Tag Archives: memories

Lou

Posted on September 7, 2020 | 5 comments

On Thursday, July 19, 1979, future major-leaguer Rick Ankiel was born, and the Cincinnati Reds arrived in St. Louis following the all-star break where 27,228 fans settled in at Busch Memorial Stadium to watch the two all-star-laden teams resume the second half of the season. I was there with my dad for my first major league baseball game.

It was the summer after third grade, and I was eight years old. I now knew my multiplication tables and how to write in cursive, but no educational environment could have prepared me for what going to a major league stadium with my dad would do to my soul. It was the highlight of my life at the time, and forty-one years later, it remains pretty close to the top.

My dad never missed work at the meat-packing plant, but he did that summer day. We didn’t have enough money for a hotel, so we boarded a Great Southern Coaches bus in the early morning darkness for a twenty-four-hour adventure, rode the two-hundred miles north, and spent the afternoon using public buses to check out the zoo and marvel at the majesty of the Gateway Arch. But that evening, cliché notwithstanding, I walked through the left-field tunnel into the open air of the stadium and felt as if I had entered heaven.

Lou Brock had turned forty a month before and was in the final season of a remarkable career. He still hit over .300 that season, and in a stroke of good luck, our seats were right behind him. Two months later, the Redbirds would go ahead and retire his #20 jersey, making him only the fourth Cardinal at the time to receive such an honor—joining legends Dizzy Dean, Bob Gibson, and Stan Musial. The speedy Brock finished his career in the 3,000 hit club and as the all-time leader in stolen bases (and decades later he has only slid into second place).

Lou went 3-5 that night, knocking in three runs along the way. He also caught a couple of fly balls that evening under my eager eye, and somewhere along the way, little eight-year-old me held the family camera and snapped a fuzzy picture of the future hall-of-famer as he patrolled left field.

Lou Brock died yesterday at the age of eighty-one. One of his famous legs was amputated five years ago, and he battled blood cancer for the past several. His storied life is over now, which makes me sad. But it also makes me remember.

My wife bought me a couple of stadium seats from that old version of Busch Stadium a few years ago now, and they sit on our back patio. Sitting in those seats reminds me of July 19, 1979, when I was eight years old and sitting with my dad in a veritable heaven watching Lou Brock play baseball.  I’m glad to imagine Lou suiting up on the other side of life now, and I like to imagine that my dad is saving me a seat.

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Mother’s Smile

Posted on August 26, 2020 | 1 comment

I live one mile from the office, so it almost isn’t worth the trouble to drive. But in August it is always worth the trouble. Turning on the radio, however, does seem a little silly. I only have time for one song at the most.

On an early morning several days ago I went to the trouble of turning on Sirius XM satellite radio for some reason and chose a station called “The Coffee House.” The station seemed right for an early morning just for the name itself, but I like it any time of day for its soothing, acoustic music.

The song that played immediately was unfamiliar, and in about two seconds it had me. The title was “Mother’s Smile” by an artist named Keelan Donovan. It was only a mile to the office, but my goodness I had gone on a journey by the time I got there.

A couple of mornings later I chose The Coffee House again, and somehow that exact song came on once more , and the combination of the coincidence and the content took my breath away.

My mother died eight years ago today. I’m not sure how satellites work and what all goes on up in the space we call the heavens, but somehow leading up to this special day I was greeted twice on early mornings with these opening lyrics—and I smiled, too.

My mother’s smile
Looks the same as it did when I was a child
It’ll stay right here with me for a while
My mother’s smile
Oh, oh, how I miss you

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Front Porch Memories

Posted on May 25, 2020 | 3 comments

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Early 1970s

There was a cardboard box next to the exposed hot water heater on what we called the back porch in the tiny house I grew up in on West Mueller Street. That is where I kept my baseballs and glove, along with any other sports equipment I could get my hands on. I played outside a lot as a kid, and every day, multiple times a day when possible, I would grab something from the box on my way out the back door.

Most of the time I played alone, not that I was a loner per se, but we lived in a neighborhood without other children, so there simply weren’t other options. There is this embarrassingly adorable picture of me as a little boy stage propped on our front porch between a couple of older neighborhood boys, Butch and Joe, who paid attention to me and made me feel important. I dreamed of being a big kid someday and was over the moon excited to have their attention. But by the time I was a big kid, they were long gone.

