Category: A Very Short Story

From the Short Story Vault

Baseball In A Parochial Environment

An excerpt from my book of parochial school nostalgia: “I Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven.” Click on the link above for more information.

 

“Then there was Jim Reynolds: a tall athletic young man who
was very fond of Our Lady of Peace. I say this as he repeated the
higher grades of the Catholic elementary system, grades six
through eight, a plethora of times. In grade seven, when I first
ran into him, I do believe he was sixteen. He must have been, for
he smoked and drove a ’56 Ford to school. That was cool: to
park his beater with the grownups, the teachers, in the school
parking lot. We knew he was a smoker for he rolled his cigarettes
up tight in his short-sleeved white tee during the warmer spring
weather. Buckinghams, non-filters, seem to come to mind as the
cigarette of choice for all young punks at the time. Of course no
one seemed to care about second-hand smoke at the school in
those unregulated days.

A smallish baseball diamond was situated in one of the back
corners of our schoolyard. During the late winter, early spring
months, when the last vestiges of snow had all but disappeared
and the ground was suddenly covered with trash and rock-hard
dog shit, we would pull out our bats and balls and set up a game.
Teams were not a problem, for we used an “up or out” rotational
system of play. Somewhat like the Navy’s promotional and
downsizing scheme, but I digress. One could remain at bat so
long as one did not strike, fly, or be thrown out. You had to be a
good hitter to remain at bat. Once you were thrown out or struck
out, you were in the field and would remain out there until
another batter suffered the same fate. Then rotate positions. The
only exception to all of this was that if someone caught the ball
in the air, they would immediately go to bat and the batter would
take their place.

Jim Reynolds may not have been too smart but he was tough.
Street tough. And could he ever hit a softball.
When Jim came to bat it was pure delight. He could hit, man
he could hit: towering, out-of-sight fly balls that seemed to go on
forever. No one could match his skill or catch his fly balls. If you
were on base ahead of Jim, you were safe by default as a home
run was coming in very short order. I always tried to be on base
just before he came up to bat.

1950s TEEN News Photo - Getty Images

He was a sight to behold. Standing there full of confidence, a
smirk or sneer on his face, his lips sometime adorned with a
smoke out of the corner of his mouth. Of course he had to do this
by stealth such that he wasn’t noticed by any of the lay teachers.
Not the black and whites mind you, for they refused to come out
during recess, lunch time, or before or after school. I think that
this was the only time they could catch a few puffs of their own
without being seen by the prying eyes of us turds—as they sometimes
called us. They were possibly at prayer but I doubt it.

So here was Jim. His whole frame permeated confidence,
self-assuredness with an air of arrogance: shuffling his feet like a
rabid dog marking his territory after a good piss. The pitcher,
watching him suspiciously as he readied his throw, knowing full
well what the outcome was going to be, as did everyone else for
that matter. Yet Jim, for all his size, and swagger and confidence,
was not a bully. A show-off perhaps but no bully. We all appreciated
that. For he could have easily kicked the living shit out of
any one of us if he so pleased for he looked the part. He was the
James Dean of Our Lady of Peace. Slicked back brill-“a little dab
will do ya”-creamed hair, with a trace of growth above the upper
lip, muscles bulging beneath his body-shaped white tee. Blue
jeans, of course, with the bottom cuffs turned up about two
inches, showing his bright white socks, as was the style in those
days. He was cool and we all marvelled at that, but in a good
way, and all of us thought that when we reached the age of
sixteen we would all look as cool as Jim but with hope upon
hope to be in a higher grade perhaps.

