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I am up early, heading southon I-65 for West Lafayette and Indianapolis. This is the same road I took from Montgomeryto Birmingham a lifetime ago. Today's is my shortest drive, and I will reach Indianapolisearly. At least I think it will be early, because I will never figure out where theboundary is between Central and Eastern Time Zones. They're sure not where any of the mapssay they are.
I suspect people sortthemselves out these days according to the nearest large television market. If you arenearer to Chicago, you do Chicago time; if you watch WKRP in Cincinnati, you dial east. Iset my car clock at the Indiana border, and for two days don't really know what time itis.
There are still two Big Tencampuses I haven't seen, Purdue and the University of Indiana. I'll visit one today, onetomorrow.
Approaching West Lafayette,the flat, deep brown Illinois-like farmland begins to roll. It is spring once again, thetrees full of leaves. I trail the Wabash into town.
Purdue is more than Iexpected. I don't know why, but I've always thought of it as functional and boring, likeMichigan State. But it's quite attractive. The Union is connected underground with othercentral campus buildings, a nice touch, I'm sure in Indiana winters. The grout in one ofthe men's bathrooms touts "The Great Groutsby."
The campus has lots of openquads, red brick buildings around the grass. One quad sports a modernist fountain, afour-piece concrete, incised thing, with the water in the middle. It is sculpted withtrees and flowers, and surrounded by a low wall. The whole space feels expansive and open.The nearby buildings have horizontal strips running their length to echo the fountain.
Nearby is the rounded musicbuilding. Bands are so important to these schools that I'm not sure if this a pan-musicbuilding or just a band building.I am reminded that the operative word at these Big Tencampuses is "BIG." These are huge civic landgrant institutions, the megaliths ofAmerican higher education. I feel a sense of awesome resources and power, if onlyregional. I am impressed. I don't think I'd want to work in places this big, but I'mimpressed.
I walk to Ross-Ad Stadiumand, for the first time, get the urge to walk out on the field. The cavernousstadium is empty. A supervisor says go ahead, so I enter the field. It's just like thosemovies where the school star comes back years later to walk an empty field and dreams thathe hears the roar of the crowd. Even I, who quit football after high school, hear ghostsounds, as I walk the fifty-yard line and from end zone to end zone. I get chills. I admitit. It's a rush. This is one of those famous places you see on TV, although given theBoilermakers' recent prowess, not too often.
I've seen what I need tosee, so I go south on U.S. 231. I will turn east in a bit, after one more DQ blizzard, forthe run to Indy. I'm in church country. I'd forgotten. A church sign says, "You can'tstumble when you're on your knees." I assume it's religion, not fellatio.
I'm hours early inIndianapolis. Like Little Rock, it rises out of the ground, but farther away when I firstsee it. I am taking the by-pass to get a motel room on the south, on tomorrow's road toBloomington. This is my fourth, and last, motel, and another back-to-backer.
It's less than a month tothe Indianapolis 500, and signs all over the city say "Welcome Race Fans"; butI'm not one. Part of me is just unAmerican. I drive right past the Speedway exit. Latertonight I'll get a bit lost on this side of town and see it anyway.
Downtown Indianapolis isvery attractive, what with the state capital and the spaces and fountains of MarketSquare. The Square is a busy place on this sunny afternoon, even in the wind. The arena ishere, of course, and the Pacers are in a dogfight with Celtics in the NBA playoffs. It's abittersweet situation, since Hoosiers are Larry Bird fans as well. The Celtics will eke itout in the maximum five games, but lose, in turn, to the Pistons.
Still early, I look forsomething to do. I'm still in the dumps. Elmhurst took its toll; but my breathing isbeginning to ease a little. Maybe Nolan Ryan helped. Maybe it was good to go from winterin Milwaukee to spring in Indianapolis. I'm not on my way to any miraculous cure, but mycuriosity, at least, is beginning to return.
At the moment, I'm turningoff of Southeastern Avenue, curious about what's inside Brad's Brass Flamingo. I call thisplace by its name because I'd go out of my way to return.
Inside is a regulationexotic dance club, with tables, bar stools, and stages, semi-badly lit. It's afternoon, soonly one dancer is working at a time, dancing exotically as exotic dancers do. It's likeother places you might see, except that there seem to be a few more smiles here thanusual.
I sit near the stage towatch the dancer work, but when I reach over to slip a dollar tip into the dancer'sgarter, something happens that I've never seen before. She leaned over and placed herchest on my forehead, wrapping her breasts around my ears. Taken aback, I fumble to get myglasses off.
She laughs and backs off. Ithink about it. It was exciting, no question; so when the next song comes on, I reach outwith another dollar, taking my glasses off with my other hand. And then something elsehappens. She laughs again, but a laughing with, not at, as if to say, "You likedthat, hunh, you sweet old fart. Well, there's more where that came from, and it's a niceday, and let's just smile and have some fun."
