wiffle ball and the point of contact

We played wiffle ball over on West Hill Place, just off of Charles Street, by the T-station. Drivers would use it as a shortcut to get to Storrow Drive, even though they weren't supposed to. It interrupted the game. We'd have to move the traffic cones or undo the chain to let them through. There'd be dirty looks shot and much huffing and puffing, but the drivers didn't care. We were just kids playing wiffle ball. West Hill Place was essentially a circle. Car bumpers played the role of bases and a convenient manhole served as the pitcher's mound. You got a homer if you hit it fair over a second floor window. We weren't exactly power hitters - we had more luck scoring runs by grounding the ball under parked cars. On the rare days there were no cars, there weren't a lot of runs scored.

There were usually only three or four of us playing and so we had to adapt the rules a tad. You could throw the runner out by hitting him with the ball. It was a dangerous strategy as a miss would almost always result in a run scoring. We also always underestimated just how much that little white plastic ball stung when it slapped against the flesh. Shrieks of pain resulted in derision, so you had to grimace, bear it, and take your place out in the 'field', fiercely rubbing the point of impact and wincing.

Contact was sublime. It always is, whether it's a proper ball against a wooden bat or plastic on plastic, there are few better feelings than the shudder of a bat when it hits the ball, that split second of unity and ultimate harmony that comes when the ball's trajectory reverses and it becomes part of the bat's motion, exploding forward with a crack that staggers the forearms. The hitter becomes a motor; an engine generating propulsion. The balls sails and as it does an incredible sense of forward motion flows through you. There's no time to appreciate it; you have to run and maybe, if you reach base safely, you smile and clap your hands together hoping to feel again the moment of contact.

I'm writing a new book. I can't really say much about it yet, but it's not fiction. It's not about baseball or wiffle ball either. But it's new. Instead of sifting through countless pages in the big purple binder, buried in words I've already written, I've got blank sheets staring back at me, waiting to be filled. Some writers fear blank pages, but not me. For me it's a thousand points of contact, hit after hit, as each page fills so goes the forward motion and as I type I feel the shudder in my forearms and so it flows.

Hopefully.

 

 

the rattling of a wagon

I can't remember which Christmas or birthday it was, or even if it was one of them at all. In any case, one year I wound up with a red Radio Flyer wagon. I don't think it excited me at the time. My reaction was probably, 'it's ok, I guess' or something similar. It grew on me, though. It wasn't a toy, it was a tool for childhood; as seminal in its own way as my first bike. Not to say I didn't use it as a toy, of course I did. My mom and her hardwood floors were all too aware of my propensity to use it as such. She never regretted giving it to me though; it was too useful. It was the kid's version of having a station wagon. All of the sudden a trip to the park could be undertaken fully equipped with all manner of cumbersome sporting equipment, picnic, toy and even extra clothing. Just pile it in the Radio Flyer and away we went. It made a racket on the brick sidewalks of Beacon Hill, trumpeting our youthful parade. My mother would use it from time to time as well, when she didn't want to take the car. It served to link my boyhood to that of Calvin, from Bill Watterson's Calvin & Hobbes. I never quite managed to find a trail quite as idyllic as the scenes set in the comic, but my mind certainly wandered as I sat in it and gripped the handle careening through imagined wilderness. It was frequently a mining cart from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It leapt many a magma pool in its day.

I dragged it behind me when I walked to the Boston Common for little league games. My bat and glove joined the rattle of the wheels along the brick, bringing their own rhythm. Sometimes there'd be a playmate cooler full of juice and sandwiches. I have no bad memories of those games. Time has polished them into unblemished gems of childhood. Wearing a batter's helmet that would always look too big and trying, at the age of 11, to stare down the opposing pitcher. Lying in the warm spring grass before warming up, tossing the ball up gently and catching it again. We talked about Boggs and Clemens and Oil Can and Greenwell and '86. We all wanted to play for the Red Sox when we grew up, right after being James Bond, Indiana Jones and Luke Skywalker. Then we'd play and sometimes we'd win and sometimes we'd lose. Losses stung and wins overjoyed.

Then, in the golden late afternoon, covered in dust and dirt, I would load up the wagon and drag it home, firing questions at my mom, 'did you see that double I hit?', 'did you see that throw?' I never waited for an answer. Breathless, I'd ask another and another until we got home.

These memories come back stronger in the depth of Scottish winter. The golden afternoons, when they're not grey, come far earlier in the day. My bright red Radio Flyer's been replaced by a beat up silver Renault.

