The Light Post in Center Field

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This story just may be a nice dream. Without fabricating information, I always dream of my late father, mother and brother as though they belong in a blog. Weekly, they are alive and they seem the same as I remembered them. The saddest part of it all is I can’t hear their laughter in the dreams.

The light post in centerfield doesn’t just provide light to baseball players who can’t play when darkness arrives. It represents an idea when fathers and mothers can only watch them perform after closing time. Yes, baseball was meant to be a day game, but as long as the lighting is correct, and without the sun in your eyes, the ballplayers could see not only the players and fans in front of you, but also the folks behind you.

Having a nice chat with a friend the other day who loves and misses the game of baseball, we talked about it a bit. The chat reminded me of a story once told by my late brother, Steve, and even a later father, Rod.

Steve and our dad had a pretty good relationship when Steve was a youth…so I’m told. Steve and dad both loved baseball.

As all of us did, at some point, chose our own positions in society. In baseball, the positions were chosen for you. Some were outfielders, some infielders, some pitchers and some catchers. It didn’t really matter. We just wanted to play or perform. Our brother, Steve, only wanted to play when our father wasn’t at the game. He always thought dad gave him a baseball jinx. Baseball players love using that as an excuse for failure. If you know anything about baseball, you don’t need any excuses for failure. It’s just a law. You fail. Do the math. Then, you make adjustments and then fail again. It’s either, “this sport stinks..I quit”, or, you go to The Hall of Fame if you beat the odds.

Steve wanted to go to The Hall of Fame, but he couldn’t handle our old man at the Ballpark. Our old man was, in baseball, Steve’s only achilles heel. Steve would be positioned in centerfield watching the game in front of him. He was only looking for the old man. When he couldn’t find him in the stands, it shook him away from the proper game. Instinctively, Steve knew our dad couldn’t miss a game. Like a crossword puzzle, much like when you have to leave the coffee table for a break just to figure out the answer, Steve went to the dugout instead. It was then when he found our dad behind the light post. At the conclusion of the inning, Steve trotted back to centerfield. Dad remained camouflaged behind the brown light post wearing his bright blue cigarette stained jacket only Steve could identify and the other members of the community could identify.

With his back turned to him, Steve yelled, “I know you’re behind that post!.” Dad was caught watching his son play baseball.

Three Men and a Sucker Punch

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Sometimes, what happened in our living room, would leave the living room, or just sprint out of it in shame.

As a spectator, and still a boy of maybe 12, I witnessed something spectacular. It was a wrestling match between by brother of 16 and a formidable opponent: one of his older brothers of roughly 25. The details are a bit sketchy, but the conclusion is definitive. My father was there not to officiate, but to time the massacre.

The wrestlers were two of my six older brothers. Although siblings, they maintained different styles of athleticism. The elder, Aaron, was an excellent high school baseball player, which was the only sport he participated in while in high school. His love and talent for the game was natural, however, it couldn’t match his lackluster attitude, which we decided he did only to drive our father crazy. He could have been a terrific football player…..no, too much “rah rah!” B.S. Wasn’t his style. He would have been an excellent basketball player……nah, too much work. While he seldom wrestled, when he did, Aaron seemed to allow his opponent to gain a quick and large lead, before pinning his opponent with ease. This drove his coaches and my father nuts. It seemed deliberate. Perhaps it was his interesting sense of humor, which remains to this day, or perhaps he just didn’t give a damn. Aaron’s ability and his elite speed was no match for his disinterest, or what he would maintain as arrogance.

Tom, his living room opponent, was a little different. Great attitude, and impeccable work ethic. Having superior athleticism, Tom acquired All-State awards in both football and wrestling, and would eventually earn him the school’s best athlete award, not to mention a college football scholarship. When he was 16, he was a man.

Verbally sparring in the living room, Tom and Aaron were not interested in the riveting golf game our father was trying to watch. They were arguing about who was the best wrestler. Dad told them to take it out on the lawn. Evidently they agreed that someone must be there to officiate. Now, there was no way in Hell the old man was going to get out of his comfort zone, walk outside and officiate this mess. So, Aaron proposed a solution. Aaron bet Tom he could take him down ten times in thirty seconds. In order to speed things up, Dad agreed to be the timer. He even chuckled at the thought of what may happen, knowing Tom was a little too big for his Buster Browns. I stared at Tom, knowing he had never been beaten. If I had any cash, I may have even put that cash on Tom.