So I spent untold hours in the backyard, complemented by untold hours shooting hoops on our narrow driveway, but for some reason my mind drifted recently to the many afternoons spent in our tiny front yard as a change of pace. There wasn’t much room to maneuver there, but plenty of free time and childhood imagination could make do.

When it came to baseball, my dad taught me important skills like curving a bill on a baseball cap and breaking in a baseball glove, so I would suit up, and with that intoxicating smell of leather in the air, slip on that Rawlings baseball glove and arch my index finger out the opening and transform into my hero, Ozzie Smith. I would crouch in position and imagine the pitch, then fire a worn-out baseball against the concrete porch at an angle that would make me/Ozzie range from side to side while the crowd held its breath.  I would scoop up the ground ball and whirl to fire to first. Playing alone, however, firing to first meant another delivery toward the front porch angled to hit the grass just before thumping the hard concrete resulting in a line drive back to me where I was suddenly a first-baseman stretching to beat the runner as the crowd went berserk.

It was pretty spectacular stuff, and I did this over and over and over again, all the live long day, sweating and basking in imaginary baseball glory.

Every once in a while I would misfire, and the baseball would sail just above the front porch and slam into the siding outside my bedroom window. I would wince knowing that my dad winced when he heard the errant throw, but I never broke the window, and he mercifully never stopped my treasured ritual.

I don’t know what made me think of those countless afternoons in the front yard pounding baseballs against that concrete front porch. There is nothing particularly redeeming about the memory, but for some reason I discovered that I missed it—the innocence of a little boy playing heroic baseball in an imaginary world.

I would like to visit that innocent place again. Maybe that is heaven.

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Finish the Race, Keep the Faith

Posted on January 27, 2020 | 4 comments

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Note: I wrote this post before the tragic helicopter crash in Calabasas near one of my old running trails, but the message still somehow applies. RIP to Kobe, his daughter, and all who died in such a terrible accident.

When I was fourteen, Shawn invited me to run a 15k in Memphis at Oktoberfest, and since there was little adventure in our small-town Arkansas life I quickly agreed. I was bright enough to know that fifteen kilometers equaled 9.3 miles but not yet bright enough to prepare by running more than three miles in advance. Coach Watson warned us, but we were invincible junior high schoolers, so we weren’t worried.

We rose in the early morning darkness and rode the hour and a half to Memphis in a custom van with Ethan and Everett. We thought both men were ancient, although I realize now that Ethan was only fifty-three (and Everett sixty-seven). Ethan was a legend in our hometown, completing over forty marathons, including three Bostons, and Everett was a legend in several ways—college football at LSU, one-time world record holder for sit-ups, pole vaulter in the Senior Olympics. We were unable to comprehend our great privilege.

The race was something else. I had only run a couple of local 5ks, so this was the first time I had experienced the exhilaration of a major race with a thousand runners—much less the distance. Filled with adrenaline we started way too fast, and at the second mile marker I could not breathe, where it occurred to me that I still had over seven miles to go. So I let Shawn, the far better runner, go on while I slowed the pace to focus on survival. I never stopped, in spite of the monster incline up Riverside Drive near the end. I may not be a natural runner, but I am naturally stubborn.

Last weekend, thirty-five years later, I remembered that race on a seven-mile run at Percy Warner Park, alone in nature with my memories. The trail is hilly, and the temperature was frigid, and as my aging body huffed and puffed up a small mountain I remembered Shawn’s impression of the whistling sound Ethan made as he inevitably caught and passed us at each race. I had to laugh. At an overlook at the top of a major hill I stopped to gaze at the Tennessee winter forest and realized that I love Ethan and Everett now more than ever. I was in California when each passed and could not pay respects in person, but they helped shape my life. And then I thought of Shawn, killed in that tragic automobile accident so long ago. My very first running buddy.

The cold and the hills and the memories combined to bring tears to my eyes. I realized that I am the only one left from that 1984 Oktoberfest quartet, the only one left even to remember.

