BASEBALL MEMORIES

                                                BASEBALL MEMORIES

Growing up in Staples, I became a nut for baseball at an early age. I loved all kinds of sports, but baseball fit my mentality and my talents better than all of the rest. I say that because I was a small kid, so sports with physical contact left me lying on the ground most of the time. But baseball wasn’t a contact sport, and when the ball was pitched, it was just me and my glove against the hitter, or me and my bat against the fielder. It was a challenge that got my blood boiling, and I played my heart out.

In the summer, we would gather at the field in Pine Grove Park and pick sides. If we didn’t have enough players, we would play workup—where you batted until you made an out, and then you went into the field and rotated through the positions. Everybody pitched, everybody caught and everybody fielded. But many days we had more than enough kids, and we would choose sides, and the game was on. No umpires and no spectators, we played for the love of the game. We drank water from an old steel pump in the park—always filling the can when we were done in case the next user had to prime it—and when we were done with the water we drank, and didn’t sweat out, we left it in the bushes behind third base. The game filled our imaginations, too, and sometimes, if you closed your eyes for a moment, you could hear the murmur of the nonexistent crowd in the old wooden bleachers. 

On many days, we would play the day away and then jump on our bikes for the long ride home, the old mitt hanging from the handlebars with the ball safely tucked inside and the bat tied to the frame of our bike. You went home hungry, sunburnt, and knowing you were going to get it from mom, for the hole you tore in your pants sliding into second base, but it was worth it. The game meant that much to you.

I’m an old man now, and those days are distant memories, but I still remember the names of most of the kids. We never fought or tried to hurt each other; we were brothers of the game. In nineteen fifty-six I broke my leg playing out there, and for the rest of that summer I was on crutches. I felt like a wounded veteran, standing on the sidelines, cheering on my friends. My buddy would give me a ride on his bike, because I couldn’t ride mine, but I had to be there, it meant that much to me. On Sundays, we went out to watch the Railroaders, and I still remember Rev. Ray Ewing walking back and forth in front of the bleachers, selling ice cold pop out of an old galvanized bucket, for a dime. If you turned in a foul ball, you would get a freebie.

Baseball, as we knew it then, taught me a lot about life. It taught me about winning and losing, and getting hurt, and bouncing back. And it taught me the meaning of the word “teamwork.” The most amazing thing about all of this was—we did it ourselves. No coaches, no spectators and no uniforms. No incentive but the love of the game, and the respect of our friends. None of us ever went on to bigger and better baseball. Oh, some of us played baseball in high school, and some of us played for the Railroaders, but our best memories were made out on that old chopped-up field, out at Pine Grove Park.

  

ONCE UPON A TIME

At coffee the other day, one of the guys asked me if I ever started any of my columns out with “Once upon a time.” I don’t remember what I told him, but it got me thinking about the words and what they mean to me. To me, “Once upon a time,” conjures up a story I want to tell. The very word conjure can mean something mystical or magical but it also can mean a reflection brought on by a scent, sound taste or anything that takes you back in your mind to “Once upon a time.” Put another way—it’s just a memory.

I have received some criticism for writing about the past so much. “It’s done and finished,” they say, and now it’s time to move on. But the future for each of us is different—and especially for those people who, to put it bluntly, don’t have a lot of tomorrow’s to draw on. For you see, there comes a time in your life when you’re satisfied with where you have been, and what you have done. You’re not exactly ready to cash it in yet, but when they tell you it’s time to start taking money out of your 401k instead of putting it in—well, the handwriting is on the wall. Old age is a time when many of us are stripped of our titles, dignities and maybe our driver’s license, but no matter how much they try, they can’t take our memories away.

Writers write mostly from their experiences or someone else’s observations. After all, if something hadn’t happened—what would there be to write about? Mark Twain didn’t gain all that wit he shared with us when he was in his twenty’s. He accumulated it over his lifetime. The biggest shame is that he didn’t live to be a hundred, for who knows what else he would have penned. To be smart is to retain what you have seen, heard and experienced—be it “once upon a time.” The only travesty for a lot of us is, just when we have seen and experienced most everything, we lose that God-given ability to remember things. It’s my experience, however, that the memories you lose most often are the things that just happened, and not the memories you cherish and never forget. Those are so ingrained in your mind you will never lose them. Maybe it’s your mind’s way of saying, “I’ll remember the important things. You’ll find your keys eventually.” Years ago, Frank Sinatra sang a song called “Once upon a Time” that says it all for me when it comes to a certain memory I have.