They both positioned themselves, Tom with a look of determination, and Aaron smirking. Dad, waiting for this pissing contest to be over, quickly said, “Ok, lets get this started. Ready…..Go.” By the time I could get nervous for Tom, Aaron had taken him down eight times in less than twenty seconds leaving only ten more seconds for him to survive. While Tom seemed a little tired, the only breathing Aaron was doing was out of laughter. Tom had met his match, and he knew it. Tom then took the matter into his own hands, literally, when they entered the center of the living room for the last ten seconds. With abject surprise, Dad and I watched as Tom punched Aaron in his stomach, or I think it was his stomach. Aaron dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes with the wind knocked completely out of him. Knowing it was an illegal wrestling move, and fearing reprisal, Tom quickly fled the scene of the bet. It was over, just like that.

While the old man and I sat laughing at Aaron wheezing on the floor, Tom was no where to be found. While still wheezing, Aaron chuckled at Tom’s keen sense of how to conclude a battle less than royal. After catching his breath, Aaron asked, “Where’s Tom?” Dad merely stated, “Probably close to the Idaho Border by now.” (That’s a half hour away from our house….driving.)

Although Tom was disqualified, upon his return he seemed a little satisfied. Not as satisfied as Dad who was back to watching a golf game with softly spoken commentators. This was a well deserved nap for the old man.

The C-Note

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“The best money I ever spent.” That’s how my old man described giving money to a ne’er-do-well he wished to not see again. When someone was in need, my father would happily give cash away, no questions asked. He taught me a helpful lesson when he used one of his C-Notes (one hundred dollars to non-gamblers) to keep a neighborhood thief from storing his stolen tires in our garage while we were on a vacation. This fellow was shady, and after discovering the stolen tires, my father deduced who the culprit was. Dad floated him a hundred bucks after he expressed his hard times, and Dad knew he wouldn’t be repaid. That was actually Dad’s plan . . the neighbor avoided us from then on, and never returned to Locust Road. Perhaps. he was just avoiding the house with thirteen children … we’ll never know. I think expecting the shady neighbor to avoid contact with someone he owned money was a clever bet on the old man’s part, though. Thank God our father was a semi pacifist.

Anti Social Distancing 101 (Dorothy’s Justice)

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Many people have older sisters.  Very few of them have six.  I do.  Many people have sisters who are tougher than them and most people in the neighborhood.  Very few have six tougher than anyone in their zip code.  I did.

All of our sisters grew up in a glorious Catholic family, attending church each Saturday or Sunday.  Our sisters were angels most of the time and, hoping to stay in the good graces of God, said their prayers before bedtime and stood out as upstanding, smart, and hardworking citizens.  Then, every once in a while, someone would cross them.  Enter Satan’s little helpers.  If you messed with my sisters, you were simply deemed a fool whose face could be departed.  A fool and his money are soon parted?  No.  A fool crossing my sisters would only be deprived of one thing……blood. Trying not to be be overly dramatic, I did pity the fools who tested my sisters’ reputation as Jekyll and Hyde-ish.  Let’s just say they are probably on a “do not trifle list” managed by the government.

I’ll share an example.  My sister, Dorothy, was walking my sister Maggie to her first day of school.  Maggie was in elementary school and a bit nervous, so Dorothy was supposed to look after her.  Not to worry.  Dorothy did just that.  A student, who knew our family, made the mistake of calling Maggie “Maggie the Maggot.”  Walking up the flight of stairs, he would learn his lesson by having to walk that flight again, if he could, after Dorothy turned red, grew horns, formed a tail looking like a trident and tossed him down that flight of stairs.  “Call my sister that again, and I won’t make it that easy.  Consider yourself warned.” He never did it again.  And, it turns out, this guy was one of Dorothy’s friends.  She’s also infamous for ripping our brother Greg’s pants and shoes off, then making him walk through misty morning dog feces after he had forgotten a key part of his daily chores.

Now a mother of three, and a wife to “bless his soul” Steve for forty years, Dorothy is still alive and throwing.  Her fierce protection of others is one of many ways she shows compassion for her loved ones.  That being written, when pissed off, she will suffer no fools.

