by Bob Thompson
Beside me, a man in the stands summed it up simply: “Wow, that was a great catch!”
“That’s my son,” I said.
In the twenty-five or so years since that day, my son and I had continued to share a love of the fields of summer. On family vacations we’d managed to work in major league games from Fenway Park in Boston to Candlestick in San Francisco, ten or twelve in all. Now, despite his busy schedule, we still managed to catch a couple of Bats’ games every year at Louisville’s Slugger Field.
On a perfect late-summer evening we had great seats in a not-crowded row on the upper deck, above home plate and just below the corporate boxes. It was a time to relax, drink a malted beverage, share memories, and catch up on each other’s lives.
In the fifth inning, a right-handed batter fouled one up toward us. We followed its path well up over our heads till it was out of sight, onto the stadium roof behind us. From experience we knew that it was likely to bounce off the unseen parapet wall up there and roll back down the metal roof, so we stood in the narrow row with our backs to the playing field and waited. Judging from the angle of the ball, its spin and velocity, I moved right down the row and kept my eyes on the roof edge. It was an instinctive reaction, no thinking involved. In the blink of an eye my hand shot into the air and the ball snapped dead center into my palm, the impact pushing my sixty-five-year-old arm back and forcing my fingers to curl around it. I held my arm aloft for a moment, smiling, listening to the “Ooohhh!” from the nearby fans.
“Wow, that was a great catch,” a guy further down the row said admiringly.
As he surveyed the crowd around him, I heard my son say in a louder than normal voice, “That’s my dad.”
Running
Often it’s not the big thoughtful decisions that have the greatest impact, but the small spur-of-the-moment acts and accidents that have the most lasting effect: like attempting to flip the dishwasher door up with a bare foot, a neat trick that saved me from bending down to properly lift the door but left me hobbling around for a month with a broken toe, severely interrupting my life.
As I lay immobilized in the big recliner by the front window I saw one of my regular walking buddies go by on the street and I realized that aside from everyday movement from one spot to another, walking was an integral part of my spirit, my creative space, my fitness plan, and my self-image. I’ve often thought that a fitting way for me to leave this life would be on a long walk on a cold winter’s day, and I have not shied away from putting myself in those situations. Now all that was taken from me.
I went back into my memories. A few years ago, I had committed to walking 150 miles from Prestonsburg in the eastern Kentucky mountains to the state capitol of Frankfort, in February, the middle of winter, to emphasize the need for a sustainable future for environmentally and economically ravaged mountain communities.
It was for a good cause, a personal challenge, and a goal that needed extensive preparations. I knew that if it didn’t kill me, I would be better off for having done it. I also knew that to walk eighteen miles a day, five times my daily average, for days on end in hard winter, I needed to build my outdoor wardrobe and my stamina. I began training just after New Year’s.
After my regular morning three-lap, four-mile walk around the neighborhood with the buddy I’d just watched through my window, I would take a ten-minute break and then head out again, regardless of the weather, on a different route, a hilly four-mile walk down the south fork of Harrod’s Creek.
After a couple of weeks of this expanded regime, I started trying to figure out how to extract more cardio and muscular benefits without devoting the entire day to exercise. After all, I didn’t have the time or inclination to train for an eighteen-mile-a-day hike by walking eighteen miles a day!
Coming around a corner on Cambridge Drive, I made the snap decision to see how running felt, rationalizing that I could pack a lot more cardiovascular exercise into a much shorter time frame by upping my pace. I was near a stone mailbox and the next one was a couple of hundred yards away; I figured I’d run that distance. With no further consideration, I broke into a run. Instantly, I knew it was not good decision—not all body parts had retained memory of this activity and it rattled every bone in my body. In my bouncing head, I blamed inappropriate shoes for transforming each contact with the pavement into an electric jolt that rattled all the way to the top of my skull. My chest was heaving as the snow, sleet, and icy air knifed into my lungs. About halfway to the mailbox, I quickly adjusted my goal to a nearer destination; I’d run to that line of trees on someone’s property line. After what seemed like an eternity I made it to the trees and slowed back to a walk, gasping for air.
It was a short episode that thankfully didn’t seem to have any lasting consequences, and it reminded me that quickness was my forte, not distance running. A day or so later I told my doctor about the experience and he made me promise not to try that again. I took his advice and left the idea of running out of my training regime.
The long walk in February, undertaken with likeminded people sharing hardship in a just cause, was a life-changing experience. Due to my training, it had not caused me undue physical problems.
Almost a year later, I wrote a story about my experience on the walk and told it on the radio. In the lobby after the show, a man came up and introduced himself. He said, “You don’t know me but I’m a neighbor of yours and I just wanted you to know you are an inspiration to me. You changed my life.”
He explained that the year before, just after his company relocated him to Louisville, he had been caught in a dreaded corporate downsizing. He had felt depressed, old, irrelevant, and out of shape. Staring out his front window, contemplating what, if anything, remained of his life, he’d watched me, a guy older than he was, out there fighting it, running uphill into the face of the coldest, snowiest day of the year. It had inspired him. “If that guy could do it, so could I!” He’d joined a fitness club and started working out, swimming, and running. Now he was training for a mini-marathon in the spring. And it was all my doing. I had given him the inspiration for a new life.
