Nebraskan Surprise

It was one of the most pitiful excuses one could have to take a road trip. But I was lonely and fed up with feeling sorry for myself. So I decided to visit Nebraska.

On the way to Sioux Falls, South Dakota where I am presently camping, I had entered Sioux City, Iowa. It was very close to the Nebraska border and I had never been to Nebraska. I was tempted to divert for the 30 miles or so and cross over the border, but I hadn’t slept at anyplace but rest stops for four days and I was tired, cranky and gas was being consumed at a way higher rate than I wanted.

But I had been in Sioux Falls for several weeks and it was time to explore. I had been buried in front of the computer for most of the day, and taking naps as well. And it was suddenly 3 p.m. I had to get out and do something as I was driving myself crazy and Pup, the pup who is no

longer a puppy, kept giving me a look that reflected my mood: “Let’s do SOMETHING other than hanging around the trailer,” the look said. I knew it well. Pup needs to go to a place where he can find something new to smell and walk around. Ever since I adopted him, he had peed in every state we had visited, so why not add another one?

The Nebraska border was only about 70 miles away. And where we are, the sun doesn’t set until around 9:40. My friends on the East Coast may wonder about that, but South Dakota is in both the Central and Mountain Time zones. The Mountain Time zone is about 100 miles away and so it sets later than an Eastern Time zone.

So, even though it was late in the afternoon, there were still more than six hours of daylight left. So we climbed into the truck and headed south. My earlier route as I drove from Iowa to South Dakota, involved taking Interstate 80 west and then driving North along Interstate 29, which is a North-South route in the Southeastern part of South Dakota, linking I-80 with I-90 over about 100 miles. When I headed for Nebraska, I figured I would just go back Southbound and continue West on I-80 into Nebraska.

But I stopped at a gas station at the Vermillion exit at Route 50 and they had a local road map that showed if I took State Route 50 West I would save at least 40 miles. And I was truly sick of interstate driving. I like to get some local color. So I set the GPS for a town called Newcastle Nebraska and started driving. As with most of Southeast South Dakota, there are lots of Corn fields and not much else. And I suddenly found myself approaching a large bridge when I beheld the Missouri River for the first time.

When I crossed the Mississippi River, it was along I-80 by Grand Rapids, Iowa. I didn’t get much time to enjoy it, as there was heavy traffic. But this bridge had no traffic at all. I pulled over and shot a few photos, thinking I would then cross over and return. But just as I entered Nebraska, there was a sign for a scenic overlook and I drove up and was rewarded with an incredible view. The bridge is located at a spot where the river bends and it is not only pretty, but also impressive. It reminds me of the power that moving water has. Over the year, a huge island of sand from upstream erosion had been created in the middle of the river as it deposited it at the bend.

As I was looking at this scene, a photographer with a tripod came back from further uphill and he told me there were four different viewing places. So I started climbing. Pup gave me a look that said, “It’s about time.” He loves to go hiking with me and he immediately broke into his unmistakable grin of sheer joy as he climbed stairs and dragged me along.

We had a blast. He sniffed and marked his spot everywhere and with each observation level we reached, the views were even better. Eventually, we reached the end of the trail and I realized something was quite different. We were up pretty high. While we weren’t in mountains, we were on some pretty steep hills. It’s quite a contrast. On the South Dakota side of the river, the land is fairly flat and filled with corn and soybean fields. And it was just the opposite on the Nebraska side.

Even though I had accomplished my silly objective of visiting Nebraska, I decided to drive a little further into Newcastle. It was about five miles away. As I moved away from the river, I noticed something else was different. The hills were filled with fields that were clearly cultivated but here it was in the first days of summer and nothing was growing on them. I suspected that it might be a grazing area for livestock and I saw a few horses and a small herd of cattle. But then I saw a field with stacks of hay and I realized that this crop was the first harvest of the year.

Moving on a little bit, the cornfields re-appeared and the stalks were about two feet high. As I began my journey into corn country, which starts at the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, I had watched the crop grow from seedlings into an early crop where ears had started to emerge. Just about everywhere is fertilized. I saw fields that ran for miles without a farmhouse in sight. Yet the Nebraska farms were different in that they were on fields. I tried to imagine how tractors managed to maneuver around. Being raised on a farm,

the only terrain I had rode on was flat.

