Just missed being in the stories...

A quick break from my genealogical ramblings:

A few weeks back, I was reading the latest Stephen Hunter "Bob Lee Swagger" novel, Dead Zero, and discovered that some of the climactic scenes take place very near where I lived in Washington, DC back in the late eighties, on P Street NW, up near Georgetown University. The action follows down P Steet, from the edge of the university grounds, past my old apartment and out onto Wisconsin Avenue.

Maybe more surprising, this is the second time I've found myself reading a novel where a scene or two are set, not only someplace in a town where I've lived (not so surprising, given how much we've moved around), but within a block of a place I once called home, where if it hadn't been fiction, I could have seen it happen from my window.

The other one was John Sandford's Heat Lightning (featuring Virgil Flowers), a couple of years back. Sandford's a Minnesota writer, and his novels almost all are set in Minnesota, so a lot of familiar places show up. But this one starts off with a guy (and his dog) getting shot in Stillwater, on South Third Street, half a block from where I lived for a while back in the early eighties.

That got me wondering: How often does that happen? How many people out there are reading books and suddenly find the author taking them into their own neighborhoods, right down their streets, or out front of their houses? And maybe more important, when they do that, do they get it right?

Sandford did--he described the area just as it looks these days. Hunter did okay until he got down to Wisconsin Avenue, then addresses didn't match the locations and I'm pretty sure the convenience store where the scene ended was fictional. But P Street sure rang true!

So here's the question: If these stories had taken place during the times when I was living in either of those two locations, could I claim that I was an unseen character in one of the houses the characters passed in the respective books? And if I were, would I be © John Sandford or © Stephen Hunter now?

I've turned up in a couple of comic books over the years, so I know I "exist" in the fictional DC Comics universe, but would I have been part of Bob Lee Swagger's or Virgil Flowers' fictional worlds as well?

What I don't know about my immigrant ancestor...

There’s a lot I don’t know about my immigrant ancestor, Johann Hinrich Lübker.

Let’s start with who he was and where he was born. There seems at least to be agreement about the “when”: 1804. And according to just about every source that lists it, the “where” is Prussia. But given the German penchant for grabbing up land, that covers a fair amount of geography.

For the last couple of years, I was convinced he came from Fehmarn Island, a place that kind of sticks out in the Baltic Sea at the base of the Jutland Peninsula, off the northeast coast of Schleswig-Holstein—close enough that it’s been connected to the mainland by a bridge since 1963.

But let me back up and set the stage a little.

In the mid-1800s, the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein were essentially the rope in a tug of war between Denmark and Prussia that had been going on in various forms for centuries. By the mid-1840s, Schleswig was controlled by the Danish crown, Holstein by the Prussian-dominated German Confederation. But there was a popular movement (at least among the German majority living there) that wanted the two duchies unified and made part of the German Confederation.

The story I’d been told had it that Johann Heinrich Lübker was a member of the shoemakers’ guild, an organization that got caught up in the excitement as the movement morphed into an uprising. He threw an ax at a local (Danish) official, missed, and had to get out of there in a hurry.

As Dad told it, both Johann Hinrich and his brother got out on Danish passports, supplied by a “Danish nobleman” for whom they’d worked. Johann Hinrich went to New York. His brother—unnamed in the tale—was said to have gone to South America, maybe Brazil.

So imagine my surprise when, while trolling through Ancestry.com, I discovered my ancestor in someone else’s tree, and with a brother listed and named!

There were some things that looked strange: For example, it said he was born in “Iceland.” But after getting in touch with the tree owner, it turned out someone had mistranslated or misunderstood “Fehmarn Island,” which was, in fact, the place she believed both had come from.

Fehmarn Island fit Dad’s story perfectly: Part of the disputed territory back in the 1840s and ’50s, occupied by Danish troops and returned to Danish jurisdiction, like the rest of Schleswig and Holstein, at the end of the First Schleswig War. In the end it was incorporated into the German province of Schleswig-Holstein—the Confederation ultimately prevailed, but not without having to hold a second war, and then some. If you think political machinations are complicated today, go read about the “Schleswig-Holstein Question.”

Dad had told me many times—more frequently when he was encouraging me to go to Canada or try to get British citizenship during the Vietnam War and thereby avoid it—that one of the reasons our ancestor had to come to America was because he didn’t want to be a soldier in a war (although I guess he wasn’t averse to attempting an assassination). The records bear out that he emigrated in 1846, two years before the First Schleswig War actually began.

One of the attractive things about this other tree is that by connecting Johann Hinrich with their ancestor, Hans Hinrich, it also connected the Luebkers of Wisconsin/Minnesota/Indiana with the Lubkers of Nebraska—the former descended from Johann Hinrich (who anglicized the spelling of the name by converting Lübker to Luebker) and the latter descended from his supposed brother, Hans Hinrich (who just dropped the umlaut and spelled it Lubker).

It also seemed telling that no photos seemed to exist of either Johann Hinrich or Hans Hinrich—both of whom could have been considered political fugitives, and might not want have wanted any photos floating around out there to make finding them any easier if, in fact, anyone was looking.

The brother-to-Brazil business was easily explained by someone confusing Sao Paulo with St. Paul (even though neither brother actually lived in the Minnesota city) and the two sides of the family simply losing touch in the pre-Internet, pre-telephone days.

On the other hand, I never could find any source besides that other family tree that made the connection, not in Ancestry, not in any other family trees (although a bunch of them picked up the info from me), not in any of the LDS records or even in a Danish database I stumbled across a year or so ago.

Then recently, I got in touch with my second cousin, Kathryn Hillert Brewer (each of us is descended from one of Johann Hinrich’s grandchildren), and she had some very different info—info that apparently came from my dad’s research.

She had a whole gaggle of siblings listed for Johann Hinrich: Hans Joachim, Engel Margarethe, an earlier Johann Hinrich (who died as an infant), Margarethe Elisabeth, Detlef Hinrich, and Wilhelm Asmus, Lübkers all.

But no Hans Hinrich Lübker.

That probably shouldn’t have been a surprise, given that she also had a different set of parents listed for Johann Hinrich. The other tree had his father and mother listed as Casper Friedrich Lübker and Malen Christin Bohnoff. Kathryn had them (from my dad) as Detlef Hinrich Lübker and Katherina Elisabeth Beck.

She also had a different point of origin for our ancestor.

Instead of Fehmarn Island, she had Niendorf, kirchspiel Zarpen, landkreis Storman, amte Reinfeld, Schleswig-Holstein. I had to do a little digging to figure out what and where that is.

• Niendorf turns out to be a Prussian area incorporated into Hamburg by the Nazis back in 1937, and is now a “quarter” in Eimsbüttel, one of the nine boroughs of the city.

• Zarpen kirchspiel (parish) is a municipality in the district of Stormarn.

