The Boys of Summer

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The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn came out nearly fifty years ago. Since it was published many have recommended it to me. For who knows what reason, I just picked it up last week.

The Boys of Summer is a very good book that got more engaging the more I read.  It was one of those reads that I did not want to end.  I finished it in a library and looked around to see if there were newer editions which might have more inclusions. The edition I read had a late 1990s addendum so I thought that since the author is still alive, he may have included more stories. I discovered that I had read an edition that included all the subsequent additions.

The Boys of Summer can seem like two separate books. Initially I thought they were so distinct that it should have been two separate books, but later I thought the connection was less tenuous. The first part of the book describes how the author got his job covering the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1952 and 1953. There is a good deal about him growing up, his folks, the steps he took to become a journalist, and some stories about the 52 and 53 Dodgers.  

The second part is "where are they now?" That is, where are the Dodgers in 1971 that he covered in 1952 and 1953. Where is Preacher Roe, Andy Pafko, Jackie Robinson, Billy Cox, Pee Wee Reese, Carl Furillo, Gil Hodges, Joe Black, Duke Snider, Carl Erskine.  In 1971 he was able to meet up with these ex players and learn how they had fared once the summer ended.

Now most if not all the people he interviewed in '71 are dead.  Jackie Robinson And Gil Hodges died  very shortly after the book was published. Carl Erskine and the author are alive, but the rest are gone.  

Where are they now books may be more popular now than they had been when The Boys of Summer was published. One of the reasons for the book's enormous popularity could be that there were fewer such books at the time. Also, the book was about a team that was beloved among New Yorkers. Reading about the Dodgers to many was an opportunity to relive young years.

 But the book, to me, is more than about the Brooklyn Dodgers.  We all have our summers, and we are all boys and girls of summer at one point—but then there is fall and winter.  The people who come out the best in the book are Pee Wee Reese, clearly number one, and Jackie Robinson. Some others kept their heads up and were mensches. Others fell on hard times or took routes to hard times. 

Billy Cox went home to an area that was very racist,  Furillo retained anger that was debilitating.  The people who fared the best were those who, like Reese, dodged the inevitable toxins and did not "give way to hating."

There are several good stories in the book, but my favorite is how Reese, when Robinson was getting berated by racists, walked across the diamond from his shortstop position and put his arm around Robinson at first.  And Reese was from Kentucky.  When Robinson was promoted to the Dodgers, several players approached Reese and asked him to sign a petition refusing to play with Robinson. Reese, refused to sign.  

I had heard of nearly all the people Kahn interviewed, but did not really know the Dodgers of 52 and 53. My consciousness with baseball arrives when Don Larsen pitched his perfect game in 1956.   One could contend, I suppose, that I like the book because it was about baseball regardless of the era. Yet, I think anyone who is interested in what happens to people past their prime, will find the book engaging.

The title comes from the first line of a Dylan Thomas poem. "I see the boys of summer in their ruin."

We are all, as I wrote above, boys and girls of summer.  We have our moments in the sun.  What happens in the fall and how we decay is up to us and the choices we make..

I see you.

Twice in the last month there have been incidents in which I was startled to see myself as a young man. And it was not in a photo.

I've moved my office once again.   I am now back in an office I'd been in a few years back. We at Northeastern have become excellent in many ways. One has to do with the broad area that is called Facilities. Facilities folk do a number of things including moving furniture from one space to another. You fill out a form on line and at a mutually convenient time, movers come to your new space bringing items from the old one. They patiently ask where items are to be moved and place them there.

So, on an assigned date a few minutes before the scheduled time, I arrived at the office. As I turned a corner to a hallway that leads to the office, there I sat.  Two people were there, ahead of time, but one was me.

In the summer of 1970 I took three classes during summer school.  I had switched majors and in order to complete on time I needed nine credits.  Before school actually began I sought work to help pay the tuition bill. I had a short stint in a fast food restaurant chain, another as a pot washer in a catering outfit, and eventually got a pretty high paying job as a toll collector on the New York State Thruway.  There was another job too.