I reached Newcastle. It was a pretty little farm town with several churches, a town hall and a school. But there were no stores, gas stations or restaurants. I liked this place and wanted to leave a dollar or so in the local economy. I stopped and asked a couple leaving church services and they told me there was a restaurant a few miles down the road.

I drove a few more miles and couldn’t find anything but more farms. I decided to turn around and pulled to the side of the road to permit the minivan behind me to pass before doing my U-turn. I was stunned as they followed off the road and then pulled up to my right. They were at a very bad angle. They thought I needed help, though I had no idea how they could. I explained I was simply turning around and needed no help.

Suddenly we both were being harassed by a large black dog from the farmhouse we were in front of. He started to chase the minivan until it was able to pull back on the road and then barked furiously at us. Pup, who is generally a pacifist, does not have much tolerance for big dogs. I suspect he was once bitten by one and has a damaged ear to show for it. And so they engaged themselves in a rather spirited debate as I slowly did my U-turn trying not to hit the dog, which seemed rather suicidal.

And so we went back over the bridge and into South Dakota. I plugged in a Sioux Falls destination into the GPS and it took me back through the middle of Vermillion. It’s a really nice little town. I passed the University of South Dakota and its campus reminded me of the one where I graduated in Stony Brook, NY. It was also a smaller version of State College, PA, with a main street filled with fast food restaurants and other businesses catering to the college community.

As I reached Route 29, the sun was setting and I got some nice shots. One was a cornfield filled with the golden light of the sun’s last rays. A few minutes later, I shot another cornfield as the orange ball touched the horizon. As we continued to drive back north, there was a cloud that reflected the orange glow and twilight ended around 10:15 as I pulled off onto my exit.

So what did the road trip do for me? It renewed a zest for discovery; wondering what is around the bend. I’ve been thinking in terms of places like Mt. Rushmore, the Badlands and Yellowstone. But the true beauty of God’s creation often takes us by surprise.

Talkin' Baseball

Photo Captions: Top:At a Steinbrenner Field spring training game this April wearing my #9 Roger Maris shirt. Middle: My own personal "field of dreams" where I played baseball at Firemens' Field in Denville, NJ. Lower Middle: John sitting in Hank Aaron's locker at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Bottom: At the Yankees' ticker tape parade in 2009.

"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America is ruled by it like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good. And that could be again. Oh, people will come, Ray. People will definitely come” Terence Mann (James Earl Jones) in Field of Dreams.

I cry at the end of this movie every time when Ray gets to have a catch with his dad. My father and I also had games of catch, and it wasn’t until many years later I realized the physical agony he went through to do it as one of his arms was destroyed in an auto crash. But I remember those days. Yes I do.

I was born in 1947 in Manhattan: 114 West 116th Street, Apartment 3A, to be exact. A few buildings to the West was Riverside Park where I spent many of my days from birth to about age five. Television was only an experiment and the radio reigned supreme. And even before I began to speak, I was listening to Red Barber and Mel Allen, Ernie Harwell and others. The same year I was born a man named Jackie Robinson became the first African American (we called them “Negroes” in those days) to break the segregation that had held baseball captive for nearly a century. He signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Yes Brooklyn. In those days there were 16 major league baseball teams and New York City had three of them. In addition to the Dodgers, the Yankees inhabited the Bronx and the Giants were in the upper area of Manhattan.

It seemed as if one team, and often two, played for the World Series championship nearly every year. The first time I every watched television, we went over to my friend Jerry’s apartment to see the Yankees and Giants face off in the 1951 World Series. The Giants and the Dodgers had tied for first place in the National League and there was a three-game playoff that ended with Bobby Thompson's "Shot heard round the world" homer. My Mother rooted for the Dodgers, also known as “Dem Bums” They played in a band box called Ebbitts Field and had many stars but never managed to win a championship until 1955. They were immortalized in a book by Roger Kahn called “The Boys of Summer.” It’s been in print nearly forty years. I have a place mat with a picture of that Dodger team. My father grew up in the shadow of the Polo Grounds where the Giants played. And that was HIS team. I didn’t know much but the Yankees always seemed to win. And so I rooted for them.

