Keepin' it real ...

Tody - A Memoir

I was thumbing through some old yearbooks the other day and I came across this inscription in the 1957 Hogan Junior High Totem Pole, written by my friend Tony Petrillo:

Chawie,
It’s been a lot of fun to be around you this year. We can have a real ball this summer. Maybe one of these days, we can rob Sperry’s by the way of our secret entrance. (ha ha)
Your iddy biddy buddy,

Tody

That entry brought back a flood of memories. First, let me explain the “Chawie” and the “Tody.” I don’t know how this got started, but Tony always called me Chawie, and I always called him Tody (pronounced TOAD-ee). I was in the ninth grade that year, Tony was in the tenth, and we shared some pretty remarkable adventures. He is a guy that, in the words of the old song, will always be “gentle on my mind.”

Tony was a lot of fun to hang around with. He was a classmate and close friend of Dillon Mini, and of course, Dillon and I were like brothers. Tony had a way about him that kept me in stitches most of the time. When he was around, the laughter went on nonstop. As we got older, into our high school years, we started to lose touch with Tony. He got a job very early on, working for a supermarket chain, and he was an incredibly hard worker. And so, we began to see less and less of him. I do remember that he purchased a beautiful mid-fifties Buick that we would go cruising in from time to time. I picture it to be much like that Buick in Rain Man, except that it was a hardtop rather than a convertible.

But, I digress. Let me explain that reference to Sperry’s (i.e., Sperry Mills).

One of our favorite things to do was to grab our well-maintained tackle and head for one of the many fishing spots in the waters around Vallejo, including places like Dillon’s Point, Glen Cove, The Lighthouse, Lemon Street Pier, Ryder Street, and The Old Destroyer. We caught a lot of flounder and the occasional striped bass, but mostly we just logged a lot of memories about time well spent with great friends.

There was a legend, widely accepted as true, that the best place to fish for striped bass was from the concrete wall at Sperry Mills. I think we can credit our friend Jerry Warren for keeping this legend alive, because his dad, his grandfather, and his uncle all worked at Sperry’s. The story went like this: when ships came in to unload sacks of grain at the mill, the spilled grain that was left over was scooped up and tossed into the Mare Island Strait, right off the concrete wall that faced the southern end of Mare Island. Allegedly, striped bass were fond of this dumped grain, and so they would school just off the wall to feed, making them easy pickings for eager fishermen. I can’t honestly tell you that striped bass like their Wheaties, but that’s how the legend was told.

I ask you: how could a boy resist a challenge like that?

At the crack of dawn one Sunday morning in the spring of 1957, my mom dropped us off—Tony, Dillon, and me—at the Lemon Street Pier. We had stopped at Parmisano’s to buy bait and our cover story was that we would be at the pier all morning and into the early afternoon, at which time Mom would come to pick us up. As soon as she drove out of sight, we headed south along the railroad tracks, away from good old Lemon Street and toward the front gate of Sperry Mills. We had been told that there was a hole in the fence surrounding the Sperry plant, somewhere up on the hill in the northeast corner of the property. Our plan was to find that hole, make our way to the legendary wall and catch limits of grain-fed striped bass.

On a quiet Sunday morning, what could possibly go wrong?

The hole was right where we were told, in the northeast corner of the cyclone fence. No sooner had we crawled through and started down the hill, than a car came screeching to a halt on the road just beyond a large building. The driver of the car yelled at us to halt, which we took as a signal to take off running down the hill and south along the building. Before we could reach the corner of the structure, the car came flying around in front of us. The driver jumped out and again ordered us to halt. At this point, we gave up. It was obvious our fishing plans had been cancelled. After a few stern words about trespassing and criminal penalties, the man loaded us into the car and drove us to the front gate. I think we kind of got to him though, because on the way to the gate, he told us a great fish story.

It seems there was a Chinese gentleman who often fished from the wall in front of the mill. One day, he hooked what appeared to be a huge fish. He played the fish carefully and relentlessly for more than four hours. Finally, it came into sight. It was a sturgeon, about eight feet long and weighing at least three hundred pounds. The Chinese gentleman played the fish right up to the wall and directed a companion to get a gaff into the monster. As they attempted to gaff the fish, it shook its mighty head and threw the hook. And then it slowly swam away.

What a story! As we walked away, heading back toward the Lemon Street Pier, we swore that we’d be back.