I decided to dedicate the run to my old friends (may they be somewhere running in peace), so I turned from the overlook and hit the trail again—alone. Not sure why I am the only one still on the course, but as long as I can I’ll keep running.

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1982

Posted on September 30, 2019 | 5 comments

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“Baseball has been good to me since I quit trying to play it.” – Whitey Herzog

The year was 1982, and I was adjusting to life in junior high school. I doubt I knew the word hazing, but I sure was nervous about going to the locker room, which was unfortunate since sports were my very favorite things.

But God smiled on me as a young baseball fan.

The combination of my dad and Paragould, Arkansas, made me a St. Louis Cardinal baseball fan, and 1982 was simply our year. Dale Murphy tore up the National League, and Robin Yount the American League, but destiny was with the Redbirds.

The previous winter the Cardinals added Joaquin Andujar and Lonnie Smith—and more importantly, Ozzie Smith—and during the season they called up young Willie McGee. In the summer they would draft future stars, Vince Coleman and Terry Pendleton, but it was Keith Hernandez and Bruce Sutter who were the beasts on the field in 1982. They led Whitey Herzog’s team into the playoffs for the first time since 1968 where they faced the Atlanta Braves.

It is a special memory. The Cardinals were my team, and I knew them so well from listening to Jack Buck on the radio. But Ted Turner’s young television “superstation” helped me know the Braves, too, and for a twelve-year-old boy enamored by all things sports, it was just special. That my team swept the series was icing on the cake.

It is disturbing how quickly thirty-seven years can pass, but here we are again. Times have changed, including baseball, and along the way I have watched the Redbirds go to the postseason fifteen more times, including six World Series appearances, but today I am remembering that first innocent memory: The Cardinals versus the Braves in the playoffs.

The Braves are loaded this year, and I would be surprised if my Redbirds survived the challenge. Honestly, I don’t really care that much anymore. Now, I simply like to watch and imagine Bob Forsch firing a fastball in to Darrell Porter on a fuzzy console television. Those two players aren’t with us anymore, at least in person, but they have never left my sweet childhood memories.

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By Blessing Brightly Lit

Posted on March 4, 2019 | 4 comments

Malibu“Life is all memory except for the one present moment that goes by so quick you can hardly catch it going.” – Tennessee Williams, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore

To say there is much to do this week is an understatement that borders on absurdity. My farewell sermon yesterday was followed by such a sweet farewell reception—that all four of “us” could be there was very special—but now the rollercoaster whips around an unexpected turn and we will worry about breathing later on. The week ahead is packed floor to ceiling (hey, like that moving metaphor?) as we tie up loose ends and then move to a new stage of life in Tennessee.

A nice and clean reflection has proven impossible. Do I write about the unforgettable people? There are too many. Do I write about stunning California? I wouldn’t know where to start. Do I write about law school or Pepperdine or Malibu or the Labor Exchange or University Church or running or…

I give up.

Maybe I will just say that our time here has transformed our lives in every conceivable way. Physically. Intellectually. Professionally. Emotionally. Spiritually. You name it.

And we are thankful.

I have been told repeatedly that I will miss the views here. With all due respect, I don’t believe it. Those views have been permanently imprinted on my memory and will always be nearby—and I’m not simply referring to the natural scenery. Edgar Allan Poe said, “To observe attentively is to remember distinctly.” If nothing else I was sure to pay attention, so I’m not worried.

I have shared my favorite Wendell Berry Sabbath poem before, but it is most appropriate today:

We travelers, walking to the sun, can’t see
Ahead, but looking back the very light
That blinded us shows us the way we came,
Along which blessings now appear, risen
As if from sightlessness to sight, and we,
By blessing brightly lit, keep going toward
The blessed light that yet to us is dark.

Exactly.

So here we go on these crazy final few days. I will blog from the road next week—Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise. The South, here we come.

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Surprised by Nostalgia

Posted on June 4, 2018 | 1 comment

Front BeachI was born and raised in Arkansas. I love Arkansas. Now I live in California. And I love California. But recently I was reminded that a significant part of my heart remains in Mississippi.