And we do, and there areothers, and for an hour old farthood is terrific. I forget for a while that for a longtime I've felt fat and bald and ugly and sexless, riven with intimations of emotional andphysical decline, owner of a life that just didn't work out. For just a while these youngwomen build with me a fantasy that I am still a young man, vibrant and with promise.
There is not a moment ofcondescension here. There is kindness, a gathering in mutual respect. I am not onlyexcited, for the first time in who knows how long, but I feel worthy. I buy in a bit tothe fantasy. I know enough not to make a big thing out of any of this, but what interestsme is my reaction; for that matter the fact that I am having a reaction.
I don't know how much I'mready to build on this discovery, but, as I emerge back out into the sun, I figure it's astart. After the game, as we'll see, I'll take another step, one of those steps anunconnected man might take. It will be good in its own way.
This is not a brief for the"sisters of mercy," of whatever sort, but rather for the healing gesture ofkindness that is possible in what they do.
* * * * *
I find the park, BushStadium, where the Indianapolis Indians will play the Nashville Sound, the Cincinnati RedsAmerica Association AAA affiliate. The Indians are part of the Montreal Exposorganization. Some of these AAA teams have traditions older than many major league teams.The Indians, for example, won their first league championship in 1902, sixty-some yearsbefore there even were any Montreal Expos.
Bush is one of the great oldbrick band-boxes of the minor leagues. It's 335 feet down both lines and 405 to deadcenter. Behind center field is a fenced off space with a tipi in it. The seats come inyellow, dark red, orange-red, and blue, depending on what kind of tickets you get. LikeWrigley, the outfield wall is red brick with ivy.
At this level the game isplayed by kids in their early to mid-twenties, older than those in the levels below, justone injury away from the majors. In the course of a year, some will be called up forvarious periods of time, maybe to stay.
There are also big leagueplayers here on rehab, off the disabled list after severe injuries, testing, and readyingthemselves to return to the majors. One of these, Mark Gardner, will pitch tonight forIndianapolis, but he will be bested in a superb performance by Gino Minutelli, a lateReds' cut in spring training.
Finally, there are careerminor leaguers here, guys who didn't have as many bats in the Show as Bull Durham's CrashDavis. These are the heroes of the Game. To play year after year in the minors, riding thebuses, never making the big salary, mastering the disappointment, this is the mark ofcourage. Once in a while a career minor leaguer will earn a shot late in life--a DanaKiecker, a Doug Jones. Every hierarchical part of life must have its Horatio Algerstories. But each year the odds get worse.
Some of these men may becoaches-in-training, studying the game, learning it in a different way in compensation fortheir limited skills. After a certain age, though, you just have to be committed to thegame itself to keep playing in the minors.
Razor Shines is a localfavorite, a 34-year-old first baseman who has been a journeyman minor leaguer. Old enoughnow to play in the Senior League in Arizona, Shines is here, giving an optimisticinterview in the Indians' year book about his, and their, chances this year.
Ross Powell is also here, atwenty-three-year-old left-handed pitcher for Nashville, on the way up. He was in AA lastyear, played A Ball the year before. Sitting beside me is Mark, a teacher from Michigan,at the game with his wife, Jayne. We are in the first row of box seats directly behindfirst base. Later in the game, our neighbors to the left will step out for refreshments.As soon as they are gone, an errant throw will ricochet past us, and, thanks to Mark'sreflexes, be batted down in the vacated space. Jayne will gather it in.
Mark was one of RossPowell's high school teachers back in Michigan. Each year Mark takes a long weekend andtravels to see Ross play a weekend's worth of ball. Sometimes he gets to see him pitch.This time he won't. Ross threw last night in Buffalo. But they always get to visit.
When a train whistle isheard, Mark runs up the steps to the top of the stands. If he can, he'll take a picture.He's a sucker for trains. But tonight there is just the rumor of train, little sight.
He also has a wonderful riffgoing, something he just sort of fell into. It's nothing I could call an obsession. Heseems remarkably sane about it. For the last few years he has been collecting used collegefootball jerseys. He writes university athletic departments asking if they have any lyingaround. Often they do, and they ship him one in the mail. Sometimes they ask for fullreimbursement, although I don't know what the depreciation on a used jersey might be.Sometimes they thank him for his interest and send other materials as well. He alwaysoffers to pay postage and whatever compensation is requested.
He started out aiming atMichigan schools, but the thing kept expanding. Now he's branched out elsewhere. When hetravels, to see Ross, for example, he visits whatever athletic departments he can get to,trying to add to his collection. He's got well over 150 now.
I asked him if he'd writtento any of the Florida schools. He said he had, but that, as I would have expected, thefive major football schools--Miami, Florida State, Florida, Central Florida, and FloridaA&M--didn't have much time for him. I promised that if ever I were around any of thoseschools again, I'd see if I could get him a jersey. In return, he was to send me a CentralMichigan coffee mug, his alma mater.
Well, the cup came lastweek. If anybody in a university athletic department has the urge to add to thecollection, please send me the jersey: Florida International University, North Miami,Florida 33181. I'll see that he gets it; and thanks for your support.