• Stormarn (note the extra “r” in there) was the Prussian landkreis (county or district, which is now part of Schleswig-Holstein) from which the Nazis took Niendorf, among other Prussian pieces.

• An amt is a "collective municipality." Reinfeld, in the district of Nordstormarn (North Stormarn), is the seat of the amt, but not part of it—kind of like the District of Columbia is not part of a state, but is the seat of our national government.

But enough of the political geography lesson.

The point is, THAT location fits my dad’s story about Johann Hinrich, as it probably should, since it’s based on his research. But it’s also close enough to Fehmarn—a little less than 100 miles—that it’s not impossible that we might be related to the Fehmarn Lübkers. I just need to look closer at some of the folks on the two branches, dig back a little and see if the lines connect someplace earlier on.

As a postscript, there’s one other thing that bothered me: Germans of that era tended to go by their middle names, not their first names. So it would be odd for brothers to have the same middle name: Hinrich.

On the other hand, I’ve run across many German immigrants, first-, and sometimes second-generation descendants whose birth records list the first and middle names in one order, and reversed in subsequent records as they adopted the American style. So it was easy enough for me to imagine brothers actually named Hinrich Hans and Johann Hinrich, the former going as Hans, the latter Hinrich. And from what’s in the census records, it’s pretty clear that the former DID go by “Hans” and the latter “Hinrich,” even though my dad often referred to him as “John Henry.”

But they probably aren't brothers.

Of course, as I mentioned elsewhere, it’s also possible that my ancestor got out on a Danish passport as Dad had it, and the name on THAT was “Johann Hinrich Lübker,” a name he just kept using after arriving here. His real name could have been something entirely different. And there's no way to know if his brother left on a passport with the same surname or something completely different. In which case I have another, even bigger mystery on my hands!

Another mystery—solved?

I’ve been digging back into our family history for the last few years—something my dad was passionate about, but that didn’t particularly interest me until after I had kids of my own.

What piqued my interest was a photo I came across of my great grandfather and his wife and kids. I received it as part of a packet from the current pastor of a church where he’d served back in the early years of the 20^th century. I’d come across a reference to the place online and, on a whim, sent a note asking if they had any info about and maybe a photo of my great-great-grandfather, Gotthilf F. Luebker.

I’d never seen a picture of the guy because there weren’t any hanging on the wall when I was a kid, as there were some other ancestors. I later discovered that my dad had many pictures of him in his files, but when I got that photo from the church, I felt like I was I “meeting” him for the first time.

It had a particularly strong impact because it showed him surrounded by his wife and kids—as a husband and a father—like me. And standing to his right was my grandfather—whom I recalled only as a white-haired old man holding me on his lap and letting me play with his pocket watch—here, as skinny teenager, with his whole life still ahead of him!

Anyhow, something clicked, and suddenly these people became real to me, more than just names or dusty, disconnected relics (like Gotthilf’s hat) that my dad kept in his study when I was growing up.

The only problem was that Dad had been gone for 15 years, so I couldn’t go ask him to repeat all of the stories I’d half-listened to when he was still alive. His family history records were scattered around the old house up in Pine City where he’d been living when he died, but not organized or even consolidated in any significant way. I felt bad about that: I’d made him a promise during his final months that I’d gather up that stuff and take care of it, but moving around as much as we have, I never quite got around to it. It remained in what I came to call “the Dad Museum.”

Then, last November, my daughter and I went up to Minnesota to do a college visit and were able to spend a couple of days at the old place, where I packed up and shipped as much as I could back to Arizona. There were some things I couldn’t locate—files that supposedly had info that tracked our family tree back into the 1600s, and some old photo albums that belonged to my great aunt—but in talking to my brother and my nephew, it sounded as though those might already be in the care of my sister, who also has been researching family history.

Among the stuff I shipped to Arizona were a number of framed family photos I’d never seen before, including one of Johann Hoefler, my great-great-grandfather, my Grandma Luebker’s immigrant ancestor. I scanned the photo, posted it on Ancestry, and didn’t think much more about it. (That's him, below.) There was just one thing that seemed odd—I couldn’t find a date of death for him, and he didn't seem to be buried alongside his wife in Pine City.

Flash forward to this year. I’m up in Pine City again, helping my other daughter get set up in the house up there, and I get in touch with Jerry Hoefler. His grandfather and my great grandfather were brothers, which makes him my second cousin once removed, if you’re keeping score.

I asked Jerry about Johann, and it turns out that Johann was the ancestor my dad often described to me as having been “assassinated.”

The story—or one version of it—was that a Hoefler ancestor sold the family linen mill back in Bavaria and used the proceeds to kind of tom-cat around for a while, maybe fathering an illegitimate child or two. Eventually he emigrated to the United States where, in dad’s story, one of this ancestor’s “bastard” off-spring from Germany tracked him down years later and shot him to death on the porch of a whorehouse near where the St. Paul Civic Center eventually would be built.

My problem was that I hadn’t associated Johann with that story or as being that guy. I hadn’t made the connection that the guy who’d settled in Pine City, the guy who had six kids with Catherine Wölfinger (with whom he’d arrived in the United States along with a pair of daughters—Barbara, two years old, and Margaret, only six months—in 1866, when he was 28 years old) was the same wastrel who’d met the colorful end in my dad’s story.

Jerry had some different information. It seemed that Johann actually had started another family back in Bavaria, then abandoned them to start the second family with whom he came to America. So that would mean we're the “bastards,” and the family he left behind back in Germany would be his "real" family. And as Jerry had it—apparently from my dad, as well—it was the youngest son of that left-behind family who’d been sent over here to—well, I’m not exactly sure—to avenge the family’s honor, I guess.

Jerry also shared a couple of letters with me that my dad had sent starting back in 1953 when Dad was stationed in Germany.

One was asking his aunt for more info about whether any of the older generation of Hoeflers recalled a visit by a German relative circa 1898 or 1899—he’d been in touch with the German Hoeflers, and one of them mentioned traveling to visit relatives in the States around that time.

Apparently none of the surviving American Hoeflers recalled such a visit, leading dad to formulate the hypothesis that there may have been a visitor who came to visit just one person: Johann, to shoot him dead.

In a later letter, Dad transcribed the newspaper accounts from the St. Paul Dispatch and St. Paul Pioneer Press that indicated Johann had shot himself. But Dad discovered what he believed was a significant discrepancy: one article said the pistol was found in Johann’s right hand, but the wound was below his left ear.

That seems to have been the genesis of the “assassinated ancestor” story. That it was a shooting is certain. But Dad’s question was, “Who actually pulled the trigger?”

