1969-1970

Dear Theophilus,

If you would allow me, I would like to take a little time to wax auto-biographical for just a bit.  The years of 1969 to 1976 were quite significant years for me.  Between the age of 12 and 20, my life went through wide swings.  I sometimes wonder how I made it through the latter part of those years.  Let me tell you about them.

First, I need to catch you up to 1969.  While in the fourth grade at Carenco High School (Grades 1 through 12) in Louisiana, my dad showed up at school and told me to get into the truck.  My parents had been divorced for a few years and I didn't see my dad much.  I'm not sure whether it was because he just didn't come often or if my mother wouldn't let him see us.  I really don't know and they're not around anymore, so I can't ask.

So, my dad is there, and he tells me to get into his truck.  We go get my sister, who is 4 at the time, and then off we go to Alabama. My mother had no idea where we went.  I didn't see my mother but once after that until around 1979, after my first son was born.

So, there I am, in a household with my dad, my sister, and a new stepmother and two older stepbrothers in Bessemer, Alabama.  I went from being the oldest to the middle.  So, from finishing the fourth grade to the eighth grade at Greenwood Junior High School, I was now in a family where I was genuinely not liked, nor did I like it.  And, as the years passed, the animosity of all parties grew more and more.  My stepbrothers seemed to get a singular joy out of tormenting me and my stepmother seemed to visibly hate me.  And for most of that time I had no idea why.  So, I became very adept at becoming invisible.  I would stay out of sight and out of mind, as that was the only way I could have any peace.  So now comes 1969...

In the summer of 1969, I played my first year of organized baseball.   I fell in love with the game.  For some reason, that I still cannot fathom, I started that season a terror at the plate.  The coach I had was John Nixon, the father of one of my best friends at Greenwood, Bruce Nixon.  (Bruce's story is something you should hear.  I will tell you about him some time soon.) John Nixon played Pro ball and knew how to coach.  I was lucky to have him.  The reason I can't fathom my hitting that year is that the next year of playing, I went very cold at the plate, almost like I forgot how to hit.  But, my passion for the game turned to pitching.  I loved pitching.  It was me against you, so to speak: The pitcher against the hitter.  As the years have gone by my love for baseball has not waned.  So, for the summers of 1970 and 1971 I pitched well, I thought. I spent every waking moment thinking about pitching, I threw anything I could get my hands on, rocks, pine cones, whatever, every chance I got.

My one glory story from a baseball game was the last game I pitched.  I vividly remember this one inning.  I had pitched 4 good innings, but I knew I was getting tired.  I remember thinking to myself, "I just need to get through this inning and then we've got this game."  I decided to change my windup and I reared back very far and fired as hard as I could.  That one pitch was amazing.  The batter swung at air as the ball passed him by.  The coach and the rest of the guys jumped up off the bench and cheered like I had never heard before.  I distinctly remember the amazement of it.  So, I did it again.  Swing and a miss, I blew it by him!  I thought "Wow! This is cool!"  I did it again. Another swing and a miss, strike 3, out.  I threw 10 pitches that inning. I struck out the side.  But that was it.  I had nothing left, and I knew it.  Another came on and pitched the final inning and we won.  In 1971, in Knoxville, that was the last inning of organized baseball I ever played in.  I tried to get on the Karns High School team, but, apparently with the coaches there, if you didn't play on the football team, you didn't play baseball there either.  That was a shame. So, I only played three years of organized ball.

In August of 1969, I spent a month in the University of Alabama Birmingham Psychiatric ward.  My dad told me later that my stepmother insisted on it because she was convinced I was insane or something because I was so different from her precious two.  That was a harrowing experience.  There I am, 12 years old, in a ward with older people who truly did have problems.  One I remember in particular.  He would walk around in a dazed state and just stare at stuff during the day, and spend the night pounding on the walls of the room they kept him in.  After that month, I became even more convinced that I needed to stay out of sight and avoid as much contact in my dad’s house as possible.  It was where I lived but I knew it wasn’t my home.

In September 1969, right out of the psych ward, school started and I had signed up at the end of the last year to play football.  So, I practiced for a season as an offensive lineman for the Greenwood Junior High School Rebels football team.  I knew next to nothing about football and basically was a body that they spent a lot of time using as a live blocking dummy that fall, dummy being the operative word.  I got into two games for a grand total of 4 plays.  I can’t say much more than that about my one season of football. Oh, I did get a school letter for being on the team.  Whoop-dee-doo.

Near the end of the 1969-70 school year, I got up one morning and put on my clothes and my green and white letter jacket and started for the bus stop.  My dad, who happened to be home that day, asked me “Are you going to wear that old jacket today?  Why don’t you wear something better?”  I told him it was just another day, so what?  And I went on to school.  Later that day, there was a school assembly.  We had those in the Gym.  I walked in and saw my Dad and my stepmother and wondered why in the world they were there.  I found out shortly.   Along with either 9 or 11 girls - I can't recall if there were 10 of us or 12 - I was tapped into the National Junior Honor Society.  Yes, I was the only boy that year.  (From the 3rd grade on, my grades were always good.) 

An auspicious ending to a very weird year.

In the next chapter I will take this up from the Fall of 1970.

As Always



taj