While discarding several boxes of old magazines the other day, I ran across a stack of long-forgotten photographs that sparked a lot of memories. In the next few blog posts, I'll be sharing a few of those memories. First up, the fields of my youth.
The first photo might seem nondescript to most people, but it holds a lot of memories. This field was on the southeast end of the house where I grew up, separated from our yard by a barbed wire fence. Out of view to the right was a gate leading from the bend in our driveway into the field. Another "gap," as we called it, was in the fence row but is not visible because of the bushes that had overgrown it and where the dirt path turns right into the next pasture.
Straight ahead as one looks toward the trees and bushes in the background was Pappaw's apple orchard. (He also had a couple of pear trees there.) I recall often climbing the apple trees and picking ripe apples in season. They made delicious between-meal snacks for an active boy. I also remember picking apples with Pappaw there. He would drive his blue Chevy pickup under a tree, and I would pick from the roof of the cab.
To the left in the photo was where the old barn stood. We kids spent hours there, climbing the ladder from the ground-level manger to the spacious loft above, where Pappaw stored hay. Someone (I'm withholding his name to protect the guilty party) once was caught sneaking a puff there--a dangerous feat considering all the dust and hay present there--and I vividly recall his threatening me with death, or something within an inch of it, if I ever told on him.
But my fondest memory of that field is of its being our first baseball field. Home plate was just in front of the big clump of bushes in the middle distance. First base was on the extreme left side near the barn. The pitcher's mound was just this side of the natural swale in the middle.
Of all the hours we kids spent playing ball there, however, one memory stands out. Mother, always a competitor, was playing ball with us one night. Daddy, tired from laying bricks all day, was relaxing and reading the paper in the back yard. I was playing second base. Mother was at bat. She hit a screaming line drive that whacked me squarely in the chest, knocking me down and the breath from me.
Mother made a bee line, not to first but to me. I lay motionless, not breathing. She began to cry, thinking perhaps that she had killed me. Daddy had heard the ball hit me and came running, probably leaping the fence to get to me. I lived, of course, but I never got to play baseball for the Atlanta Braves. Not that there was any connection between that incident and the fact that I didn't play for them.
Today, that field is covered by houses along the left side of Garfield Terrace Drive, which was named for Pappaw, Garfield Blaine Peterson.
Another memory-inducing photo was of the pond in the field across from the driveway in front of our house. We fished there, gigged frogs there, retrieved fish from the pasture when it rained a lot and the pond overflowed, sailed fence-rail ships there, and even "skated" on it on the rare occasion when it froze thick enough. I also sailed my models of PT-109 and the USS St. Paul on it--until someone (again left nameless to protect the guilty) stuck firecrackers in the funnels of the St. Paul and sent it to the bottom. (Little did I know at the time, but my future father-in-law had served aboard that powerful warship during World War II.)
Beyond the trees on the far side of the pond is Fort Sumter Road. And beyond that was Walter Coomer's farm.
The best memories of the field, however, were again of it in its role as our second, larger baseball field. Home plate and first base were far beyond the left side of the photo. The large catalpa tree was our right field foul pole.
The presence of the pond necessitated our having special ground rules. Any batted ball that went into the pond was an automatic homerun. Any balls that bounced into the pond were ground-rule doubles. In both cases, the batter had to hightail it to the pond and fish the ball from the water. Play was suspended while we threw the ball around until it was dry enough to continue the game. (The next day, the leather would be hard and the seams brittle, so after being hit hard a few times, the cover eventually would fly off. We ruined a lot of balls that way.)
We had to share that field with cows, so we had to make a crucial ground rule that took into consideration a certain unavoidable risk. Any ball that happened to be hit into a pile of cow manure was an automatic single, and the batter had to take the ball to the pond and wash it clean. Play was again suspended until the ball was in a usable condition. It never again would be white. (Mother was especially eager that we wash our hands thoroughly after we played there.)
The field was quite large. None of us kids was ever able to hit a ball over the fence into Fort Sumter Road, although I came close a few times. The only person I knew who did it was Jim Simpson, who married Aunt Mildred and they were living with Pappaw and Mammaw temporarily. He came down to the field one day and asked if he could "hit a few." Always glad to have another player (we never had enough for one team, let alone two), we agreed. He hit the first pitch I threw. It went not only over the fence but also over Fort Sumter Road, over the fence on the other side of the road, and into Mr. Coomer's field.
The pond has long since been filled in, and our second field now comprises the backyards of several houses now. But the memories made there are still very much alive.
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