The game moves alongexpeditiously, played with appreciably more skill than the two AA games I've seen. It endsin just under two hours, a 2-0 win for Nashville, on two four-hitters. The park, the game,the front-row seats, the time spent with two nice people--people you'd want to collectjerseys for--this really is the baseball that summers are made of in my dreams. It ismellow, friendly, low-key. The scent of commercialism is far away. There's no one aroundsaying that he is the greatest, or that two million dollars is unfair compensation. Onemight almost think that the Reagan 1980s, with its glorification of individual greed, hadnever existed.
It feels good to be inIndianapolis this gentle spring night. Spirits buoying, I see my new friends off to anevening with Ross and head to the car. I have one more stop to make.
Some time later I stand infront of the door of this rectangular building beyond the edge of town. It is almostmidnight, and I have driven up and down this road for half an hour, looking for courage. Asmall lit sign sits over the door, "Massage." Shaking just a bit, I open thedoor, and enter a little waiting room. A slim brown-haired woman turns in from the side.
"Hello," she says,seeing my nervous eyes. "First time?"
I nod.
"Well, it's 25 dollarsfor the basic massage; anything else, you tip the girl."
We go into a back room. Itake off my clothes and lie down.
"On your stomach,"she orders, and it begins.
As she rubs my back andlegs, we begin to talk. She is "almost forty," has three kids, and loves horses.Tomorrow she will go look at one she might buy with the extra income from this, her thirdjob.
She tells me I have stronglegs, saying nothing to make me feel bad about my weight, and asks me where I'm from andwhat I'm doing.
I explain. She responds,then tells me to turn over.
I am now relaxed, and Ithink that what is good here is the utter ordinariness of our talk. We're just like twofriends, passing time, comfortable, but a little tired. This is a nice way to be. My handrests lightly on her hip. There is kindness here also.
After a while, she goesquiet and touches me. I close my eyes as her hands bring heat and pressure. I hear ourbreath, mine quickening. Then it is over.
It is a gentle, sweet end,and we chat some more as I clean myself. This is the second time today that I have feltthat my senses might not be dead.
I step out into the night,two days past the full moon. Looking up into the well-lit darkness, I am the Fisher King.Perhaps I can be reconnected, body and soul. The question might be asked, the Grail found.
* * * * *
I have been here inIndianapolis before. When I was in college, the Yale Glee Club came here one winter tosing a concert. We sang at a church whose pastor was the father of two of us. Some of usstayed at his home.
I sang for a year each withGordon, two years older, and Kyle, in two of the a capella groups for which Yale isfamous. It was a privilege, for their skills were far beyond mine. We were together justabout every day in those years, rehearsing or singing concerts.
But they remained mysteriesto me. Whatever their kinks, they were good Indiana religious kids, from a culture Ididn't quite understand. Kyle, at least, was a teetotaler. On concert trips I was one ofthose who divided up the non-drinkers' free bar chits, and I was grateful for Kyle'supbringing.
Over the years, they bothpaid their dues, especially Kyle. They are both university professors now, citizens of theworld, and I see them once in a while. It is always good, leaving me a little hungry formore. Now Kyle drinks a little of my wine. I drink his fuzzy water.
My notion of Indianapolis,both before and after that college trip, was of a dry Bible-Belt town, rigid andrule-bound, earnest and unsophisticated. I didn't know anything, yet, about car-racing andcountry music.
How ironic it is, Ithink--driving to my motel on the late, late evening of this tenth day--that this imagehas proven so wrong. I don't know if it rains here in the summertime, but I do know that,of all places, I have found some small redemption in this fair city, at the breasts and inthe hands of Hoosier women.
DAY 11: Down by the banks.
But Hoosiers can get too close. Maybe it's the Indy 500, I don't know;but what I think happens is this. Kids here learn how cars work here at a very early age.It's just part of the state culture. So in driver's ed class, when the rest of us all overthe land are learning about how brakes work on the ice, and where the soft-drink holdergoes, Indiana kids are attending tail-gaiting school.
If you have the urge to be tail-gaited, if you miss the tail-gaiting youremember from your youth, if you want to know what tail-gaiting is all about, having heardabout it from your uncle Fred, come to Indiana. Everybody does it, male and female. I'venever been tail-gaited as well in my life. These people take the "HoosierHospitality" motto on their license plates seriously. Put them in a car, they are upclose and personal. It's vehicular sodomy.
It's early Friday morning, and I am being tailed south on Indiana 37 toBloomington, past trees tied with yellow ribbons. I still don't know what time it is, butI'm so nervous, looking into my rear view mirror, that I haven't space to care. I'llfigure it out when I lose my tail in Ohio.
I reach Bloomington through an increasing intensity of the green leavesof spring. I'm almost back to the border of the south now. and the sense of the north isslipping away. Amid the green, the totemic color of Indiana University is bright red. AnIU graduate, Cincinnati Reds fan would never have to change his clothes.
