Wednesday's Word: Introspective

Bonus word: Pisces.

Augie often chews his lip when deep in concentration, and if you ask a question he may choose not to answer. He's probably processing everything that has happened recently, which would account for his astonishing recall. Long silences are a habit we share, a fact I attribute (with a straight face) to our both being Pisces. To one born under the sign of the fish, getting lost in thought can feel like swimming to the bottom of the sea. Often we just sit together holding hands, thinking our separate thoughts until we swim back to the surface.

July 4, 1985: Fireworks

During my single years, I gravitated to Fourth of July festivals and to art fairs, parades, outdoor concerts, etc. If friends were available, I’d go with them; other times I went alone. Sometimes I thought it might be more fun if I had a special guy to share the experience.



So in 1985, with just such a man in my life, I suggested we go to Taste of Minnesota, a festival on the state capitol grounds featuring food, music, and fireworks. We went early and spread our blanket in a good spot. The food wasn’t wonderful, but people-watching was. As it grew dark, the Minnesota Orchestra played classics…1812 Overture, Stars and Stripes Forever, something by Aaron Copeland…all stirring and beautiful and perfectly suited to the occasion. If memory serves, they ended with the 1812 and started the fireworks just then. Huge chrysanthemums and fountains filled the sky overhead, and we oohed and aahed with the rest of the crowd. The finale might have been romantic, except that the skies opened up. Suddenly thousands of people were bumping and jostling, hoping to get out of the rain, hurrying in different directions toward their cars. We rushed, too, until we recognized the futility: first, we were already soaked, and second, once we got into the car and pointed toward the bottled-up freeway it would be stop-and-go traffic for an hour.

That’s when I understood why Peter didn’t like big, crowded festivals. We became a family in search of accessible fireworks. (And yes, I'm breaking with the tradition of my "25 years" stories by acknowledging the obvious: we are together, and celebrating the 25th anniversary of our courtship and marriage.)

We found a more distant vantage point for the Taste show—a church parking lot at the top of a ridge overlooking downtown. But a year later, the shrubs on the ridge had grown tall, blocking much of our view, and the mosquitoes were so thick we left early. In 1988, on the return leg of a family trip to Boston, we watched fireworks with my college friend Kathy and her family in Grafton, Wisconsin. And for a few years we headed over to the east bank of the University of Minnesota, sat on a hillside, doused ourselves with Avon Skin-So-Soft (original formula, an excellent mosquito repellent), ate fresh cherries, and watched the fireworks set off at the state fairgrounds. We had that down pat, until they cancelled the show.

In 1993, we bought season tickets to the new St. Paul Saints. And guess what? They have fireworks three times every season: Memorial Day, Independence Day, and the final game of the year. And fireworks at the Saints means huge shells, lots of them, and a couple of false finales so good than when the real finale comes, you find yourself laughing because it’s so fabulous and because you’d been silly enough to think the show was over 10 or 15 minutes earlier.

Yes, we’ll be together tonight, watching from our first-row seats, wiping ash off our faces if the breeze blows in from right field. We’ll be wishing the grandkids could stay up late enough to join us. We’ll be saluting the flag and humming the patriotic tunes because we learned during the 1960s that it’s not a good thing for liberals to abandon the symbols of patriotism to the right. And we’ll be reveling in the fact that this comfortable life we’ve built together includes fabulous fireworks two miles from home.
 

Wednesday's Word: July

Men of York (Maine) Calendar 2010

...And Terwilliger Bunts Another One!

You know that game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon? If you played that game with Wayne Terwilliger, I'm pretty sure you'd only need three or four degrees to reach every person who played, coached, or managed in baseball from 1880 until, say, 2080.

Twig, who is our good friend (I wrote recently about his Marine service), played 12 seasons for major and minor league teams, and has been a coach or manager for 50 years since.

Wayne Terwilliger

The man is still in a baseball uniform, in his 62nd season of professional ball. I believe nobody else who is currently active has been at it as long as Twig. It hasn't been 62 consecutive years--he ruined the streak when he "retired" for a year to manage the family tavern in Michigan. As the next season approached, he jumped at the chance to get back into the game.

The Minnesota Twins announced his retirement in 1994 and put on a celebration (in fact they were pushing him out). But instead of relaxing in the fishing boat presented to him by Kirby Puckett, Kent Herbek and other players, he turned up as first-base coach for the St. Paul Saints in '95. He retired from the Saints in 2002 to move to Texas, and promptly took the job of managing the Ft. Worth Cats. In 2005, after leading the team to the league championship and being named Manager of the Year, he retired again--as manager, that is. He was immediately hired back as a coach.

Twig was a teammate of Jackie Robinson, hit a single off Satchel Paige, was on the Dodger bench when Bobby Thomson hit "the shot heard 'round the world," coached four years with Ted Williams when Ted managed the Washington Senators (who became the Texas Rangers), won the World Series twice as a coach of the Minnesota Twins, taught Chuck Knoblauch to play second base so well that Chuck became American League Rookie of the Year... and so much more. As a young player, Twig's managers included Frankie Frisch "the Fordham Flash," whose feisty play made a big impact in the majors straight out of college beginning in 1919. As a manager and coach, he has influenced players who not only had an impact on the game but have themselves become coaches. Young players talk not just about his grasp of the fundamentals of infield play but of his enthusiasm and hustle.

I haven't even begun to tell you all the great stories about him, but you can find some of them here. It's the site I developed while Peter and I were helping him write his book, Terwilliger Bunts One.* We became friends while he coached for the Saints, and we persuaded Wayne and his wife, Lin, that his stories would made a wonderful book. He allowed us to help him write it, and it's a labor of love of which we are very proud.

Today Wayne Terwilliger turns 85. He says this is his final season in a baseball uniform--but would you take him at his word, after all those retirements and all those comebacks? I didn't think so.

Happy birthday, Twig! We hope the Cats win today and the after-game beer tastes terrific!

* "Terwilliger Bunts One" is a phrase from Annie Dillard's memoir An American Childhood, in which Annie's mother hears a play-by-play announcer exclaim those three words. She asks, "Is that even English?" For many years, the mother used the phrase as she tested a microphone or a typewriter or wanted a nonsense phrase for any purpose. Thanks to Google, we have learned that the story was included in an anthology and is used in teaching high school reading and writing classes.