Discord

Let’s hope it doesn’t reach separation status. It’s an odd one though. My roommate and I disagreed on a topic (outside my eternal shortcomings) last evening for about the fourth or fifth topic in 47 years. It was silly, but aren’t most disagreements? Just think about the million upon millions of poor folks who have died over which mythology to believe.

Ours was even sillier.

It happened his way. We hardly ever watch sports on TV. We hardly ever watch sports period. As for TV, if it wasn’t for Turner Classic Movies and PBS, I’d probably sell the darned thing.

Anyway, steer me back to the point. She has decided, because of countless in-state adventures with her cousin Phyllis in Houston, and a great-grandfather who didn’t stop fleeing Kentucky until he crossed into the territory, that she is some sort of honorary Texan or such. Hence, we surfed upon the seventh game of this year’s World Series.

Lo and behold. It was between the Houston Astros and some team I had never heard of in my life. We locked on.

Then the trouble started. I noticed that, through TV magic, they now insert a rectangle around the batter’s crotch to show where the baseball goes after it is thrown. (Man, I had to study the structure of that sentence carefully. The apocryphal Dizzy Dean comment about the young couple watching the game kept sliding into my head.) Anyway …

 I was thinking, “Isn’t baseball on TV boring enough without displaying what the umpire is going to do before it happens? Watching and waiting for errors to occur is one of the few enjoyable pastimes left to mere mortals. Why are we suddenly eschewing human frailties? People like me want to know.

I was on the verge of proclaiming my insightfulness when her voice broke the silence. “I really like that little box that shows you what’s a ball and what’s a strike,” she said.

Oh, the horror! The horror!

I’ve learned to keep my opinion to myself over the years. I’ve learned to follow the Galilean’s advice to “agree with thine adversary quickly.” Why seek discord? Why annoy? Why make mountains out of molehills? Why sow rancor? Respect the opinions of others. Harmony is divine. Quarrels provide a feast for the Dark One. Smile. Be agreeable and history will judge you a sage.

“It’s the silliest damn thing I’ve ever seen,” I said.

Wrong way to express a contra-opinion, I found. Why didn’t I pay homage to the wisdom of Sheriff Marge Gunderson in Fargo and say, “I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work, there, ... .” It’s just not my style, anything that smacks of wisdom and forbearance.

“Idiot,” she observed.

“You’re a bigger one,” I countered.

Anyway, resolution evaded us. Luckily the Texas team folded like a two-dollar suitcase at that point and she retired in only a mild huff. On arising this morning before her, I read where one of the teams won the game, and the world series. It wasn’t hers.

I think I’ll let her sleep. I won't mention baseball all day. Armies have marched with less provocation.

The Past as Baseball

I must confess an affection for college students, not the kind that just want to get “credentialed,” for a high-paying job, but the sincere ones who want to learn. So, I felt remorse Sunday when I talked to a group from Missouri State University. We met in Mountain View, Arkansas, a nice community in a beautiful and historic part of our state. I was to talk to them about planning for rural communities. Their eyes were bright and their minds were eager. I had some hardball facts ready to hurl.

As I say, I felt remorse. It involved at least two aspects. On first base there stands the truth that my generation isn’t handing them a very good place to enter as working adults. We have started the planet to frying and I’m not sure we would have time to stop it even should we want to. Maybe, you will say, the mindset that allows this started way before my time. That’s probably true, but no excuse. We had the time and brains to go about things differently but chose not to.

On second base stands the fact that those young folks will have to survive the after effects of the worst presidential administration in the history of our country. I can only wish them luck.

It’s certainly no excuse, but my generation had a few bumps in our nine innings. The so-called “Greatest Generation,” having lived through the Great Depression and World War Two, were benignly determined that we would have it better. Accordingly they ,spoiled us unmercifully. At least I thought so until a person of impeccable veracity related seeing a family dining in public recently and watching a father spoon feed a six-year-old son who wouldn’t remove his hands or eyes from his cell phone.

“Well then there now,” as Jett Rink said to Leslie Benedict in the 1956 film epic Giant. I guess that would translate roughly to, "it is what it is." As I say, we had a few spitballs thrown our way. First in the lineup, at least for males, was The Draft. Oooh boy.