I pass the football field. Workers are getting it ready for graduation.Nearby is Assembly Hall, domain of Bobby Knight, the most cosmopolitan, genteel basketballcoach in America, a real gentleman. I bet if I lived here, I'd love him.
There are quadrangle after quadrangle of residence halls, and anothercoal-fired power generator? Just like at Iowa State. A brook runs through the centralgreensward, past a pond, and crosses the street to meander past the union. This may be thelargest university union in the country. It's a massive stone building, with wings,gables, towers. It looks like a huge version of the Hotel Frontenac in Quebec City. Astand of red tulips colors the entrance.
Behind it is an arboretum, a beautiful, peaceful place, set withwalkways to places just out of sight behind the trees. The whole campus is stunning. Withthe University of Chicago, of a different style, it is the prettiest university campus Isee on this trip, a place I could live in.
I'm starting to feel as if I've seen enough campuses, however. Maybeit's because I've turned south back toward my own. Maybe its higher ed fatigue. I'll giveperfunctory looks at the Universities of Kentucky and Tennessee, quick"drive-by"s to notch my belt, but any extended visits will have to wait. I willspend some time, however, at Berea College. I will trip over another thread there.
I am back in town square country. Bloomington is another version ofOxford, Mississippi, or Fayetteville, Arkansas. I realize that in the last few days, Ihave spent my time in big cities of the central north. I had forgotten about the charms ofsmall city town squares.
Exiting Bloomington, I pass through a series of four-way stops. In town,where it's harder to tail-gate, driving is very civil in this part of the midwest. Thereare lots of these four-way stops, even on relatively major town roads, where much of thecountry would use stop lights. The main streets around the University of Illinois atmorning rush hour were entirely coordinated by stop signs. Roads were jammed, butpeaceful.
Here in Bloomington it is the same. I cross major intersections, justslowing down and democratically take my turn, like everybody else, one car at a time. TheHeartland can show public civility at its best.
I drove north a week ago prepared to be bored silly by Illinois,Indiana, maybe Wisconsin. I was just going to find ball parks and maybe stop in to seeStoughton and my gramma's house in Elmhurst. The rest would just be boilerplate,unremarkable stuff to get through between games. I'd have to toss off 600 miles in a roundtrip between Chicago and St. Louis, because that's the way the damned schedule worked. I'dstop off in Indianapolis because I had an off night between Milwaukee and Cincinnati.
Well, the trip has changed all that. I had found the Minotaur outsideChicago, and the trip out, if I make it, will be long and hard. It will go on long afterthis story is finished. Yet in the last few days, things have happened that have shaken mycommitment to despair, small epiphanies, perhaps, but epiphanies they were. The big-leafedbeauty of the midwest has been one of those unexpected surprises, cutting through thelonely bleakness in my gut.
There are fine things in this land, across the Hudson, beyond theBeltway, over the Grapevine. I can see how this might be a country where we could reachout a hand, raise a barn, feed a stranger, treat a man with dignity, hold a dying woman.It might go against the grain, but we could do that. If we can make a four-way stop, andride 200 miles to see a young old friend play ball, we can surely do that.
Some of us might stand with Mother Jones before the mines, or with JohnAltgeld after Haymarket. We could walk the streets with Rosa Parks. But that is notrequired.
We could make small acts, each of us, more than gestures, less thancrimes--small acts to fight the sickness at the core. For the world is in a grain of sand,and god is in the details, and we could keep a brother.
* * * * *
It's Indiana 46 east, a road with dots. I'm at the edge of hill country.For the first time since the Ozarks, layers of rocks fringe the highway. The banks of theOhio can't be far away. There are hints of Appalachia here. Underneath Weed Patch Hillsits Nashville, Indiana, home of the Little Nashville Opry.
We're nearing the edge, where factory borders hardscrabble, then ends insmall farm. Columbus, for instance, just down the road, is a factory town. A sprawlingCummins plant is here, along with others, Cosco, Stone Container, and more. Do they buythings here with scrip?
I'll follow Indiana 7 to North Vernon, then U.S. 50 into Cincinnati. Aweek ago I was sailing north to Kansas City, into a storm that would kill in Kansas. Whata lot of death on this trip. Let's see it to the end.
I go through a town with an "all-you-can-eat" chickensmorgasbord. Then there's a sign, "No loaves for the loafer," and a stretch ofceramic dalmations, sitting out in front of porches, tied to the rails by leashes as ifthey were real. This will be an odd introduction to the game tonight.
This is not rich country. There are stone houses, falling down, andwooden places in disrepair. I pass wild fields, holding stubbled corn stalks anddisorderly clumps of yellow rapeseed. There is plowing going on, old John Deeres forkingthrough the crust.
Folks on the roads are sunburned, bright, painful pink on arms andthroats. Winter ended and, starved for sun's heat, people immolated themselves, ignoring,as we all do, experience and common sense. What a stubborn bunch we are!