The answers came as a result of another letter Jerry shared with me, from another cousin who’s been researching family history. In it she mentioned another article about the shooting in the St. Paul Daily Globe, a newspaper I’d only recently discovered on the Library of Congress’s “Chronicling America” website. Turned out there are two articles. Here’s what they say:

From the Saint Paul Daily Globe, Tuesday Morning, December 30, 1890:

THROUGH HIS HEAD.

———

John Hoeffer Lies at the Hospital, His Head Horribly Mutilated.

———

Tired of Life, He Attempts an Exit by the Well-Worn Pistol Route.

———

He Cannot Possibly Recover From the Self-Inflicted Injuries.

———

John Hoeffler lies the city hospital with a bullet hole through his brain. He will die. Last night at 9:30 o'clock Mrs. Ryder, of 122 West Sixth Street, was engaged in household duties in the rear of the house, when she was startled by a flash, followed by the report of a pistol just outside the kitchen window. The report was also heard Amelia Ryder, daughter of the lady mentioned, and a roomer in the house named George Regelsberger. The latter ran out to the spot from which the flash had seemed to proceed and there found the prostrate body of a man. Blood was flowing from a wound in his head. He was unconscious. Mr. Regelsberger at once hurried to police headquarters, a block away, and gave information of the facts. Lieut. Schweitzer proceeded to the scene, and found the man as described. Mrs. Ryder. having recovered from her fright, identified the man as John Hoeffler, formerly a roomer at the house, and latterly fireman at the Ryan Hotel. He had shot himself near the base of the brain with a .44 caliber navy revolver. The ball had penetrated the brain. Hoeffler’s hat, a black slouch hat of Stetson manufacture, was bespattered with the brains of the suicide. Hoeffler was removed to the city hospital after a brief examination of his wound by Dr. Ancker. An operation was postponed on him there, but it is impossible that he can survive.

In one of the man’s pockets was found a memorandum book. On one of the pages was written in German: John Hoeffler, Dec. 29. Did he shoot himself?

Hoeffler came to St. Paul nine years ago from Pine City. Mrs. Ryder, on whose premises the shooting occurred, also came from Pine City about that time. The Hoeffler and Ryder families were neighbors there. Mrs. Hoeffler died in Pine City eleven years ago, and since that time Hoeffler has made threats against his own life, which, however, were regarded as meaningless until the affair of last night occured. Hoefler leaves six children. One of them is Mrs. Henry Kruse, of Pine City, who has charge of three younger children. A son, John Hoeffler, resides in St. Paul on Canada street, and a daughter, Henrietta Hoeffler, is employed as a domestic by a Summit avenue family. Hoeffler is addicted to drink. He was discharged from his position at the Hotel Ryan nearly a month ago. It is thought his action was due to despondency.

From the St. Paul Daily Globe, Friday Morning, January 2, 1891:

A DELICATE OPERATION,

———

But It Failed to Give John Hoeffler His Life

John Hoeffler, the man who shot himself in the head last Tuesday evening in the yard of Mrs. Ryder’s residence, at 122 West Sixth street, died at the city hospital yesterday. That death has ensued in his case is less surprising than that he survived for so long the injuries of such a nature. The revolver with which Hoeffler shot himself was a forty-four-caliber, navy pattern. The ball entered his skull at the base of the brain, made a circuit of the inside of the cranium, and lodged just above the ear on the left side. Dr. Ancker probed for the bullet, but was unable for some time to trace its course. Having at length located it, a piece of the man’s skull was cut away from the region of the bullet, and it was removed. Hoeffler was unconscious during the operation but rallied, subsequently regaining his senses, and discussed with the attendants his chances for life. These up to yesterday morning seemed tolerably good, despite the nature of the wounds and the intricacy of the operation performed. From that time, however, the man became rapidly worse, and he died at 3:30 in the afternoon.

DATES: The first thing I noticed is that the actual year of the shooting doesn’t match up with the supposed dates of the travel by the German relative that made my dad curious in the first place. Back in 1953, he was looking at the years 1898 and 1899. Turns out Johann’s death was nearly a decade earlier.

WOUND LOCATION: While I don’t reproduce them here, the articles in the Dispatch and Pioneer Press, were the source of the “gun in right hand/wound under left ear” discrepancy. But in the Globe accounts—and one can infer from the detail that the reporter talked to the doctor or the “attendants”—it’s pretty clear that the shot entered at the base of the skull on the right side and the slug traveled around inside the cranium and came to a stop below the left ear.

It seems likely there was trauma to both sides of his head. And even if there was no exit wound on the left, it seems likely there could have been swelling and bleeding (or worse) from the ear that might lead a reporter to assume that’s where the shot entered and that the open wound on the other side was the exit, assuming the reporter actually saw the injured man. Maybe he didn’t. Or maybe he just got it wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time.

WEAPON: There’s also disagreement between the Dispatch and Pioneer Press and Globe accounts on what type of revolver was used. The Dispatch and Pioneer Press say it was a “.44 bull dog revolver” and the Globe says a “.44 caliber navy revolver.”

Here, I tend to believe the Dispatch and Pioneer Press version. The .44 bull dog—based on the British Webley—was a fairly common (and inexpensive, if you bought an American-made version) “pocket gun,” a far more likely weapon for a man in Johann’s circumstance to have and be carrying. A navy colt is much larger—nearly three pounds, and more than a foot long—and actually was a .36 caliber weapon, although the Army version was a .44.

And the navy revolver probably would have done significantly more damage, with a muzzle velocity of about 900 FPS, compared to only about 600 for the bull dog.

REGAINED SENSES: Before reading the Globe article I had no idea that Johann ever woke up after the bullet entered his head. But apparently he did. While not definitive, it seems that he might have told his attendants if someone else had shot him, and the article only mentions his discussion of his chances to live. You could chalk that up to traumatic amnesia, of course. But the rest of the evidence seems to point in another direction.

CIRCUMSTANCES: The articles hint that Johann moved to the St. Paul with Mrs. Ryder, his former neighbor in Pine City. Her husband was still alive at the time of her leaving (and was through 1893) but not living with her in St. Paul. So it’s easy to imagine that after his wife died in 1879, a guy who once sowed wild oats across Bavaria, may have run away to St. Paul with his neighbor's wife.

But in the news account, Mrs. Ryder identifies him as a “former roomer” at her boarding house, indicating that if they’d had a relationship, it most likely had ended and he'd moved out (or been asked to move out).

The article also states that he’d been fired from a job at the Hotel Ryan a month earlier, he had a history of threatening suicide since his wife’s death (the eleventh anniversary of which had passed less than a week before, on Christmas Eve), he was “addicted to drink,” and was suffering from “despondency.”

And it was Christmas time—prime time for depression and suicides. It sounds like his holidays hadn’t been particularly happy.

That he chose the backyard of a woman who probably was his former paramour, a house where he formerly lived, is consistent with the mental state of someone wanting to draw attention to his act and to punish the person he probably felt had done him wrong somehow. One can imagine him looking through the window and making sure she was nearby before he pulled the trigger.

