This being my 500th post I thought I'd toss up a little something I wrote for a class once upon a time:
The Clover Field
I remember everything about that day.
It was rainy, and the sky was gray. It wasn’t cold, but the kind of damp where you’d need a jacket if you went outside. All I could do was watch through the checkered curtains of our back door as the men with their bellering, belching, yellow machines dug away at my memories.
We called the place the “Clover Field.” I guess because clover grew freely there. When I was a little kid the Clover Field was a great place to play Army or Hide-and-Seek. It had tons of tall elm trees covering the entire lot. There were also old, cement foundations that made great foxholes.
When I was about eleven years old the city came and cut down all the trees and pulled out all the aged concrete foundations. They leveled the land, leaving only two rows of trees that bordered the vacant property on two of its four sides. This was a lucky break for me and all the guys in our neighborhood because now we could use the Clover Field for a baseball field. That short walk across the alley sure beat having to get all our gear together and tote it to Charmony Park.
We worked hard to get the Clover Field into shape. We mowed the whole field often with Dad’s mower. We raked the baselines down to dirt. It was hot and sweaty work, mowing and raking. And talking my dad into letting us use the flooring from the girls’ playhouse for a backstop on days of big games was no easy feat, believe me. My big brother Dave used a chisel to shape a home plate out of large piece of smooth cement the city crews left behind. We buried it in the ground. We went through dozens of pieces of wood and cardboard that served as first, second and third bases throughout the years, but we had only one home plate – that wonderful chunk of white, smooth cement.
Apparently the city had sold this land and it was being “developed.” I didn’t even know the meaning of that word at the time but I knew what I saw happening before me.
The huge, yellow machines lumbered their way across the Clover Field. I could hear their beepers that signaled they were in reverse over the soft mist falling through the trees that had just begun to shed their leaves. A guy jumped out of one of the large yellow trucks. He grabbed a big bar and shoved it hard into the ground around home plate. He pried hard with that bar, using it as a lever.
When that bar lifted home plate it broke open a seal in my mind that forced memories out like a burst of compressed air. There was Dave hitting one clear over Sidney Avenue. Dennis Rhodes, man what a cut he would take; a home run or a strike out every time. Nick Miller would get so mad at Brad Wagner. One time he punched Brad right in the face – but Brad had a catcher’s mask on. Nick got the cast off six weeks later. Dave hit a homerun one day that broke Skinny Flater’s windshield. Mr. Flater pulled his 3-hole Buick over to the curb, “Did you boys throw that ball or hit it?” Mr. Flater wanted to know.
The right fielder pointed to Dave as he circled the bases, “He hit it.”
“Well, then that’s a mighty fine hit,” Mr. Flater said and he got back into his Buick and drove off.
He got home plate out of the ground by pushing down hard on that pry-bar. Another guy came and helped him and they threw the big block of cement into the back of a truck. My forehead leaned against the window of the back door. The glass was cool and moist to match the air outside. My throat was dry and sore. My eyes were full of tears.
I remember everything about that day.
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