Mays in centerfield

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It is 1958. July. About dusk. I’m standing in deep centerfield of the baseball diamond at Jones Memorial Park. I can hear music coming from the ice cream place across the street, behind me. I’m not really daydreaming but I’m not completely focused on the game, either. I might be closer to the ice cream place than to home plate.

A sharp “crack” yanks me back to the game. The crowd is yelling and looking in my direction. But up. A high, fly ball is coming my way. I frantically search the sky. If I don’t get a visual lock on the fly ball, it could land at my feet. It could smash into my face and kill me. I spot it. Coming straight down. It seems almost motionless, just getting larger and larger. There’s no time to raise my glove hand but I manage to get it open at my waist. Two thousand miles to the west, another Mays is standing in centerfield, Candlestick Park, executing a far more relaxed version of this same maneuver.

Back at Jones Memorial Park, the ball ricochets off my bony, ten-year-old chest and into my glove. Because of the distance and the angle, the crowd sees only Mays, in deep centerfield, making a perfect “basket catch.” But we’re not related.

Junior High Basketball Team

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I think Frank Proctor made me memorize the state capitols and all of the U. S. presidents (I no longer know either). One summer he started his “Merry Mobile” business. He drove up and down the streets of Kennett selling frozen treats. He was also the junior high basketball coach and one of my greatest achievments was “making” the team. I loved playing basketball in the back yard but was terrible at the real thing. I warmed benches through the 10th grade before hanging up my Chuck Taylors and rediscovered the joy of the game at the city park. The Web cannot be complete without this photo of the Kennett Junior High Basketball Team.

Kennett 8th Grade Basketball Team

Back Row: Terry Hunter, Mike Shipman, Robert Taylor, Phil Ayers, Buddy Shivley, Jerry Bird, Otis Mitchell, Randy Carter, Brett Baker. Front Row: Tommy LaTurno, Ben Pickard, Larry Hale, Bruce Baker, Steve Mays, John Robison, Tommy Saunches, Darrell Jackson, Tony Stewart.

Accidental Death Remediation

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One of the ten thousand billboards blighting Interstate 70 reads: Homicide, Suicide, and Accidental Death Remediation. Barb and I speculated about the services provided and she got it first try. I couldn’t get past, “Who the hell would be willing to do such a job?” I found the answer on their website:

“It’s a job no one else wants to do: cleaning up human blood and tissue and getting rid of the stench that often follows death. But a Menifee mother and daughter have started a business to do just that. Calling their business Crime & Trauma Scene Specialists, Debbie Haar and her mother, Shirley MacNeill will clean up homicide or suicide scenes, homes where someone has died a natural death or even what they call “pack-rat” homes that need special care. The two are also trained to do extensive cleaning of medical offices and funeral homes and can remove tear gas or pepper spray from inside buildings.”

Eastern Standard Tribe (Amazon summary)

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“Art is a member of the Eastern Standard Tribe, a secret society bound together by a sleep schedule. Around the world, those who wake and sleep on East Coast time find common cause with one another, cooperating, conspiring, to help each other out, coordinated by a global network of Wi-Fi, instant messaging, ubiquitous computing, and a shared love of Manhattan-style bagels. Or perhaps not. Art is, after all, in the nuthouse. He was put there by a conspiracy of his friends and loved ones, fellow travelers from EST hidden in the bowels of Greenwich Mean Time, spies masquerading as management consultants who strive to mire Europe in oatmeal-thick bureaucracy. Eastern Standard Tribe is a story of madness and betrayal, of society after the End of Geography, of the intangible factors that define us as a species, as a tribe, as individuals.” —  Amazon review of Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow. Or you can read it for free.

Quotes from William Gibson novels

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William Gibson –touring to promote the paperback release of Pattern Recognition– was interviewed by Leo Laporte on Tech TV’s The Screen Savers. Leo asked some good questions, including one about Gibson’s creative process. Gibson said he did not work out the plot in advance and wrote from day to day with no idea of what would happen next. He said he waited for the first sentence and everything grew (“fractally”) from that. And he would never consider going back to edit that first sentence because the story would (I think he said) “collapse.”

“The ghost was her father’s parting gift, presented by a black-clad secretary in a departure lounge at Nirita.” — Mona Lisa Overdrive

“I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pair of tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think you’re crude, go technical; if they think you’re technical, go crude.” — Burning Chrome

“Through this evening’s tide of faces unregistered, unrecognized, amid hurrying black shoes, furled umbrellas, the crowd descending like a single organism into the station’s airless heart, comes Shnya Yamazaki, his notebook clasped beneath his arm like the egg case of some modest but moderately successful marine species.” — All Tomorrow’s Parties

“The courier presses his forehead against layers of glass, argon, high-impact plastic.” — Virtual Light

“They set a Slashhound on Turner’s trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair.” — Count Zero

“The sky above the Port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” — Neuromancer

“Five hours’ New York jet lag and Cayce Pollard wakes in Camden Town to the dire and ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythm.” — Pattern Recognition

Lucy: 3 weeks

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The new puppies are 3 weeks old so we drove to Union, Missouri to select the new member of the family. The Head Human at Country Golden Acres is Theresa and the woman radiates love for her Golden Retrievers. There are two new litters. One 5 weeks old…one 3 weeks old.

Barb selected #17 (we’re working on a name). Theresa spends ALL of her time with her dogs but treats each one like a member of the family. She’s been at it a while but says life is good when surrounded by the Golden’s. It’s like a love farm…you come away glowing.

Imus was right

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Thirty years ago (during my KBOA days) I was attending the annual meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters. Lots of big name talent on hand, including Don Imus and Robert W. Morgan. I spotted them sitting at the bar (the Mint Julip according to the bar napkin) and couldn’t resist going over, introducing myself, and asking for their autographs (I know, I know). They saw my name tag and asked me what station I was with. I assured them they’d never heard of it. Then Imus asked how long I had worked there.

“About ten years,” I said. To which Imus replied, “If you’ve stayed at one little radio station for ten years without getting fired or quitting, you’ll never go anywhere in this business. You should pack it in.”

Robert W. Morgan thought that was a little harsh and told Imus so. I made my escape. I thought about it many times over the years and Imus was right. There are a million small town radio guys who lack the talent or the ambition or both to make it to the Bigs. I’m proud to have been one of them.

Nostalgia by Billy Collins

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Remember the 1340s? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called “Find the Cow.”
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.

Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle
while your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.
We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.
These days language seems transparent, a badly broken code.

The 1790s will never come again. Childhood was big.
People would take walks to the very tops of hills
and write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.
Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.
We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.
It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.

I am very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.
Europe trembled while we sat still for our portraits.
And I would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,
time enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps,
or shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let me
recapture the serenity of last month when we picked
berries and glided through afternoons in a canoe.

Even this morning would be an improvement over the present.
I was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees
and the Latin names of flowers, watching the early light
flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse
and silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks.

As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,
letting my memory rush over them like water
rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.
I was even thinking a little about the future, that place
where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,
a dance whose name we can only guess.