So with all of that, I have a hard time inserting a stealthy assassin into this scene. From the article, it sounds like George Regelsberger was outside within seconds, hardly time for an assailant to put the gun in his victim’s hand and flee.

For me it’s difficult to see anything more than a man whose life had collapsed around him, who thought he had nothing left to live for, who believed a bullet would end his pain.

And the saddest part—for me, anyway—is that if he’d lived a hundred years later, someone probably would have picked up on his symptoms and got him the help he needed, long before he reached this sad end in a cold back yard.

But some questions still remain:

• What was the purpose of the note in his pocket: “John Hoeffler, Dec. 29. Did he shoot himself?” It would be interesting to know whatever happened to that, whether it was in his writing, and why he got the date wrong.

• What was the eventual disposition of the gun, the hat, the memorandum book and the rest?
  

• Mrs. Ryder’s maiden name turns out to have been Mary Schweitzer. Was the police Lt. Schweitzer who “proceeded to the scene” a relative of hers? Could it have been a murder for different reasons, a murder that was covered up, just not the murder my dad suspected?

• And where is Johann Hoefler buried?

I don't know whether those are questions I'll be able to answer. It would be interesting to try to locate descendants of the Ryders and find out whether any stories have come down through their family about the events of December 30, 1890 in that back yard on Sixth Street.

But that’s a project for another time.

How do you pronounce "Luebker"?

I was talking to my cousin a couple of weeks back. Somehow or other we got around to talking about our grandparents and great grandparents, and I was surprised to hear him pronounce my last name as "lip-ker."

Now that shouldn't surprise me--it's the way my dad always pronounced it and the way I pronounced it up until I went off to college, and decided I'd start pronouncing it the way it looks--"lube-ker"--and stop confusing people who couldn't figure out how "lueb" would end up being pronounced "lip."

Actually, even that pronunciation was a compromise. Back in the old country, the name was spelled "Lübker" (when you transliterate the "ü" into English, it becomes "ue") and the "ü" is pronounced as though you're trying to say "eeee" with your lips set as though you meant to say "oooo."

When my dad would go all German on me and pronounce it that way, I noticed that the "b" also got sharpened and sounded more like a "p" and the "k" got softened and sounded more like a "g"--something I later discovered was basically pushing the pronunciation of those letters back through two Germanic consonant shifts.

However, my guess is that my immigrant ancestor (Johann Hinrich Lübker) pronounced the sharpened "b" but not the softened "k," since in the 1860 census the person transcribing his name wrote it as "Lipker." (I'm assuming the "u" with the umlaut must have sounded like a short "i" to the census taker as well, hastening the Anglicizing of the name, or at least how people said it.)

So it was pronounced "lip-ker" by the next three generations, still is by most of my generation, and continues to be by my nephews among the next generation. I'm apparently the only renegade, at least as far as I know.

To further complicate things, when I refer to my grandparents, it's still "Grandma Lipker" and "Grandpa Lipker," since that's the name (or version of it) that I knew them by.

Maybe I'll e-mail some of the other Luebkers I've encountered around the country and ask them how they say it.

Then there are the Lubkers who are descended from my immigrant ancestor's brother--he simply dropped the umlaut and never added the "e." So now I'm wondering if maybe they pronounce it "lub-ker," with the first syllable rhyming with "glub."

Finally, family legend has it that Johann Hinrich Lübker and his brother lived up in Schleswig-Holstein and got caught up in the excitement of the First Schleswig War. Johann supposedly threw an ax at a local official and missed, and they both had to leave the country in a hurry, allgedly on Danish passports. I've never found anything to confirm that, and I've also been unable to find any reference to either of the brothers on the other side of the ocean.

And that makes me wonder whether "Lübker" was even their real last name, or if it might just have been the name on the passports they used.

So the whole question of pronunciation might be moot--it may not even be my real name!

A mystery I probably can't solve...

Earlier today I was scanning some old family photos. I took one of my great uncle, Royal Hoefler, out of its frame and behind it I found an apparently uncashed, but endorsed check for 10 cents made out to A.W. Dunn from the assistant Treasurer of the United States in Chicago, Ill.

The check isn’t dated, although there is a line for a date that apparently wasn’t filled in, but the check has a picture of William McKinley on the left side of the front. The name of the payee (“A.W. DUNN”), the amount (“TEN CENTS--”) and the voucher number (“238522”) are filled in by some sort of machine-generated type. The signature of the disbursing clerk who signed the check looks like “GeoG Box.”

There was a George G. Box who was serving in that role in the office of the secretary of the Department of Labor (in Washington, DC) in 1913 (according to the Official register of the United States, 1913, published by the U.S. Bureau of the Census), but by 1918 (according to the Report of the United States Housing Corporation, December 3, 1918, 1919) had moved on to become treasurer for the United States Housing Corporation.

So presumably the check was issued before 1918.

Royal was from Pine City, and with a little research I was able to determine that "A.W. Dunn" was most likely Alexander W. Dunn, Clerk of District Court in Pine City back in the early 20th century.

Royal Hoefler died of a ruptured appendix at age 21 in 1932, and according to a family tree on Ancestry.com, A.W. Gunn died the year before.

The check clearly had been folded in quarters for a time--one idea that crossed my mind is maybe Royal was carrying it around with him for some reason and had it in his pocket when he died--but guesswork is pretty much all I have.

So why Royal--or some other member of the family--would be in possession of that check, why it was endorsed (but not cashed) and what the connection between him and Gunn may have been are questions we may never answer. How it ended up behind the photo of Royal (who played football for the University of Minnesota and is shown in uniform) and why, may be a mystery we can't solve.

Thanksgiving 2009

My mother sent around a nice Thanksgiving greeting this morning, so I figured I'd answer her note with a brief one of my own.

As often happens when I'm left to my own devices, my handful of comments quickly grew to something more like an essay--or at least a reflection on some of the things I'm thankful for, not just on this particular day, but year 'round.

While this may be less of general interest, it does touch on some folks whom other members of my extended family will recall, so I decided it might be worth posting here a slightly edited version of what I sent to Mom.

Mom wrote:

To all my family, near and far, I wish you ALL peace and happiness and love! May God always
watch over you and your loved ones and guide you in the path He has created for you. On this
day I remember those who have gone before us...especially Bumpa and Nanny and my Grandma
and Grandpa Brown, Aunt Mayme and Aunt Fran, and my godmother and dearly loved Beth.
I also remember Brian, who gave his life in the service of our country before he was even 20 years old. God's blessings on ALL of you!

Hey Mom--

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you as well. Please pass that along to the whole bunch up there. I hope Nick and the Nebraska boys all arrive safely. Hard to believe we haven't seen them for a holiday since that Thanksgiving you all came up to East Lansing back in 2001.

