National Treasures

by Ryan McCord



  National Treasures

  by Ryan McCord

  Copyright 2011 Ryan McCord

  CHAPTER 1 THE DREAMERS

  With Florida’s calm April skies cloaked behind a cloud formation as far as the eye could see, NASA is about to launch a rocket carrying a team of astronauts into orbit.

  In Brevard, about 20 miles north of the launch site, 28-year-old pals James McEwing and Gerry Galloway idle themselves in lawn chairs next to a pond. In order to help pass the time, they engage in a brief discussion concerning health care reform in the United States.

  Directly behind them is James’s white Mazda pickup. The canopy-capped bed of the vehicle primarily functions as a shelter for the nomad at this stage of his life. James is a journalist by trade; unaffiliated but aimed to build a career out of writing about the world of sports.

  On the other side of the pickup is a chain-linked fence with a baseball field behind it. The very same fence that Gerry, eight hours from now, will be working in front of with a baseball glove, wearing a Washington Presidents uniform. Gerry is an affiliated minor league baseball player with hopes of making it to the Big Leagues some day. This marks the fifth spring training he has participated in with the organization.

  James completes his stand on the health care conversation.

  “For 40 years we have been voting nothing but false prophets into major political office, and will probably continue to do so for the next 40. So all I’m asking is, if they’re going to continue to: A.) Work us to death B.) Feed us poison C.) Take our money and D.) Stress us out; then we should be getting some kind of annual, remedial thank you in return.

  “For years I have been teetering the hemorrhoid line because I can’t afford quality toilet paper, let alone running water. Is the right to a bi-annual, 5-minute examination too much to ask?”

  These two educated Americans are closing in on their 30’s, respectively. Neither one of them have the slightest clue where they will be living or working a year from today, let alone next week when training camp breaks. The inevitable final boarding call for the flight back to “Settlesville” is being made by now, isn’t it?

  “We can’t afford it,” Gerry starts, taking a brief time out from wolfing down host family evening leftovers of fish sticks with ketchup. “So the question is…if a certain empire, let’s say the United States of America…shows serious signs of crumbling…would the rest of the world just go on?

  “I can’t imagine us, the King of the World, allowing that to happen.”

  Just in the nick of time, one of those catchy Jimmy Buffett tunes begins to play on the truck’s satellite radio, sending a cheap wave of fun into the air.

  James shrugged, “I’ll let you know when I’m teaching Eng-rish in tucked away Korea.” He reels in his bass fishing line while bobbing his head along with the tune.

  Like many young and untested Americans certain of grabbing hold of their butterfly ambitions, James has had a difficult time finding an employer and consequently a consistent lifestyle he can anchor to. It doesn’t help when the investment of a college degree has yet to return enough to purchase a loaf of Wonder Bread. He’s searched the web high and low for entry-level jobs in his respective field of print journalism, and must have applied for nearly 500 openings since earning his BA from Washington State University in his hometown of Pullman.

  His stubbornness to succeed is a byproduct of The McEwing family Mission Statement growing up. You’ve probably heard it before, as it goes something like: You can do anything you put your mind to.

  Until the other day, thanks to the Mission Statement, James’ drive was fueled by the underpinnings of the following self-centered life goals: 1. Become a Manhattan-based sportswriter someday and 2. date super models and A-list actresses.

  If only James’ parents, anthropology professors at WSU, had known that their adapted Mission Statement was actually formulated by a group of people they happened to be separated a full seven degrees from. It all started during the early 80’s, on a 5th of May in fact, halfway through an eight-ball gathering hosted by a collaboration of part-time community college students and full-time pizza delivery drivers somewhere in upstate New York. A high school drop out turned future motivational speaker happened to be in attendance. He couldn’t sleep or eat pizza for two nights. He ended up betting his career on the idea, and now he is sipping pina coladas made by one of his young wives, on his own tropical island.

  James finally finished school at Wazzu (because his tuition was free, he managed to milk his junior and senior years out of a single Bush term), and took the first job that he was offered: a carpenter’s assistant for the summer. That lasted three years before he managed to save enough, thanks to Gerry’s wisdom that he filed away (and living with his parents for 27 years) and decided to take on the role of entrepreneur-in Las Vegas.

  Gerry had been telling James for years that in an economy hiring more computers and Chinese youth than their own countrymen, creativity that allures the masses is where the occupational advantages await.