Amazed, I thought for a moment and then said, “You live just past the corner on Cambridge in the house with a stone mailbox and a line of poplars at your property line, don’t you?”
He took a step back, looking stunned. “How’d you know that”?
“Oh, just a lucky guess.”
Flagger
The 150-mile walk for a “Sustainable Future for Eastern Kentucky” was to begin the next morning, and the dozen or so participants were gathered around the dining room of our overnight host facility for a final briefing.
In the serious and sober discussion, we went over what situations, human and environmental, that we were likely to encounter along the walk and how to handle them. When everyone acknowledged they understood all parts of the endeavor, volunteers were requested for each necessary responsibility. The everyday mundane tasks of shuttle driver, cook, kitchen and host facility cleanup would be rotated, but the more specialized and dangerous jobs like public interface, media spokesperson, and road flaggers were to be permanent.
In my mind I went over the jobs that might best suit me. I was not yet experienced enough with the group to do the public interface or media jobs, so that left the flagger jobs. I knew a license to march or parade was not required in most counties in Kentucky, but we were required to have flaggers properly equipped with bright-orange reflective vests and flags out in front and behind the group as we traversed public thoroughfares and intersections. I’ve never minded being out front in dangerous situations, but flaggers in their reflective vests were separated from the rest of the walkers. Being fifty or seventy-five yards out in front or behind would greatly lessen the comradery between old and new friends united in this social and environmental cause. I’d get to fraternize only during the hourly breaks every three or four miles and in the tired evenings at our ever-changing overnight locations.
Suddenly a distant mem
ory flashed in my mind: I was an eighteen-year-old college freshman in an Army Reserve Officer Training Corp uniform, armed with a reflective vest, an orange-coned flashlight, a whistle, and an army-issue walkie-talkie. My job was traffic control at intersection 1, the busiest of four intersections of the after-football-game traffic scrum at Murray State University. It was not my favorite job, but it earned money for my Pershing Rifles drill team and there was a certain elevated status in being picked for the important detail.
The traffic light above me was green, but I had just gotten a short radio call from the traffic control officer at his command post high up in a nearby campus dorm. From his lofty perch he had a view of all positions, including intersection 2, which was over a hill and out of my line of sight: “Hold lanes 1 and 3; release 2 and 4.” That was a signal for me to stop all traffic in my lane till further orders. Holding my light saber up, I stepped closer toward the middle of the street to head off a Cadillac that was going too fast and obviously intending to ignore me. The uncompliant driver swerved away toward the curb as I moved toward the center of the road. As I blew the whistle and waved my light saber frantically, he finally screeched to a stop, red-faced, yelling and cursing at me well before the power window came down and I could hear his diatribe. With the voice of an agitated drill sergeant, he informed me that I was not aware how much trouble I was in. He was a longtime season ticket holder, a prominent businessman, a generous athletic booster with deep ties to the president and Board of Regents. In short, he did not recognize my wet-behind-the-ears, fuzz-faced, toy-soldier authority to stop him.
I have never tolerated undeserved tongue lashings well, and from his red-faced glower it appeared that the pocket flask on the seat beside him had seen much use during the regrettable grid-iron loss. He looked to be spoiling for a fight, and in the heightened moment, I was willing to oblige; but he was going to have to come to me because I was not moving from in front of the car.
Just as I thought him ready to open the car door, I got the radio message: “Hold lanes 2 and 4; release 1 and 3.” That was my signal to let him go. “Now you can go, sir. Move out,” I commanded, stepping aside and waving him on with my saber.
His car did not move, a stubborn Taurus or Scorpio, no doubt. He was having a problem with any aspect of my authority, even if it was favorable to him. I moved from the front fender of the car toward the driver’s window to deliver my command from a closer distance while he spewed more expletives and pointed to the nowred light above us.
“That doesn’t matter,” I shouted. “I’m in control here!” For emphasis, I slapped the roof of his car above his head and blew my whistle into his ear. “Move!” I said. The cars behind him now added their horns in exhortation for him to go.
Ready to explode, he stomped on the accelerator and in a squeal of burning rubber shot off into the intersection … just in time to get T-boned in the driver’s side front fender by a pickup truck. It was ugly.
In the investigation that followed, I was cleared of any wrongdoing. The culprit was a dead battery in intersection 2’s radio set.
Back in the dining room at the pre-walk briefing, everyone was waiting for me to say what responsibility I was willing to take on. “Uh, orange is not my color. I think I’ll stick to kitchen cleanup.”
Searchlight
It was the last day of school at Oldham County’s Crestwood Elementary and everyone was in a great mood. With their regular teacher on extended maternity leave, I had been the only constant for this second-grade class, showing up once a week to help a nine-year-old with reading. Soon I was telling stories to the whole class and their parents were listening to me on the Kentucky Homefront radio show. Lately the kids had been tracking my progress with my daily text updates as I walked halfway across the state, from Prestonsburg to Frankfort, in the middle of winter for an environmental cause. I was their rock star. In my first appearance after the conclusion of the walk, they erupted in a collective “Bob!” when I came in the room. “Tell us a story. Please, please!”