We complied with it, most of us anyway. Even when they ordered some of us to sacrifice so other runners would advance, we complied, picked up our gear, and headed for the dugout. At least we headed for southeast Asia.

It may have been an illegal war, probably was, from all accounts. It was surely a bad call from whomever was umpiring the game. We went anyway. We may have thought the Constitution of the United States treated us shabbily, but we never thought it a phony document, only one that could be used by phony people. So, into the “valley of the shadow of death” we went. Most came home. Some didn’t. Some never were the same after they got back. Now they tell the ones who are still around that there is another monster associated with the color orange that may be waiting around the next corner.

No matter. We were called. We went. We served. Each suffered in his or her own way. It didn’t matter. At this age, some of us are even proud we served.

The hard part is that our country has never forgiven us for it.

The other hard part was that when we got home there was a man standing on third base, having been born there and now ready to score for the big win.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m Donald Trump and I’ve just hit the biggest and best triple that’s ever been hit in the history of baseball.”

Well then there now. I didn’t tell the students Sunday about that. I just told them that, as far as planning for rural towns was concerned, there wasn’t any. I didn’t tell them that nobody cared. I figured that they had enough things to worry about.

Not much to plan for in the rural South

Morning Thoughts: October 27, 2017

It was beer-induced cruelty, beer-induced fame, beer-induced fun, beer-induced insanity, or maybe a combination of all of them. I dunno. Beer does funny things to a person.

Walter "Hook-slide" Bradshaw—I couldn’t help thinking about him last evening. In an odd evolution of marital harmony, Brenda and I have taken to watching the World Series of baseball. I’ve long loved what were once known as the hapless Chicago Cubs, so we watched them win last year. Brenda now considers herself an honorary Texan after multiple trips to Houston for fun times with her cousin and best friend Phyliss Cole. On a recent trip down, B enjoyed a trip to the ballpark to see a Houston Astros game. At that time the team was wrapping up a successful season. They won that night.

Now she’s a fan. So, we are watching the World Series again.

But back to Hook-slide. I counted 17 commercials per inning, or something like, that last night, so there was ample time for mind-wandering, the only thing I’ve ever been really good at. Mine wandered, somewhere about the seventh inning, back to a character who became a local hero to Little Rock area baseball fans in the late 1970s.

It was odd the way it happened. See, we had this baseball stadium in the city for years: Ray Winder Field. It served a Class AA farm team of the St. Louis Cardinals, and was a great place to spend a lazy summer afternoon or evening. It was also a great place for making memories. If I close my eyes when I’m alone and it is dark, I can still conjure up a deep bass voice yelling “Cold beer …cold beer.” Those of you who were ever there know what I’m talking about.

Enter Hook-slide Bradshaw. I don’t know how old he was, maybe in his 50s at the time. He was one of those men of indeterminate age who probably invented the phrase “Hold my beer and watch this.”

And the fans did. They formed the rowdy bunch who congregated in the third-base bleachers and raised hell, not a fit setting for anyone with a shred of adult tendencies. As the game would wear on, someone would flatten a popcorn box, place it at one end of the concrete walkway in front of the bleachers, and start the chant of “Hook-slide, Hook-slide, Hook-slide.” By then the crowd would have de-inhibited its hero with free beer.

If he sensed a worthy level of enthusiasm, the great man would step to the end of the walkway away from the popcorn box positioned to serve as home plate. An “umpire” would suddenly appear behind the base, probably the second-most alcohol-directed person in the crowd.

Hook-slide would then begin his long run and terminate it with a slide over the concrete with one foot expertly hooking “home plate.” The umpire would signal “safe” or “out” and the crowd would go berserk. I’ll swear I think I’ve seen the play on the field halt for a second or two over the commotion and the sheer grandeur of it all.

The concrete never seemed to bother Hook-Slide. He would acknowledge his fans and start “freshening up” for the next time. They say that, in his prime, he might perform his act over ten times a game.

