It was a drag to get up, get dressed, find masks, and navigate the after-all short distance downtown to drop off some correspondence that had weighed on me for weeks. Hot summer weather; vehicle AC hasn’t worked for a long time. Chore done, when I turned toward home she started to say I could drop her at the grocery store and come back. Then said never mind when I turned away from that direction. The local A&W Root Beer drive-through was calling my name.
These days A&W shares space with Kentucky Fried Chicken here. Chicken didn’t interest us. Where’s the A&W food, she asked me. On a list around the turn beside the speaker: two big cheeseburgers and onion rings to go with large root beer floats. The makings all fresh as those we enjoyed in fly-over country on our year-ago road trip. When road trips were still okay.
Then on to a delightful heavily treed local park, where a cooling breeze welcomed us under the sheltering firs and maples, as if the old trees were breathing fresh oxygen to cut the swelter. A road that hadn’t been open the last time here led us deeper, past vehicles parked at random in the cool. A fork led us into sunlight again along a long parking lot for abandoned baseball stadiums. Any summer before this they would have been full of games in play; crowded bleachers, noise.
Beneath a spreading shade tree, two people stood almost motionless behind tall tripod-mounted cameras with thick telephoto lenses long enough to surveil Mars. Angled skyward. If you looked where they pointed, there was a huge lump high atop a ballpark light standard. And a bird perched on the lump. The bright sun flamed on a bobbing white head.
An American Bald Eagle, evidently feeding its young.
We parked in a shady spot for lunch. Root beer floats and food, a sprightly breeze. In front of us a park of tall widely spaced trees of different species, many unknown. Behind, the eagle doing its eagle business. It was like an unexpected reward for getting the unpleasant stuff done.
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After lunch she wanted to examine tree varieties more closely and did, while I searched my vest for a cigar. One of those tiny little cars they’re making these days pulled up. A tiny little old woman and tiny little old man exited, him carrying a cute tiny little dog. The car was just their size.
They ambled into the trees and examined some of the samples while the dog scampered happily at their feet. One of those heart-warming sights that make you think life and relationships turn out all right after all. Put me in mind of a man I worked with long ago and his wife. He was a damn good newspaperman, an ordained Methodist minister — and didn’t clear five feet in his socks. His wife was slightly shorter.
One remarkable thing about Dave and Trudy was their shared passion for the circus. They visited Sarasota for the wintering-in of circus folk. They indulged road trips all over to visit circuses on the pitch. The terms dwarf and midget came up when talking about them, probably because of the circus connection. Never bothered them, far as I know; his newspaper stories could trim anyone to size regardless of stature or political power. But I guess little people are just called little people now.
The ease of the little old couple in the tiny little car was as good to see as the eagle. Even better, reminding me of well-liked friends from forty years ago. One remarkable thing about Dave and Trudy’s circus road trips was they used a VW square-back as a camper. And had plenty of room. The other: she carried shoe boxes home from the circus packed with elephant dung. Which she assured us was the best fertilizer there was for her roses.
About the time my companion returned from tree-gazing with an onion-ring box full of sample leaves, a car stopped behind us. The woman exited, walked around and squeezed the arm of the man driving, then walked across to a parked car. Unremarkable in dress or feature — except for the rapid glances as if to determine if she was observed. And the almost beatific smile of someone getting away with something. She drove out a different way than the man. Secret love in the time of pandemic? Made me smile to think so.
How many baseball fields do they have around here my companion asked as we looked for a road out of the complex. At least six I said, based on us passing Field Six. All empty. Kind of sad. I had seen them all full and noisy. We came to a dead end and had to turn around. A lone SUV was parked behind abandoned dugouts. Through dark windows I made out a slim woman wriggling into her clothing. Anyone else was below eye-line. Maybe it was something in the air. Maybe life had grown impatient of being locked down.
We turned one final corner past a blind outfield fence. And found two entire teams of Little League ballplayers in uniform doing warm-up exercises. Spread out on the ground stretching; lined up playing catch; swinging bats at lobs from adult coaches. Swinging and missing. Swinging and fouling them off. Weak dribblers. Soft fly balls. We stopped to watch. A slender left-handed hitter wearing famous number nine drilled a line shot. Another. Balanced and athletic, good stance and follow-through. Hawk among the foul-ball and flailing-miss pigeons. Why — that’s a girl, my companion said. She was right.
Grown-ups began to show up, taking coolers and folding chairs from their rigs. Headed for the field. A woman carrying a scoring sheet — I could see the innings-chart on her clipboard — walked to another woman sitting beside a dugout hunched over, writing entries. Maybe a lineup. They consulted. It looked as if a real baseball game was about to start. Lack of sleep was catching up with me; it was time to go home. I thought the sight of that fledgling slugger the perfect note to end on.
From root-beer floats to interesting trees to an eagle to a little old couple to imagined assignations to baseball. All in an hour. In these conflicted and worrisome times, we had found new meaning for an old phrase: Happy Hour.