Interesting about Thanksgiving being the time when you remember those who've gone before us. Along with the cooking all day, it's become that for me, as well.

Sometime after Dad died, I started going outside after Thanksgiving dinner to smoke a cigar in his memory.

I soon realized that cigars also reminded me of Uncle John--I remember him smoking them pretty regularly back in the sixties, in the days when he and Aunt Eva would come down from Two Harbors in the summer and stay upstairs over at 1019.

And even though he never smoked, Grandpa soon found his way into those reminiscences as well.

I think it's because the three of them were the strongest influences on me and how I've tried to live my life and shaping my understanding of what it means to be a father and to be a man.

I know none of them were perfect--I still remember how stunned I was to hear Karen complain about Uncle John as a dad when she "ran away" to Stillwater a couple of times in her teens--but each of them was an example for me in his own way.

Like any kid growing up, I focused on the good I saw, the things I liked and wanted to be like, and the things I thought and hoped I had in common with each of them. So when people ask me who my role models were or who my heroes were, I always list those three.

It would be hard to explain all of the things and all of the ways that they influenced me, but I can try to sum them up.

Dad gave me the art talent (and the writing, although I suspect I get some of that from you, as well) that's carried me through my life, along with the understanding that creative work is something you have to work hard at in order to make a living. It's never really a very secure career, but you can carry it with you anywhere you go.

As tough as it can be sometimes, it's not just pounding nails, it's something that's a part of me, that comes from somewhere inside. And because it's personal like that, and something I enjoy doing, the "work"--even at times when there are long, seemingly endless hours of it--always has at least a small element of doing something I WANT to do and that I ENJOY doing. When I look around at my colleagues over the years, I know that's not a common a thing.

I never would have been a freelancer if not for dad. All of those money-making schemes he came up with under the auspices of Blue Dog Enterprises and the office he made of the front room at 1110 were there as examples for me when the St. Croix Boom Company first offered me work painting signs and designing flyers. Sure, I already had a job at the Lakewood, but the way I understood the workings of the world, that didn't preclude me taking on additional work. Heck, it seemed almost EXPECTED.

Uncle John taught me the value of being part of the larger community and reaching out to the people who were part of it. I remember spending a week up in Two Harbors with him and his family back in 1966 or 1967, and how he took me with him everywhere he went. And everywhere he went, people greeted him or stopped to talk--a simple trip to the store took at least twice as long because of all the socializing.

It just blew me away how he'd touched all of those people's lives in some way or another and how glad they all were to see him. So I've tried to become part of each community where we've lived as well--getting to know the neighbors, volunteering at the schools and churches, helping with the Girl Scout troops and activities and coaching softball--to give something back to the various communities of which we've been parts over the years.

And, of course, he was a teacher.

I know you always wanted me to be a teacher, and I don't recall whether I ever told you about the period back in Indiana when I worked as a substitute teacher for a while. I didn't find being in a classroom very rewarding--for the most part the kids were there because they HAD to be, not because they wanted to be. You had to overcome a lot just to get them to engage.

However, it was that experience and Uncle John's influence (albeit indirectly) that sort of propelled me into coaching. That was different, because those kids WANTED to learn how to play ball and function as a team, and those were things I enjoyed and believed in at a fundamental level.

Softball (like baseball) is an unusual sport in that it combines moments of individual accomplishment into an overall context of teamwork and players helping one another. You can't play it well and win without combining those two things. And when you have a bunch of kids who actually WANT to learn how to do that, it's some of the most rewarding "work" I've done--for almost 15 years, now.

And that gets me to Grandpa. He's the one who introduced me to baseball and was responsible for it becoming a lifelong passion in me.

At the time, I was too young to realize what a big deal it was to have a major league team in the Twin Cities, because for me, baseball didn't exist in my life before 1961. So his enthusiasm to watch or listen to the games--surely elevated to a large degree by the Twins arriving in Minnesota from DC that same year--was pretty contagious.

He (and Uncle John) explained the game to me, Grandpa dug out his two old mitts (lost forever when the old shed and garage collapsed) and taught me to throw and catch. So when you guys bought me my first glove, bat and ball for my birthday when I was in first grade, I already knew how to use them.

The other thing about Grandpa was his sense of humor and, the appearance at least, that life wasn't to be taken too seriously. I loved it when he teased us kids, popped out his false teeth or made up stories about "when [he] was a little girl." It was hilarious when he'd make fart sounds in the kitchen and then say "Myrtle, cut that out!" and she'd get so flustered.

Grandpa was another guy who loved to socialize, although most of what I remember of that was him sitting in his T-shirt at the kitchen table at 1019, drinking a cup of tea and chatting up whoever stopped by: the milkman, Barney, my cousin Greg Brown, Bob Reilly, and on and on. I got my lifelong love of tea from Grandpa as well.

One thing that all three of them were responsible for was teaching me to use tools, along with a kind of ethic about WHY. I expect a lot of that had to do with our modest means and the idea that when something broke, you fixed it.

Whether it was Grandpa and Uncle John tackling some job over at 1019 (or Grandpa over working on the plumbing at 1110) or Dad out in the garage in the middle of winter, trying to make some sort of repair on one of those second-hand cars he always drove, the message was clear: It CAN be fixed, and you should know how to fix it.

I sometimes refer to that as the family blessing and the family curse, because it's always harder to call a repairman if you think you might be able to fix whatever it is that's broken yourself.

But most of all, family was important to all of them.

We came together to mark every holiday (and sometimes it seemed like a holiday just because we came together), they worked hard to raise and support their families, and even when family members were far away, they stayed in touch and they kept those links alive.

So I think about all of that (and more) when I smoke my after-dinner cigar on Thanksgiving, and I wonder about what I might have learned from the others who came before me and what parts of them are stamped on my DNA, characteristics that I'm carrying forward without even knowing it.

Of course, those three didn't do it alone. They had families of their own--grandparents, parents, siblings, wives and kids who also played enormous roles in shaping who they were. And along with the DNA, those influences and traditions have filtered down through the years and surely have shaped who I (and all of us in the current generations) have become as well.

Doing genealogical research over the last few years, reading about and looking into the faces in the photos of those people makes makes me realize that parts of each of them and each of their lives live on in me, and will continue forward through my daughters.

While I can't know exactly what parts those are or might be, I'm thankful today--and everyday--for what all of them contributed to making me who I am, and for giving me all of that to pass along to my own kids.

"Black Friday" notwithstanding, Thanksgiving seems to be the holiday least affected by our changing world, still a time for family, still a time to sit down together and to recall the people, places and events that have made our lives richer.

So a Happy Thanksgiving to ALL of you-- both the family members acquired by birth and the family members we've chosen over the years.