When on my side, I never felt nervous in her presence, unless I had done something wrong and feared being punished to the point of submission.  Ok, Dorothy,….that’s enough.

God Bless Dorothy.  God Bless them all.

The Every Other Daily Corona: Public Cess Pools

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With the reopening of fishing and golfing, I wonder when or if they’ll open up public pools again.  Sadly, for some, I can guess it won’t be anytime soon.  As a child without a pool at our house, we’d frequent these pools regularly during the summertime pissing season.  I wasn’t a huge fan.  Having two public piss stations in our neighborhood, neither of them were too pleasing for me, but wherever my brothers went, well, I was their shadow.

Thinking back, sans the deaths, I would have welcomed the Corona Virus.  With the exception of one pool out of our neighborhood, I always thought of them as a possible death sentence amongst other unnatural disasters.  Having few friends my own age, I glommed on to my brothers and their friends.   They were all four to six years older, and took pretty good care of me, but there were countless times when they may not be present, thus fearing for my life and clothing.  This was after my brother, Greg, witnessed his bicycle being stolen five feet from the fence barricading him between the thief and himself.  Helplessly, he watched his bike and its new owner, bolt cutters in hand, laugh himself off into the distance.

Once, heading nearby to the same Mission Pool just on the next block past the corner of Mischief and Theft St.,  I proudly rode my bike to the pool in my brand new sneakers.  After some swimming and diving into the blue/yellow liquid, making it green, I left after about an hour to find my shoes missing from the locker I had placed them.  Clearly stolen, with no “witnesses”, or confirmed suspects, (all the deviant a-hole thieves working the locker room) holding back the tears, I rode home in my bare feet.  Walking into our house, leaving a bloody trail from the bottoms of my feet, my mother asked where my new shoes were.  It broke my heart to tell her they’d been stolen.  It was the first pair of really nice shoes she’d ever purchased me.  My very own.  No hand me downs.  Tom, my brother, four years older than me, knew some sleaze bag was prancing around with my shoes showing them off to his derelict family.  He saw red.  Enraged, Tom jumped on his ten speed, recklessly riding to the pool hoping to find the culprit.   With a different pair of shoes, I trailed him by a few lengths witnessing, to no avail, him busting into the locker room without asking for permission.  Tom was only around fifteen at the time, but as a varsity wrestler, he could lick most eighteen year olds in the valley.  Although scaring the hell out of each employee, he was forced to leave by adult personnel.  They were ready to call the fuzz.  Knowing nothing good happens when cops enter a scene, he decided to leave without finding my shoes.  If my brother, Greg, or the rest of our neighborhood gang had heard the news, they would have been right there with him.  I never saw those shoes again, but they did lose my business.

On the other side of the valley was an even more sinister pool. This was Park Piss Pool.  It was a piss dispensary.  If the county could have figured out a way to fabricate fuel with this daily yellow mess, the world would be a far more efficient place.  Gallons and gallons of urinary grime and disgust.  However, it wasn’t the contents of the pool I despised the most.  It was a boy, or perhaps man, who was most definitely mentally disturbed and just flat out mean.  He scared any guts I may have had right out of me and countless others.  While trying to drown me or any other child not practicing social distancing with him, he was a menace.  I’m betting he was in his mid twenties.  His name was Glenn B.  He was also unfavorably known as The Park Penis.  Before throwing him out for several counts of attempted murder by drowning, the pencil necked lifeguards would allow us to witness his grand finale.  Looking like a six foot tall bowling pin, he’d make it safely to the diving board, pull down his bathing suit and piss into the deep and now deeper end of the pool.  Then, he’d further amuse himself by doing a whopper of a belly flop directly into the strategic area of his urine, thus creating a tidal wave of yellow terror.   Children would be screaming while pushing each other right and left with fright trying to find a tsunami safety zone.  It was chaos. Before paying to get into the pool area, I’d refuse when I saw he was present. He’d be there most of the time.  I’d stay on the monkey bars most of the time. While utterly baffling to me, they didn’t present him a lifetime ban for his ungentlemanly antics.

