Jimmy- A Short Story

                                                                                                                   photo courtesy of tripadvisor 

“Is that ‘backer in your mouth?”  yelled his Grandpa from the porch as Jimmy angled across the yard toward the road.  He had come out the side door of the house, letting the screen door bang behind him in the still morning.  From where Grandpa sat on the front porch cupping his coffee against the chill he could see a bulge in Jimmy’s mouth that appeared to be tobacco. “No Gramps, its seeds“, croaked Jimmy with a full mouth as he turned back toward the house and held up the bag for approval. Grandpa snorted his reply while Grandmother, at the kitchen sink cleaning up the breakfast dishes called through the open window “have fun!”  Jimmy did not slow his hurried adolescent scramble across the grass but instead merely raised his baseball-gloved arm in farewell.  At the curb sat his Dad's idling truck, with it's rusty fenders and cracked rear window.  When he pulled open the door it emitted a sickening honk like a hoarse goose.  Inside the cab it was warm and smelled like the day-old dip juice in a pop bottle in the the cup holder.  His dad grinned and patted him on the leg as he settled into the seat; “are you ready for some fun bud?”  asked Mike as he put the truck in gear and eased away from the house. “I sure am daddy” replied Jimmy, unable yet to call his father anything but daddy, even at 13.

Jimmy's Grandpa Geno was a New Yorker.  The 1970's had not been kind to The City and Geno had joined the white flight from every borough as families fled to the suburbs for quiet leafy streets and long commutes.  Geno's escape took him way beyond the growing towns of northern Jersey, to Greene County, almost three hours from his boyhood in Queens.  He took with him his wife and baby daughter and started a new life in the village of Lexington, deep in the heart of the Catskill Mountains.  He got a job on the county road crew, plowing snow in the winter, and fixing potholes in summer.  They settled into a white two story home with a front porch and wood heat along the banks of Schoharie Creek. Gina, Jimmy's mom grew up, went off to Tannersville High  and fell head-over-heels for a skinny kid with a greasy mullet and a love of baseball.  Gina and Mike were both juniors the year Jimmy was conceived, probably in the bed of Mike's truck in the parking lot at North Lake.  Gina brought Jimmy home from the hospital to the house on the creek and got her GED at night while her Mama watched the baby.  Mike finished school and signed up for the Navy but a fleet week brawl afforded him a one way ticket back to Greene County, were he eventually got a job doing maintenance at nearby Hunter Mountain Resort.  Once Jimmy was ready for Kindergarten, Gina took a job as at the nursing home and took night classes at SUNY Oneonta. The funny thing about high school love is that sometimes it grows up and stops being lovely.  That's what happened to Mike and Gina.

Mike maneuvered the truck across the metal bridge over the Schoharie and turned left on the two lane road that followed the creek.  Snow had, for the most part been a no show that winter so mid-March meant naked hardwoods and brown undergrowth along the highway.  Here and there a southern facing lawn  showed glimpses of green as the season's first signs of Spring. Jimmy loved ridding with his daddy.  Mike drove a lot faster than anyone else he ever rode with and the jacked-up truck offered a commanding view and an air of invincibility.  The boundaries of Mike's musical sphere at not stretched much from his high school days.  He still listen to old tapes of Nirvana, Bush  and The Beastie Boys and since son still worshiped Dad, they both sang along to "No Sleep 'till Brooklyn" as the miles slid away.

Both men in Jimmy's life loved baseball.  In Geno's home, summer evenings were spent on the front porch with the radio tuned to WFAN, the home of his beloved Mets.  Those evenings listening to Howie Rose call the game while the creek gurgled and fire flies danced across the yard became imprinted in Jimmy's DNA.  His Dad in-turn introduced Jimmy to the game, reliving the glory days on the metal bleachers of the high school field, and hung around his little league team as a volunteer assistant coach.  Both men took a turn adding a part of the rich tradition to Jimmy's development.  Baseball Tonight filled in the rest.

It had been Gina's idea.  A chance she hoped to bring the two men in Jimmy's life together.  The thought came to her one evening while sitting at the kitchen table with her dad after a call to Mike to plan Jimmy's upcoming thirteenth birthday.  "You know the Jewish have Bar Mitzvah's to welcome their sons into manhood " she offered, "but we pagans have nothing, so why not some sort of baseball Mitzvah for Jimmy?"  Geno looked up from his slice of pie, eyes brightening.  "We could take him to Cooperstown."

An hour and a half of time with your Dad can fly by.  The sun was starting to warm the air as Mike eased the truck into a diagonal spot on main street.  If Cooperstown was just home to The Baseball Hall of Fame that would be enough but it doubles down with postcard-worthy homes and a thriving downtown wrapped around the southern tip of Otsego Lake.  More then half the establishments on Main Street are devoted to the sale of all things baseball.   Father and son's first order of business are plates of pancakes and sausage at the Cooperstown Dinner.  Next comes souvenir t-shirts and a Mets licence plate frame to take home to Geno.  Two hours of bats, balls and busts at The Hall and Jimmy's cup overflowed.

He didn't notice the orange county dump truck parked across the street as Mike slowed to a stop in front of a house on Elm Street.  When the door opened Jimmy was taken aback to see his Grandpa smiling at him from a chair in the living room.  "Hey bud", said Geno, "I had to get a load of gravel from over in Hartwick and thought I'd surprise you." I've been friends with the Larranaga's here since we were your age."  Wait till you see what they have over their back fence."  It was one of the holy places in baseball, Doubleday Field.  The field was closed still for the season, but like the faithful chopping a hole in the ice for a baptism, this moment couldn't wait.

Jimmy fell asleep on the way home, his head resting against the window as the sun disappeared behind the mountains that crowded the road.  With the help of Mr. Larranaga's step ladder, the two men whom he loved had lead him onto that slowly greening grass of the outfield for the blessing. Three grinning devotees playing catch in the afternoon sun.  The sweet music of the ball thwacking into each glove.  Three gloved hands coming together in a celebratory cheer.  Three men climbing back over the fence.  Manhood.