get up get up and get outta here!

I think of my organs as separate beasts all sharing the same prison cell body with eyes as peep holes through the bars. Memory or lack of one is not an organ. I guess it would be the action of one of those hammond b’s, but amazing how unpredictable it can be; amnesia and recall dueling side by side.

Phone numbers from the fourth grade I can recall digit by digit. That’s almost 30 years ago and yet I can feel the melting of my data base memory. Maybe it’s a timely fleeing; a slow disintegration of all I’ve gathered over the years; all the stimulation and what not; the fruition of Pol Pot’s horrific “Year Zero” Cambodia? We are living the 40th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon in neighboring Vietnam. PBS reminded me.

I was five years old at the time and don’t remember a damn thing except my first pack of baseball cards arriving in that 1975. I bought it at Winkie’s Variety store; same place I bought a gold-fish a few years later and then put the damn thing in a rice bowl because I didn’t have a fish tank. It died a few days later. That was the first and last pet I ever had; other than my organs.

I don’t remember any particular sensation freeing those cards from cramped wax packs, holding them in my hand and sliding them one by one; revealing faces, colors and scenes. Nope, I don’t remember a thing except Jim Brewer being in the pack. Maybe it’s a simple case of day glow psychedelic borders dominating the memory freight and fret boards in our brain or maybe it was his first baseman’s glove appearing bigger than his head. I got pulled into a whirl pool junky paradise and never really made it out.

This gives me hope and incentive to perform word searches and attend Bingo at the local church. Doctor’s say those types of activities are good for the memory and brain, but screw it. I can throw away my Ginkgo Bilbao. I’ll remember yesterday; no crutches needed because the Brewers won a game hot Yosemite barbecue grilling corn cob chomping damn Sam!!!

I always thought it sounded smarter to hit behind runners, bunt, wear a squint in my eyes and look pensive as I rolled dice to see how my strat-o-matic hit and run would turn out. It got me nowhere. The Brewers hit home runs. They win games. They can switch leagues and they did and it still won’t make a difference. Yeh, there was Davey Lopes and Phil Garner managing former Brewer teams and Tom Trebelhorn too, but those were just intermissions. The Brewers hit home runs.

Yeh, Roenicke was brought in as manager that loves to run; loves to stretch singles into doubles and yeh, the Brewer led the league in stolen bases a few years ago and Gomez and Segura and Braun when healthy all keep stealing, but it’s just a recreational activity between home runs. The Brewers hit home runs. The Brewers win games. Bambi’s Bombers Harvey’s Wallbangers. The one time trip to the World Series is a hard habit to break. 

I love Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati because I love whiffle ball. Ryan Braun hit an opposite field home run Tuesday and in his second at bat Wednesday he hit another opposite field home run and then in the 8th,he hit a grand slam-more of  blast to center field because a home run to any center field is a blast and so is the Brewers winning. That was Braun’s 4th home run of the year.  Adam Lind also hit his 4th of the year earlier in the game and Khris Davis hit his first. 

Contagious situation.
Here’s to the forest fire beginning right………………….now.
The Brewers are 5-17. 

grandma moses, postage stamps and letters to heaven

To live to be 101 years old causes some people to say no way, enough is enough. Maybe some people are born old. Everything always seems to be dying around them. They complain about telephone booths disappearing and wonder where all the coin slot laundry machines go and day dream about spontaneous encounters in back alley pool halls.

Who can blame them? Those were the good old days when individuals lived and struggled and died just like any other time roaming planet earth; including here and now, today 2014. Grandma Moses musta been like Quincy Jones; integrating current happenings into her activities and creations. Miles Davis wrote a hip hop album. That must be the ticket outta here.

No one really says, “I’m too old” anymore. Do they? Are those the same people who say, “Oh, I haven’t played chess in so long. I’m no good at it anyway.” Is that an old psych ploy? a woe is me strategy so no one expects a damn thing or flowers you with praise?

I wanna talk about pound cake because it’s old and so are people greeting you at a door with “What can I get you to drink?” Grandma Moses remembers and there was no Ginkgo biloba available at the pharmacy in her daze. You had to comb Chinese gardens and play chemist and do some extraction and sniffing.

G Moses is part of a pretty long tradition in America; baseball themes on postage stamps. And these are the dying days of the postage industry. Oh shit, here I go with my own swan song charade.

(In a whiny voice) “and there was a time when we would walk to the post office and pass by the dirty river and the root beer billboard painted on the side of the old Woolworth building. The nappy boys would be staring up Miss Lanphiers dress. She had that yellow spinner on; ankle high. Mmmmm, what flesh, so soft and shiny. Turn a choir boy into a daylight sinner.

There were many baseball players on stamps. I remember the Jackie Robins in 1982. It had a yellow background. That was the only one I saved, but according to the article, Generations:Baseball on U.S. Postage Stamps by Robert A. Moss.  there was Ruth, Gehrig, Greenberg, Sisler, Speaker, Trainer, Thorpe, and many more. There was  a mighty Casey in cartoon, anonymous little league and on and on.

I mailed many letter in my day and maybe that’s why I don’t remember most of those baseball stamps. Some sort of government conspiracy; amnesia to the masses, a Khmer Rouge mind freeze. History is officially over. We start at zero every damn day. That’s not a bad idea if we could get rid of the killing fields.

Apparently, there are still thousands of land mines still buried in the Cambodia ground not yet detonated. Anyway, focus focus, focus, on stamps and the ground in front of me. Stamps. Yes,  There were was the legendary stadium stamps issued in 2001. I’d like to get a sheet of those and past em all over a manilla envelope and stuff a letter to my grandpa in there. If he had a mailing address, he would dig the Forbes Field stamp.

I’d address it to heaven. Probably end up in a garbage can somewhere. Hopefully some kid goes dumpster diving and finds it, takes it home and gets a story form his own grandfather..

A Grandma Moses painting is included among the baseball stamps. It’s barely noticeable and kind of becomes a Where”s Waldo situation but I know it’s there. Why else would the postage powers include it as one of their baseball stamps?

So I keep looking and wind on down the dirt road. I bump into a horse and admire it’s hair; so long and black and shiny like a Japanese Geisha. People are dancing and screaming and blowing instruments and it’s annoying, but I keep walking  because I’m stuck inside this painting.

The mountains in the distance are encouraging and then  there it is; a bat and a ball and a glove and some kids in a merry-go-round formation or no formation at all; playing pickle? It can’t be. Looks more like a Gas house gang flip game.