Aurora, Indiana-- "River City." There's probably trouble here,maybe caused by all the ceramic geese. At its edge, the Ohio. Just as the Mississippi did,the Ohio seems small to me. It's hard to match the legends of riverboat and barge, thestream of people and things down to the Mississippi, and on to New Orleans and the West.It's big enough in real life for all that, but not for the myths in my head.
The river's edge here, and all the way into Cincinnati, is justindustrial gunk, ugly and smelly. An Arcturian overlord has dumped a huge Monsantochemical plant here, full of pipes and tanks and mixers of sludge. There is littleevidence on the whole path into the city that this riverside industry has brought the goodlife to its neighbors; for these are working class neighborhoods, not unlike the poor"burr" neighborhoods across the river. These are people for whom the sleazy"sin city" emporia in Newport and Covington are tolerable, but the liberalelite's embrace of Mapplethorpe is anathema.
Now again a downtown core rises out of nowhere. I turn onto Pete RoseWay for Riverfront Stadium, sitting, as its name tells, between the banks of commerce andthe banks of the Ohio.
The stadium sits in a bath of concrete three escalator rides above theriver. From the plaza walls I can see the River Queen, paddle now resting. I circle thestadium, buy my ticket, and eye the crowd as the sky vaguely darkens in the west. I hopethe rain holds off. From the loudspeakers I am welcomed and repeatedly given thedon't-bring-bottles-and-cans-into-the-stadium drill by the same woman's voice that makesthe step-out-to-the-right-watch-your-step announcements at Disney World.
On my way in I am handed a small poster of some Reds, including ownerMarge Schott, and their dogs--1991 Cincinnati Reds Most Valuable Pets. It is PetAppreciation Night here at Riverfront. We are all asked to help Schottzie and Meaty Bonesupport local animal charities.
As I walk the concourse I think about the day's drive, and about Iraqis,Kurds, Sudanese, Bangla Deshis, and Schottzie.
We are a sentimental people, we Americans, trained by tradition, butalso by school, church, and the effluvia of our mass media. We are told to have bighearts, ready to be touched by tragedy. But we are pointed at the small misfortune, thebaby in the well, the transplant-needing child. We are asked to see things in theirsingularity, as individual events about which we might be moved one at a time. We are toldthat there are no such things as pervasive, systematic problems, only individual ones,with individual solutions.
We are all from Missouri, in a way. We say "show me," but insmall doses; for my days are full with the business of life. Show me the instance, not thepattern. The bigger the numbers, the more I glaze over, the less attention I pay. Let mesee one picture with a simple caption. Let me hear one sound bite.
But we will pay attention to the animals; for they are helpless. Theyare often adorable, sometimes friend and family in a lonely time. When I live in mytrailer in my old age, at the other end of town, I will bring my dog with me when I comeover for Sunday dinner. I will do what I can to see that animals sacrificed for human goodare done so with as little pain as possible.
When I try to tell Cameroonian friends about pet cemeteries, dogsweaters, cat food in packages, whole hospitals for Garfield and Sport, it just doesn'tcompute. How could people be so rich? And other people be so poor? And people spend aMalian year's income on birdseed? Birdseed?
I tell them they don't quite understand. That's where our compassiongoes. We are truly for the underdog. Bomb a hundred thousand Iraqis and that's militaryprecision. Show one single American soldier, bruised and bowed, and we are furious at theinhumanity. But I always knew that if we'd seen one puppy being kicked in the desert, wewould have said, "By golly, that really makes me mad," and nuked Baghdad.
I am happy tonight that we might help the animals. It's a good thing.Whatever one might think of Marge and Schottzie, I'm delighted that they are in the world.
I wish, though, that we could all learn to see that animals aren't theonly form of supportable life. I wish we could see the individual case of misfortune as anexample of other situations like it, brought about by more than just blind chance or badkarma. I am thinking, as I hunt my seat, down here by the banks, that no one is an island,apart from the main. I am thinking that my own soul's torment is like that of othersfacing intimations of mortality. That is the human condition.
But I am also thinking that my Gramma's dying doesn't have to be sohard, and that like others in this rich but badly shared land, the poor do not go incomfort. They die as well as the blessed few around them, with small resource at hand, canease their way. And the guardians of the nation's purse, having long since abrogated ourPilgrim covenant--that we should live in just community together--do not earn a whit ofour attention to their cruel sanctimony.
* * * * *
The Cincinnati Reds are the defending champions of baseball. They sweptthe Oakland A's last fall in an American morality play--David against Goliath--unless youare a Philistine fan, in which case it was a tragedy of major proportion. Tonight they areplaying the Cardinals. As at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, I feel as if I'm watchingarena-ball in a perfectly round bowl.
This is another well-played game. Chris Sabo--one reason modern baseballis a good thing--hits one out in the first, and Norm Charlton and Ken Hill pitch prettyfair ball for six innings.
I go out for my bratwurst and find that nearly all the workers at thefood stands are Asians. I would be less surprised on the coasts, perhaps not even havenoticed.