The ball is ultimately pitched by the pitcher. It comes his
way, straight across the plate. As if on cue Jim swings the bat
with a florid motion, picture perfect, as if in slow animation,
stepping into the ball with his arms outstretched, his elbows
locked, his eyes focused entirely on the seams of the ball as it
comes into his sights. Whack, ball upon bat, in the sweet spot,
Jim’s cheeks and belly wobble like hard jelly, as if his whole
body’s energy force is transmitted down that bat and into the ball
itself. Then the pregnant pause as Jim looks up to the heavens,
arms outstretched as if giving lordly thanks and praise, dropping
the bat to begin his cool saunter toward first base. He doesn’t
have to run hard for he knows, yes he knows, that that ball is
gone. Like God’s angelic rocket, or a holy ghost of a hit, it soars
to the heavens above Our Lady of Peace’s schoolyard. And us,
with our innocence and heavenly gaze, are entirely awestruck
and enthralled at the power and the sheer majesty of it all as the
ball rises up and into the blue cloudless sky. A pure white
stitched canvas ball set against the backdrop of the apostolic
blue, like Christ’s resurrection, rising then arcing its way across
the heavens, then down and out and through a second floor
window of our school.

Ooops!

It was like this all the time. The nuns tried their best to curtail
Jim’s prowess. Perhaps that’s why they were praying during
recess, but to no avail. They would have loved to expel him but
his parents were church stalwarts and sat in the front pew at the
10:15 semi-high mass. They were quite rich, quite influential,
and quite demanding. I am told that his mother was the civilian
equivalent to Sister Mary Bernice. I would have loved to have
seen that. It wasn’t long though before Jim did leave us. Trade
school, we were told. Trade school! That prison and so-called
parallel universe of Catholic elementary school life. Trade
school! Failure in the eyes of the church. Trade school! We all
shuddered at the thought. Trade school! Be good or you’ll find
yourself in trade school they would tell us. Say your prayers
every night. If you don’t you might just find yourself at trade
school. Of course, the female equivalent was secretarial school,
or worse, in later years, home economics, code for getting yourself
knocked up! The rest of us, if we were good, worked hard,
and said our prayers every night, would be blessed in more ways
than one could possibly imagine at the time at the local Catholic
private high school for boys. Generalists! Arts and science! If we
graduated from the local Catholic high school for boys, we could
aspire to be “Jacks of all Trades,” “Masters of Fuck-all”. And for
all of my efforts, I became a real “Jack Tar”, although I wanted
to be a proctologist. Somewhat like a plumber. Perhaps trade
school would have been a good fit for me after all.

I missed Jim after he left. When he was with us he sat in the
back of our class. I can still see him sitting there in the tiny desk,
his legs sprawled out, arms folded across his chest, with his
Elvis-like sneer, snickering at no one in particular. He always had
a cig ready to go behind his left ear. He was so cool, and quite
funny. Like a class clown. Indeed, he intimidated the teacher and
swore like a trooper but he was very, very friendly to us.
Jim did leave a legacy of sorts. All the windows of our school
that were facing the schoolyard were fitted out with metal
screens. Even today, some fifty years later, those same screens
adorn the windows at Our Lady of Peace School. Today,
someone not completely in the know might surmise that vandals,
petty criminal activity perhaps, presented a causal relationship to
those metal screens. They would be wrong, of course, for whenever
I look at the school today with their protective screened
window coverings—for I knew the truth—I would nostalgically
think of Jim and his baseball prowess.”

Great memories of a simpler and fun age.

And F&^K AI. It truly is artificial

When men were men, women were women and great tunes like this one ruled the airwaves.

Play loud.

Happy 4th of July

To Our American Friends

Happy 4th of July

 

“The Star-Spangled Banner” is the national anthem of the United States. The lyrics come from “Defence of Fort McHenry”, a poem written on September 14, 1814, by the then 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by British ships of the Royal Navy in Baltimore Harbor during the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812. Key was inspired by the large U.S. flag, with 15 stars and 15 stripes, known as the Star-Spangled Banner, flying triumphantly above the fort during the U.S. victory.

Have a great day.

