There Used to Be a Ballpark

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Received a text with a couple of photos attached on Thanksgiving morning.

My buddy Jeff attached the photos of the old campsite where we spent a lot of our weekend days and nights when we were between the ages of 16 and 22 or so.

That's the hoop.

There was also a shot of some names carved in a tree where the girls raided the site and wrote messages to us.

Damn! No girls allowed!!

Jeff was taking his grandson back to the campsite to show him around!

Yeah.

Grandson!!

And it's a strange thing about photos.

Some of them are worth a million words.

I immediately had about eleven memories pop into my head.

That site was the first place where I drank beer.

Number 11...

That was a place where I heard about one of my buddies hook-up with his first girlfriend. I was shocked I tell you!

We used to play hide and seek in the woods.

We had b.b. gun wars.

(I still have a small mark on my right wrist where Lauber shot me).

I recalled childhood buddy Dan Alff being back there and tossing rocks at a streetlight.

(Dan never made it to adulthood as he died in an accident - he was alive in my memory).

The food we ate!

We'd have buffet breakfasts and four-course dinners.

There was always someone standing in front of the pot-bellied stove.

And we laughed.

When someone was down in the dumps the others would jump on him:

"Al feels neglected!"

We joked about getting the gout if we didn't cook the chicken just right.

About half the guys who went camping back then do have the gout now...maybe there was something to it!

The photo didn't make me sad...quite the opposite...it made me realize how special my teenage years were.

I loved all of those guys.

And then I thought about Jeffy's grandson.

The property is still in the family.

Perhaps 15 years from now there will be kids back in that spot again.

And the hoop will be re-attached, and the fire pit will be burning again.

And the laughs will echo through the trees to the church and all through those woods.

And the ballpark will be alive again.

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