Round-tripper

The idea is to get to the other side of the garage. Since I sold my truck, the middle stall stays open. I'd parked the car, slid myself out, and used the car itself for ballast as I moved around it towards the ramp that runs up to the door. But there I stood, between me and the other side maybe ten feet or twelve. 

I had the option of going back into the back seat of the car to fetch my walker, but I'd just about had enough of that thing. People are surprised and happy about me and my walker, but I stagger around like a drunk with it, especially when I pull my bod around the car to get to wherever it is I want to go.

Sometimes I wonder--I swear it--whether some cop on a slow day might see me creeping around and just assume that I spent too long holding on to a bar stool somewhere, but it's standard procedure if I'm to get out of the house, which, believe me, is highly desirable for anyone who, like me, has spent a goodly chunk of the last six months without, well mostly without, four walls.

So, as I said, the idea is to get to the other side of the garage. That's it. 

From the right  front fender to the ramp is maybe six feet--I can almost reach it, so I take one tentative step with my right foot and lean until I'm there with right hand. 

Big deal. the idea is to get to the other side of the garage.

There's a bunch of stuff in a bundle and some lawn tools hanging from the wall along with--wait for it!--a baseball bat. That's right, a baseball bat. Calling that beast a baseball bat is like calling me Hemingway. It's skinny, short, and may well be the only wooden bat in Sioux County, Iowa.

But it'll work, so I inch my way across a couple of boxes, and grab it from its place  on the wall, a sandlot bat that survived hundreds of ball games kiddy-corner from the house I grew up on the blacktop at First Reformed.

It's my bat. It's got my name on it because when I was ten maybe, I branded it with a magic marker. No, I haven't packed it along with me for all these years. For a long time, it was the possession of one of the kids who played ball with us out there at First Reformed. Maybe thirty years ago, he gave it back when we stopped at his place in Hastings, Nebraska, and, yes, it was a great, surprise gift.

I can only imagine his joy when he thought about his old buddy dropping by blind to a gift he couldn't give to just any human being. I was the only guy. So sometime during that visit, he gave it up, smiling with his own generosity, and it's been mine--again!--for the last thirty years.

So the old bat wasn't a perfect cane, a little short for me and lots heavier than the aluminum one I sometimes use. But I thought it wonderful. The thing got me no farther than the other side of the garage, but that's all I needed.

Once more, these days the Schaaps are packing up, trying to throw things away. We got a helping hand from a big flood last spring that took out our first floor and lots of possessions. We haven't considered a total. It's too heartbreaking.

And I'm left with a ton of things that'll have to go now, as we move to a smaller place, an abode for the elderly. 

Among the memorabilia, an ancient wooden bat, dressed up to make it look like a Louisville Slugger.

That's what I wrote on it when I was a little shaver with visions of baseball grandeur, dreaming of getting to be a high school star. I played third base in high school, catcher in college, and never used that old bat. Even if I had wanted to, my old friend packed it along with him for all those years. Besides, it was the kind of thing made for First Reformed parking lot.

I wanted to get to across the garage because ever since I became a cripple, I've spent too much time in the house. I just wanted to sit down for a while before I went in. 

So there I sat, me and this ancient sandlot baseball bat, inscribed by a kid reaching for dreams. I ended up playing ball until I was 55. Loved it.

But it'll go now. It's hung around with nothing to do for years. Still, for a while I sat there enchanted with the dreams drawn out with black magic marker. It's a beautiful, wonderful blessing to hold and swing and dream again of lacing a fastball straight out over the pitchers head into far left center. 

Today, that old bat delivered a round tripper that led only to the other side of the garage. The old guy got me where I wanted to go. 

It's going to be left behind, but somehow I feel better knowing that on the Saturday before we move, that scrubby Louisville Slugger, signed by Jim Schaap, got me where I wanted to go.