Cruel? One might say so, but I hope that person is not from Spain, where they torture and murder innocent animals in arenas full of drooling fans. (I’m sorry, Ernest Hemingway but you should have known better). And don’t get me started on boxing matches, or those “beauty contests” for four-year-old girls.

But back to Hook-slide, he died in the mid-1980s. Ray Winder Field died a few years later as did something much larger. The team moved to another city and now serves as a farm team for someplace known only in Arkansas as, “It ain’t St. Louis, so who cares?” They play in in a fancy new stadium designed for planned fun. There’s plenty of it, I’m told.

You can’t, though, plan fun like that provided by Hook-Slide Bradshaw.

The only tribute left to Hook-Slide is a beer stand
at the new stadium, and, in the style of modern
"fans," they have him sliding in the wrong direction.

I couldn't find a photo of Hook-Slide. If anyone has one, send it to me and I'll post tomorrow.

Growing Up Southern: October 24, 2017

My folks ran a grocery store six days a week, so I had few outings alone with my father. There was this one, however. Yeah, there was one.

Oh, he would take me with him on occasion when he drove around on Sunday afternoons to look at how the crops were doing. He would be looking though, and not in the mood for talking to me. But he might see a man he knew, and he would pull in and talk to him for an hour while I fidgeted in the car. Those were hardly father-son outings designed to “red-line the old fun meter.” I think they were generated by my sainted mother who needed a break.

This one time, though, wasn’t like that, not at all. He suddenly, late one afternoon, and it was on a weekday—a Thursday if I remember right—up and asked me if I’d like to go and see a baseball game. “A baseball game?” I said. “Boy hidee, yes I would!” I was eleven years old and life couldn’t have taken a better turn, absent meeting Roy Rogers in person, maybe.

Whatever possessed him I’ll never know, but it wasn’t long before he and I were headed uptown to Taylor Field, over on the East-side where the “Pine Bluff Judges” played.

See, back in those days, even small towns like ours, (population 37,162 when I graduated from high school and don’t ask why I remember that) had farm teams from the major leagues. Ours was, of course, associated with the St. Louis Cardinals. They played in what was called “The Cotton States League.”

We went that night and wouldn’t you know it, I don’t think we saw a play. Before we arrived, the manager, a man named Frank Lucchesi, was hit by a ball and the play was delayed. He recovered and later went on to a long career with the majors. Read about him here.

Anyway, it was going to be late before play resumed, so we missed the action.

It didn’t matter. The atmosphere was both electric and addictive. I was about as thrilled as a young boy could be, absent meeting Sky King’s Penny in person, maybe. Our entire family became fans and regulars. We knew all the players. My heroes were catcher Dan Gatta and first-baseman Cliff Mansfield. We could stand behind the fence and talk to them in the bullpen. Neither made it to “The Dance,” but Gatta let me try on his catcher’s mitt one time, and Mansfield gave me a baseball before a game. I think my brother traded it away for something while I was off at college.

It doesn’t take much to create lasting memories.

Our lives expanded in other ways. We began to take trips to other cities in the League on Sundays, including: Meridian, MS, Monroe, LA, and Hot Springs and El Dorado within our own state.

I can remember the hubbub as one of the teams in the League put the first African-American on its roster. The “Judges” did the same a little later and I remember the crowd that showed up for his first appearance, just to stare—stare—nothing more.

They created a special section for the African-American fans, who flocked to witness this small stirring of equality. This helped extend the life of the League, but, in 1954, it succumbed to changes in American lifestyles, particularly the proliferation of home TVs. Sadly, it shut down for good. I remember local efforts to garner contributions and save the team. There was even a big poster of a thermometer in the window display of a downtown store (Froug’s maybe) showing the rise in dollars contributed against dollars need.

The capillary representing the dollars donated never reached the top. Too bad.

But I’ll never forget the pride I felt, as a young boy watching a baseball game on TV narrated by Dizzy Dean. Filling in time between innings, he read off a list of teams in the Cardinal organization, and where they were playing that night.

Would you believe that great, that immortal, man stated on national television that the Pine Bluff Judges of the Cotton States League would be playing in my home town that night? A city couldn’t get better publicity than that, now could it? I ran to tell my dad about it and he was as proud as I was.