I'm thinking of all of you today.
--
Best,
Mark

If I were an action figure...

About 18 years ago, I was buying cheap Mexican bootlegs of the Kenner Super Powers action figures at a toy market in Mexico City, then customizing them into other characters. I stopped doing that around the time my oldest daughter was a few months old, but some years back, I posted pics of a bunch of my custom figures on my old Tripod website.

Anyhow, for a few years thereafter, I kept on picking up stray figures at garage sales, flea markets and even eBay, with the intention of getting back to customizing some day.

That day HAS NOT arrived, by the way.

But I did pick up a "Bob the Goon" figure back then (from the first "Batman" movie), thinking it looked like a good starting point for a custom action figure of myself.

Flash forward to last week: I ran across a fellow figure fanatic when I was up in Phoenix for a meeting at an agency my office has been working with for a while. They introduced this guy as being into action figures (oddly enough, they didn't tell me what he does for the company), so I mentioned I was also a fan, we chatted for a while, exchanged info and URLs, and suddenly I find myself participating in a form on the ActionFigureInsider.com website. (The weird thing is, I've had this site bookmarked for a year or so, after running across it while trying to find info on some Captain Marvel figure or other.)

Anyway, most of the participants in the forum have "avatars" to represent themselves, so I figured I should have one as well.

Re-enter "Bob the Goon," or at least a photo of his head, which I "digitally customized" into a reasonable facsimile of my own visage and uploaded as my avatar.

Now all I have to do is figure out which box out in the garage has the actual figure, get out the putty and paints, and do the same with the real one!

Who people think I look like

I'm probably going to regret this (not the least reason for which would be the need to dig up the old photos of me to support what I'm about to talk about), but over the years folks have suggested that I look like a whole range of famous people.

When I was younger and had shoulder-length 9and beyond) hair, it was kinda flattering. They said i looked like Bob Seger.

When I got a little older and cut my hair, they started saying I looked like Kenny Rogers.

More recently, as I've gotten older and, er, more substantial, I started hearing comparisons to Dom DeLuise.

But then today an old friend of mine--Michelle Membrez--told me that my Facebook photo reminds he of Lakers coach Phil Jackson. I think that's moving in the right direction.

Anyway, now to go look for some photos...

Our 2008 Christmas card

Kathleen and I aren't very good at sending Christmas cards. As a matter of fact, I'm trying to recall whether we EVER have managed to send out any during the nearly 19 years we've been married. Oh, we've bought some nice ones during that time and we've had good intentions in that regard, but well, somehow it always got to be January or February by the time we were ready to ACT on those intentions. So we'd always say, "Okay, next year then."

This year may actually turn out to be a little different. It's still November (barely), and while we haven't bought any Christmas cards, we nevertheless have one ready to go. It's not store-bought, though, it's a reproduction – or maybe "adaptation" is a better word – I made of a Christmas card from 1943.

Let me back up a bit and explain.

Over the past 8 or 9 years, I've written up a small handful of stories for my kids – time travel stories that feature the older two girls. I started when Emmy came home one day from second grade and was sitting in a chair crying. She told me the reason was because she'd finished all the "Magic Treehouse" books and there were no more to read.

What could I do? I read a couple of them to see how they were put together, then wrote the first two "Time Scouts" books with Emmy and Rosie having their own adventures in the past. It wasn't entirely altruistic--I also saw an opportunity to teach them some history, something I've really grown to love as I've gotten older.

Anyhow, the first one took them back to the day during the age of dinosaurs when the asteroid hit the Yucatan. That took me a day to write. The second had them spend Good Friday 1865 with Tad Lincoln, and because I wanted to do some research first, it took me a week to finish. I started a third one, that has them and a couple of neighbor boys from Indiana in New York City on Sept. 30, 1927, but after a month or so of writing and researching, I put that one on hold because I was having problems finding some of the info I needed to finish it. So I started the fourth one, the one I've been working on and researching for something like five years now, where they travel back to the homefornt during WWII at Christmastime in 1943 and meet their grandmother when she was their age.

I think my problem is that I like doing the research as much (or maybe more) than I do the actual writing. I have the whole story mapped out, I have a cardboard box and numerous digital folders full of research, but I also have a bunch of eBay notifications set up that let me know every day if certain kinds of popular culture artifacts from Christmas 1943 turn up for auction. Mostly, I copy the images and have built a pretty extensive library of them to give me some idea what the world and the things in it looked like back then. But occasionally I'll also bid on something that strikes my fancy.

I did that a couple of months back when I saw an auction for a lot that contained a small pile of Christmas cards dating from 1943. I won them for a ridiculously low price – I think the shipping cost more than the cards – and when they arrived, one in particular really jumped out at me.

When we moved out here, we rented a house (until we can sell ours up in Michigan) that has an oasis-like back yard, with a kidney-shaped pool, palm and citrus trees and beautiful landscaping. The Realtor had a great photo of it posted on the Web as part of the listing when we were first looking. And one of those 1943 Christmas cards had a picture on the front that could have been a drawing of that same view! The only problem was, it said, "A Merry Christmas from California" and we're here in Arizona.

I've been reading a little about the history of Arizona, and many of the writers compare what's been going on here over the the last few decades to the growth boom in California back in the 1940s. Some even refer to the Phoenix area as "L.A. II," and with all of the palm trees, the desert setting and endless freeways, one can see the similarities.

Anyway, that card inspired me. I tossed it on the scanner, cleaned it up a bit and changed "California" to "Arizona." It was a simple matter to find some appropriate ivory-colored paper and envelopes at Staples to give my new card a slightly aged appearance. Right now I'm contemplating whether to scan a sheet of 1943 Christmas Seals I bought in another eBay auction and include a reproduction of one on my envelopes as well, for the full retro-Christmas experience.

So if I have your mailing address, watch your mailbox. If I don't, send me a note and I'll try to get one of these out to you this year. And if I fail at that – remember, we've never really been good at mailing out Christmas cards – remind me and I'll e-mail you a PDF.

However this turns out, it's been a fun exercise and an opportunity for me to wish all of our friends and family a Merry Christmas or a Happy Channukah or just offer the Season's Greetings and our best wishes for the New Year.
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Halloween again!

Wow, the gaps between posts here have gotten longer and longer. Last time I wrote anything we were still up in Michigan. Now we're enjoying an Arizona Halloween with the temperature in the high eighties.

One thing we've noticed is that no one puts out jack-o-lanterns early the way they do up north. With the weather as warm as it its here, they'd probably spoil pretty fast, and while rotting pumpkins WOULD be scary, I'm not sure we'd want to deal with the insect life they might attract.

There also doesn't seem to be the same amount of house and yard decoration going on here that we're used to seeing up north. Not sure why that is--it would work even better here, since Arizona doesn't go on daylight savings time, so the sun sets even earlier than what we were used to.

