Sweet Spring, Sweet Surrender

“Maureen,” 18 x 24. Conte stick on paper

 

Spring.

Flowers bloom. Love blossoms. And dreams get crushed. Sometimes that’s what happens.

Regardless, the power of spring’s beauty is such that hope springs eternal every year. Like this spring. And next spring. And every spring I’m alive.

A particularly sweet spring – my sixteenth – occurred many years ago. The thrill of love, art, girls and winning combined for a lifetime worth of boyhood passion and intensity all in one season.

I’m pleased to share that story with you from this excerpt in Chapter 5, “Artistry,” from my memoir, Maybe Boomer.

I liked art class. It was different, a looser, free-flowing experiment in sociability as well as art media. The teacher often asked Maureen, a classmate one year behind me, to sit in a chair so the class could draw her, giving me the opportunity to stare at her freckles, low slung bell-bottoms, long brown hair, and exotic eyes. One minute, I fancied she liked me as more than the casual friends we were, the next minute not. Her penetrating smile always lured me in, either to bang my head against the wall in frustration or to try to get closer to her yet again. I was beginning to understand why the world associated love and art as inseparable, beautiful one minute, unsettling the next.

In this class, learning to dabble in the love of art and the art of love occurred simultaneously, but the art of love took precedence. I hoped my fascination with Maureen might lead to something.

Of all things, the attraction resulted in winning a Gold Key from the National Scholastic Arts Organization for a drawing I did of her in class. Using a fancy Conte’ a’ Paris pastel stick, I sketched Maureen as she posed in innocent, chaste fashion, cross-legged on the floor, writing in a notebook situated on her lap. Apparently, I’d also succeeded in shading her supple lips and tight shirt-covered breasts with a considerable amount of feeling – it sure got the judge’s eye.

It was news of winning the Gold Key that got Maureen’s attention. That night, unannounced, she drove over to my house.

When she said she came by just to say hi, I was flattered.

When we proceeded to go out for ice cream, I was nervous.

When we licked our ice cream cones while parked alone in her car, I froze.

As we sat together in the front seat, looking out over the high school’s tennis courts, even my chilled hand couldn’t keep butter pecan from melting all over the motionless cone.  Despite my statue-like position, thoughts and feelings raced through my mind, and I became oblivious to any signals she was sending.

After thirty long minutes of only coming to know her car’s interior intimately, the right side of her face exclusively, and the uneasiness of love exactly, Maureen released me of my burden by reaching over and kissing me on the cheek. Oversensitive, thinking I’d been weak for not rushing the net to make the first move, I never recovered, never scored as much as a single point. Worse yet, I whiffed showing her any of my heartfelt affection. Forty-love; game, set, match.

If words failed me, if touching scared me, if my own emotions threatened me, at least my passion had been comfortably freed to touch her through the segue of art. The memory of her would surely live on, but perhaps my greatest thrill came in creating a masterful work of art from my own hands for the first time, one inspired by Maureen.  

 

Remember This? Gas Stations With Full Service at the Pump

 

As I look at this vintage photo, is it my laughter I hear, or just coughs from the gas fumes I smell on my hands from this morning’s self-serve fill up? What, five servicemen attending a car’s every whim, and for free? Are those ceiling fans to keep customers cool in summer? Was this gas station ever on Earth?

Flash forward to the new and improved present day.

I drive in to the gas station and park at pump station #2. Walking inside the station, I notice the cashier’s sweatpants don’t exactly coordinate with his faded gas station tee-shirt, although I can still see his strategically placed forearm tattoos and sparkling earrings.

Equally bright are the Lottery tickets passed from the cashier’s hands to customers in front of me. It’s good to know even though I’m about to self-serve my gas, there’s not only Lottery tickets available here, but a full array of fresh foods the cashier can serve me when he has time – churros, pizza slices, hot dogs, chili – all kept warm by a light bulb inside a glass box.

