Did all the one-room country schools have baseball for their favorite sport? It seems so to me when our children were attending our little Maple Grove, and my skills fell far short of what was expected at the school picnics! The youngsters played "scrub baseball" because there were seldom enough pupils to make up two full teams. They had to use girls and first-graders and the teacher to have enough to play at all, and when picnic day arrived, the children assumed that all the mothers would want to play, too, as nothing, in their estimation, was any more fun. They had to have special rules for little players, at least they seemed to make allowances for them, but for this particular mother they had to make allowances for total ignorance and bewilderment.
At our childhood home there were five girls and one boy; we had more girl cousins than boy cousins, there were 50 or 60 children in our block, and our school rooms had about 30 pupils apiece, so we had never had to resort to playing with the boys to have enough for games. We were whizzes at jumping the rope and playing jacks, but baseball! That was entirely beyond our experience. To tell the truth, most of my knowledge of the game was acquired while Joe, our youngest, was in high school, for by that time we had radios and it was my duty to listen to the main games closely enough to give him some sort of report when he got home. By degrees I learned not only the names of the players but many of the intricacies of the sport. Such and such a play would occur and the announcer would say so and so about it, and what did that mean? In that way, Joe found out what happened and at the same time taught me my lessons.
To this day I enjoy a game over the radio but I have serious doubts about understanding everything if I just watched a game without someone telling what was happening, and as for playing, if I ever should be where I had to take part, I haven't a doubt that, being left-handed, assumng that I ever hit the ball enough to run, I would head for third base and go around the wrong way . . . Just this spring, we took up the boards and stakes where the boys used to play horseshoes alongside the lane, having decided to let the grass take over, as it has been trying to do ever since they went away. And last week, in cultivating a flower border, I unearthed an old croquet ball, damp, dark and partly split, which the children had probably lost in a game years ago. It's been a long while since we played a game. But the grandchildren will soon be old enough to enjoy it, maybe we'll have to get a new set soon. -- Hope.
Memory Gem
The two greatest highway menaces are drivers under 25 going 65, and drivers over 65 going 25.