I knew a man who worked in what was the equivalent of Facilities at the university. It may have even been called Facilities. He got me a job as an assistant to a worker who did anything and everything in our multipurpose Campus Center.  An air conditioner had to be moved, it came to him.  Someone wanted a chair that was on the first floor of the campus center. We got the chair. The bowling alley had to be cleaned so bowling balls had to be carted somewhere; he was in charge of the carting.  I was an assistant. There was another fellow there too, a guy from Brown University who played baseball for them who was a relative of the head of the Campus Center. So, he worked with me as an assistant too.

What I remember most about the job was that I felt sorry for the fellow we worked for. He was about 50 and had been laid off by the railroad. This job in the campus center was either beneath him, or paid less than what he earned at the railroad.  And he looked at the two of us with some mixture of envy and sadness.  He had, he thought, had his shot, and here he was shlepping air conditioners. But we, the guy from Brown and me, were just shlepping on the way to something possibly grand or hopeful.

I'm not sure how long I lasted as an assistant, but at some point when the toll collector job came through I hauled my last air conditioner. But during the time I found the job to be a lark; I kibbitzed with the kid from Brown, and listened respectfully to the stories from the head guy with sympathy. 

So fast forward to 2019 as I approach my door waiting for the furniture.  And slumped along the wall are two people who had gotten to the job early.  I came up short because there was me and the guy who worked for the railroad.  The elder person was courteous, and the kid was energetic and helpful.  Lugging my furniture here and there with a sense that this was just a summer gig.  About a week later I found some furniture in the campus warehouse that I wanted so the same two but this time with another young guy came to the office and there I was again, smiling and looking at the furniture. The two of them oozing, hey this is just a summer job and, well it is kind of fun. You want the bookcase here, sure. You want the cabinet there, nothing to it.

And I wanted to stop the kid and shake my hand. And say something like, "hey young man, I am you fifty years down the pike.  Take a good look.  And don't lift like that you could hurt your hip, and guess what-- it isn't going to be as smooth sailing as you think it might be."

But he would have thought I was crazy. So I just smiled in a way that he would have thought strange if he thought about it at all.

Then a week or so later, again I ran into myself  We bought a couch.  And we needed to get rid of the 85 inch monster of a couch that had been in our living room for 25 years. Even I agreed it was time for this guy to go, even though it was in decent condition.  I called the sanitation folks and they said we could bring the couch to the curb.  But the thought of Donna and me lifting the couch and carrying it to the curb was, sadly, comical.  Even when my buddy Kenny came to visit, I didn't even ask.  We would have left our groins on the deck if we tried to carry that thing.

Coincidentally, I had contact with one of the two cousins I have living in the area. She called me for a ride and I happily obliged since we see each other far too infrequently.  In the course of our ride I asked how her 30 something year old son was doing. Very well, she told me, and he was moving to a new apartment.  I asked her if Alex might want the couch.  She did not know but gave me Alex's number.

He did want it.  He just needed a buddy of his to be available with his van to be able to transport it.  In a few days, Alex called to tell us that the fellow with the van was available. He came at the appointed hour.  Out of the van popped Alex, his friend, and his friend's girlfriend. And there I was again.

Three happy bouncy 30 something year olds.  Moving furniture. How many times I moved furniture in my day, I do not want to count.  There was a stretch when I was about Alex's age when I drove a very large truck from Buffalo to Boston having stopped at a number of places along the way to pick up couches, chairs, and bookcases. Quoth the raven...

In no time Alex and his pal, picked up the couch which would have left Kenny and me crotchless, and carried it through our slider and around the corner.  The three maneuvered the couch into the van as Donna and I stood by. Most of the couch was on the bed of the van; part was in the air. After a number of tries they shut the van trunk.

They had a problem, I was sure. The couch took up the entire back of the truck.  How they managed to get it in there was one thing. But there were only two seats in the cab part of the car. Where would the third sit. I offered to drive one of them to the apartment.

No need they said easily.  They sort of laughed and the woman said that she had been in more cramped places.  The two fellows got into the cab.  Then as if it was the simplest thing in the world, the woman climbed through a window into the back of the van and lay down on the couch as if she was in someone's living room. Head on the ground. Legs in the air.

Donna said, "We used to do that." Meaning it metaphorically. I don't remember an incident where one of us had so contorted to climb through a van window and kerplunk on a couch that was part on the bed of the truck and part in the air, and drive however long--but there was a time even before we had met, that we would think nothing of hauling an 85 inch couch into a van and then sleeping on it as we drove here or there.   And doing similar things.