In an effort to be fair and since tickets were only a couple of dollars for the best seats in the house and only a 15-cent subway ride, I wound up watching all three teams. I don’t remember very much, for I was only around three years old, but I am told I saw Joe Damage play in his last year. I also have a vague memory of shaking Jackie Robinson’s hand, as well as the other Dodgers. If you waited until they left after the game, they would talk to you and sign autographs. Today, if you go to a baseball card show, they’ll charge you at least ten dollars.
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Even though I was too young to voice an opinion with much to back it up, there was always talk around both the house and the city as to who had the best center fielder: the Dodgers’ Duke Snider; the Giants’ Willie Mays and, of course, the incredible kid from Oklahoma, the Yankees' Mickey Mantle.

There weren’t many team sports that were popular in those days. Pro football had not taken hold. It was well known that if you went to his church on a game-day Sunday, you could get free tickets from Wellington Mara, the owner of the football Giants. The National Basketball Association had just started and frequently relied on a double header featuring the Knicks and the Harlem Globetrotters to fill Madison Square Garden. The Trotters, now a famous international comedy act, was a national pro champion in those days and Knicks games without the Trotters barely drew a crowd.

The big draws besides baseball was horse racing and boxing. In fact, my father was a professional boxer n the 1930s. He had won five straight as a middleweight and got on the Garden undercard once. He started to pound his opponent and the guy just smiled and proceeded to knock the crap out of him in the first round and knock him out in the second round. He realized that he previous fights had been fixed so a white guy could make the card. Blacks dominated he sport at the time, as they continued to do so for much of the 20th century.

But baseball ruled. I really became involved with it when I was in third grade when my mother got me into the Denville, NJ Little League.

We were the Hornets and played in tee shirts (which we had to return at the end of the season), bluejeans and PF Flyers or US Keds canvas sneakers. I was the worst player on my team, but a classmate was also on the team and we played every day in his back yard after school. In those days, I moved frequently, but I do remember one magic summer in a small town called Victory Gardens. The town had cleared a ball field and put up a batting cage and we would play on that field just about every day. There were no grown ups to supervise us, and that’s the way we wanted it. Every day after school and endless days throughout the summer we would spend from early in the morning until dark without going home. We didn’t even have water and didn’t care.

By then, television had become popular and at night I would watch the Yankees. I remember one stretch in the summer of 1958 where Yankee Catcher Yogi Berra had hit late inning home runs in about four straight games.

But we moved yet again and I eventually wound up at Bonnie Brae Farm for boys. And there we also played every day, usually in a sloping field where first base was a tree. We had a Little League team there but I couldn’t play. In most Little Leagues in the area, the maximum age was 12, which I was. But in this league, it was 11 and I watched helplessly as my friends played to an undefeated season.

In the 1960 baseball season, the Yankees had traded for a Cleveland Outfielder named Roger Maris, who won the most valuable player award that year. All the kids in school favored Mickey Mantle, but I stuck with Roger as my favorite. The next year was the incredible summer of 1961. That year Roger and Mickey hit home run after home run and both were in a race to beat Babe Ruth’s single season record of 60 homers in one season set in 1927. Towards the end of the season, Mantle had an ulcerated hip and couldn’t play but Maris hit his 61st on the final day of the season.

By then, my father had forced my mother and Bonnie Brae to permit me to visit him and we went a few times to Yankee Stadium. He wanted to buy good seats, but I insisted in sitting n the 75-cent bleachers in right field so I could watch Roger. One day, the love of baseball was forever sealed in my heart. In one game, I saw Roger hit two homers into the area were I was. I wasn’t close enough to catch them, but “my” hero had come through. But then Mantle came up to bat. He drove a ball into the back wall of the upper deck in right field. I swear it was still rising when it hit the wall. If it had been a few feet over to the left, it would have been out of the park. And no one, not even the immortal Babe Ruth, had ever hit one out of Yankee Stadium. I later learned that Mantle’s right arm was severely injured and he had hit it with only one arm. About seven years later, in 1967, my company had given me some seats for a game at Yankee Stadium. I took my best friend, Bill Stevens, to the game and it was the last game Mickey ever played.

