Turn Right at the Stop Sign

Monday being Monday, I was off to Menards to order replacement basement storm windows.  This required beating back the ghost of my father, whose voice I kept hearing ask me, “Did you measure right?  You know, you get it wrong, and you can’t take them back.”  Yes, Dad, I measured right, or at least twice.

 

After I placed the order, I turned right out of the parking lot instead of left.  About three-quarters of a mile down the road was Clare’s practice field for three years of travel softball.  Let me tell you, it’s a weird place, and not just for the cicadas that showed up in droves that first summer.  The field is in a park located next to a working quarry.  The earth literally shakes from time to time from dynamite going off in the quarry.  That’ll affect a player’s timing, trust me.

 

I have mostly good memories of the place, or two years out of three.  The coaches the first two years were thoroughly decent human beings.  Harry was a little crazy, looking like a whirligig as he tried to position his players from the bench, and he did all the drills in double time, it seemed.  Coach Mike kept Harry from having a heart attack, and they both liked Clare.  The third year’s not worth remembering.

 

We had our own tournament at the park, which required parents volunteering for various duties; I was part of the grounds crew.  The first year I made the mistake of wearing a Sox hat while dragging the infield, and the umpire started in on me about how 2005 was getting to be a long time ago.  This would’ve been 2007, and the ump was a Cubs’ fan, which means he had another nine years to go before his team won its first World Series in  108 years.  Just another reason to dislike umpires.

 

It was a beautiful day, 75 degrees, no humidity with plenty of sun; if the devil were to show up in these parts in January—or February or March or April or May—and promise a day like this, he’d have himself a whole lot of souls to take back to hell, maybe mine included.  And yet there wasn’t a person to be seen anywhere in the park.  Strange times.

 

I turned around and headed back home.  The windows should be ready in three weeks, said the man in the mask at the counter.