0327blog
A Curve Like No Other
I know the joy of breaking off a perfect curve ball, setting the batter up for my fastball, low and away. It was summertime in 1965 and stickball season was in full bloom with my once, good friend Donald (name changed to protect the innocent) and we’d use chalk to create a strike zone box on the red brick wall at Memorial School and use either pink Spalding balls otherwise known as Spaldines or we would strip the outer covering off a tennis ball to expose the ribs and when thrown, the ribs would catch the wind and the ball broke like a Sandy Koufax curve ball , falling right off the table but if we used the Spaldine, eventually, after a good crack, the ball would split in half and be of no further use and occasionally, the broomstick bat would snap, making it also a disposable, and we would play for hours.
As sophomores in high school, Donald and I argued about the Vietnam War, with him taking the progressive position that the war was obscene and just another example of U.S. imperialism and what with my brother recently returning from Vietnam, I spouted out the conservative line I had heard at home that if we let one domino fall, the Commies would soon be knocking on our doors. Needless to say Donald turned out to be right but maybe he was just spouting dogma he’d heard from his liberal, English professor father. In high school, we were somewhere in the middle of the status ladder, not hoods or jocks, who competed for top rung and not nerds, who were firmly planted on the lowest rung and although they didn’t call them nerds they were the kids who were either too skinny or too fat, unathletic, had ink stains on their shirt pocket and were destined to make more money than all of the rest of us combined. One high school hood gave Donald the nickname of “Gwerch” and I may be spelling it wrong because it’s a meaningless, made-up word but it sounds like a creature from middle earth and that makes sense because Donald read all the books in the Lord of the Ring series. But Donald didn’t like the nickname, seeing it as something of a slur and a way of making fun of him, which I believe it was, though we all took to calling Donald “Gwerch” when we wanted to annoy him. Maybe the high school tough guy was referring to Gwrych Castle, a 19th-century country house near Abergele in Conwy County Borough, Wales but I don’t think so. Donald also called me “BuJew” because I toyed with Buddhism and was and is Jewish.
Donald played guitar quite well, self taught he could pluck out a melody after hearing a tune once and usually the tunes he chose were the Grateful Dead, and he raved about the wonderful harmonies of Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, while I didn’t really get it and instead was a Beatles fan and recall hearing an intellectual discussion of why the Beatles were so great, with the discussion focusing on the bridges of Beatles songs and I heard one famous rocker say that he’d be in heaven if he could write just one bridge as good as found in the Beatles songs. Donald also preferred the Stones over the Beatles and that said a lot about our differences. I don’t know if Donald kept up with his music but I do know that I hit a plateau or is it a brick wall 20 years ago and haven’t progressed since then.
As sophomores and juniors, we also practiced wrestling on the rug in his living room and I was always on the varsity team and Donald was on the junior varsity, something that made me feel good but I tried not flaunt my obviously higher level of skill in something that would later in life be utterly meaningless in the general scheme of things.
Donald’s family life was pretty screwed up but he didn’t talk about it much. His father was an longtime English professor at City College, a hotbed of radicalism at the time and he left Donald’s mother to shack up with one of his students, leaving Donald’s mom alone to raise Donald, his sister, Luanne, and his younger brother, George, who was epileptic and would have frequent, Petit Mal seizures, something I did not understand at all and would watch puzzled while George would just stop what he was doing and freeze with a mysterious, far away look until the seizure passed. Last I heard was that George was working at a major book publishing company, so I guess that epilepsy was not as debilitating as I had thought.
My friendship with Donald started drifting apart when we were seniors in high school. He started hanging with a different crowd and while I knew them, I didn’t particularly like them and they included Walter, an overweight guy who didn’t talk much, and Harriet who called herself Harry, along with a few other hangers-on and I do believe they all got into some pretty heavy drugs, something that I did not want. Looking back, I should have put two and two together, as in the Dead and drugs. I believe that an important part of the hippie, drug culture was to look down on those who did not use drugs and to feel superior because drugs were unlocking doors of the mind, and other such bullshit. I felt that condescending attitude and in time, Donald and I rarely saw each other and certainly didn’t play stickball because, as everyone knows, stickball and drugs don’t mix.
Donald enrolled in Baldwin Wallace College, now, Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio, and I went to Central Connecticut State College, now Central Connecticut State University, though I have no idea what is the difference between a college and a university. I have no idea why Donald chose Baldwin Wallace College, now Baldwin Wallace University and he didn’t talk to me about it, as by then he was with his much cooler, hipper, druggie crowd and I was just too straight for him. Baldwin Wallace is known for its education, business, neuroscience, and music programs is home to the Riemenschneider-Bach Institute and the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music and hosts the oldest collegiate Bach Festival in the nation, so maybe that was what attracted Donald. Or maybe it was just far away from home and he could start fresh, away from the turmoil in his home. He stayed in Ohio and earned a law degree, later working for a legal rights service, which was true to form of his liberal upbringing. Last I heard, Donald wasn’t married and referred to himself as Asian American although that is another aspect of Donald that I knew nothing about, so it seems that as friends we probably didn’t talk much beyond stickball. I tried to get in touch with Donald a few years ago but his phone number was unlisted and he didn’t respond to a Facebook message but maybe that was a message in itself.