Some people describe those days as the “golden” era of baseball. And it certainly was, but I will never forget the last day of the season when Roger hit the record breaker. The stands weren’t even half filled.

In eighth grade, I was on the junior high team, but one day I hurt my elbow and my arm was pretty much shot for that year. The next year I played Freshman Baseball at Morristown High School. I wasn’t very good at baseball, and I rarely played in the field, unless we were getting clobbered, which happened a few times. I usually would get to pinch hit late in the game. But I had an incredible string over the course of the season. I never got a hit, but never made an out. In my first at bat, I was hit by a pitch. Other at bats resulted in walks. I hit a grounder to a second baseman who bobbled the ball and I reached safely on an error. And one day I struck out, but the catcher dropped the ball. If a catcher drops a third strike, the batter could try to get to first and I made it. But my spikes caught in the bag and I wrecked my knee. I tried to play football that autumn and baseball the next year but the knee just wouldn’t hold up. Not that I had much talent anyhow, but that group of freshmen won the state championship when we were seniors. It would have been fun just to have ridden the bench for that great season.

By then, the Dodgers and Giants had left for the West Coast and there was suddenly a new team in town, the Mets. I can’t say I have been much of a Mets fan, but I did see them play the Dodgers once at the Polo Grounds in their first year. When I became a father, I took John to a few games with our church’s scout-type group, the Royal Rangers, and we also visited the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. He still has the baseball cards we bought that day and I think some of them are worth quite a bit of money.

One of the first dates with my wife was to take her to a Yankee game. She hated it. So I sometimes took my mother to a game. We shared opening day weekend when Yankee Stadium was refurbished in the late 1970s.

Although I did have some catches with John as a child, it was less often than I wished and he never really became interested in doing sports. Matthew was a big basketball player and fan but despite his coach and I trying to have him play baseball, he refused. Neither boy is a fan of the game today, though Matt has followed it loosely. The closest major league baseball team near John is the hapless Seattle Mariners and I doubt if he would ever make the trek to attend a game.

In the last years of my marriage, we got cable television and I was able to frequently watch my Yankees on the YES network on a little 13-inch television in my room. This was the Derek Jeter age and championships were won. But I couldn’t afford to go to a game where the prices had ridden up to $35 for a nosebleed seat. The last major league game I took in was at Yankee Stadium in the spring of 2001 when I chaperoned a group of the children I was teaching to a game. We watched Roger Clemens pitch in a year he won the Cy Young Award as the best pitcher in baseball.

As I write this, Clemens was just found innocent of lying to Congress when he claimed he never took steroids. This issue has made dramatic changes in the game and we may never see the incredible home runs or power pitching we saw in the 1990s.

In 2009, the Yankees won the World Series. I managed to go to the ticker tape parade down the canyon of heroes in

lower Manhattan. I couldn’t get anywhere near the players, but managed to have a blast anyhow. It was the only ticker tape parade I had ever attended. In 1959, I begged and pleaded with my mother to let me go watch the one for the original seven American astronauts after John Glenn had gone around the earth three times. I was in 6th grade and mom wouldn’t let me go. I stayed at home that day and watched every minute of the television coverage.

For the past two winters, I have managed to get to Florida to watch spring training games. One year I was lucky enough to be there when they gave away replica World Series rings. I sometimes wear mine, but keep in safe in my dresser. I might wind up watching spring training this winter in Arizona.

Living on the road has its issues with baseball. I don’t get to see many games unless the Yankees are playing a nationally televised game on ESPN or Fox and I happen to be in a campground with cable television. I'm looking forward to seeing the Yanks and Mets square off on Sunday night. But I did attend a game with a friend recently that reminded me why I love the game so much. It was a Little League game her grandson was playing in. It was filled with errors, bad pitching, poor hitting and a bunch of kids who just loved being there. It brought me back to the time when I fell in love with a game more than half a century ago. If only my other love lives were that successful.