Once upon a time a girl with moonlight in her eyes. Put her hand in mine and said she loved me so. But that was once upon a time, many years ago.

Once upon a time the world was sweeter than we knew. Everything was ours, how happy we were then. But somehow once upon a time, never comes again.

To those of you who are still making most of your memories, those lyrics might not mean much to you right now. Your “once upon a time’s” are just a yesterday away. Your tomorrows seem to stretch out forever, and really, all that is important is the here and now. Believe me, however, time has a way of slip sliding away and before you know it, you too might be sitting at your keyboard and typing, “Once upon a time.”

SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW

                                    

Many years ago a young Judy Garland sang so beautifully. “Somewhere over the rainbow skies are blue. And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.” The year was 1939 two years before I was born. I grew up hearing that song over and over again and although it’s a melody you can never forget it’s the lyrics I was drawn too, because somewhere in those words came hope that dreams really can come true. Good dreams to me are simply aspirations of things you really like and want to happen. Reality tells us however we must do more than just wish if we want these dreams to come true. We need to act, and make an effort on our part to make them come true. 

This brings me to the crux of my story, about the American dream. What is this American dream we talk about and why is it in peril? The American dream has meant many things to many people but always somewhere in its contents was the freedom to go after the things you have always wanted and wished for. That if you worked hard and stay focused and kept your eye on the goal, most of it would come to you. This was all possible because we lived in a country that encouraged you to do so. The old adage “land of the free” meant simply the opportunity to do this and more if you worked hard. Today the “land of the free” means to many people that you don’t have to do much to help yourself because the government will do it for you and for way to many, this has become a way of life.

On the Statue of Liberty there is inscribed. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free; the wretched refuse of your teeming shores.” Were those words to be interrupted to mean come here and we will take care of you? No. They meant come to this land of opportunity and grow with us and they did. My grandfather was one of them. Millions of people came, just wanting to have a chance to succeed in a growing country without government intervention. That dreams that they dared to dream really did come true here. All they had to do was work hard and believe in themselves. It was truly the American dream.

Fast forward to today. Our country is for all practical purposes broke. Not just broke but broken too. Those huddled masses that came here to work, now come here to get free health care, food and rent subsidies. There is little incentive to work and even less opportunity for jobs because we now send our work to those teeming shores they came from. Our tax laws are a muddled mess of loopholes that allow those who make millions, pay almost nothing and keep their money overseas. I read the other day that the flood of illegal immigrants, across our southern borders has slowed dramatically and not because of stepped up enforcement. It has slowed because there are few reasons to come here when the jobs are being outsourced to the very country they were leaving. What a way to promote America & The American dream.

How long before people in this country leave our teeming shores for a less oppressive business climate. How long before the American dream becomes the American nightmare or are we already there?

OBSERVATIONS FROM ITALY

                                              

Buon giorno readers. I was blessed to be able to go with some friends to Italy a while back and for you who have not been there, I would like to offer the following observations about the country. Keep in mind that these are my opinions and may or may not be shared by those who accompanied me, or others who have been there. To start with, I could not substantiate the notion that Italy is the land of delectable Italian food that will wow your palate with perfect pizzas. I like cheese and sausage on my pizzas and neither seemed to exist where I was. The pizzas seemed to be a rather hard crust with a few veggies and some pepperoni on them and instead of cheese they have oil on them that tasted to me like lucky tiger hair oil. To those who like pasta, they have great pasta but I was unable to find a single meatball or a Godfathers pizza shop. When I asked about “Godfather’s” they drew their finger across their throat and said “Sicily.”

There is no coffee in Rome just shots of espressos that come in cups about the size of the ones that are in a Susie Homemaker play dishes kit. The one-ounce or so of sludge that is in them is equal to about six, five-hour energy drinks. You gulp it down in one swig, wait for your eyes to uncross, and your on your way. There is cappuccino for the non-espresso drinkers, which is the same thing with milk in it. Americano coffee, which is sometimes advertised but frowned upon, is not anything that resembles American coffee. I believe it is illegal to have American coffee in Italy.