  So James moved to Vegas in order to write a sports gambling blog, where he would bet on sporting events for 365 days, for an average wager of $5 a day, for an entire year-with one simple goal: finish ahead of the house. The problem behind this move was that Sin City was already dealing with the second highest unemployment rate, per capita, in the country. James arrived with only $2,000 in overhead, no job, no place to live, knowing nobody.

  The blog, infused by the intricacies that grew to define his daily plight, was original and fun to read. It probably could have become commercially successful had it lasted 365 days, but James couldn’t even get a job waiting tables. Financially strapped, the project lasted only a few months. He managed to leave Vegas feeling vindicated as a sports writer, only to fall victim to bad luck and poor timing.

  So out of money, with no job, now it was time for James to go back home and get a job working at the University. That would have been the conservative thing to do. James’ parents thought it was the only thing to do. Just a few phone calls had to be made and James probably could have landed any full time job opening he was even the least bit qualified for.

  But James was still wrestling with a psychological dysfunction far more detrimental than any of his lofty career goals would suggest: he loathed the idea of settling. And furthermore, the only thing he loathes more than settling, is settling back home. James’ longtime attitude towards having the luxury of growing up within a culture riding high on free enterprise would suggest that settling back home is the downright antithesis of the Mission Statement.

  So after Vegas fell through, James decided to utilize his family connections for a quick bundle of cash in the private sector, via the Alaskan fishing industry. James landed an assembly line job in a salmon processing plant during the summer migration run, in Bristol Bay, AK. James would work 16-hour shifts, everyday, for six weeks straight. No cocktail hour. No beaches. No days off. Most of the time he cleaned the guts out of belly sliced salmon with a shank spoon. Fish after fish after fish, James spooned out guts. He spooned out so many guts that summer he was even dreaming about cleaning fish guts.

  On his last night in Alaska, James drank a lot of beer. He drank like a fish. He had pocketed around $4,000 for that six-week period. Everybody was celebrating that night. Everybody had graduated from a sort of twisted intensive labor camp. There was Ben from Duluth, Jenson from Arizona, Carlo from Guadalajara, Zach from Sacramento, the trio from Boston, and Big Game James from Pullman. That night of celebration, nobody had a care in the world. After all, they all had acquired short-term financial freedom. They were all best of chums that last night. They worked, ate, shared cigs, and slept within three feet of each other for half a su
mmer. In the end, with the exception of the Boston boys, they will never see or speak to one another other again.

  James did a lot of thinking while he was gutting fish. He decided by that second week in Alaska, that when it was all over, it was time to attempt a permanent move to New York City. This was the right time in his life to take his sports writing talents to the media capital of the world. He had a dependable car. He had a degree. He had a body of writing work he was proud to show to potential employers.

  James went on to pedal The New York Daily News, part time, in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan at the corner of 168th and Broadway. This was as close as he could get in becoming a sports writer for a New York based newspaper.

  Theoretically, James was nothing more than a water boy for The Daily News. He figured that by being employed by the media outlet, it would keep him in the company’s internal employment loop.

  But James’s circulation advisor informed him that he was nothing more than an independent contractor for the company, and therefore, he would not be receiving any kind of internal employment information. This did not completely send James’s morale into a tailspin, however, because he did need the money and he was still riding the emotional high of living in The Big City for the first time. At $40.07 a week, The Daily News gig kept him busy for three weekday mornings.

  James witnessed a lot of strange human behavior during his Daily News tenure on the streets. He saw schizos try to court pigeons for spare change. He saw schizos try to catch house flies in January. He even saw schizos help themselves to handfuls of snow for breakfast. He saw them count those obtuse black spots on every sidewalk panel nearby. He even saw schizos sparring with nobody but the space in front of them.

  Incidentally, many of these same guys once sought the very same job at the Daily News that James had occupied.

  What separated James from the rag tag crew of local street people was the ability to count change. The supervisor presented each individual the same hypothetical scenario: give the vendor one dollar for one newspaper. The newspaper costs 50 cents. Three guys put the dollar in their pocket, one of them replied, “God Bless you.” Another guy tried to buy a toothpick from the supervisor with the dollar. And another guy gave a quarter back to the supervisor, pocketed the other quarter, and proceeded to walk away with the newspaper mumbling, “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swang. Do wop-dee bop, do wop-dee bop.”