My father hated these stories, so on several occasions, weekends only, he’d take us to another public pool on the other side of town……..the West Side.  It was here he introduced us to another world all together.  Since our side of town was predominately white, we hadn’t really interacted with people of color, usually just cheering for them to race for the goal line on Saturdays or Sundays.  Sure, we had a couple of hispanics in our neighborhood gatherings, in fact they were welcomed as a part of our group, but other than that, it was mostly Irish, Italian, German and British white trash.  When we entered the West Side pool, we were outnumbered by blacks.  There was a little staring on both sides, but I never felt anything but welcomed, and not one ounce of threat or violence. I liked this pool far better than the ones in our neighborhood.  Years later, I gave praise to our father helping us not only acknowledge diversity, but embrace it.  It was deliberate. So, I guess sometimes you have to experience ugliness before finding the right pool.  It’s out there.  Just please don’t cough, sneeze, or most vehemently, piss on me when you find it.

***Following the publication of this blog, I was quickly contacted by an actual member of our Spokane Valley community who was disturbed with a memory this blog dragged out of his wet heart which he hoped to be dead and buried.  He had his own tale of Glenn B., A.KA. “The Park Penis”.   Jeremy S. writes, “I’ll never forget him.  He Kicked the living s–t out of me when I was at Park Pool.  I might’ve been in fifth grade.  I don’t remember what I said to him, but it had something to do with him bugging my younger brother, Andrew.  He held me under water and punched me multiple times.  It was frightening!  I remember the lifeguards pulling him off me.  The dude must have been 35 years old at the time of the beat down.  I crawled out of that pool bawling.”

***Yet another Glenn B. story from my brother, Tom.  He writes, “I will never forget that dude.  He would walk up and down the line of everyone waiting to get into the pool and terrorize them.  Shirtless with only tight shorts and cowboy boots, my friends, Joe and Ryan were waiting in line one day and Glenn slapped Joe and Ryan started crying.  True story.  He was a terror for sure.  He also circumnavigated the neighborhood on his custom built low rider Schwinn bike with fake throttle handle grips and long plastic pom pom strings beneath.”

Oh, the wonderful 80’s.

 

The Every Other Daily Corona: 6 Seats Away

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My old man indoctrinated strangers in a civil, albeit it odd, fashion back in the early eighties when a few of his thirteen children were still in school. You could say he was a man ahead of his time, as he seemed to encourage people to socially distance from him on a routine basis.  He was a suit wearing, neatly combed executive at a radiology clinic in Spokane by day, and well…..a bum in the neighborhood on weekends.  Some of my siblings hated it, but I actually enjoyed it.  One of my brothers didn’t care for it at all.  Our old man would attend baseball games, wearing a mangy sweater with cigarette burns, talking to my brother about his last at bat in between innings.  It was usually encouraging and his analysis was often times spot on.  Dad had the credentials after being drafted to play professional baseball before fighting in the Korean War.  When my brother would return to the dugout, one of his teammates would ask him what that hobo was saying to him.  My brother was ashamed to admit that it was his father.

Taking his six foot rule a bit further with strangers was a bit embarrassing for the rest of us and our mother.  On a short weekend vacation to Seattle, he would find a hotel with an indoor swimming pool and hot tub.  While four of the thirteen children were horsing around in the pool, he wished to use the hot tub.  Once, their was a group of young couples probably in their mid twenties monopolizing the tub when dad was trying to find a place to sit.  There just wasn’t enough room, so he stuck his foot in the water and tried to make small talk with one of the couples.  “I’ve heard one of the easiest ways contract this H.I.V. Virus is sharing a hot tub with others who may have the virus.  Isn’t that the damndest thing you ever heard?”  Three seconds later, he had the tub to himself.  My sister, Maggie, who became a registered nurse and is on the front lines to this day was thoroughly embarrassed by his behavior even at the age of thirteen.  “Dad, that’s a bunch B.S.” Good old Rodney Gannon would just chuckle.

