Baseball season.
The hot, dusty game. Makes me think of my uncle‚ Actually, my uncle, kind-of-godfather, big brother, and idol all rolled up in one man.
He lived in an unfinished – dust-filled – house on an 80-acre homestead in Washington County, Nebraska; seven miles south of Blair. A fire destroyed the original farmhouse in-I think-1962. He lived in the half-finished home full of piles of newspaper, closet shelves with Butternut Coffee cans full of coins, 410-gauge shotgun shells, nails, springs, hinges, matchbooks, cotter keys and old pens and bullet pencils from every grain elevator and cattle auction within two hundred miles.
Your basic bachelor farmer. Read the Wall Street Journal.
Twice a week he would drive from the farm down to Omaha for as long as I can remember‚ one afternoon to have lunch with mom and pick up his laundry; and Saturday night to take a shower and go down to south Omaha to polka dance. He graduated from Blair High School in 1936; played catcher for the Blair Bears. He loved baseball. He read the Sporting News every week.
During a visit to Texas to visit me in about 1980, I took him down to NASA to the space center. On the way back we crossed over the Houston ship channel — on the enormous bridge on interstate 610 that overlooks the port in Houston. We pulled off on an exit ramp and saw grain being loaded into a huge freighter, dust blowing into the air. He stared at the activity for quite a while‚ like looking off to the southwest at weather coming in. Then he turned and simply said “Let’s go” and climbed back in the car hunched forward like he wanted to be to be one driving. Ten minutes later out of silence he said “Well, I sure saw the grain going into that ship. That was really worth the drive.” And that’s about as dramatic an exclamation as you could expect from him. His life’s work‚ a dusty load of grain‚ being loaded into a big ship off for God-knows-where.
Later that day I took him down to the Astrodome to see the Astros play. It was Nolan Ryan’s second game in Houston and we saw‚ from seats right above the first base dugout‚ the Ryan Express‚ a one-hundred mile-per-hour fastball smacking the catchers’ mitt. The first time we heard the “pop” he turned and looked at me like he had witnessed the second coming. Driving home from the game, he came out of silence and said something like, “Well, I sure saw that Nolan Ryan Express tonight. That was really worth the drive.” His life’s passion‚ baseball‚ all rolled up in a little puff of dust that had exploded off the catcher’s mitt.
For me, it was a big day. Here I am writing about it 30 years later. A day with a man who spent 80 years of his life alone; busting sod and wringing a living out of 80 acres. All those years without much money, without indoor plumbing and without much help, save a sister to care for his laundry and a bunch of nieces and nephews like me whose adoration he must have felt as he gave rides on the tractor and lessons in living simply.
Recently in Houston, I was reminded of his visit, and the connection between the fluffy clouds of grain dust swirling from the bottom up as wheat from a massive elevator is being funneled into a freighter sitting in the nasty water of the Houston ship channel, and the nearly-invisible puff of dust from a catcher’s mitt that follows the sharp smack of a 100-mile-per-hour fastball thrown by Nolan Ryan. But the person who can really make the connection is gone. One of my lifetime idols, he is dead from Parkinson’s disease and other complications. He’s returning to dust himself, beneath a headstone next to those of his parents; beneath the soil he spent a lifetime tilling and caring for; not far from the dusty ball diamond where he caught fastballs for Blair High School back in 1936 in the only sport played where dust is an element of the game – the umpire carries a brush and batters dust up bats; pitchers dig their toes in it; catchers squat in it around the plate and tag runners sliding home in billowing clouds.
Dust.
Ship channel photo
Nolan Ryan photo