Anyhow, the main purpose of posting today is to get a photo of my Halloween-crazed wife up here. Two years back I managed to get the "Married to a Vulcan" posted, but last year I missed getting a photo of her in her costume. The good news is, since we moved and no one here saw her in it last year, she's doing a rerun. (Probably be a good opportunity to go back and revisit some of the other costumes of Halloweens past in coming years as well.)

So without further ado, there she is, Kathleen the Riveter!

My old baseball glove

Okay, this will be a quick one. I've already forgotten exactly how I happened to find the photo of the glove in my previous post here. I suppose I Googled "Hawthorne baseball glove" or something like that.

I know this much: It found it as part of an auction on eBay. And since I no longer had my old glove – I thought I'd left it at Mom's house, but when I last went looking for it in early 1980, it was nowhere to be found – OF COURSE I had to bid on it.

I was the only bidder – who else would want a 45 year-old baseball glove from Wards? – and won it for $2.99. I'll have to dig up an old Wards catalog, but I bet that was around what it cost back then.

It was a little more expensive if you add in the $7 it cost to ship it to me and the glove conditioner I picked up for $3. But how do you put a price on nostalgia?

I used up about half the conditioner, stuck a ball in the pocket, wrapped a couple of fat rubber bands around it and let it sit for a few days.

Then, about 45 minutes ago, I dug a baseball out of the garage and made my middle daughter (who pitches on the varsity softball team) go outside and play catch with me. After about 5 minutes, she blew the lacing out in the pocket, even though she wasn't throwing very hard.

I had to come in and fix it, then we went back out and threw for about 10 more minutes. This time the glove stood up okay.

It felt just like my old glove, and even though it looks like something out of an old baseball movie, it caught the ball just fine. It's hard to describe the feeling of being out there and throwing with one of my daughters, using a mitt that was such a tangible link back to my childhood.

I probably need someone like W.P. Kinsella to try to explain what that connection feels like when you play catch with your kid, then think back to when you were the kid and it was your dad or your grandfather out in the yard playing catch with you. Whatever it is, it's good.

Oh, and since this glove is less worn than mine was when I last saw it, I still can read the model number on it. It's a Hawthorne 60-4076, near as I can tell, a not-particularly-distinguished glove that's pretty much been forgotten. Google it and see – no hits.

Well, that's not quite right. There should be at least one now, since I remember it, was out in the yard playing catch with it (and my daughter) a few minutes ago, and will be posting this to my blog in a few seconds. So the name of the Hawthorne 60-4076 will live SOMEWHERE on the Internet or the archives of the Internet for as long as there's an Internet. And with luck, maybe someday my daughter will be out in the yard throwing with her daughter or son, maybe even using this old glove.

Baseball memories

I was reading the coverage of the Minnesota Twin on the Minneapolis StarTribune site this morning, and ran across an article that talks about how some of the current Twins players got started playing ball, as kids. The comments section was full of other fans recalling their own childhood experiences learning about baseball and how to play ball, and that got me thinking about mine.

Baseball first popped up on my radar when, in 1961, I was at my grandparents house and saw a box of Post Toasties with cut-out baseball cards on the back. Having lived in Northern Ireland for a good part of my young life (we returned in 1959), I had no idea what baseball was. My grandpa, who played city ball when he was younger and who, I discovered, was a great baseball fan, explained it to me as best he could.

He let me cut out the cards, even though there was still cereal in the box, and I remember going outside with my new treasures in hand, to show them off to any of the other neighborhood kids who might be outside.

The only card I remember from that batch is Jerry Lumpe, then of the Kansas City Athletics. He was my favorite, because, as i recall, he'd scored more runs than any of the other players on the back of that particular box. Not that I had a clear idea exactly what runs might be. But it sounded good.

I went out to stand by a big elm tree where the sidewalk on Hancock Street met the the driveway at the back of my grandparents house--a spot where the grown-ups could see me and from where I might see some of the other kids. There was a puddle on the sidewalk there, where the pavement had buckled a little, that looked like a square head with a rectangular nose . That Jerry Lumpe card and the puddle on that gray spring day are where my lifelong love of baseball began.

I think it was Ronny Bastyr, who lived a few houses down Fourth Street, who happened by. I showed him the cards, he showed me some other ones he had (in those days kids carried baseball cards around in their pockets, we didn't keep them in ring binders with Mylar sleeves around them) and I seem to recall that we traded a one or two. That was it, I was hooked.

As it happened, that was the same spring that the Washington Senators arrived in Minnesota and became the Twins, so there was a lot of baseball talk going on, even though as a kindergartener, I didn't understand a lot of it. But my grandpa and my uncles watched the Twins whenever they were on TV and it seemed like there were radios tuned to the games in every basement and garage. Evenings, you could walk down the street and follow a game, just listening to the sound of the broadcasts coming from the front porches and open windows.

And eventually, I found a Minnesota Twin or two on the backs of other cereal boxes (and Jell-O boxes too!). They became my favorites, and Jerry Lumpe was forgotten.

Naturally, I wanted to try PLAYING baseball. So my grandpa dug out a couple of his old mitts and took me out in the side yard to throw. One was a big, overstuffed catcher's mitt with a patch on the top front where the leather had worn through, and the other was a small fielder's glove. Both dated from the early 1900s, so the catcher's mitt didn't flex at all and the fielder's mitt had no webbing and was barely larger than an adult hand.

On the other hand, I'd never seen a baseball glove before, so those were just fine with me. And I learned to throw and catch.

Over the course of the summer, I discovered that the other kids in the neighborhood had very different kinds of baseball gloves--bigger, with some sort of pocket between the thumb and index finger, and a kind of hinge that let you flex it closed to hold the ball. But by that time, the season was over and everyone was putting away their gloves and starting to play touch football in the side yards.

By the following spring, I discovered that baseball cards weren't just something you could get off the backs of cereal boxes, you could also BUY a two-sided variety that came in a pack of five with a stick of gum. These could be found on the candy rack at Hooley's Supermarket, just a block down the street. Even better, Kearney's Grocery--on the corner opposite Hooley's--carried penny packs, with one card and a stick of gum in each. So for your nickel, you could get five cards AND five sticks of gum! It was a great world, and I think I'd probably had my first lesson in economics.

For my birthday that spring, my parents got me my first baseball glove—a Hawthorne, with a "Snag-Em" pocket— a 31-inch black bat (the handle of which I taped with white adhesive tape) and a brand-new baseball, all from "Monkey Wards." I'd take those to school with me and join in the games we played on the fields out back and down below the hill.

I think it was that summer when we began playing two-on-two or three-on-three out in our side yard. Most of the houses in our neighborhood were on double lots, and all of the ones that had kids also seemed to have something resembling an elongated baseball diamond worn into the grass--longer from home plate to second than they were from first base to third, because that was the shape of the yards.