During the aerobics era, we’d often have people in our neighborhood walking the streets to get exercise.  If they lived more than one house away, our old man didn’t know any of them.  He’d be outside smoking a cigarette, and stop them in mid stride just to offer them a cigarette.  I’ve never seen such sinister looks from people.  I thought it was hilarious.  “Well I NEVER!” would be the usual response from some old bag trying to exercise on our street.  You’d never see them twice.  Our dad’s shit eating grin was delightful.  Out of his office on the North Side of Spokane, he made the Valley his own little world by, in very civil ways, pestering those who didn’t know him all for his own amusement.  He took his job so seriously, I think it was his way of winding down, and lightening the world up a bit.  My friends, who knew him well loved it.  While tossing a baseball or football around in the front yard with my friends, they would stop the action and nudge one another and say, “Hey watch.  Mr. Gannon is going to say something funny to this person walking down the street.”  It never failed.  It brought belly laughs for them.  I’d just smile and shake my head.  I guess he was amusing those who knew him as well.

Rodney wouldn’t go to movies much because of the crowds.  We’d sometimes convince him to go to one we knew he’d enjoy.  Raiders of the Lost Ark was playing at a local theater and it was packed, thus difficult to find many open seats together.  You could have referred to it as social distancing from our father at the theater.  I was sitting next to Maggie when she nudged me and had me look up to where the old man was seated.  He’d always buy two supersized barrels of popcorn, one for him and one for others to share, even if they didn’t know him.  Normally, if it wasn’t a packed theater, the people sitting next to him would whisper, “Let’s get the Hell away from this weirdo.”  With no other seats available, they couldn’t move six seats down, so they’d humor him and take the popcorn and pass it on down the line.  That didn’t bother us.  Watching him eat the popcorn was borderline embarrassing.  Anyone who didn’t know him would be convinced it was his last meal.  One handful or front loader at a time, he would shove three quarters of it in his mouth leaving the other quarter in his or someone else’s lap.  That was during the previews.  When the previews were over,  the popcorn was gone, and not wanting to leave his seat, he’d offer a complete stranger twenty bucks to go get two more buckets, one for him and his girlfriend and one for himself.  He’d also tell them to keep the change hoping they’d just leave with his twenty spot and walk to the nearest Chinese restaurant for a decent meal.  They’d return with the popcorn and, by the end of the movie, they even seemed to enjoy his rascally behavior.  With butter soaked hands, they’d even bid our old man adieu by shaking hands with him.  “That was one Hell of a movie.”  And he, was a helluva man.

The Every Other Daily Corona: Lose Yourself

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Even though they were before my time, I love watching the old black and white Laurel and Hardy episodes.  Happy humor.  I also liked the Gong Show. Now I must confess something about embarrassing humor and the depths of which we’ve sunk to keep ourselves busy and sane, sometimes insane, when spending the majority of our time at home.

My wife and I were chilling with Alexa this morning when the song Lose Yourself, by Marshall Mathers, AKA, Eminem, began in the background.  My wife decided to bust a rhyme with Marshall.  I had no choice but to dance to her Karaoke.  Just imagine Laurel and Hardy doing this at the Apollo Theater.  That’s pretty similar to how we probably looked, just with far less talent.  Much like the Gong Show, Alexa put a halt to this very, very extraordinarily white couple singing and dancing in the bathroom with my wife taking a break from putting on her makeup. (Makeup during a pandemic???? Who does this? That’s borderline blasphemy.)

While my wife was trying to bust a rhyme,  it was more like crushing a rhyme, in the negative sense.  My dancing, with half an apple in my hand and the other half in my mouth was equally as dreadful.  However, we were able to laugh at ourselves and were wildly thankful no one was recording it.

Crazy days.  It reminds me of the year Sir Charles Barkley said, “These are crazy days.  Who would have thought that there’d be a time in our lives when the best golfer in the world was black (Tiger Woods) and the best rapper in the world was white (Eminem).”

I wish the topic was as light as that, but it isn’t.  We strive to search for laughter and smiles so we can go to bed with hope and peace in our hearts rather than fear in our minds.

Strange days indeed.

Reading?: The Every Other Daily Corona

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Chaucer, Hardy, Frost, Shakespeare, Swift and Twain.  Amongst others, they were on the long list of my required reading in college.  The latter two were a couple of my favorites.  Do I wish to go back and re-read some of their classic novels, plays or short stories during a time when we do have time on our hands?  Not me.  It’s not the type of reading meant for the toilet.  Maybe a couple of Thomas Hardy “classics” which would ultimately clog our septic system.

