Читать книгу Chili Dawgs Always Bark at Night - Lewis Grizzard - Страница 18

Pulling the Wool Over My Eyes

I found my old high school letter jacket the other day. I was looking for something else in the back of a closet at my mother’s house and came upon it—blue with off-white leather sleeves and a block N sewn on the front.

I had forgotten it even existed. I suppose that twenty-four years ago when I graduated from high school, I simply cast it aside as I leaped into the more material collegiate world.

“I put it up for you and kept it,” my mother said, “in case you ever wanted it again.”

I played basketball and baseball at Newnan High School. I lettered in both sports, which is how I got the jacket in the first place. My number, 12, is stitched on one of the sleeves. The face of a tiger—our mascot—is on the other.

Enough years have passed now that I probably could lie about my high school athletic career and get away with most of it.

I know guys who barely made the varsity who’ve managed to move up to all-state status with the passing of enough years.

But I’ll be honest. I was an average athlete, if that. I averaged maybe ten points a game in basketball, and shot the thing on every opportunity that came to me.

“Grizzard is the only person who never had a single assist in his entire basketball career,” an ex-teammate was telling someone in my presence. “That’s because he never passed the ball.”

I hit over .300 my senior year in baseball, but they were all bloop singles except for one of those bloopers that rolled in some high weeds in right field. By the time the ball was found, I was around the bases for the winning run.

“Why don’t you take it home with you?” my mother suggested after I had pulled the jacket out of the closet. “Maybe you’ll have some children one day and they might like to see it.”

I reminded my mother I was forty-one and down three marriages, and the future didn’t look that bright for offspring. But I suppose a mother can dream.

I did bring the jacket home with me. Alone, up in my bedroom, in front of a mirror, I pulled it over me for the first time in a long time.

A lot of names came back with the jacket. Clay, John, Buddy, Russell, Richard, Al. And Dudley and the Hound, who’s still looking for his first base hit since he was fifteen.

And then there was Wingo, of course, the best high school shortstop I ever saw until a ground ball hit a pebble one day and bounced up and broke his jaw.

Ever hear that haunting song “Where Are the Men I Used to Sport With?”

They’ve all got kids, I guess, and their mothers are happy.

It’s funny about my jacket. It still fit well on my arms and shoulders, but I couldn’t get it to button anymore.

I guess some shrinkage can be expected after all those years of neglect in the closet.