Nero and Sons built the current roads in Rome out of cobblestones. Not nice smooth cobblestones like we have but little pointed ones that that poke you in the arch of your foot like walking on top of a picket fence, if you have soft shoes. If you have hard soled shoes it’s like walking across a room full of big marbles. They have no lanes marked off in the roads, so the cars-- which are about the size of those bumper cars you used to see at the state fair years ago—just wander nilly wily all over the road at very fast speeds blowing their horns ever few feet and waving their hands. If there were lanes marked, that would change in a hurry because restaurant owners seem to own at least two lanes of the street, in front of their establishments, and they fill them with tables and chairs for patio eating. So all of the traffic goes from four lanes to two lanes and then back to four again and then they repeat the process in the next block and sometimes more than once in any one block.

Nothing that Rome ever built for the last three thousand years has ever been torn down or removed. They just build around it or over it. If you are in an apartment in Rome, there is good chance, if you went to the basement and stated digging, you would find bones and chariot wheels, or the mother of all finds— Caesars sarcophagus full of old wine bottles. If you are Catholic and want to go to a church in Rome simply make a right turn and walk in. There is literally a church in every block. If you are protestant or Jewish, I can’t be of any help. After walking around about twenty square miles of Rome--scusi me—thirty square kilometers of Rome--I did not see any other kind of church. Despite all of this I fell in love with the eternal city and it’s people. For now, arrivederci my friends.

OUR ANCESTORS

                                                

America is a land of immigrants, and outside of our Native American friends, we all seem to have come from someplace else; albeit for most of us, a few generations removed. As a young man, one of the things I remembered happening, was people saying to me, “Holst—is that Scandinavian?” At this point, I would proudly tell them about how my grandfather came over from Norway on a tramp steamer, when he was eleven years old, to this land of milk and honey. Then the conversation would go on to Klub, Lefsa, Lutefisk, Krumkake and every other Norwegian dish you could think of.  By the way, I don’t do Lutefisk, and never have, but I still go to the church suppers for the Lefsa and the Norwegian atmosphere. My father said, “The only difference, between Lutefisk and snot, is that you can get kids to eat snot” and by the way, he was Norwegian. But my point is, those ethnic ties were a sense of pride to them and through interbreeding, it’s something we’re slowly losing.

I lost my mother when I was four. Her maiden name was Cromie, which is an old Irish name. I also know they came from the Belfast area. My father said she was mostly Irish so that’s the other half of me. Right near the top of my bucket list is a trip, someday, to both Norway, and Ireland. I have to admit, a pot of corn beef and cabbage makes my mouth drool like a sprinkler head in a burning building; and in the shower, my rendition of “Danny Boy” is a real tearjerker—especially after a couple of Jamison’s. I remember visiting my wife at the cemetery a while back, and those lyrics from “Danny Boy” came filtering through my mind. “And I shall hear, tho’ soft you tread above me. And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be. If you’ll not fail to tell me that you love me. I’ll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.” Yes, somewhere the simplicity of that old Gallic life style still stirs my soul, and yes, it’s been said “If you’re lucky enough to be Irish—you’re lucky enough.”

When I was first married I would go to family get-togethers, on my wife’s side of the family, down in Stearns County. They, like most of their neighbors, were of German heritage. We ate pig hocks and sauerkraut, and drank mugs of beer from New Ulm breweries, no less; also German sausage and hot potato salad. We danced the polka and the schottische, and old-time waltzes at places like the New Munich Ballroom. In every town, the centerpiece of the town seemed to be the steeple of a Catholic church—where most of them had been baptized, confirmed, confessed their sins and were eventually laid to rest in cemeteries behind the church where the tombstones read like a “Who’s who of the countryside.” It was always “Guten Morgan” when you arrived and “Auf Weidersehen when you left—her ninety-year-old grandma, with tears running down her face when we departed, extending her arms to heaven and saying, “mag Gott Segnen” or “may God bless.”

Yes, in everything I’ve talked about above, these were simple people who lived simple lives, never forgetting their roots. It’s not that way, anymore, and it’s sad. Sad because they’re gone, yes, but sad because gone, too, is the food, drink, traditions and the language that meant so much to them at the time—replaced by a different life, in a fast-paced American world that has no place for these, anymore.