When we were kids Dad would listen to ballgames on an old transistor radio that he hauled upstairs from his workbench. It was a tan rectangle with an oversized dial backlit with an orange glow. He plugged it into the kitchen socket and ran the radio out to the picnic table on an extension cord.
Once there, he would sit in an Adirondack chair, either smoking a pipe filled with cherry-blend tobacco or a cheap El Producto cigar. A cold can of beer would create condensation as it sat on the arm of the chair. On good days we would get subs from Billy Kidd’s to fill our bellies.
I didn’t always sit with him while he did this but I remember riding down the street on my bike, sailing past our house on flights of fancy, hearing the Red Sox announcers or the crack of the bat coming across our backyard. Seeing Dad sitting there filled my heart in a way that I couldn’t describe then and still can’t, really. The Old Man allowed himself so few pleasures, and he took great joy in moments like this. I think I recognized contentment on his face. I know that my Dad taught me that small moments can mean the most if you recognize them.
One of these moments happened with Dad was during the 1990s.
We had snacked on sausages from the “Sausage King” cart, bought a couple of beers and a bag of peanuts and made our way to our seats at Fenway Park. We were seated out in center field. It was an hour or so before game time and we were watching the players warm up.
The crack of the bat and the slap of the ball in a glove were the soundtrack for the moment. The sky was lit with brilliant multicolored hues of orange, pink and purple and a gentle breeze was blowing across the outfield. We were smoking some good cigars that I had bought for the occasion. You could still smoke at Fenway back in those days. I looked over at Dad in his baseball cap, a cloud of blue-grey smoke around his head. He had his hands folded across his stomach, watching the players. His thoughts were his own as he smiled contentedly.
I thought to myself, “This is a perfect moment.”
Dad turned to me. “Good seats, me boy,” he said. Thank you.”
And it was.
Leave a Reply