  James’s primary means of income came by the way of Arastar: a company that manages a variety of local business needs, including managing the hygiene duties of professional work uniforms. For 18 hours and $125 a week, James would assist the driver in picking up and dropping off laundry for local hospitals, restaurants, etc.

  In order to afford living in The Big Apple, James figured he had to make at least $200 a week. Thanks to Junior, a Dominican-extracted co-worker at Arastar, James learned of an opening for weekend help at nearby Heavyweights Moving Company. He took it with little muse.

  This job proved to be very dangerous, though. Often times, the moving crew had to deliver office equipment like a one piece, 15-foot long filing cabinet. How do you fit a 15-foot long horizontal filing cabinet that needs to be dropped off at the 15th floor, through an elevator? You don’t. You drop the elevator to the basement and slide the cabinet through the hallow elevator doorway on the first floor until it rests secured by two men already standing on top of the elevator itself. The man inside the elevator presses the 14th floor button. You reverse the process from the 15th floor elevator door, and sign here, please. James did not have to ride the elevator the first time, as the experienced workers took care of that. But there seemed to be at least one new guy every other weekend. Within a month’s time, James would be one of the senior workers qualified to ride the elevator. By James’ eighth weekend on the job, his supervisor, Raul, looks at him apprehensively and quips, “Que onda?”

  James knows what he’s getting at, but plays the communication barrier card and shrugs in coy.

  “Your turn, primo,” Raul smiled.

  So James was working seven days a week in order to make ends meet. He rented a room in the Kew Gardens district of Queens. People in Washington Heights would look at him like he was a two-headed monster and ask, “Why are you working here and living all the way over in Queens?” To James, the answer was simple: for $600 a month, utilities and a window included, it was all he could afford at the time he moved to New York. And if people only knew just how pristine the neighborhood of Kew Gardens really was. James never had to worry about locking the door every waking second. Most forms of lowlifes were non-existent. The neighborhood presented all the New York bachelor staples with just a stone’s throw away from the apartment: a laundromat, a few bars, a liquor store, a diner, a bakery or two, a grocery store, Chinese food, a delicatessen, a coffee shop, a movie theater, a newspaper stand and an old world pizza parlor.

  James loved Queens. By comparison, however, he only liked his apartment, in which he shared with two single women around his age.

  “They’re cat ladies,” James would often bemoan.

  People looked at James like he was inventing a new cultural stereotype or something, and often responded with, “What do you mean?”

  Most of the straight males he spoke to on this subject simply could not justify why he’s so opposed to sleeping with at least one of them.

  “I mean they are nice girls and everything, but there is a reason why they are single, and nobody will have the heart to tell them its because guys don’t care for cats,” James would lobby.

  “If you have one, fine. But that’s it! You can’t have four or five cats lying around a tiny apartment. These are animals that crap inside.

  “And think about this: the cats sleep in bed with the chick. If you’re the guy who is going to sleep with one of them, prepare to cough up hairballs the next morning courtesy of Trinka, the one who likes to scratch.”

  James is allergic to cats as well, which made matters a little socially awkward around the apartment. But because he was competing with a few other prospective tenants when applying for the room itself, he never told his roommates this. He just knew that because the neighborhood was perceptibly flawless, and the rent was affordable, he had to live there and he was willing to deal with the elements for it. He had a dream to be a sports writer in New York after all, and in order to realize your dreams you have to sacrifice and suffer. What made the situation awkward at home was the fact that James never kept the door open in his room. Not even cracked. He actually went out of his way to make sure it was shut even when he stepped out to use the restroom. To his roommates, this was perceived as sort of an antisocial vibe. If the ladies had actually known that James was allergic to cats, the perception could have been one of understanding, ultimately.

  James was never home during the day, and by the time he got home at night, he was often ready to relax and fall asleep. In other words, he rarely spoke to his roommates. His eyes began to water, and nose began to itch just seconds after entering the apartment.

  So by the time his lease was up in February, the roommates respectfully asked James if he could find somewhere else to live. The landlord, who was a friend of a friend to one of the roommates, informed James that he would receive his security deposit back, but assured him that he would not be granted another six-month lease. He tried to explain the circumstances under which he was living, but by then it was too late. The roommates, since they didn’t know him very well, still felt mildly insulted and just viewed his explanation as an excuse to veil an antisocial nature.