I Identify As An “Equit”

Canadians are such wooses:

Heard in passing in Ottawa: “They really believe in our national jobs plan, or as I like to call it “Just Trans-ition” for heaven’s sake.  The LGBTQ plus and minus like us, they really really like us and believe in everything we do to screw you. By the way Wilky, you have one week to get your hand off of my ass.”

Trudeau’s latest job action plan:

A Liberal sustainable jobs bill is being criticized for invoking “identity politics” by emphasizing jobs for members of “equity-seeking groups.”

Tabled by Minister of Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson (shown above), Bill C-50 would support the federal government’s efforts to increase job growth in the green energy sector

However, the bill appears to prioritize certain groups over others.

“A sustainable jobs approach should be inclusive and address barriers to employment with an emphasis on encouraging the creation of employment opportunities for groups underrepresented in the labour market, including women, persons with disabilities, Indigenous peoples, Black and other racialized individuals, 2SLGBTQI+ and other equity-seeking groups,” the bill says.

In other words straight, anglo, whitey need not apply.

Canada is probably the most discriminatory nation on the planet.

Equity is at the root of all of our problems. Why can’t everyone be equal, and not equit (sic), under the law of the land.

By the way, if you were born here in Canada then by the very definition of Indigenous, other than the Canadian version of a dictionary, you are an indigenous person.

From here on in I now identify as an equit.

This song was well ahead of its time.

Dedicated to Trudeau’s vision of Canada.

Check out my books at the links at the top of the page.

Camino and counting.

SJ Out.

Home Is Where The Heart Is…

An Excerpt from my book: “I Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven.”

Cmon in, the beer is fine.

“I boarded coach on the transcontinental at the very large
cavernous platform of the enormous train station that served my
hometown for over a hundred years. I could imagine then and
there, at that very moment in time, how the soldiers of the Great
War and World War II felt while leaving the familiarity and
warmth of families and loved ones for the trenches of France and
Belgium, or the training fields of England, knowing full well that
many of them would not be returning to the comforts of home.

Why did I feel this way? Think this way? At this particular
moment? I don’t really know, but the images of troops on trains
in cavernous train stations like this one just seemed to just pop
into my head for no apparent reason. It was as if this thought had
been ingrained into my psyche from such a young age that their
individual and collective sacrifices paved the way for my very
own freedom of choice at this very moment in time. As I was
waving goodbye to my parents, just as the transcontinental was
slowly leaving the station, I could almost see or visualize the
spectres of long-lost loved souls roaming about this station,
waving goodbye to their friends, their families, and their loved
ones for the very last time, for eternity. These willowy images
dissipated slowly like some mist of memory in the stillness
of time.

It took over three days to reach the coast. I was dead tired as
it was extremely difficult to sleep in coach. The scenery for a
young lad was extremely boring. Trees and lakes; trees and
lakes; the occasional hill covered with trees, then more lakes
with trees around them. Muskeg, Muskox, and Muskrat—it was
rather musky out there with a lot of musky critters running or
scampering through the musky forests of trees and lakes and
streams. Then more trees and more lakes and more trees and…
trees. Finally, no more trees. Just flat grassland. A sea, no, an
ocean of grass. More grass, then a lake, maybe a river bounded
by grass on all sides, but no trees, just grass. As far as the eye
could see. Grass! Sometimes a small rise would come into view,
a small hill covered with grass. I dreamed of grass, of trees, of
lakes of grassy knolls. It was weird, man, and I was no stoner

Finally hills, as barren as Sister Mary Bernice, my elementary
school principal, morphed into bigger hills which transformed
into very large hills with deep, deep valleys. Valleys
covered with trees. The mountains, the Rocky Mountains: all the
granite one could ever imagine. Most people see these mountains
as majestic, beautiful, God’s handiwork, a reflection of his
power: the very smallness of mankind in full view when
measured against this spectacular backdrop. Yet all I could think
of was granite. Enough granite to cover every kitchen countertop
on the planet. But wait, that wouldn’t occur for another thirty
years. What was I thinking?