There is a couple sitting next to me who have come down from Dayton forthe game. We are sitting in the upper deck, down the first base line. They have somefriends out in left field, hundreds of feet away. Every so often they wave in that generaldirection. I can't understand the logic. I just waved at somebody in a condo across theBay. It's about the same thing.
The Reds never score again after their 2-run first. Just as they didagainst Atlanta three nights ago, the Cards rally from behind. Tied in the top of theninth, St. Louis Manager Joe Torre demonstrates the value of a pinch runner. Geronimo Penasteals second and comes around with the go-ahead run on a single to left. Ozzie, wouldn'tyou know, knocks in the insurance run, as the Cards take it 4-2. Lee Smith is massiveagain.
This is the largest crowd of any of my games. 33,643 people have comefor their picture of Schottzie.
It's drizzling as I leave the stadium. I drive across the bridge intoKentucky. Tomorrow is Derby Day, but I'll pass. It's also my last game, Braves versus Cubsin Atlanta. Things are seeming just a little bittersweet. I'll soon be done, and I'mpretty ambivalent.
I'm exhausted, in general and in particular, as I head down I-75 towarda highway rest stop in Georgetown. But I've come to treasure the timelessness of theroad--these eternities in an hour. I'm living at the edge of my nerves as I bed down thisevening of the eleventh day.
DAY 12: A rainy day in Georgia
There's early morning fog as I drive south through Bluegrass countrytoward Lexington. Along the way it seems that every farm and homestead has a horse aroundsomewhere. I feel the aura of their heroes, who will race together this day at ChurchillDowns, but as at Indy, I will pass on by. I'll reach Atlanta for post-time and see Strikethe Gold win it from behind.
Skipping the Derby doesn't mean that there'll be no American classictoday, though. Berea and Corbin are just down the pike.
I make a perfunctory pass through town, past Transylvania University tothe west side. I want at least to see Rupp Arena, named after the long-time University ofKentucky basketball coach. I may just be burned out on universities, but this one doesn'tcause me to jump out and walk around.
I cross the Kentucky River back on the interstate. The deep gorge isfilled with fog, a picture that always seems romantic to me. Not far beyond is the signfor Berea.
My friend Mary is a southerner, raised in Florida, but mobile. She haslived in South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, her children in Alabama and North Carolina.Her mother and her eldest live now in the latter, in the western mountain country.
Her love, which she professes for her livelihood, is the theater--bothas literature and as production. She knows the Renaissance and the modern British stage.Her dry wit leads her to the comedies, whose oft-dismissed importance she champions.
Mary tells a story in the southern way, like we're sitting on the porchof a warm evening. The details are there, the context set, the names named, all therelationships traced out, as if the story can only breathe in the company of all its kin.There are internal clauses and remembrances until the pieces are all stitched together.
I have often been gruff and twitchy, in my New England way, listening toa scene unfurl as its corroboration is unpacked, layer by layer. I tend to visit less, totell the tale efficiently, sparely, densely, to finish the business and get on tosomething else. It's the mark of Calvin, I'm afraid, and years in the sun don't seem tomelt it out.
Mary's partial to the southern mountains, to her mother's side on theeast, and to the west where, among other mountain things, sits Berea College. She stopshere when she can, organizing north-south drives to rest for a while. She has told enoughwarm Berea stories that I am compelled up the hill in her wake.
Well, she tells the truth. It's a good place.
Berea, "where the bluegrass meets the mountains," as the townbrochure tells us, is about Appalachia. Students come to the college--founded in 1855--tolearn, preserve, and embellish mountain traditions. In lieu of tuition for their liberalarts education, they work at the school and in the village, in over 120 labor departments,making and selling craftpieces at the crafts centers, repairing structures, and serving asstaff at the Boone Tavern Hotel, where Mary finds her peace.
Like those little New England colleges, Berea forms a "cityon the hill." It, too, is red brick, its buildings ranged around the yard. But thisis a meadow, not a tamed lawn. The grass is high. Trees stand randomly around intermittentstumps. To the squirrels chattering about, it is their land, not ours.
Maybe I like it because it reminds me of New England, the college justacross the road from the white, wood buildings of the stores and hotel. Save for theaccents, the gingham, and the tinkle of dulcimer, this could be Vermont or the Berkshires.This is another place a human being could live.
South of Berea the road is cut through symmetrical bluffs. The rock liesin horizontal layers, perfectly geometrical, six tiers piled up like a giant stoneparfait. I drive into national forest as I meet the hills, heading obliquely southwest.Soon, in Tennessee, I will head toward Chattanooga down between the same tendons ofAppalachia I first travelled just outside of Birmingham.
Now comes an unanticipated surprise, a true piece of pop Americana.Corbin itches, and I can not tell why; but I follow my curiosity into town. Of course,dummy! Here's where Col. Harland Sanders had his gas station. Here is the source ofKentucky Fried Chicken--franchised America.