We lived in Mississippi for about ten years and then moved to California about ten years ago. When we moved I expected to visit Mississippi from time to time, but somehow that had not happened in nine years until an unexpected invitation to officiate a funeral for a sweet friend arrived a couple of weeks ago. After a crazy couple of days of rearranging plans, I woke up to discover that I had been blasted into the past. I was unprepared.

I often say that nostalgia is just not my jam. For better or worse, my brain is oriented toward what is ahead, so life’s rearview mirror is relatively unused in my world. Well, it got used a bunch on this return to Mississippi.

Upon landing in Gulfport, I rented a car and drove down Highway 49 to the Gulf Coast and then along the beach that had been ravaged by Katrina thirteen years ago and, as the kids say, I started to feel all the feels. I saw familiar landmarks such as Beauvoir, the Biloxi Lighthouse, and Mary Mahoney’s. I saw the Coast Coliseum where my oldest daughter graduated high school and Point Cadet where my youngest had her first dance recital. There was the familiar Sharkhead’s souvenir shop and Jaws-inspired entrance but with a post-Katrina transformation that turned the entire first floor into a shaded parking lot. The Treasure Bay casino pirate ship is simply gone forever, and although I had never stepped foot inside, that made me want to cry. I had misplaced certain memories like the unique combination of bright white sands and murky waters and wondered what else I had forgotten over the years. It appeared that my GPS had sent me unwittingly down Memory Lane.

Our old hometown of Ocean Springs really threw me for a loop. I drove downtown past Lovelace Drugs and the Walter Anderson Museum and had to get out on Front Beach just to breathe. I stopped for a heavenly Tato-Nut donut and drove to our old Katrina-flooded house and discovered that it now looks like it did that fateful day when we evacuated for the storm. I wasn’t sure what to think about that sort of resurrection.

But seeing old friends nearly made my heart explode with love. Jim and Dimple. Gene and Eileen. All the Fains. Bruno and Linda. Angie and Carol. Todd and Robin. Samantha and Shelly. Tandy and Peggy. Bernice and Cathy. Frances and Mark. Tim and Katie. Connor and Amanda. Debbie and Brynlee. There is so much love in my heart for Ocean Springs and the Mississippi Gulf Coast—especially for our friends. I knew that in my brain and held it in my heart, but this trip resurrected the feeling from deep in my soul. Nostalgia hit me like a wave and left me dizzy. Like that old storm surge.

I texted my wife to say that we have to go back and visit together sometime. She said that she had wanted to do that for a long time now.

I know that I should learn to stop and smell the roses. But I am learning that I should also stop, turn around, and head back to Mississippi to smell the magnolias from time to time.

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The Fan

Posted on April 23, 2018 | 3 comments

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THE FAN (a free verse poem by Al Sturgeon)

The memory arrived unprompted as a tender gift.

I had been sunburned yet again.

It was night as I lay in bed, miserable,

motionless, and cursing myself

for an apparent inability to learn a lesson.

 

I was a teenager, alone in that tiny bedroom,

alone with my restless imagination, naked

as a modest kid in a modest family could get

to ease the pain, limbs sprayed like a

hopeless summer attempt at a snow angel.

 

My mother had tried her best to provide

some lotion as a remedy but to no avail.

I would simply be miserable until I wasn’t;

there was nothing more to do but listen to

the silent sound of time passing.

 

But squeezed into the corner was an oscillating fan.

It stood watch through the night, keeping me company,

marking time with its fluttering whir, rhythmically sending

a breeze both soothing and not across my blistered skin—

a welcomed sensation in solitary confinement.

 

The rhythm led to a mindless world of nothingness.

No thought of the terrible fate of dressing in the morning.

No self-loathing. Just staring into dark eyelids with

my sweet parents next door; at peace, listening, awaiting

the consistent and predictable relief from the oscillating fan.

 

The memory arrived out of nowhere.

For a brief moment I was a kid again

with a mom and a dad who would answer

if I simply called their names. It was so real

that I could hear the whirring fan and feel the gentle breeze.

