an out). I remember diving for ground balls, and getting those big red grass rashes that made you itch like mad. It was our rule that, in order to throw someone out on a grounder, you had to hit the runner with the ball. The games generally ended with one of us deciding someone else had purposefully threw the ball too hard and raised a big red welt, and the offended party would stomp off to a chorus of "Baby, baby, baby." Of course we played together again the next day, completely forgetting our 24-hour-past accusals. I remember hitting one ball so far that it cleared the huge oak tree that stood behind the right field fence. We kept various stats, and we would vote for the league MVP at the end of the summer. I don't remember who won. Don't ask me what it all means. It's just what I was thinking about as I sat down this morning, and somehow it feels important to me. So I wrote it. Somewhere inside you, I hope you have memories like this. And I hope they make you feel exactly like I do right now--bittersweet for the freedom of childhood, but also filled with a sense of self-understanding, a sense of knowing yourself that winds around your bones like magic. Have a great day.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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"Oh! The old swimmin' hole! When I last saw the place, The scenes was all changed, like the change on my face." James Whitcomb Riley |
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