‘You know, I used to play baseball.’

5 Responses to ‘You know, I used to play baseball.’

1. mitchell says:

   September 27, 2006 at 2:37 pm

   awesome..what a face! i fear that the advent and ease of plastic surgery will eventually create a world without those wonderful faces..what would my Aunt Dottie have been without that amazing face??? Well..she always had her voice! WEEEeeeEEEeeeEEe!
2. ricki says:

   September 27, 2006 at 4:03 pm

   mitchell – I’m currently reading “Stranger in a Strange Land” and one of the things that strikes me (at least earlier in the book) is that Valentine Michael Smith (the Martian/Earthling) really doesn’t have a concept of human BEAUTY, but he is impressed by – and likes – faces that are “their own.”

   That the pretty people are all kind of a dime a dozen but the people who “own their own faces” are the interesting ones.

   And that’s a beautiful story (the baseball story). I remember reading somewhere someone who said that whenever an old person dies, it’s like a library burning down or a whole atlas being buried in the grave with the person.

   I wonder how many other old people there are out there, nearly forgotten, who have these wonderful stories of what it was like “then.” (Probably just about every one of them, at least the ones who are still communicative. I could spend hours as a kid listening to my grandma talk about what it was like on the farm where she grew up, or my older teachers talk about what World War II was like on the “home front.”)
3. Mr. Bingley says:

   September 27, 2006 at 5:16 pm

   Wow, how very cool.

   And how heartbreakingly sad is the line “having outlived all of his children…”
4. red says:

   September 27, 2006 at 5:24 pm

   I was amazed Bingley that his wife had only died 7 years before!!
5. Mr. Bingley says:

   September 27, 2006 at 6:27 pm

   (I think it said that was his second wife.)

   Reading this reminds me of what I read last night regarding Byron Nelson, who died yesterday. Sports Illustrated has a rather long article detailing each win in Nelson’s amazing streak of 11 victories in a row in 1946, and what really stands out to me is how gosh darned poor the sport’s stars were back then, and how they really hustled for every dime. And these were the white guys; how a fella like Mr. Simmons survived given what he had to face simply astounds, and humbles, me.

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