I do love to read, especially when it’s not required.  Even though it will be obsolete, until it is, I will still subscribe to the newspaper.  One of my favorite parts of the day is taking the Super Quiz with my wife even though the man producing it often gets bored. Subject: Different Fonts.  How riveting!  We like American culture, geographical areas, famous prisons, some science, sports,  languages and other topics besides Plain Clothing or Band Aids.  It’s fun.  I then read her the daily Seattle Rant.  These can be hilarious.  “To the man next door who keeps his ten cats in a tree on his property.  They keep me up all night caterwauling.  I hope he burns in Hell.”  I used to read the sport’s page, but, well you know.

Saying 75% of my reading is done on the toilet is probably an understatement.  When I’m interested in an article from The New Yorker (my most pretentious magazine) my wife may walk by the bathroom and politely ask me if I’m ok.  “I’m fine.  Though, I may be little sore when I exit this room.”  When the New Yorker becomes too sophisticated, I mean when those ridiculous cartoons which are somehow published for unearthly reasons become agonizingly thought demoting, I return to a favorite standby….Readers Digest.  Written at a sixth grade level, it’s right up my aisle.  Additionally, most of the publications are uplifting and educational.  If I ever decide to get a pony, I now know because of R.D., one of the pony’s many attributes is licking the skin of an unripened avocado until it’s ripe in only twenty licks.  Pretty cool.

Then there’s the internet.  I can read various articles which may or may not convince me to join certain clubs or cults.  This flat earth society one is really tricky.   I’m right on the border.  My wife would say, “You mean the border of insanity?”

I want to believe in Bigfoot, but most of the stories on the Net attempting to convince you of its existence, really just push you in the other direction.  The elusive Sasquatch was not your taxi driver.

We also like looking up lists such as the top 50 movies of all time.  We’ll make bets on who will guess the most out of the top ten.  I lost the last bet because I put Cocktail, Road House, and Breakin Two, Electric Boogaloo on the list.  Personally, I think I was robbed.  There must be a reason they are on cable all the time.

Sadly, my favorite author, Pat Conroy, passed away.  I haven’t read a novel since his passing.  Oh my God!  I almost  forgot about the Bible.  It reminds me of a movie my family has cherished for years, and has now become one of my wife’s favorites as well…  Paint Your Wagon.  Portraying a full time inebriate, Ben Rumson is played by Lee Marvin.  One of his lines after a very pious lady asks him if he’d ever read the bible was “I have read the Bible Mrs. Phinney.”  Mrs. Phinney:  “Didn’t that discourage you from drinking?”  Ben:
“No. But it sure cured my appetite for readin.”

Whether you like or don’t like the Bible, novels, the paper, magazines or any other form of reading, it still stimulates our minds.  That’s a good thing, and like the great and powerful former Vice President Dan Quayle once said, “A mind is a terrible thing to lose.”

Prayers for all.

 

The Daily Corona: The Good News

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The good news is we can watch T.V. during these trying times. The bad news is we can watch T.V. during these trying times.

tv-addictThe great news is we can watch movies like The Bad News Bears.  Anyone who doesn’t love this movie can shove it straight up their ASS!  That’s a semi direct quote from the movie.  The boy shouting this after losing the championship little league baseball game is a white haired child who believes authority is overrated. (He reminds me of someone I know.) The boy, Tanner, was suggesting where the opposing team could place their trophy.

We also knock down some Datelines from time to time, but when that becomes too much of a downer, we switch gears and check the Mafia Channel.  It takes much less time to find out who kills who.  This is definitely not “Whodunit” theater.  It also provides early morning conversations about which one of us had the worst nightmare.  Good times!

I get my exercise when Desperate Housewives of Rathdrum, Idaho shows up on our screen.  She gets hers when I switch to a Classic Major League Baseball game from the late seventies.  Pathetically, I do remember games I watched when I was six.  Hell, I even remember most of the players.  As I’ve stated previously in blogs, we both love baseball, and we miss it, but she doesn’t understand why I sometimes live in the past,

We do occasionally pry ourselves away from the T.V. long enough to take morning and evening walks with our lunatic dog, and I try to cook up something edible daily.  Well . . . this blog is getting as old and boring as watching Corona T.V..