Another activity that we enjoyed during the summer was to hike out to the East Vallejo Little League field, out on Benicia Road by the Auto Movies, to take batting practice. The permanent fence at EVLL was about two hundred and eighty feet away, and it was a lot of fun to see how many you could hit out of the park. After a couple of hours of BP, we’d go over to the Auto Movies, find (or create) a hole in the fence, and let ourselves in to mess around on the playground down in front of the screen. This drove the security guard nuts! He would come driving down in his pickup truck, pitching and bucking over the terraced rows, to chase us out. After a couple of summers of this, he was getting pretty frustrated. One day he chased Tony, Dillon, and me out through the fence, but he wasn’t through. He sped back to the front gate and came roaring around to the ballpark, determined to apprehend us and put a stop to our shenanigans.

We saw him coming and ran out into the field adjacent to the park to hide in the tall grass. The grass had to be at least three feet high and we were sure that he wouldn’t follow us out there. Wrong! He headed his old beat-up pickup out into the field, coming straight toward us. We jumped up and took off running, finally making it to a row of houses that bordered the field. We jumped the back fence of a particular house and started to run through and out onto the residential street.

Tony didn’t see the twisted wire clothesline. It caught him across the upper lip on the left side of his face and left a deep gash—and more blood than I’d ever seen in my life. I don’t remember much after that. I know we got Tony home and from there, his parents took him to the hospital for stitches. And that’s how Tony got that scar on his lip. If anything, it only added to his Italian good looks.

I think it was the summer of 1959 when Tony, Dillon, and I decided to go up to Tahoe, to the cabin Dillon’s parents owned near the South Tahoe Y, and go trout fishing on the Upper Truckee River. Tony had never done any stream fishing and we were determined to show him how. Dillon and I came prepared with our usual stream fishing outfits: T-shirts, old gym shorts, and beat-up Chuck Taylor high-tops. We could go wading in the stream to our hearts content. Tony forgot to bring shorts, so he decided to take a pair of jeans and cut them off. We looked around the Minis’ cabin but could not find a pair of scissors, so Tony took a butcher knife and set about cutting off his jeans. You can probably tell what’s coming. The knife slipped and Tony put a deep gash in that tender spot between the thumb and forefinger on his left hand. There was more blood than I had seen since the clothesline incident.

We should have hauled him off to an emergency room to get stitched up, but Tony wouldn’t hear of it. We found some gauze pads and adhesive tape and patched him up as best we could, and the next morning, we went fishing. I wish I could say that we caught limits of beautiful rainbow trout, but the fact is the fishing was lousy.

Tony did the best he could with a huge bandage on his left hand.

The last time I saw Tony was in the summer of 1969, though he didn’t see me. I was living in Alameda at the time, and on the spur of the moment one evening, I hustled out to the Oakland Coliseum to catch an A’s game. I was lucky to get a seat in the lower level of the grandstand behind the first base dugout. The game was close with the A’s leading by a run or two in ninth inning. I happened to look down toward the box seats and saw a couple making their way up to the concourse, apparently intending to beat the rush when the game ended. The girl was gorgeous, with beautiful platinum-colored hair. I looked at the guy with her and realized it was Tony. They stopped at the concourse level and knelt down to catch the final out of the game. I yelled, “Hey, Tony,” but he couldn’t hear me over the noise of the crowd. So I started to scoot my way out of the row to try to get to them and say hello. Just then, the game ended and the rush for the exits was on.

I lost them in the crowd.

I think back to Tony’s entry in my ’57 Totem Pole, and I wish I could write a short note to him. It would go something like this:

    
Dear Tody:
I’m sorry I couldn’t catch up with you at that A’s game back in 1969. It would have been great to visit with you and get caught up with everything going on in your life, and it would have been nice to meet that beautiful girl you were with. (ha ha)

I know our friendship left its mark (scars?) on you, and I feel like I owe you an apology. But we did have some great adventures, didn’t we? You’re one of those guys I’ll always remember fondly. Here’s wishing you all the best.

Your iddy biddy buddy,
Chawie
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A book review ...

The Art of Fielding

Chad Harbach
Little, Brown and Company
First edition, 2011
512 pages

The Art of Fielding is Chad Harbach’s first novel and it is generating a lot of buzz following a strong review in the New York Times, not to mention great word of mouth. The notes on the dustcover summarize the plot perfectly:

At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big-league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended.

Henry’s fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry’s gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the team captain and Henry’s best friend, realizes he has guided Henry’s career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert’s daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life.

Yes, The Art of Fielding is about baseball. But it is so much more. It is really about relationships: the ups and downs, twists and turns that all of these deeply flawed characters experience. At the heart of the story are Henry and Mike. And then Guert and Pella, Guert and Owen, Pella and Mike, Pella and Henry, and on it goes.