Mountains, and more mountains, snow covered, nature’s
monuments. Mountain passes that provided a route for the early
explorers: Lewis and Clark, Thompson, Fraser, Carson, DiCrapio,
Morrison, I thought. Unbelievable! Then darkness. What?
These idiot trainers scheduled the very best transit, the transit
through the mountains, to occur at night? Dopes! And they called
us stoners! We would arrive at our west coast destination in the
morning? Try to sleep, I thought.

Waking up to a slow-moving chugalug train inching its way,
it seemed, into the outer ’burbs and run-down industrial sites of
this so-called magnificent coastal city. Magnificent in that it was
a large metropolitan area surrounded by the majesty of the
coastal mountain range and the Cascades: a nice name for a
string of active, dormant, and extinct volcanoes. Think of Mount
St Helens, Rainier, Hood, Baker, Shasta, and other nondescript
names for mountains that have the potential of wreaking natural
havoc, cascading death and destruction on an unsuspecting, unassuming
public. These mountainous, frighteningly natural mega-
liths formed a formidable barrier to the north and east of the
city’s metropolis but then were offset by the calm waters of the
Pacific Ocean bordering its northwest, west, and southwestern
flanks. Only problem with this visual description was the curtain
of rain, drizzle, and mist that permeated my vision out of the
coach’s dirty windows. These titans of nature and the oceanic
beauty and seemingly calmness of the Pacific were really just
figments of my active imagination in all of this rain, or as a
described picture by some nature magazine article I read about
the place.

My first impressions were not good. I found the outer fringes
of this city in disarray: disorganized, third worldly in its ardour
and its feel. Low rise buildings of various sizes and shapes with
facades of every colour of the rainbow. Ugly purples, grotesque
yellows, and grim orange decor trims added to this canvas of
dirty grey stucco buildings and rusted out arches and gantries of
the numerous bridges that spanned the delta of a mighty river.
With the dreariness of the rain and the drabness of the grey skies,
these colours and contours were transformed and morphed into a
visual scene that reminded me of some hippie’s bad acid dream
of an undulating kaleidoscope landscape of a barf-induced wasteland.
When we finally reached the western terminus of this
national journey, and could go no further, a young fellow like me
could only sigh a sigh of relief that the torturous three-and-ahalf-
day trek in coach was finally over.”

My sister met me at the station then took me to their abode in
the downtown core. They had rented an apartment in the city’s
west end, very close to the beach of a British-sounding bay with
water that was so cold as to render it un-swimmable. One would
have an extremely difficult time finding one’s privates and taking
a piss after a swim in waters such as this. And who was one
anyway? Close to that were funky-looking shops and high rise
concourses that spread their way along narrow streets, avenues,
and boulevards toward a massive green expanse of a park that
adorned itself with towering trees of old growth forest. But in the
rain these towering, magnificent giants of nature were mostly
obscured by the fog in the midst of a city that was blanketed for
the greatest part of the year by a canopy of clouds and mist. With
all of this rain the buildings of the downtown core exuded a
depressed aura of doom and gloom, being grey on the mind, grey
on one’s thoughts, with an outlook of a grey, depressing world in
the midst of all of this precipitation. “But at least it’s not snow,
you don’t have to shovel it,” I heard over and over again. Yes,
but saying this was really a defensive mechanism on the speaker’s
part, a sense of insecurity or rationalization by some idiot
who chose, regrettably, to live in such a grey expanse of concrete
within what is, in reality, an urban concrete rain forest. After a
few days of this I wondered how anyone in their right mind
could live there. The dampness of the place was bone-chilling
and mould-worthy. But then again I guess home is where the
heart is.”

Camino Frances: 60 days to go.

With all the LGBT craziness going on these days, I thought this song would be appropriate:

Way ahead of its time…I guess.

Read more of this existential journey through life in my book: “I Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven.” Click on the link at the top of the page. It’s available through Amazon.