50 years in 50 days Day 39 Speaks with Uncle Hal

I sat down with dear old Uncle Hal today. Around ordering golf balls and showing the golf coach new playing attire options and fielding a request for Pro V-1 golf balls from one of the two young chaps there with their coach, Uncle Hal and I talked a little bit about life.

We talked about getting older, as this is the theme for these fifty days of writing here. But, while talking about getting older, we also reflected on days of our youth as well.

I am the second from the left on the back row. We won it all in 1979. The same summer we moved to Harrison County.

Uncle Hal and I talked about going back for one day. He talked of playing with friends, riding his bike, and getting a pizza made by a legendary pizza queen.

The first image that came to my mind was riding my old purple Sears bike up Bridge Street in Brownstown. My baseball glove was hanging off the handle bars and I was riding to practice at the town park. My childhood in Brownstown was filled with images out of Norman Rockwell’s Greatest Hits. Whether is was arm-wrestling with a pastor after church every Sunday, playing on the tank on the courthouse lawn, or hanging out with the town librarian.

Down the hill from the park on Bridge Street, I had a great-grandmother who looked the part. In an old dress, swinging on the front porch waiting for me, Grandma was ready to hand me a glass of ice cold water, or lemonade, or on that rare occasion she asked me if I wanted a Coke. I knew better than to ask myself. They were in the back of the fridge and they were gold that didn’t come out often.

I had two parents working in a large garden full of Mississippi style produce. We had purple hull peas and peanuts growing in that sandy Jackson County soil. When I rolled in on my bike, they told me to grab a hoe and join in. If I could turn around and ride away before I was spotted, I did that too. Regardless, time to come home was not negotiable. That usually got me to hoeing and weed pulling.

We lived in a house that didn’t have air-conditioning. I have written here before about living in a house a cornfield away from the Jackson County Fairgrounds home of the Brownstown Speedway. With windows raised, I was serenaded every Saturday night to cars running around the quarter mile dirt track.

My sister filled half of eastern Brownstown with The Sound of Music blaring out the window of the house. That record has to be crumbling by now. Me, I was listening to the Bay City Rollers.

The son of a high school football coach, I lived that life as a youngster. Locker rooms and dirty words flying around. Music from a locker room that has lasted decades later. Having the opportunity to grab a ball and throw it and kick it. Grabbing a basketball during basketball practice warm-ups and shooting around with the high school guys. I was there. It was a great place to be. It was what you would hoped it would be. It was what you wish others could feel and understand.

I shared some of that last May before they tore down the old stadium.

Uncle Hal and I talked about getting older too.

Do I feel fifty? I don’t know. I snap crackle and pop a bit when I stand up. Still, I think I have been fortunate enough to hold on to some of these things I have mentioned. I still love football. I’d give anything to play a baseball game. The music of my youth has stayed with me. I saw my first Moody Blues concert when I was 18. I saw my last one this past July at age 49. There were 55 of them in between. Justin Hayward is 71 and can still sing wonderfully and can still flat tear up an electric guitar. I hope another of his solo shows is in the future. But…you never know.

We don’t know.

But what I do know is that I am glad I left that Brownstown life. It wasn’t always easy…but it got me here…