So I saw myself in the van and speaking for myself, but maybe for both of us, it was an odd sensation standing on the lawn watching the van drive away with me in it.

Again, like with the Facilities guy, I wanted to shout out classic middle age platitudes--"Enjoy yourself, seize the day, don't blow it" as the car drove away,

We had a '50 Ford in Brooklyn. It was the only car I knew until we moved away. We drove that car everywhere. In 1961 a year after we moved to Plainview, my dad bought a Rambler.  He put an ad in the paper to sell the '50 Ford for 50 bucks. We could not believe how many calls we got to buy that car. The lucky guy, a hot rodder or so it seemed to me, came by and gave Dad fifty dollars. Dad began to explain the problems with the car. The kid didn't need to hear anything.  He said something like, "I got it." And took the keys. Dad called mom from the house so that she could see the '50 ford for the last time. My brother and I were already at the curb.  By the time my mother got out the door, the '50 Ford was zooming down Forest Drive. And there Dad stood looking a bit stunned at the past, take off down the road.

What we need

There is a bagel place I go to when I am in south florida.  It's a couple of miles from the condo my brother and I inherited.  It sits in a strip mall and two doors away from the bagel establishment is a Starbucks.  A fancy restaurant anchors one end of the strip mall and a bank sits at the other. Near the bagel place and Starbucks are outdoor tables for sipping on coffee or eating bagel sandwiches while sipping on coffee.

Outside of the Starbucks there are two tables pushed together. And there, every time I have gone to this spot, a cluster of what I take to be octogenarians sit and hold court.  The thing is that while often the octogenarians are different; the conversation and reason for convening is essentially the same.

Yesterday for example, there were 8 of these fellows who chatted about politics, tv shows, and-- until a woman crony joined them-- their assessments of the asses of the women who went in and out of Starbucks.  One woman with high heels and very tight jeans--easy pushing 50 and maybe 60--who came over and gave one of the fellows a hug and a kiss--drew several quips once she walked away. Close your eyes and forget where you are in the country, and these could be fraternity boys based on the chatter.

Today I went back, in part to see who all would be there one day, and a few hours, later. Yesterday I had arrived around 8; today--a Saturday--it was closer to 1030.  Same two tables pushed together. Different octogenarians holding court.  I did not hear much kibbitizing about the sexual allure of the passersby.  (Because, maybe, it was shabbas?). Today the conversation had to do with the starting salary of pharmacists-"straight out of college, and they don't mix a damn thing, they just pour pills from one jar to another!"; problems with the tenure system; the mandatory retirement age which forced one of these fellows out of work; and the quality of hamburgers at two competing restaurants in the area.

So, why the clustering and kibitzing? These folks could have consumed their coffee and sandwiches at home.

Yesterday--when I went into Starbucks for the smallest coffee they had (and wound up wired until 4 pm)--I noticed several folks camped with computers at the indoor tables. This, as I blogged once before, is standard at all Starbucks.  Why are they sitting there long after their beverages have been consumed.  Just hanging out by others at nearby tables.

They are hanging around others for the same reasons the octogenarians gather--they need human interaction. We need to interact.  There are fewer encumbrances when we travel and sit alone. Nobody can irritate you with their own brand of craziness if you are at home.  Yet we travel and seek out the interaction with others because such contact is a balm despite the potential for off putting behavior.

Yesterday, one of the fellows at the table (I sat one table behind)--twice offered his opinion about two women who had walked by on separate occasions looking combative. The 80 year old's comment-twice, was the same. "She needs to get laid" he said. That, he seemed to suggest, would solve all problems.  I think this was this fellow's standard refrain. My bet is the next time I sit at Starbucks and he is around, he will comment similarly about some other annoying pedestrian.

In the general sense of the phrase, and generally speaking, the fellow is correct. That is we ALL need to "get laid." We need social intercourse. We need to shmooze, opine, chat, tell stories, try out jokes, and touch others.  Stay at home and you won't have to deal with a person pontificating about how all doctors are rat bastards because of one episode in a life, but you will miss the nourishment of the intercourse.