Member-only story
THE NARRATIVE ARC
What I Learned About Life, I Learned From Baseball
Memories, lessons & grandpa
When I was six years old, I first heard the magic of a hickory stick smacking a round cork and rubber, leather-covered ball. Over fifty years later, this sound still brings tears to my eyes.
My mother would ship me off to visit her parents, my grandparents, each summer. It was a highlight of the year for me to leave Indian land (the reservation) and go to a town with a stop sign, a building with two floors, paved streets, and lights that blinked on and off in store windows.
My favorite spot was a wooden stump on the road, by my grandparents’ mailbox, where a tree once grew. I would sit for hours and watch people live their lives; the milkman driving by, bottles rattling in racks, women pushing baby carriages, and the smell of fresh bread in the air.
I sat, watched, and waited. And every day at 5:30 p.m., I would see him ambling up the road, swinging his silver aluminum lunch box. It was dented with spots of rust, two clasps, and what looked like a flying V in the center of the domed lid. He whistled an old Johnny Cash tune, and as his 6’3” frame got closer and closer, my excitement grew in equal measures.
