mom was doing. He had the sports section of the paper and was just as engrossed in his reading. I think my mom was trying to get him to notice what she was reading, as she kept clearing her throat and was crumpling the papers.
She made much more noise than a person would normally make while reading a newspaper. I do not know if my dad was intentionally ignoring her, of if he was really all that interested in the sports page, but finally my mom had had enough.
“Look at this,” she spoke up loudly. “You can get a brand new electric washing machine for just $2.50 down and pay off the rest in very small monthly payments,” she said to nobody in particular.
My dad looked over at her as if she had just awoken him up from a sound sleep. He looked at her with an expression as if she had just given him the least important information he had ever heard in his life.
“Read the whole thing,” he said to her. “The total price is $115.00 and if you pay it off in small payments like they say, you’ll end up paying a lot more than that with all the interest they charge you,” he continued.
“The ABC Electric Washing Machine Company ain’t stupid, they’ll have you paying for that thing for the rest of your life,” his voice rising in anger. “Even the people whose houses you clean don’t have an electric washing machine,” he said, as his voice seemed to calm back down.
I could see my mom wanting to scream out with all the reasons that she needed the machine, how hard her life was and how one or two luxuries would make her life a bit easier, but nothing came out. She looked over at my father and then moved her eyes back to the kitchen walls. She did not say a word to him, and she never looked back at the newspaper advertisement.
She seemed resigned to the fact that in her life there would be no luxury, no sense of privilege or entitlement. She would have a hard life from this day to the last day she spent on this earth. She seemed to wave a white flag and acknowledge that all the modern inventions they were coming out with would all pass her by, and she would be stuck living in her modest lifestyle forever.
My dad turned back to his newspaper, as my mom began to clean up the kitchen so we could leave for church. I guess that this was an argument for my parents, although it was hard to understand. Nobody yelled and nobody hit each other, yet my mom seemed mad and acted as though she had once again lost the battle. The walk to church was very awkward, as my parents walked side by side without saying a word the entire way. It was going to be another Sunday morning of trying to entertain myself with thoughts of Annie, baseball, our clubhouse and anything else that had nothing to do with whatever Reverend Casey would be saying.
8
We arrived at church minutes before the Garrity family, so I had to take potluck on the viewing angle I would have on Annie. We sat half way back in the congregation, which was a good safe distance. Reverend Casey would not see me when my eyes inevitably closed, nor would he be able to catch me yawning. The Garrity family came in about five minutes after us, and sat two rows behind. This was the worst possible positioning, since I could not keep turning around trying to sneak a peek at Annie. Not being able to stare at Annie and daydream, forced me to create stories in my head to keep myself amused.
The service started on time, as always, and Reverend Casey seemed particularly passionate in his speaking. My mind wandered through the first half of the service and I barely heard a word. By the time Reverend Casey got around to his weekly sermon, my mind had become completely numb.
He was about a minute into the sermon when a crazy thought ran through my head. I could swear I heard the Reverend mention baseball. Could somehow my fantasy thoughts have merged with what the Reverend was actually saying? Was I just dreaming with my eyes open? I was sure that I would shake myself awake and hear him talking as usual about the ills of drinking whiskey.
Another moment passed and I heard it again. Reverend Casey was definitely talking about baseball.
“We can come together as a community and build a baseball field on the empty lot on the corner of I and Tioga streets,” Reverend Casey said.
“The children of our parish do not have nearly enough wholesome activities and playing baseball could keep them out of the other troubles that plague our neighborhood. If our children are the most important thing to us, as we all claim, then this has to be our highest priority. They are surrounded by so much bad, that we have to make sure we counter it with all the good wholesome activities that we can provide. We can raise money through extra donations and I hope to open the field by the end of this baseball season. We are going to name the project Boger Field.”
He did not say why it was to be named “Boger Field”, only it was going to have real bases and benches for the players to sit on when they were not out in the field.
“After we build it, we can all pitch in and help maintain it so the children will have a safe place to play. This is the type of project that can bring our whole community together,” Reverend Casey finished.
I could not imagine playing on a field where you were able to swing the bat as hard as you wanted and hit the ball as far as you could, without having to worry about breaking a window or hitting the ball into the tombstones.
Everyone in the church seemed to be agreeing with the Reverend as they nodded their heads up and down as he spoke. It seemed hard to believe but Ascension of Our Lord was going to have a real baseball field, and the kids were actually going to be allowed to play on it. I wanted to see Johnny’s reaction to the big news, but he was sitting directly behind me, a few rows back. In between us was Mr. Rourke who had an extremely oversized head, something akin to a summer watermelon, and seeing Johnny past that thing was nearly impossible. As I swiveled my head back I tried to see Annie, but Mrs. Rourke blocked my view of her, she was no slouch in the oversized head department.
This was the greatest news I had ever heard while sitting in church. It may have been the only sermon that I had ever actually listened to, and the only time I ever left the church smiling. Upon exiting, we were greeted by the Garrity family who were waiting on the outside steps. Our dads shook hands and our moms greeted each other with smiles and hugs. I pulled Johnny aside as our parents’ spoke, to get his reaction to the wonderful news.
“This is gonna be great,” I said.
“Yea it sounds great, if they ever really do it”, Johnny replied.
“What do you mean, Reverend Casey said it, then they have to do it, don’t they?” I asked.
“We’ll see if they really do it,” Johnny said with more than a hint of skepticism in his voice.
I was not going to let Johnny’s doubts dampen my enthusiasm.
“I am sure that if Reverend Casey asked the people to build a baseball field for the kids that they will do it. Maybe they will even buy us uniforms and we will look just like the big leaguers playing on our real field.”
As we walked home, I asked my mom one question after another about the new field.
“Do you know how big it’ll be?”
“Will we be allowed to play on it whenever we want?”
“When will it be finished?”
It probably should have dawned on me after a while that if she couldn’t answer any of the first twenty questions, that she did not know a single thing about the field, but I just kept on asking.
Church seemed to make my parents forget about the washing machine argument, as they spoke to each other the whole way home.
“Did you see that new hat Mrs. Rourke was wearing?” my dad asked.
“That’s was something,” my mom replied. “But how ‘bout that new dress that Mrs. Perkins had on. Wasn’t that something?”
“Yes, that was quite something.”
They laughed as they walked. I never noticed such things, but my mom always was able to pick out which women were wearing new dresses and who had on a new hat. I wondered if my mom ever wore a new dress to church, would the other women poke fun at her on their way home.
Things were looking up in our dreary neighborhood. Our new clubhouse,
and a new baseball field, what more could we want. Johnny and I would always have somewhere to go and something to do. This was going to be the best summer ever.