Danny Swanson was my next-door neighbor, living in the house behind us, and he had such a field worn into his yard, but because he was the third child, his parents had already endured years of torn-up grass and broken windows. So we weren't allowed to play over there (although we WERE allowed to throw the ball around, just not hit it).

So we made a field in our yard instead.

Home plate was a spot we picked that we figured was far enough back that every pitch we missed wouldn't necessarily roll into the street, but close enough to the sidewalk that there'd be enough yard for the rest of the field. I asked my grandpa to make me a "real" home plate out of a scrap of white formica countertop he had in the basement, and he complied. It was only about half the size of a real one, but I was a kid, it was white, shiny and the right shape, and I was thrilled.

First base was next to a birch tree over by the house. We wore away the grass there, and occasionally put down a scrap of wood or a piece of cardboard, but mostly we just used the worn spot. You couldn't really overrun first, though, without getting a face-full of tree.

Second base was set far enough back so an infielder wouldn't get killed by a batted ball, but where we'd still have room for an outfield, in line with home plate.

Third base was next to a maple tree, right at our property's edge, so any foul balls usually went into Campbell's yard.

Fouls on the first base side were problematic because that's where our house was, with windows, windows, windows all along the side, and we rarely got the storm windows down and the screens (which offered SOME protection) up as early as when we started playing out there each year. Fortunately, we all were right-handed hitters, so we didn't hit a lot over toward the house, but we did manage to break 2 or 3 windows over the years.

When we played, we never needed a shortstop because there was a big elm tree there. And there was a picket fence between Swanson's yard and ours. We confidently said any ball hit over that fence would be a home run, but none of us was able to actually hit one there until we were older and long-since had outgrown the dimensions of our side yard fields.

The first year I remember playing out there we had two "permanent" teams: Danny Swanson and Earl Gersting (who as a year older than us, and lived just up the street, on the other side of Campbell's house) versus Pat Junker (whose dad was the local candy supplier and had a big candy warehouse in their back yard, a block down from us) and me.

We pitched slow and hit as hard as we could and had a pretty good time.

Sometimes Kenny Campbell, one of the older kids in the neighborhood, whose bedroom faced our yard, would open his window and act as our umpire, or at least try to settle the inevitable arguments about fair or foul, safe or out.

Kenny also had a baseball-like game that he and the older guys played in his back yard.

Campbells had a big house, that was set pretty far back on their lot. And the lot itself extended the width of the block, from Third Street to Fourth Street. The house had seen at least two shed-like additions on the back, and there also was a small four-unit apartment building set right up against the sidewalk on the Fourth Street side. Between the sheds and the apartments was a big dirt driveway/parking area.

Kenny had chalked a strike zone on the shed door facing that area and had paced off where a pitcher's mound should be. There were no bases--the apartments were probably only 30 feet behind him to his left, and the driveway out to Fourth Street was on his right. Behind him and farther to his right was a hedge that ran along the edge of the property.

Kenny would spend hours out there throwing a tennis ball at that strike zone. When others of the older kids were around--Kurt or David Swanson, Ronny Minks--they'd step in and bat against him, using a broomstick with an electrical tape grip to try to hit. Kenny would call balls and strikes, based on where his pitches hit in or out of the chalked strike zone. If he walked you or you actually hit the ball, you got a ghost runner. If you managed to hit the ball over the hedge, it was a home run and you cleared the bases.

At first we younger guys were only allowed to watch. But as we got older and learned to hit better, he'd let us bat as well. At least when the older guys weren't around.

Kenny was also the guy who was responsible for my first cache of older baseball cards. In those days, last year's cards weren't particularly valued. They'd end up in bicycle spokes or parked in a drawer or even just thrown away. But I didn't care what year they were from--I had the collecting mania even then, and was learning about baseball and teams and even some history from them. So word got back to Kenny that I'd trade "this year's" for older cards. Because the older ones were considered worthless, I got something like 5 for 1 and ended up with a bunch of random Topps (and a few Fleer) cards going back to 1958.

One of the cashiers down at Hooley's, Mary Gedatus, also took note of my enthusiasm for baseball cards. She mentioned that her older son had a bag full of them that he'd left behind when he moved out, and asked if I'd like them. Of course, I said yes! She said she'd bring them in, so for about a week, I went down to Hooley's every day and asked if she'd done so. Finally, she told my mother that I was "hounding" her about the cards and Mom told me to stop. The next time I was in the store I didn't ask Mary about the cards, but she brought them up and told me if I'd stop by her house (which was only a couple of blocks away) she'd give me the cards.

I still remember her handing me that crumpled paper bag. In it were both Topps and Bowman cards going all the way back to 1952.

Anyway, as a postscript to that story, I probably should explain what eventually happened to all of those cards, plus the ones I continued buying through 1969. At some point in maybe 1968, Danny Swanson and I combined our baseball card collections. We counted more than 4,000 cards, dating all the way back to those early Bowmans I'd gotten from Mary Gedatus. But there wasn't a single complete season set among them.

In 1969, when the New York Mets won the World Series, Danny and I decided we'd seen it all. The Mets had been the expansion team and punching bag of the National League for most of our childhoods, and now they were the world champions. (And the Twins STILL weren't.) We figured this was some sort of cosmic sign and we needed to do something to recognize it.

So we called all the younger kids in the neighborhood together, took our box of baseball cards out in the back yard, and started throwing them up in the air, telling the kids to take whatever they wanted. Then we raked up the rest, mixed with the leaves that had fallen from the trees, and... Well, I'm not entirely sure what we did with them. I could guess, but my guess would make anyone who collects cards from that era really cringe.

A year or so later, I ran across a small box--not that it matters, but it was a box that some plates had come in--filled with random cards that somehow survived--maybe a couple hundred, total. And not long after that, while looking through the want ads for people selling comic books (my latest collecting obsession), I ran across an ad from a guy who wanted to BUY old baseball cards. I called him, told him what I had, and he drove out from St. Paul to look at them. He offered me $25 for the boxful. I was stunned that they were worth that much, but gladly took his money. Looking back, I suppose they were worth a lot more, but at the time, they were all but worthless to me. So that $25 was like found money, at a time when I was earning $15 a week as an usher/janitor down at the Auditorium Theatre.

Anyway, there's fresh snow on the ground here in East Lansing, even though it's baseball season again. When I was a kid, and the side yard was our baseball field, we often got out there to start playing when there was still snow on the ground, but spring training was under way and we just couldn't wait any longer. And usually the grass was still brown on opening day as well (if it wasn't still under the snow). But we always thought it would be cool if we could go out and paint it green, like they did over at old Metropolitan Stadium. Because the grass SHOULD be green when it's baseball season.