Tacked onto a modern KFC outlet is a replica of Sanders originalrestaurant, set up as a kind of museum display. I am led here by an iconic "bucket ofchicken" bucket sitting high atop a pole. Along with the rest of the memorabiliahere, there are tables set for customers long gone, a replica of the Colonel's motelrooms--just as the original had as an advertising sample--and a mock-up of the originalkitchen, complete with the revolutionary pressure cooker that made fast-food possible.
This is not the original cafe, just as the Laura Ingalls park inWisconsin did not contain the building that it was about, and the Suwanee River is nolonger about itself, but about Stephen Foster. A true American no longer cares whetherthings are real or fake, and I may be falling into line.
The nice attendant goes behind the counter of the real restaurant andreturns with two place mats, stamped to show that I've been to the Original Col. SandersKy. Fried Chicken Restaurant. I guess I wanted one stamped to say that I'd been to theOfficial Replica.
I pass Dr. Chatterjee's radiology office and head back to I-75. The roadpasses into increasingly green mountainous beauty as it rolls through Tennessee on the wayto Knoxville. Not too far to the west is the new Big South Fork National River andRecreation Area. This is all pretty exotic to me, but I have to rush through. Someday I'llcome back.
Knoxville and the University of Tennessee also get short shrift, a quickdrive-through, just enough to see the gold globe from the world's fair, and to cross thegulch and drive up the hill and around the campus. Now I've seen Neyland Stadium, down bythe Tennessee River. This looked like an interesting campus, but again I'm full.
Then I share I-40 for a while on my way to Chattanooga. The signs pointthe way to Memphis, but then they all do. I have been aimed at Memphis in Mississippi,going north on I-55, in Illinois, going south on I-57, in St. Louis, on I-55, and here,going west on I-40 and I-75. Maybe Memphis is a lot like Yokohama.
The rain begins now, as I drive towards Chattanooga, paralleling thedammed up Tennessee River. This is TVA country, and its georgeous, but I can't see much ofit through the rain.
I pass into Georgia at Chattanooga. For the first time since Lincoln'shouse in Springfield I am reminded of the Civil War. I would love to pause at Chattanoogaand Chickamauga, but even if I had time, the rain would stop me.
There are parts of the country where you never think of the Civil War,and there are parts where you think of little else. I'm a lot closer now to the latter.
The rain still falls as I approach Atlanta. It's Saturday, and many ofthe music stations are involved in festival promotions, on location. Cinco de Mayocelebrations are going on, and the announcers are all trying to put on the good faceneeded when you have been driven inside by Mother Nature and the promotion has beendoused.
I stop at a local bar to see the Derby, but when I come out it's stillraining. What an anti-climax! The game is going to be rained out. My last one! I shouldfeel lucky, no rainouts until now, but I needed this one. It's the Braves and theCubs--Gramma's teams.
I drive through the fancy mansions of north Atlanta and up Peachtree.Hotlanta, Hub of the New South, home to the Olympics, this is a city on the make. It's toolousy out to walk around much, but the rain does seem to be lessening. The weatherpeoplehold out vague hope, and as I drive to Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium--might as well seethe stadium, I'm here--it's down to a light drizzle.
Optimist and spendthrift, I buy a ticket. I am not alone. It's plasticbatting helmet night tonight, and lots of families and kids are here for the promotion,hoping that their magical presence can drive away the rain. Unlike at Birmingham, thistime my story and my pleading work. I get one. Thanks, Braves!
Atlanta-Fulton County is another arena stadium, a bit more worn and cozythan St. Louis or Cincinnati. The grass is real. There are two major layers of seats, blueon the bottom, red and orange on top, with a skinny mezzanine between. Retired numbershang in the outfield--Warren Spahn, Hank Aaron, Phil Niekro, Eddie Mathews. On the largescoreboard in left-center fans are shown how to score each play, a nice and singulartouch.
The game will eventually start, after a 2:07 rain delay. Not knowingthat, I get antsy and leave to drive around the city for a while. Eventually, I turn onthe radio and hear the game begin. Back I go, using my stub to get back in. I'm not alone.There are lots of others, no doubt spurred by their plastic-helmetted kids, who climb theentrance ramp with me.
I sit down in the upper deck, on the right field line, as the gameenters the second. It's Sutcliffe versus Smoltz, two pitchers better than their currentrecords. In the fifth, as the Braves are breaking a 1-1 tie, the rains return.
The Braves are playing well, as they have been so far this year. Fromwhat I hear on the radio, the city is excited. The Braves have been the Charlie Browns ofthe game for a while. They've been bad enough to garner an epithet welded to their name,the Hapless Braves, just like the Wise Odysseus, or Cow-Eyed Hera. Skip Carey, theirannouncer on Ted Turner's TBS, has honed his considerable wit on the stumblings of"America's Team," in the process becoming my favorite announcer.
But now there is some Justice,
Some Glavine, Smoltz, and Gant.
The team is at five hundred.
They wonder why they can't.
The sun is shining somewhere,
Somewhere they jump and shout.
Well, there's joy right here in Tedville.
Georgia's Bravos have broke out.
