It's the voice in this one, just as the author suggests in the introduction.
This was my second reading of Blockade Billy and being familiar with the particulars gave me freer reign to listen, rather than to glean. It really is a story that you hear, more than read (or so it seems to me). I've always loved baseball and it is all wrapped up in a lot of my formative memories. Like the way men still wore hats -- not caps -- when I was a kid. And how, the first time I ever went to Fenway Park to watch Carl Yastrzemski and Rico Petrocelli and Tony Conigliaro, I didn't really see the game because whenever anything exciting happened, everybody stood up.
Better even than the games, though, were the stories about the games. We had these neighbors back home -- the Yarnells, let's say -- who were old. Grandparent old, to my young mind, and with no children (and hence, no grandchildren) of their own. In that fine time there were still five kids in our family, and we each in our turn served as occasional surrogate grandchildren for Mr. and Mrs. Yarnell. I'm old myself now, and I am beginning to understand why older folks like having younger folks around, even though younger folks often tend to see it as duty, rather than fun (or even leisure). They would invite us -- almost always only the youngest, but sometimes two of us -- to share supper with them, or a matinee. Mrs. Yarnell would even take us to church sometimes, which paid off in ice cream after, but was terrifying to a kid (like me, for instance) who had no inkling what the actual service was all about.
Anyway, like a lot of old guys (again, me, for instance), what Mr. Yarnell liked to do was tell stories. And what he liked to tell about most was baseball. He told his stories the way most people beyond a certain age do. Everything was simpler -- and therefore better -- in his day. These players today, he would intone, couldn't carry water for the likes of Warren Spahn or Bob Feller or Ted Williams and a lot of other guys I don't remember. Mr. Yarnell was a taciturn man, or at least he always seemed that way to my child's eye, but he fairly lit up when he talked about those days. I suspect now that he may have fudged a bit about his own minor league career, but who can really say? What I do know is that he was at his happiest when he was spinning those yarns that didn't really mean much to me. I was just hanging around hoping to get invited to supper, because that usually meant some of Nell's (Yes: Nell Yarnell) apple cobbler and vanilla ice cream.
Now, of course, anyone can come to a place like this and tell a story that anyone else can enjoy or ignore as they see fit. That's okay, as far as it goes, but even now I can hear Walter Yarnell grumbling about how story-telling was better in his day. And that makes me smile.
That's what reading this story made me think of. Not baseball,
but a guy who misses it, talking about baseball.
Good story.
This was my second reading of Blockade Billy and being familiar with the particulars gave me freer reign to listen, rather than to glean. It really is a story that you hear, more than read (or so it seems to me). I've always loved baseball and it is all wrapped up in a lot of my formative memories. Like the way men still wore hats -- not caps -- when I was a kid. And how, the first time I ever went to Fenway Park to watch Carl Yastrzemski and Rico Petrocelli and Tony Conigliaro, I didn't really see the game because whenever anything exciting happened, everybody stood up.
Better even than the games, though, were the stories about the games. We had these neighbors back home -- the Yarnells, let's say -- who were old. Grandparent old, to my young mind, and with no children (and hence, no grandchildren) of their own. In that fine time there were still five kids in our family, and we each in our turn served as occasional surrogate grandchildren for Mr. and Mrs. Yarnell. I'm old myself now, and I am beginning to understand why older folks like having younger folks around, even though younger folks often tend to see it as duty, rather than fun (or even leisure). They would invite us -- almost always only the youngest, but sometimes two of us -- to share supper with them, or a matinee. Mrs. Yarnell would even take us to church sometimes, which paid off in ice cream after, but was terrifying to a kid (like me, for instance) who had no inkling what the actual service was all about.
Anyway, like a lot of old guys (again, me, for instance), what Mr. Yarnell liked to do was tell stories. And what he liked to tell about most was baseball. He told his stories the way most people beyond a certain age do. Everything was simpler -- and therefore better -- in his day. These players today, he would intone, couldn't carry water for the likes of Warren Spahn or Bob Feller or Ted Williams and a lot of other guys I don't remember. Mr. Yarnell was a taciturn man, or at least he always seemed that way to my child's eye, but he fairly lit up when he talked about those days. I suspect now that he may have fudged a bit about his own minor league career, but who can really say? What I do know is that he was at his happiest when he was spinning those yarns that didn't really mean much to me. I was just hanging around hoping to get invited to supper, because that usually meant some of Nell's (Yes: Nell Yarnell) apple cobbler and vanilla ice cream.
Now, of course, anyone can come to a place like this and tell a story that anyone else can enjoy or ignore as they see fit. That's okay, as far as it goes, but even now I can hear Walter Yarnell grumbling about how story-telling was better in his day. And that makes me smile.
That's what reading this story made me think of. Not baseball,
or oddly crazed killers playing baseball
but a guy who misses it, talking about baseball.
Good story.
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