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.
brewers baseball and things 