The Westish Harpooners are in the midst of an historic season, bound for a conference title and a berth in the national tournament. Westish has never won a conference title, and seldom experienced a winning season. At the heart of this turnaround are Henry and Mike. Henry is driven, since his days in Little League, to be the perfect shortstop. This quest has become his life and he is on the verge of breaking a college record for consecutive errorless games. Mike has pushed Henry toward perfection, not only honing his fielding skills, but packing on pounds of lean muscle and turning Henry into a fearsome clutch hitter.

On the eve of his triumphant achievement, with major league scouts crowding the stands at every game, suddenly Henry contracts Steve Blass Disease. Steve Blass was a fine pitcher who led the Pittsburgh Pirates to a World Series title in 1971. At spring training in 1973, suddenly Blass could not throw a strike. Two years later, he retired. Other players have been infected over the years: Mackey Sasser, a catcher who could not hit the pitcher from sixty feet away; Steve Sax and Chuck Knoblauch, second basemen who could no longer make the throw to first; Rick Ankiel, a pitcher who, like Blass, could no longer throw a strike. Only Sax ever really recovered. Knoblauch and Ankiel had to move to the outfield where the throws are less precise.

Harbach provides an intense and detailed description of what Henry is going through, as in the following passage:

… Henry knew where the ball was headed before the swing was half finished, a sharp grounder three steps to his left, ideal for a double play. He was there waiting when the ball arrived. Ajay darted over to cover second. Henry, still low in his crouch, pivoted and whipped his arm sidelong across his body, just as he’d practiced so many thousands of times, but at the last moment he sensed the throw would be too hard for Ajay to handle, so he tried to decelerate slightly, but no, that was wrong too. But it was too late, the ball left his hand and began sliding rightward, out into the path of the charging runner, and Ajay, all five-foot-five of him, tried to stretch to make the catch, but the ball caught the tip of his glove and scooted into short right field …

If you are a former ballplayer, this is agonizing stuff to read, because chances are, you’ve been there and you’d rather not think about it. You find yourself pulling—even praying— for Henry to snap out of it, knowing full well from your own experience that it isn’t likely to happen.

All of Harbach’s characters are effected by Henry’s struggles, especially Mike, Pella, Guert, and Owen. Nobody comes out unscathed. Much like the movie version of Bernard Malamud’s “The Natural,” you have to suspend disbelief to accept Harbach’s resolution of the myriad issues. And, because I became invested in the characters, some aspects of the plot go in directions I didn't like.

That said, this is a terrific novel, one that is a must read, especially if you have ever played the game of baseball. You former players will know the Westish Harpooners, only by different names, and you’ll smile at all the familiar idiosyncrasies that Harbach depicts so accurately.

In the final chapter, you will also see a brilliant opening for a sequel. Hey, if John Updike could do it, why not Chad Harbach? In the meantime, we can all amuse ourselves by casting the characters for the movie version. How about Richard Gere for Guert Affenlight? Emma Stone for Pella? Ron Shelton to write the screenplay and direct? I could go on; we’ll compare notes later.
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Famous last words ...

Super Bowl Sunday is behind us. Time for some final thoughts, directed primarily at the Patriots. The source may surprise you. Or not.

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag today
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory,

As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear.
          - Emily Dickinson
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The Poet's Corner ...

Requiem for Our Borders 

The house of books stands empty

Its shelves are barren now
Where once the coffee bar did thrive
No tables mark the row.

The readers and the music fans

The kids at story time
Have drifted off to other shops
To spend their precious dime.

Whither now the printed page

In the age of Kindle and Nook?
And how can I e’er download
The smell of a brand new book?
_____

Tell me a story ...

THE LESSON 

Senior year, fall semester: Nick walked up the broad ramp that led to the second story of the main building. He found the room designated for the class—U.S. History—and took a desk in the middle of the room. The instructor would be Mr. Sauer and he had the reputation of being a tough taskmaster.

Earl entered the room and took the desk next to Nick. They’d had a few classes together and, though they weren’t close friends, they’d always gotten along well. They chatted casually as the room filled, waiting for the instructor to arrive.

The bell rang and Mr. Sauer made his entrance. Nick had seen him around campus, with his tweed jackets, his horned-rim glasses, and an expression on his face that suggested chronic indigestion. He dropped a stack of books on the desk and then took his stance behind the old wooden lectern. He proceeded to call roll, constructing a seating chart in the process. When he finished, he wrote rapidly for a minute, ripped a piece of paper from his pad, and then walked down the aisle to Earl’s desk.

“You are not in this class.” He dropped the folded piece of paper. “Take this note to your counselor and get reassigned.” He turned and walked away.

Nick was shocked. It seemed like Mr. Sauer was angry, as though Earl had done something to offend him.

