Memories
of Mattoon
The Kid
With A Stepladder
Mattoon is the self-proclaimed
“baseball capital of the world” and I think it deserves the
title. Baseball has always been an important part of my life,
going back to the day my “new Dad” gave me his old ball glove
soon after he married Mom. I was six years old then and you
will find baseball in many of my memories to follow as I write
about growing up in Mattoon.
I’m not sure of the year I was
old enough to try out for a team the Mattoon Junior Chamber of
Commerce used to put together for the annual sandlot
tournament in St. Louis, home of my favorite team the
Cardinals but I think it was 1953. The same year I made the
Mattoon Little League All Star Team for the first or second
time and we all had our picture taken together at the old
minor league ballpark at the corner of Logan and Dewitt.
Sometimes growing up in a small
town, as Mattoon definitely was then, has its drawbacks. There
is a thing called “small town politics” which usually affects
the kids more than the adults. Since this is a bittersweet
memory, though more sweet than bitter, I am going to use
initials instead of names because all the kids involved are
friends of mine and I consider them friends to this day though
it’s been many years since I have seen most of them.
The tryouts for the team were,
as to be expected, quite competitive and I barely beat out GM
for the second base position. Off the top of my head after all
these years I don’t remember all the kids who made the team
but I do remember CG was the catcher, MR the third baseman and
MK the centerfielder.
One of the biggest thrills of
making the team was that the Jaycee members treated us all to
a Cardinals’ game at Sportsman’s Park where they played their
home games at the time. The seats were “nosebleed” seats but
it didn’t matter to us kids.
At the time MK was probably the best all around player on the
team but he didn’t have a good series and MR and I were
elected the team’s CO-MVP’s for the tournament in which we
were knocked out of after three or four games. We both batted
.333 if I remember right and one of the coaches nick-named me
“the kid with a stepladder.” I got the nick-name because he
and the other coaches couldn’t believe that as short as I was
then how high I could leap and snare line drives hit over my
head with my glove.
As Co-MVP’s MR and I were to be
honored by the Jaycees at a banquet to be held at The U.S.
Grant Hotel which was on Charleston Avenue at the time. At
least I think it was. We would be treated to a dinner and be
awarded trophies. Needless to say, we were both quite excited
about the trophies!
My family had moved from our
Pine Street neighborhood to a larger house on South 13th
Street after little brother Denny was born but we had remained
friends with just about everyone on Pine Street.
Mrs. Virginia Orndorff and her
husband Gene and son Joey had lived in the house next door to
us. She sold Mom a sports coat Joey had outgrown for $5.00 and
shortened the sleeves to fit me. She also taught me the
difference between the salad fork and the regular fork and
other table etiquette and manners.
MR and me in my first sports
coat met out front of the hotel. The sports coat he was
wearing was probably his first one too. I don’t think either
of us remembers what they served for dinner that night because
we were both excited about receiving our trophies.
After the coaches of the Jaycee
baseball team bragged about us and then introduced us as the
team’s CO-MVP’s for that year’s Sandlot Tournament team we
were both crestfallen when they handed us certificates
announcing our awards instead of the large trophies we had
both anticipated.
One of the coaches, sensing our
disappointment explained to us they only had one trophy and
there hadn’t been time or the money to order a second trophy
since it was the first time they had selected CO-MVP’s.
The next day there was a
picture of us on the sports page receiving our awards and a
write-up about what each of us had done in St Louis during the
tournament and how I had earned the nick-name “the kid with a
step ladder.
That almost made up for not
getting a huge, gleaming trophy until a week or two later
there was a very brief announcement in the paper that MK had
been awarded the trophy for being the team’s MVP of the
Sandlot Tournament in St. Louis that year.
I had angry tears in my eyes when I showed Dad the newspaper
article and probably said that it was wrong MK should get the
trophy. I really don’t remember what my reaction was. I just
remember Dad saying that things like that happened in a small
town and that I shouldn’t be mad at my friend MK because of
what adults had done.
I do remember tearing up the certificate before I went to bed
that night unaware that it would not be the last time “small
town politics” would affect my baseball “career” in Mattoon
and would have a bearing on me and a life changing decision I
would make a few years later because of it.
Still, I have nothing but fond
memories of playing baseball in Mattoon and I will write more
about them in future columns, both the rewarding times as well
as the disappointing times.
Yes, Mattoon is “the baseball
capital of the world” in my eyes!
Step In A
Hole
There is no doubt in my
mind that some of my childhood memories are those of a
child or fueled by old photos or listening to the stories
of my parents or other adults in my life. However, many of
the memories I have are so vivid it seems like it was only
yesterday.
Somewhere in my many photos
is one of me when we lived on South 6th Street. I am
dressed in an Army class a uniform holding a toy rifle
made of wood. I am only three or four years old and World
War II was raging in Europe, the South Pacific and other
parts of the world.
I am also certain that Ron
Kerans who was older than me and would become my cousin a
couple of years after the war ended and his friends told
or taught us younger kids some of the things I remember.
For some odd reason I
remember a ditty we would recite (it might be fragments of
two ditties my memory has combined) that went something
like this:
Whistle while you work
Hitler is a jerk
Mussolini bit his weenie
And now it does not work
If you step on a crack
You’ll break Hitler’s back
But step in a hole
You’ll break your mother’s sugar bowl.
Of course we were too young
to make any sense of any of it but giggled after reciting
it as if we’d said something funny because the adults
would be smiling as they admonished us for talking
nonsense.