The second delay lasts thirty-five minutes, long enough for me to go tothe parking lot in frustration, note the slackening rain, and return again. Ah, me oflittle faith! The game resumes. I sit behind the upper deck TV cameramen, as they areimportuned by increasingly drunken fans to be displayed on television. If these guysaren't on speed, they must have lizard genes. Their twitchy concentration is exhausting towatch.
The Braves score three. It is enough. They will win 4-2. I don't knowhow many of the 20,724 stay until the end at 12:43, but there are a lot of indefatigiblefolks in Atlanta.
I suppose I could make a lot of symbolic hay out of this game. I couldtalk about how the rain stopped to let Gramma's teams play, the game born and, indeed,reborn out of the mists of spring. I could say that her new team beat her old team,signalling an ontological transition complete. I could say that my own redemption wasmarked as the clouds parted to let the healing powers of the game bring me home.
But what happened was that it rained. Then it stopped and they played.It rained again. It stopped. They played. I happened to be there. It was my last chance ofthe trip. Though it took the whole night, I saw a baseball game. That was nice.
Now I drive into the early morning. Georgia being frugal with its reststops, I have time to think.
People have a way of asking baseball to carry a lot of symbolic weight.They do this not without some reason; for its various designs are metaphysicallycompelling. The set of the field, the spacing of its stations, the formal rules of thegame have evolved a singular geometry, proportioned like some music of the spheres.
Some have noted its unique aspects: people score, not a ball; thedefense, in fact, has the ball, and puts it into play; there is no intrinsic time limit toa game; and others. Philosophically interesting, these.
Some have noted the rhythms of its dramas within dramas, nested insideeach other and inside time as wheels within wheels. The drama of the play--Luis Tiantversus Joe Morgan in the 1975 World Series, stopping the world with throws to first untilmy hamburger was done--adding up to the pattern of the game, never two exactly alike.
The games add up in seasons, with their ebb and flow, their move andfade. And the years march on, each adding to the great stock of lore, statistic,legend--the feeding of the tales. To know these grand and sacred myths is to sharecommunion, whatever other faith we might profess.
For the Church of Baseball is an ecumenical church. It holds a finegame, played and watched by imperfect people. Its litany melds the generations in sharedvisions of hope fulfilled and hope denied. Men and women, both, came to these games I saw,and parent and child, just as once my Gramma and I used to do.
What compels the most, perhaps, is baseball's yearly time. It is apastoral game, tied to all the histories we make up of field and wood--the country game,with all that that implies. But it is pastoral because it is the summer game, playedoutdoors in the green heat. "The Boys of Summer," we have called them. Yet theyare also the boys of Spring and those of Fall. And this is the thing.
It is the game that starts again with the northern earth's rebirth. Itfollows the same round we have made since first we sowed the good seeds, ate the bad. Itends in the red leaves of harvest, as we call our sap back towards the core.
To non-believers it is endless in the repetition of its moves, theconstant buzz of its background sounds. It is unfathomably dull. But that's what ritual islike to those of other faiths. Baseball is a long, drawn-out ceremony, filled with ritual.We recapitulate a life, from birth, through promise, the dog days of mid-life, hoperesurgent, acceptance, death and triumph. Then life rests, dormant, until the sun returns.Resurrection, of a sort.
It's the same old story, told through the ages. But like children in thedark, we never get tired of its twists and turns. "Tell us the one about..." wesay, even knowing it almost by heart, our version of the archetypical tale.
And I am soothed, this rainy night in Georgia, by the story. Not a lot,but a little. My own dog days are here, and I'm a lot of games behind. It'll be a grind tofinish out the season.
I guess I'm not the Fisher King after all. I just see paths where thequestion can not be. This is not Arthur's world. The time for Perceval is past. We'll haveto fix the wound ourselves.
The journey has turned my prayers to Gramma, who once prayed for me. Wehave shared this faith in better days, and I will pass it on in her name, and mine.
Sunsweet, Georgia, the evening of the twelfth day.
DAY 13: Take a little piece of my heart.
So on a May Sunday morning
--"Let's play two," Ernie Banks would say--
I point south,
on Shadrach's trail,
into the heat.
I go toward an alien place;
but, having no other, I go.
Macon, Valdosta, Lake City,
Gainesville, the rest,
650 miles,
and time to think.
Maybe I'll tell this trip.
Maybe out of my Gramma's dying
will come a story
in whichshe can live.
Maybe, in the remnants of my life,
other stories will speak themselves to me,
If I keep on the run.
I will depend some,
like Blanche DuBois,
on the kindnessof strangers.
That is one thing to do.
But better,
I think,
to be one's selfthe kind stranger;
For redemption comes in the smallest acts, unbid.
We have come a ways now,
together,
down these roads.
And so this story you hold in your hands,
these marks on paper,
is not just athing.
It is part of talk we could have,
you and I,
Sitting near each other by chance.
And should we do some simple act of kindness,
some laying on of hands,
Then, in a moment,
quiet,
we might hear,
Echo down the silken strings of time,
My Gramma's voice.
And we might heal the world.
Amen.