Читать книгу The Last Summer - Chan Howell - Страница 6

The Brown Water

The small town where I grew up began to change thirty years before I turned twelve. My friends and I felt the lake’s impact more than anyone. The nearby river was dammed in the summer of 1920, just as Babe Ruth arrived in New York, departing Boston but leaving a famous curse in his wake. Pisgah Lake was created, and Swansville became a dot on the map. Swansville is the town where the road and the lake end.

Pisgah Lake’s original owners did not allow development. All they wanted was to provide electricity to the ever-growing North Carolina countryside. In the 1950s, development was finally permitted. The dam was sold in 1969, and the new owners agreed to allow development of roughly 70 percent of the lake the following year. The people of nearby Charlotte migrated like ants taking over a Dr. Pepper spill at a picnic. The slow march started on the big water, then the ants headed our way. It was easy to spot these transplants due to their foreign cars and their bigger boats.

Our section of the lake was the farthest from the dam and directly across from the mouth of the river. Tinker’s Creek was named after the first postmaster and cousin of the famous Chicago Cub Joe Tinker. Eli Tinker eventually became the mayor. Outsiders called Tinker’s Creek Cubbie Cove, except the folks from the big water. The big-water snobs called Swansville the Brown Water in an attempt to insult the town. Many locals embraced the insult. Almost everyone wore the badge of being from the Brown Water with pride.

The ants began to make their way to the Brown Water by the early 1980s. Pisgah Lake was a finger lake; thus, it was spread out. It was developed from the bigger sections of the lake down to Swansville. Cubbie Cove was opened for development, and our small town and small school started to drastically change. Only a small portion of the lake reached town, but the back of Cubbie Cove was its heartbeat. Swansville collected the trash that drifted down from the big water.

In 1986, the brown water of Pisgah Lake brought a new hospital just as Bill Buckner was letting a ball pass through his legs to keep the curse of the Bambino alive. A new road and an exit off the highway eliminated the isolation of Swansville. Now, less than ten years later, a new middle school was set to open in the fall. A ground-breaking ceremony was scheduled for a new high school on the anniversary of Joe Carter’s game-winning 1993 World Series home run. The town’s population was just over four thousand the summer after my sixth-grade year. Most folks lived in the rural areas or now the ever-expanding lake. The kids that lived on or near the lake would be going to a new school next fall. Classmates and teammates would soon be rivals, but for now we had one last summer together.

During the summer, most of my friends and I could be found at one of three places, the closed-public-access Rocky Point Pier, Scarborough Memorial Park, or Winslow’s. Rocky Point Pier was closed after a teenager mysteriously went missing three years earlier. Ben Lee Chapel was last seen riding his bike to the pier. His body was never found. Ben Lee Chapel’s shoes were found five days later on a small island at the mouth of Cubbie Cove. Foul play was never officially ruled out, and his death was ruled a drowning. Rocky Point Pier was just outside of town and beyond the local police’s jurisdiction. My friends and I enjoyed the privacy, but we were too scared to stay past sundown. Our parents always warned us to be careful and to never go alone. No one fished off the forbidden public pier, although that was its original purpose. We used the post for the “no swimming” sign as our launching point into the cool brown Pisgah Lake waters. It was a common occurrence to be chased from the pier, and we always told the county sheriffs we would not come back.

The summer of 1994, we rode our bikes to the pier less and less with each passing week. That summer would turn into the first day of the seventh grade before we knew it.

After the Great Depression, the citizens of Swansville raised funds to build a park and a baseball field near Tinker’s Creek. Scarborough Memorial Park was named after Preston and Pete Scarborough, the town’s hero brothers that never came back from World War I. Pete Scarborough enrolled in the Army after his brother was killed in 1915. Pete gave up his baseball dream and left the local team behind to avenge his brother’s death. His body returned in a casket just like his brother. A memorial plaque guarded the entrance to the park. The park had a walking trail, a practice baseball field, game field, and tennis courts. It was located across the street from the only boat launch in Swansville. The park was within walking distance to almost everything in town.

Every spring the town had a lake cleanup day called Green and Clean Day. Green and Clean Day always landed on the opening weekend of the Major League Baseball season. My parents felt obligated to volunteer, so my sister and I were forced to join them. Radios blared the Braves game, and playful arguments ensued over the BBQ lunch and homemade ice cream provided by Frankie Winslow. The early concern was less with the Braves title hopes and more if the season would get canceled due to a work stoppage. Major League Baseball was on thin ice that was starting to crack. A strike seemed inevitable. Our heroes of the Major Leagues and the team owners fought over millions of dollars. When you are twelve years old, you do not need to wipe the greed out of your eyes each day when you roll out of bed. I played the game for free, and I believed I would have if I were in the Major Leagues. I did not understand why a season could be canceled. I felt the innocence of baseball was lost on the Major Leaguers. I understood the importance of the game, but it was still just a game. Baseball was the reason I was accepted by my friends; otherwise, I likely would have been just another outcast.

Winslow’s was a bait shop and a convenience store that was located where the water and the road literally met. If the lake water was down, which it typically was, the lakefront bait shop only touched mud. Frankie Winslow’s dark-brown eyes must’ve turned green when the warm fishing weather and baseball season approached. He sold worms, minnows, boiled peanuts, Cheerwines, baseballs, and fishing hooks. We usually sat with our feet dangling just over the shallow water, drinking Cheerwines while we waited for practice. We typically sidled up to the counter to make sure Frankie knew the score of the previous day’s games. Frankie had an old chalkboard where he kept the standings of every team from C-Ball to PONY league and his beloved Braves. Each summer the radio broadcast of the Braves games got louder and louder as Frankie’s hearing started to fade. Every conversation with the old man featured “What?” about five times. Frankie looked and acted the part of a grandfather. He carried a flyswatter everywhere. His remaining few white hairs peeked out from under a Braves hat that had to be older than my dad. He still called my dad Speedy, a nickname long since forgotten by everyone else.

Our Little League Baseball draft was held the Monday before opening day, but now an expansion draft had pushed it back one week. Our small league had always consisted of only six teams, but the league had grown to seven teams. This year would be different. The seventh team meant we had to reshuffle the deck. The expansion draft was scheduled, and many of us did not know who our teammates would be. Each team had to offer up one twelve-year-old. The new team’s coach would get to pick four. Luckily, I was protected by my coach of the previous year. Coach Duckworth spared me the embarrassment. The unprotected players were teased at school, and everyone had an excuse why they were unprotected. My friend Mitch claimed he requested it. He said, “I am sick of being on the Blue Devils and playing for Coach Alex.” I believed him, but no one else did.

Frankie’s chalkboard would need to be redrawn with the following teams: Mudcats, Yankees, Hornets, Braves, Blue Devils, Red Raiders, and now the Pirates. The redraft, as we called it, would make the league more competitive, or so we thought. The league’s most dominant two teams, the Blue Devils and the Braves, would still be our measuring sticks. Our games were played at either Scarborough Memorial Park or at the Swansville Elementary School field. Practices started the day after the redraft, and our games were only a week away. It felt like we were being pushed into summer, and we still had six weeks left of school.