In anticipation of this request, I had a couple of stories ready, but the teacher smiled and asked if instead of one of my stories, would I mind finishing a book she’d started reading them at the beginning of the week?
“Sure!” I settled into the rocking chair and the kids filled the floor at my feet. As the teacher led them in a review of what she’d read so far, I took the opportunity to read the dust cover. Stone Fox was the name of the book. “Four million copies sold, one of the top 100 children’s books ever,” “Wow, this should be good,” I thought to myself.
It was a gripping and fast-paced tale. Against all odds and with the family farm on the verge of being repossessed by the bank and Granddad’s life hanging in the balance, Searchlight the Wonder Dog and her owner Little Willie entered a ten-mile dogsled race. The first-place prize money was just enough to save the farm and heal Grandpa, but standing in the way to the happy ending was an unsympathetic and unbeaten five-dog Siberian husky team.
I was reading well, modulating my voice, controlling my breathing, scanning ahead for punctuation, making this story come alive for the adoring audience. Little Willie and Searchlight, much smaller and more agile than the heavy husky team and sled, took a substantial lead in the first twisting-turning phase of the course. They needed the lead because the last part of the race was across flat ground, giving the multi-dog-powered team a great advantage. As the race neared the end, with Searchlight and the huskies neck and neck, Searchlight gave a final heroic surge ten feet from the finish line and—I said the words before they registered—“Her heart burst. She died instantly, without pain.”
What the—! I looked up in shock at the wide-eyed, frozen little faces, then over at the teacher, who already had tears streaming down her face … she had known this was going to happen! That’s why she wanted me to finish the book—she couldn’t! I surveyed the audience as little eyes began to fill with tears and several started sobbing, even the boys. I went back to the page, reading with an unsteady, quavering voice, hoping things would get better. I struggled through the last few paragraphs to the end. Yes, Granddad and the farm were saved, but that was of little comfort to Searchlight and everybody here in the classroom.
The kids were a mess and so was I. For the rest of their lives, I’ll be the guy who killed Searchlight on the last day of school!
I promised myself never to read another book to a child that I had not read first and never, ever would I read anything about dying animals to a kid, no matter what the reviews said. If a teacher wants to teach about loss, then hell, I’ll buy a goldfish for the classroom. And I’ll write a book about it. Maybe it will sell 4 million copies.
Old Fart
I didn’t believe a word my old college buddy Larry was saying as we walked along the University of Louisville campus in preparation for the Corn Island Storytelling Festival. “You think that young girl was smiling at you, don’t you? I’ve got news for you. She was looking right through you. Both of us are invisible to her. To her you’re just a white-headed old fart. Even now, she has no memory of you—you’re just background noise!”
I was more than a little insulted. I might have white hair, but I’ve got a lot of it. I’m about the same size I was in college. I’m not taking any prescription drugs. I walk four miles a day, and I’ve been doing yoga for forty years. I’m still flexible. Of course she would remember me!
Larry’s stinging words were still bouncing around my head when my thirty-year-old son suggested that he and I take a trial membership at a local yoga studio. I thought that was a good idea. And when I saw the instructor, I thought it was a great idea! She was not one of those teachers who talks in a hushed voice on the other side of the room, so that a normal person, with millions of jet engine miles ringing in his ears, can’t possibly hear her instructions. She was a walk-around-smiling-personal-attention-wholesomely-hot-young-Jennifer-Lawrence kind of an instructor. I looked forward to her trips past me.
I was in my elemen
t. I might be sixty-something and white-haired, but I’d been doing yoga a long time. The instructor would be able to tell that. I would not be invisible to her—she would remember me!
The exercises were familiar: bending, stretching, and breathing, first in standing positions, then kneeling, sitting, and finally, at the end of the class, in the prone position. We were near the end of the hour-long class and in a position I called the “leg over.” Flat on my back with arms straight out to the side, I brought one knee up as close to my chest as I could and then extended my pointed toes up toward the ceiling. Finally, I lowered the leg across my body, trying to touch the opposite hand. I hadn’t done this one in a while, and it put me in a bit of a strain.
Concentrating on the ceiling and my compressed internal organs, I did not feel it coming. Just as the instructor’s smiling face came into view overhead, something in me let go. It was a pants-puffing, buck-snorting trouser trumpet that rolled across the room and rattled the mirrors on the wall.
Holy cow! Where had that come from? In horror I stared up at the instructor. To her credit, she didn’t miss a beat in her soft monologue, but her smile did get appreciably wider. In that instant I knew that I had been right. I was not invisible, and this girl was assuredly going to remember me. But Larry had been right also. Her memories of me would likely include the words old and fart.
The Call
I had called the meeting, a long-weekend mountain retreat with my three best buddies, men I had walked the greatest distance with on the path of my life, but who sadly did not all know one another. I believed that with this much abstract karma coming together, a spontaneous adventure was bound to break out. In my hyping of the gathering, I told them, “I guarantee it’ll be an adventure. I promise!” It was a congress of old crows, a parliament of ornery owls, an aerie of activists, a tribal council of seasoned road warriors.