Earl looked at Nick and grinned. “See ya around, Nick.” He picked up his books and headed for the door.

Nick looked around at his classmates. Earl’s departure left the class lily white; not a black face in the room.

Mr. Sauer began his opening lecture. We are going to study U.S. History, from the founding of the nation until the present. You will be issued a textbook. There will be supplemental texts. Do your reading. Come prepared. Participate in class. Turn in your work on time. From the expression on his face and the tone of his voice, Nick could tell that this was serious business.

“What form of government do we have in the United States?” Sauer launched into a classic Socratic discussion, using his seating chart to call out names and shine the spotlight in their eyes. He let the discussion roll on for a few minutes. “Okay. Good. What we have …,” he paused for effect and everyone got ready to make a note, “is a republic. Or a representative democracy, if you will. Let’s take that word ‘democracy.’ What does that mean?”

Again, he worked his way through the seating chart, letting students offer definitions. “Okay. Good. What democracy means to me is this…,” pencils poised again, “the recognition of the worth and dignity of every individual.”

It was an electric moment for Nick, one of those ideas that clicks in your brain. He wrote it down and he would remember it for the rest of his life. In Nick’s mind, every ideal that we believe and pursue in this country flows from that definition. Equal rights under the law. One man, one vote. Civil rights. Women’s rights. Freedom of speech. The right to assemble peacefully. The list goes on, but it all comes from that idea.

Earl went on to have a fine career as an educator, rising to be an administrator at the community college level. Nick never asked him why old man Sauer had summarily booted him out of the class. But he never forgot either one of them, or the lesson he learned that day about the worth and dignity of every individual.

_____

PEACE WITH HONOR

Martin sat in his wheelchair watching the images on the television screen: desperate men, women, and children scrambling up the staircase on the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon, attempting to board the helicopter, their last chance to escape. How many would make it? How many would be left behind, and what would happen to them? Martin wanted to scream, to throw something at the screen, but there was nothing within reach.

His physical therapist entered the room, come to take him for his daily regimen of learning to walk again. Allison was a fine professional: strong, knowledgeable, compassionate, dedicated. She looked at Martin’s face, then at the television screen. She found the remote and turned it off. It was quiet then, for a moment.

“Look, that’s not your concern. It’s over. It’s done. Listen to me—”

“Yeah.”

“That’s not your life anymore, Lieutenant. Are you listening?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s done with. Nothing more you can do. Okay?”

“Right.”

“You did your job. You did the best you could. True?

“Yeah.”

“Now your job is to get well. To get well and walk out of here. Got it?”

“Sure.”

She took control of his chair and wheeled him through the door and into the hall. “All right then. Let’s get this show on the road. Got a tough day’s work ahead.”

Martin didn’t answer. He knew she was right. This was his life now: to work, to learn, to get stronger every day, and as she said, to walk out of this damn VA hospital. Vietnam wasn’t his problem anymore. The dead and the wounded weren’t his problem either. How many dead? Was it fifty thousand? How many wounded? He couldn’t remember. This place was full of them, kids mostly. Some would recover, live fairly normal lives. Some would not. Some would swallow a gun, or shoot poison in their veins. Some would drink themselves to death. And for what? Don’t think about that. What was accomplished? Don’t even go there. Why were we there? Just forget about it. You went where they sent you and you did your job. Let it go. It’s not your life anymore, Martin. Now it’s done and it’s not part of you, not ever again.

None of it.

Not one friggin’ goddamn bit.

_____

Okay, new round...

Dear Readers:

Here we go: write the opening sentence, 25 words or less, for a story based on the picture below. My top four possible submissions are as follows:

"Wait, Mr. Buffet, your wallet," Eddie cried, oblivious to the Prius bearing down on that very spot.

It was the old Charlie Brown football trick, and Ralphie was totally unsuspecting as he reached for the wallet.

Buddy reached eagerly for the fat wallet, unaware of Ashton's film crew waiting to shout "You've been Punked!"

Michael Anthony reached for the wallet, all those years ago, unaware that the rightful owner was none other than John Beresford Tipton. (Note: you have to be of a certain age to appreciate this one.)

So, vote for your favorite, or submit an entry of your own. Can't wait to hear from you: cspiggidy2@hotmail.com.

Wahoo!

Wahoo, is right! I won a contest! The challenge was to write the opening sentence, twenty-five words or less, to a story based on the picture below. My winning entry was the following:

Larry pondered the nurse's instructions to strip to his undershorts, which seemed odd for an eye exam.

And the prize? Two "atta boys" and my name published in Writer's Digest. Ha! There is a new contest, deadline February 10, which I'll share with you shortly. We can select our favorite entry. Oh what fun!
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