 

 

 

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Birthday Trips

Posted on March 12, 2018 | Leave a comment

IMG_0199Last night I attended the iHeartRadio Music Awards at The Forum in Inglewood with my oldest daughter, Erica. The celebrity-studded awards show featured mega-stars like Bon Jovi, Eminem, Cardi B, Chance the Rapper, Maroon 5, Camila Cabello, Charlie Puth, and N.E.R.D. Surprisingly, I had heard of a couple of them prior to last evening. And maybe not surprisingly, me and Jon Bon Jovi aren’t teenagers anymore.

This was my annual birthday trip with Erica. Seventeen years ago I had a bright idea to celebrate Erica’s fourteenth birthday with a surprise father-daughter date instead of purchasing a material gift, which immediately became our annual tradition. That inaugural trip included a trip to the House of Blues in New Orleans for an O-Town concert, a boy band that emerged from the reality show, Making the Band. What would motivate me to take my daughter to a boy band concert and spend the evening in an audience filled with screaming teenage girls? The answer is love. Weird, inexplicable, father-daughter love.

My youngest daughter, Hillary, was a preschooler back then, but it didn’t take her long to ask when I would start taking her on special father-daughter birthday trips. So that tradition started, too. Over the years I have taken my daughters on all sorts of secret adventures in a total of thirteen states that have included road trips, sporting events, fancy dinners, museums, theater performances, celebrity stalking, theme parks, cultural experiences, concerts, television events, and now, even an awards show (see the crazy list below).

I guess I could start buying them gifts instead. But they might not let me. And I wouldn’t let me either. Making a memory together is a far better choice than purchasing a present. Trust me.

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Birthday trips:

Erica:
#14: House of Blues in New Orleans (O-Town concert)
#15: MLS soccer in Dallas, Texas (stalking Landon Donovan)
#16: Spring training baseball in Orlando, Florida
#17: NBA basketball in New Orleans (to watch LeBron in his rookie year)
#18: French Quarter Haunted Tour in New Orleans
#19: Championship tennis in Miami, Florida (to watch Maria Sharapova)
#20: Dinner at Mary Mahoney’s in Biloxi, Mississippi
#21: Dinner at the Hard Rock Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi
#22: Wicked at the Pantages in Hollywood
#23: Driving across country on Route 66
#24: Jimmy Kimmel Live in Hollywood
#25: A tourist weekend in San Francisco
#26: Grammy Museum in Downtown Los Angeles
#27: Pepperdine Associates Dinner in Downtown Los Angeles
#28: NHL Anaheim Ducks game
#29: Horse racing at Santa Anita Race Track
#30: LA Phil at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Downtown Los Angeles
#31: iHeartRadio Music Awards in Inglewood

Hillary:
#6: Lynn Meadows, Marine Life Aquarium, and Chuck E. Cheese in Gulfport, Mississippi
#7: Exploreum in Mobile, Alabama
#8: Jazzland Theme Park in New Orleans
#9: St. Louis Cardinals baseball game at the brand new Busch Stadium
#10: Horse-drawn carriage ride in the French Quarter of New Orleans (followed by a Fantastic 4 movie)
#11: National Civil Rights Museum and a Redbirds game in Memphis, Tennessee
#12: Warner Brothers Tour in Burbank, California
#13: Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? (television screening) in Burbank, California
#14: House of Blues in Anaheim, California (Natasha Bedingfield & Andy Grammer concert)
#15: Hairspray screening in Hollywood Forever Cemetery
#16: A tourist weekend in San Francisco
#17: Pepperdine Associates Dinner in Downtown Los Angeles
#18: Space Needle and more in Seattle, Washington
#19: Seattle Seahawks game
#20: Olvera Street in Downtown Los Angeles

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Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.

Posted on December 25, 2017 | 2 comments

Christmas PictureThere is much on my mind this Christmas Day, including the great joy to have my little family together and the deep sorrow for friends experiencing great loss, and my best response is to share three short poems from Howard Thurman’s “The Mood of Christmas” — a unity in trinity:

Christmas Is Yesterday:
The memories of childhood,
The miracle of Santa Claus,
The singing of carols —
The glow of being remembered.

Christmas Is Today:
The presence of absent ones,
The reminder of the generous act,
The need to love —
The need to be loved.

Christmas Is Tomorrow:
The miracle of faith,
The fulfillment of ancient hopes,
The reign of God —
The dying of Death in the land.

Christmas is yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

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