  James packed up his car then took the subway to the Museum of Natural History, his favorite think tank. After three hours of wandering, gazing, marveling and mulling, he decided it was time to rest in front of the Big Horn Sheep exhibit. He wanted to call home, but not until he gave his spirits a jolt, which always seems to happen after chatting with Gerry. Gerry really valued talking to James about being a professional bas
eball player. James followed Gerry’s career and often went out of his way to see him play on multiple occasions.

  Here’s a look into that conversation, in summation:

  Gerry: (Answers by whistling their college fight song.) Big Game James! How’s the Big Grapple?

  James: I got my health. I’m logging 40 hours a week. I can afford a monthly subway pass. Who can ask for more?

  Gerry: Sad to say, I know folks far better off financially than you are, yet I can’t stand to be around them. Nothing’s ever good enough for some people, you know?

  James: I hear that.

  Gerry: You’ve been reading and writing a lot?

  James: Reading more than ever, since I’m commuting roughly two hours a day.

  Gerry: I’m sure it’s worth it.

  James: (facetiously) Oh, I pinch myself all the time! But I called because I wanted to get an update from you, man. These are big days, huh?

  Gerry: Yeah you’re right about that. Well we don’t start (Spring Training) for a week. But I love getting down here early. Working on my swing. Taking some jee-bers at first. Flies in right. Getting on the clubby’s good side and all. I’m in the best shape of my life, without question. Man, I wish you were here to experience this!

  James: Well that’s another thing I wanted to talk to you about. I got a few extra bucks recently and I was thinking about road-tripping for a week down there.

  Gerry: What about work?

  James: I’m in the middle of a job transition for my weekly stuff. I already got someone to cover my weekend gig for me.

  Gerry: Big Game! When can you be here?

  At this point, practicality now seems to have manifested its way through the portrait in James’ destiny of distaste. He drove down to Florida with about $4,000 to his name, conscience ringing. Hippies aside, when you go on a road trip with an open-ended ticket and imminent decisions about your future to make, you take advantage of the time you have alone with some jazz and the earth’s energy to help inspire an honest blueprint for the next move. But all James could think about was how he could avoid the inevitable without breaking the bank. But he knew he had no choice. The long-term security is ripe for the picking. He knew where he had to go once his stay in spring training was over: back home to Pullman, the only town in America that he did not enjoy being a stranger in.

  In contrast to James’ own objections with Pullman, Gerry Galloway has no qualms with permanently moving back to eastern Washington someday. He would always contend, “You can live a pretty good life being Joe Blow in the Great Northwest.”

  Most of Gerry’s cherished early adulthood experiences can be attributed to his membership with the most envied of fraternities that God could ever design for men: for he is a professional baseball player.

  So when he heard Gerry say this, James figured that the insulated version of the real world experience that pro baseball offers must have blurred his friends' sense of reality.

  However, Gerry Galloway is fully conscious of just how fortunate his position in life is. His ultimate goal is to make it to the Big Leagues, of course. But at this point, embarking on his fifth minor league season, he felt like God already welcomed him into the Utopian Casino's high rollers club for an extended stay. This is the culture that friends and family members can get a taste of, but can never fully understand. How is it that grown men can still be infatuated with a culture that’s essentially a grownup treehouse with a keg-erator and a Pizza Hut account? What these guys have that Hugh Hefner doesn't is the opportunity to perform in front of thousands. The rest, even if you're making the rookie minimum, just takes care of itself.

  One of the problem’s with Gerry’s professional situation is that he has never been rewarded any discretionary income. He could see the richest, play with the richest, and break balls with the richest; but the chances that he could ever become one of the richest were about as likely as Mitt Romney being able to recall the last time he washed the dishes.

  So just how long can someone in Gerry’s position manage to lounge around this wing of the casino?

  A career .230 hitter, Gerry managed to make it this long in the game because he possesses size (6’3”, 220 lbs.), raw power (70 career homeruns) to go along with an above average athletic ability that enabled him to platoon between first base and right field. But he also owned a quality so indispensable to success in life, let alone baseball: everybody liked him.

  And to the delight of scouts, as a first baseman, Gerry is also a true lefty; meaning he throws and swings from the same direction alike. This is an advantage that works in his favor offensively, as most pitchers are right handed, and statistically, left-handed hitters fare against right-handed pitchers with greater success.

  Defense is Gerry’s forte. He commits few errors a season and has saved many throwing errors.