As I got older I could see
the humor and meaning to the first part of the verse but
the message to the second part which leads me to believe I
may be combining parts of two separate ditties was quite
serious at the time.
Due to the war the citizens
back home faced challenges never seen before in the
history of the United States. A need for certain materials
and food items needed for the war and the men and women
serving in the Armed Forces led to shortages on the home
front that led to rationing and luxury taxes on many
items.
The government imposed a
“temporary” luxury tax on automobile tires because of the
military need for rubber. Of course that “temporary”
luxury tax is still in effect on tires though many would
argue automobiles are a necessity in today’s society and
have been for years.
As far as rationing went it
included many things ranging from sugar to gasoline and
ration books were issued to each family for the more
critical items such as gasoline. It also led to something
that has become necessary in today’s world because of
climate concerns.
That, of course would be
recycling as citizens were encouraged to bundle up their
newspapers, save their tin cans, scrap iron and other
items that could be reused by the military.
Do you have someone in your
family who puts their bacon grease or other cooking grease
in a used coffee can? I am sure many of you, including
myself, grew up thinking it is only done so as not to clog
up your kitchen sink.
During WWII the coffee cans
of grease were taken to designated locations where they
would be collected and converted to glycerin that could
then be used by the military in certain explosives.
At least that’s what they
said during a program on the History Channel one night.
Remembering Ray
Ray was a
freckle-faced, red haired boy my age. He lived with and
elderly couple everyone, including myself, thought were
his grandparents in a house on the northwest corner of
South 6th and Marshal. I lived with my mom and younger
sister and brother in the 400 block of South 6th Street.
Ray and I were best friends because the other kids in the
neighborhood were older than us. Still, they were my
friends too.
There was a
war going on and all of the men except for Larry
Shadwick’s dad were away fighting the Japanese and Germans
though none of us kids were old enough to know what that
meant at the time.
Ray’s dad had
been a carpenter and there were two tool belts hanging on
a wall in the small garage behind the house Ray lived in.
All the nails and tools except for one hammer were missing
from the tool belts.
Some days Ray
would drape one of the tool belts over his shoulder (they
were too large to wear around our waists) and I would
drape the other one over one of my shoulders. We would
then walk over to an abandoned shed set way back from the
houses in a field on the east side of 6th street.
Beginning
slightly to the north of the shed and extending south was
a thick stand of trees. For some reason I remember a
stream running through the trees but I might be confusing
it with a creek than ran behind a house we would later
live in on South 13th Street.
We would
pretend we were carpenters and hammer away on the inside
walls of the shed. Ray was real good about sharing the
lone hammer. One of us would hand “pretend” nails to the
one with the hammer. We thought we were quite a team.
Some days I would hear Ray hammering in the shed and
though I wondered why he hadn’t asked me to join him I
never asked. Something about the hammering those days
sounded different and angry so I let him be.
Ray’s
grandparents were real nice. Whenever Ray and I were
playing in his back yard his grandmother would fix us ham
salad sandwiches and iced tea or lemonade and bring them
out to us so we could have a “picnic.” When the weather
turned cold she would bring us into the kitchen and fix us
grilled cheese sandwiches and hot chocolate.
One summer
afternoon when we were playing in the back yard Ray’s
grandmother came out and told him his mother was there to
see him. He told me to stick around because she never
stayed more than a few minutes.
I could hear a
car parked in front of the house because the engine was
running. I walked around the side of the house and saw a
man sitting behind the wheel of a fancy convertible with
its top down.
The man was
frowning and kept looking at his watch. He soon began
impatiently honking the horn and a woman who I would learn
was Ray’s mother came hurrying from the house to the car.
I ran to the back yard and Ray came out a few minutes
later.
Tears of anger
were streaming down is face and he was carrying two large
bags. They were like grocery bags but larger and fancier
and had carrying handles. I’d never seen bags like that
before.
He set them
down on the grass and went into the shed and got the tool
belt with the hammer. I could see the bags were filled
with new toys, some still in boxes. I could tell they were
expensive toys. When Ray emerged from the garage with the
tool belt draped over his shoulder he picked up the two
bags and indicated for me to follow him to the shed.
Ray placed the
bags on the sturdy work bench inside the shed which was
the only thing the owner had left when he abandoned it. No
one in the neighborhood could remember who had owned the
shed because it had been abandoned for so long.
Then Ray began
taking the toys from the bags and smashing them with the
hammer. If one was still in the box the box got smashed as
well. Now I knew what the angry hammering had been when he
hadn’t invited me to join him in what we now called “our
shed.”
When he was
finished he place the destroyed toys and boxes back into
the bags. I followed him south through the trees to a
clearing in the thickest part of the trees. I noticed
remnants of some earlier bags hung from the branches
hanging from the limbs.
“My Christmas
trees” he mumbled as he dumped the destroyed toys and
boxes among the remains of those smashed before then over
what I could tell was a long period of time. He then
handed me one of the bags and said, “You can help me
decorate. Pick a tree.”
We then sat
down on a log and talked. He then surprised me when he
told me the woman had been his mother and the man in the
car her new husband. They drove over from Decatur once a
month and gave the people he lived with money to keep him;
that they weren’t really his grandparents.
When I asked
him why he didn’t live with his mom and her new husband he
said because he doesn’t like kids. “Well,” I said, “Your
grandparents seem to really love you.”
“More than my mother ever
will,” he sadly replied.
Looking back and
remembering Ray and more afternoons spent there among his
“Christmas trees” and a junk yard of toys and boxes it
feels as if I was in the cemetery of Ray’s youth.
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