Finally to the front of the line, I jokingly ask the cashier if the station has my car’s fan belt in stock and whether there’s any special on hub caps currently. He laughs. Is that because he’s never heard of a fan belt?

Once outside, I select my grade of gasoline from three choices (for me, that’s “Regular,” “Regular” and “Regular”), and place my hand around the nozzle’s dirty trigger. Nothing comes out. Hitting the intercom button on the pump, I tell the cashier my problem, but only hear static. I walk inside, wait in line, and watch hot dogs rotate. The cashier eventually resets the pump, but  with great difficulty, mumbling something about “my manager’s not here right now.”

Dashing outside, I see an elderly woman trying to wash her windshield with the station’s cracked squeegee. In fact, my lane’s squeegee is sitting in a bucket of dirty water and the wash towels are out. However, the automated, canned recording coming from somewhere within the pump is in prime working order, the loud voice talking about points, rewards, and “checking them out on Facebook.”

Back to the photo with five happy gas station attendants and cooling fans. No wonder I don’t remember service like this from my childhood – the license plate reads 1938. Was service ever so complete? Things must have been so different then. What I remember were the gas stations that looked like the one below, complete with streamers, come-ons,  free deals and advertising everywhere.

Funny, I saw much of the same on this morning’s fill up – generally just a lot of noise and hullabaloo about nothing, really.

Some things never change.

 

 

 

Photos, inspiration provided by Debra Marrs (www.yourwritelife.com). Thanks, Debra.

 

MLB Stadiums Without Crowd Noise?

There’s a point in any game where everything changes. Every player feels it. It’s when the crowd is so loud, player’s emotions and abilities swing on a dime, for better or worse. That’s exactly what players compete for, that rush, the roar of the crowd, the adulation to prove they’ve done something great or are important people. So, can you imagine NFL, NBA or NHL games played in empty stadiums? Major League Baseball may be headed that way.

The current average length of a Major League Baseball game is 3:02, of which only eighteen minutes is actual action, meaning there’s almost three hours of non-action. The current human attention span average is eight seconds, one second less than a goldfish. (And, yes, these figures come from credible research study).

Can you imagine a kid today going to his first live baseball game? He’s used to thrill-a-minute stimulation from his device, or television, or anything nowadays. The kids of this and future generations are tomorrow’s MLB fans – also known by team owners as “fannies in the seats,” the people who pay most of the player’s salaries.

But wait, young people aren’t the only ones distracted by modern-day living and technology.

The average worker today checks his email thirty times an hour. Typical mobile users check their phones 150 times a day. From 2011 to 2013, social media sharing doubled.

This is trouble for MLB. Look at the trends. The average length of an MLB contest in 1980 was 2:39, and we had far fewer distractions then. With the average 2014 MLB ticket price at $27.93, plus expensive concessions, plus travel time, plus the fact the game is available on cable, one might ask why go to baseball games at all?

Rob Manfred, MLB Commissioner, says he realizes these problems and is implementing new rules this season to speed up play to lure younger fans. No more forty-five seconds between pitches for batters to readjust their jock strap or pitchers to circle the mound two times. That’s just enough time to tempt fans to reconnect with friends, co-workers and social media outlets on their devices. Or just time to get bored, and the stadium goes quiet again.

Anyone who thinks crowd noise isn’t crucial to the excitement of sports is wrong. The NFL’s Atlanta Falcons were recently fined for pumping crowd noise into their stadium during games the past three seasons. Anyone who thinks the attention span issue isn’t crucial to sports is also wrong. The NFL has had to implement rules and fines for players and coaches from texting during games. It’s a different world today.

Major League Baseball’s official Opening Day game is April 5 in Chicago’s old Wrigley Field, ironically a night game. In 1988, Wrigley was the last MLB franchise to install stadium lights for night games.

I worry what MLB stadiums will look like in another twenty-seven years.

P.s.  The solution here in northern New Mexico: Go to our Triple A Albuquerque Isotopes games. Bring all your kids. Leave all devices behind. Baseball is too beautiful a game to miss.