  If James were to approach one of Gerry’s coaches for an interview about his friend, and asked him for a no-bull prognostication of his baseball fate, the answer would probably go something like this:

  “Gerry has the athletic makeup that most young men admire-whether your a professional athlete or not. Coaches like him because he hustles and always plays through pain. Performance wise, however, what he is missing is the “It” factor. He’s missing that indescribable, God given quality that just separates the Big League ballplayer from the average pro. For a guy whose elevator certainly goes to the top on the field of life, the baseball version of that elevator, call it competitive IQ, continues to make his talents take the stairs.”

  Playing during the wake of the steroid era in professional baseball, the opportunity to consume performance enhancers as part of Gerry’s workout regimen has always been just a phone call away. Already owning an all-natural axman physique to go along with the aforementioned power and athleticism, Gerry would have been the quintessential lab rat for steroids.

  But because Gerry is a man of integrity, steroids were never really an option. Some players don’t even consider taking steroids because they really are that lazy or just don’t care about the game enough. Then there are guys like Gerry, who are just plain frightened by the idea.

  “If you’re going to take ‘roids, be prepared to dodge bullets along the way,” Gerry will insist. “First of all, you’re living a lie. For me, that would be like knowing I am going to get shot at any day.

  “Secondly, you have to find a way to pass the drug tests, which represents a second gunman. And if you get caught, you lose an element of respect from everyone you associate yourself with.

  “That’s called bleeding. But nobody feels obligated to help you. Tough love. Good riddance, whatever.

  “And what happens if you do get to The Show? Now that you are there, are you just going to throw the ‘roids in the storm drain and dust off your hands like you aren’t going to need them anymore?

  “You can sugar coat it all you want. I’m sure there are guys out there with convincing takes on why the choice to take steroids is not as immoral as the majority of the hypocritical public wants you to believe.

  “But speaking as a God-fearing professional who doesn’t want to disappoint my family…I can’t help but conclude that taking ‘roids is cheating.”

  Let’s pretend that Gerry had decided to make that deal with the devil. The formula for success is not as complicated as everyone makes it out to be: His all around muscle strength would improve dramatically, which would allow him to swing the biggest, heaviest bat on the market. The bigger the barrel on the bat, the chances of putting the heart of that barrel on the sweet spot of the ball increase significantly. To sum it up: heart of barrel + sweet spot of baseball = more extra base hits. After that first ball goes over the fence that never used to get over before, the snowball of bravado begins to roll. Matter has caught up to the mind. A monster on the field is conceived.

  If one can stay healthy, and can somehow manage to fool the drug tests, steroids are a sure fire ticket to The Show.

  Gerry’s humility is a d
irect byproduct that dates back from the adversity he faced his sophomore and junior years in college. He spent his sophomore season in the penthouse. In contrast, his junior year was one that, for a while, he loathed the thought of actually going to the park at all.

  As a sophomore, Gerry won the Pac-10 Player of the Year. However, upon entering his junior season, coaches in the league figured out how to pitch to him by not throwing any strikes. He struggled mightily with this concept. Fifteen games into the

  season saw Gerry batting just .190 with one homerun and 40 strikeouts. His career nearly ended when the head coach considered permanently removing him from the team after punching the dugout wall. Gerry broke his hand and subsequently screamed an obscenity that made everyone in the crowd feel violated. Playing wise, his season was over. Gerry’s coach assured him that if he did not stop taking the game so seriously, that he would not return for his senior season.

  This turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to Gerry. Instead of turning into a troubled Hitchcock character, he decided to take advantage of his inactivity by refocusing. He fell in love of the game once more. He did not manage to renovate his approach to the game of baseball by himself, however. In fact, he had help from the unlikeliest of sources. This source happened to be the baseball team’s beat reporter for the school newspaper: James McEwing.

  Having the opportunity to cover the Cougar baseball team exclusively, James had more access to the players than just about anyone else in the local media. Gerry was always James’ favorite to interview during their sophomore year, because the slugger was always good for a memorable quote or two as he was performing and the team was winning.

  But because Gerry was struggling so mightily at the plate his junior year, and the team suffering without their best RBI man, James’ articles simply lost some of its verve and flavor that he and his editors were used to. The beat had become flat and, because the losses were piling up for Wazzu, almost trivial as well.

  Now that Gerry was going to be out for the season, James decided to make a pitch for a running feature. He wanted to shadow the falling star turned injured player and document the art behind his comeback.