There's still a rattle, but it's less endearing.

newspapers

Sometimes it was Charles St, sometimes it was Park St. It depended on what walk I felt like. It depended on whether I'd lost my 'T' pass yet. It usually took a week to lose the pass. Taxpayers' money to waste. The guy at Charles St knew me. He kindly let me through, knowing I wasn't selling my pass on the black market for drug money or tricks. We got them for each month. Multi-coloured plastic, kind of like a credit card, the month in bold Helvetica, or some sans serif clone thereof, and the 'T' symbol in the top-left corner. Some people put a hole punch in it and slid it on to their keychain. I think I tried that a couple of times. I still lost it. I'm not entirely sure how I made it to thirteen with all my limbs to be honest.

I liked Park St best. I had to walk through the Common to get there, and that took me close to the little league fields. It would be fitting and nostalgic to recall taking a minute to wander over to the diamonds and think of Spring, but I never did. And as much as I liked the walk, I liked Dunkin' Donuts better (back when coffee was only an afterthought - an accompaniment to their doughnuts). With whatever quarters I had, plus the odd dollar, I'd buy a honey -glazed, a copy of The Globe and a copy of The Herald.

The Green Line's a tram, really, not a train. I trudged up the steps and found a seat and read the funnies. That's why I bought the papers. If there were no seats, I'd stuff them in my backpack and wait until a quiet moment at school. Garfield had moved to The Herald. It was huge news at the time. That's why I bought The Herald. My parents bought The Times. And for some reason I didn't want them to know I bought newspapers. My secrecy made sense at the time. I was just that age. Pretty dorky form of rebellion, really.

As an aside, that was also the age where I realised Garfield wasn't really funny and Calvin and Hobbes was. And is. And probably always will be. Maybe that's why I still love that memory so much. Because it's fairly Calvin-like.

Aside aside, as it were, I wound up reading the papers. It's a lot of newsprint to carry around, just to read the funnies. So I read some of the rest.

I only remember one story from that year. It ran through the week, whatever the week that was. It was about Carl Yastrzemski, or Yaz, and his road to Cooperstown, to the Baseball Hall of Fame. I read it meticulously, though I don't remember who wrote it. I remember reading it and wondering whether someday Wade Boggs would make the same trip. I remember reading it and looking forward to going to school the next morning just to pick up the next part of the story.

I never looked foward to going to school. Not that year. It was the wrong school, I was the wrong student. But I liked the commute. At the age of 12, I liked the commute. I liked the honey-glazed doughnut and losing myself in the papers.

I remember one of my teachers commenting on them. As bitter and cynical as could be, there was no joy but the smart arse comment, the bitterness itself, his delight in the sarcasm with which he rejected every excuse. His name was Mr Donovan. White hair with a bald patch, short cut, not too tall and an almost perpetual sneer. No one misbehaved. Well, they did, and he enjoyed it. He smiled at misfortune and punishment. He laughed at the troublemakers. He mocked my newspapers.

'The school doesn't want you to have those.'

'Scared you'll read what the press writes about them.'

He never confiscated them though. A snort of derision, a shake of the head and a mutter under the breath, but never a confiscation.

I didn't misbehave at that school. Well, twice. Once smart arse and once stupid, but never the siren-wailing lunacy of the years before. I fought in the school yard, during gym, but teachers didn't get involved in things like that. But I had to see the vice-principal every day. Every day she checked my bag, checked my homework. There were 1200 kids in 7th grade that year, and every day she checked to see if I'd done my work. She worried about me, encouraged me, helped me. I wasn't going to be there the next year. I was moving to London and she wrote exceptional recommendations to schools throughout Britain, overwhelming the blight that was my transcript.

I hadn't done my work. She would shout and swear at me, send me class, telling me to come back the next day, same time, with my homework finished.

I was getting D's and F's. I was at constant war with my parents. I had three friends, only one whose name I still remember.

I remember one day at home, during a quiet time, my mother asking me when I started reading the papers. My dad was in the room. I said I didn't know. I just started reading them for the funnies. She told me Mrs. Edwards noticed. Noticed that I read The Herald and The Globe. She noticed and it gave her some sort of hope. Ever-combative, I muttered again that I bought them just for the funnies, refusing to admit that I read anything else. I went to my room. The one with the red curtains.

Mr Donovan sneered at my papers and I shrugged. He supervised, and never taught. A prison warden.

I remember going home on the Green Line. A thousand school kids, fighting for standing room, the gossip and excited chat at the end of the day, filling in slam books, eyeing each other with curiosity and confusion. I took the papers out again until I got to Park St. Sometimes I'd walk home, sometimes I'd switch to the Red Line and head to Charles St. Sometimes I'd grab a doughnut. I never understood why the trip home was so much more crowded.

There's a lot there. But as a reflex, all I remember is the morning papers on the morning train. Commuting to school, reading about the baseball and eating a doughnut.

Honey-glazed.