  The editors were certainly okay with it, but they assumed they were sending James on a fool’s errand, thinking Gerry would never cooperate.

  Gerry was a man who trusted his instincts, and having dealt with James on a professional level, and in some cases, recreational level, he always viewed the reporter also as a man of integrity with an above average sports IQ. He also admired his work as a writer.

  Growing up modestly on a wheat farm, Gerry is shrewd and atypically wise beyond his years. He welcomed James’ pitch with open arms not because he relished the attention, but because he knew that having a media watchdog would work in his favor as a motivational technique of sorts. He knew he had bottomed out his baseball career before it even got off the ground. Changes had to be made.

  The series of articles turned out to be a Godsend for the two. James won a pair of local newspaper awards given to students who display excellence in collegiate reporting. And once the cast came off, Gerry hit the weight room and the books harder than ever before. To borrow a line from Sinatra, “It was a very good year.”

  Early the next fall, James informed his editors that he was giving up the coveted baseball beat for his senior year. Having befriended Gerry and a handful of his teammates, he wanted to squash any possibility for the conflict of interest factor that lingered at times.

  He didn’t want to be mandated any longer to guys like Himmy Jurst, the centerfielder and Gerry’s roommate from Alabama. One time, while smoking grass before heading off to Entomology 101 together, Himmy frankly said to James, “Hey Wolf Blitzer, this is what off the record smells like, you hear me!”

  The ballplayers respected this move, further developing a newfound respect for James and eventually accepting him a part of their inner circle. James spent most of his Saturday nights attending a campus firmament known as the Baseball House, which is like a fraternity, only the tenants happened to be 10 or so ballplayers instead of fraternity members. And if there was any advantage ballplayers had on frat boys, it was that they each one of them happened to know at least 20 different uber-attractive coeds who were only partially psychopathic.

  The close friendship between James and Gerry was then forever born.

  After graduation, Gerry went on to sign with the Presidents, and has been playing minor league ball with them ever since.

  The rocket is now thousands of feet high, slicing its way through the clouds and straight towards the moon. The exhaust sounds something like a male lion continuously purring in surround sound.

  During the event, both James and Gerry’s minds will wander a little-the same way listening to certain music or exercising on a treadmill can do to you. James thinks about what he is going to eat for breakfast tomorrow, since he is running low on energy bars and wants to save a few for the inevitable cross-country trip back to Washington state. Gerry thinks about his opponent tomorrow, the Travelers, and if he will have to face that left-handed phenom of theirs who gave him fits last week by simply working both edges of the plate for strikes with apparent ease.

  “If I do see that sonofabitch, I wonder if he’ll even show me the deuce?” he thought. “Or will he remember how he got me out last time?

  “That catcher of his was a real tool, too.”

  Because they couldn’t see much, it was hard for James and Gerry to act in deference to one of mankind’s truly awesome accomplishments.

  Gerry is getting anxious to get to sleep.

  “One more beer, c’mon,” James lobbies.

  “You’re a bad influence,” Gerry replied dryly. “This is the Bible Belt.”

  That triggers an organic, short belly laugh from James.

  “It’s 12 ounces of canned beer; it will only take seven minutes. We could both use the nightcap after that frenzy.”

  Initially, James wanted to enjoy a beer and a cigarette with Gerry and spark up a quick conversation concerning his friend’s own projection, in regards to where he might be playing in a few days when camp ultimately breaks.

  For a guy like Gerry, whom the franchise has nothing invested with but hope itself, Spring Training is one long, grueling tryout. When James thought about that, he called himself an audible and decided it was best to talk to Gerry about it tomorrow instead. James made a conscious effort not to talk baseball with Gerry once he finished for the day. He took pride in playing the role of a friend who could help him take his mind off of it, being that he’s there. That’s why the two option to spend most of their free time bass fishing in local ponds with a small aluminum boat borrowed from one of Gerry’s neighbors. They often talked about women, the good ‘ol days, music, movies, sports, and what was good and bad about America at the time.

  To cap this night, the two drank their can of beer, listened to sports radio a little, then James drove Gerry down the road two and half miles to his volunteer host family’s residence. Then James came right back to the baseball complex, brushed his teeth and rinsed with bottled water he had in the bed. He set his cell phone alarm for the usual 6:00 am, locked the canopy by tying a red electrical wire from the handle to a nearby latch on the bed of the truck, then falls asleep peacefully knowing he was going to spend another day watching professional baseball in the sun.