Al Stewart recorded a song decades ago entitled Time Passages.
This picture hammers home how fast time really goes. So does the text a young cowboy received from his old high school buddy Rusty.
He wrote that he’s reached the eighty per cent stage of his life. Knowing him, he’ll cram enough in the final stretch to last two lifetimes.
Certainly, this excellent angler has plenty of future battles ahead with testy browns and rainbows.
I occasionally get snapshots of days and events that happened a half century ago.
Steve Fasone’s mom bringing down our favorite strawberry soda and chips while we played eight ball in the basement. What a queen she was!
Bobby Chatterton leaping high against the left field fence at Segner Field to make a game saving backhand catch.
The sad announcement by my parents in our living room that four year old brother Craig didn’t make it through heart surgery at the Mayo Clinic. The disbelief and numbness that pervaded that room was like no other for us.
Tom Finholm standing on his desk in protest to Ms. Yoakim that the triple header we arranged in his absence was illegal.
Dick Hennier gets an inbound pass with two seconds to go as Rockhurst College battles Indiana Central in The NAIA Tournament. The home crowd of 10,000 holds its collective breath as he rises up with two defenders in his face. The dude is 35 feet from the basket. He lands out of bounds as the buzzer sounds and…you guessed it, nothing but net. The greatest clutch shot this youngster has ever seen and one that ten thousand people still talk about.
The surprise rainbow trout that we kept catching at Church Ranch near Rocky Flats. Hope we didn’t eat them as they were undoubtedly radioactive. Pretty amazing…nothing less than fifteen inches and many three pounders. Ooops…’sir, we never saw the no trespassing sign.’
Our brother Chris returning from India where he caught a severe case of dysentery. Holy Schmole…he was so emaciated that his head had appeared to shrink.
The smell of Johnny Donohue’s cigar as he taught us rookie caddies the finer points of caddying at Indian Hills Country Club. How excited we were when he’d holler our name and give us a ‘loop’ that would tee off soon. We didn’t care that the flat rate was $3.00 per 18 holes…and that the normal tip was $.50.
I recall nearly fainting in the eighth grade while attending the wake of Vince Dasta’s dad who died unexpectedly when we were thirteen.
The two buzzer beaters that left the Rockhurst team stunned. Mark Geraghty nailed an 18 footer and his teammate swished a 23 ft. bomb as we celebrated on their court.
Surely, a young cowboy was thunderstruck when, at age eight, he opened the door to see mom without her dentures. She looked like the Caucasian version of Moms Mabley and I didn’t sleep a wink that night.
Lastly, I remember the first of four concussions that rocked my world. Well…it’s really a second hand remembrance passed along from mom. She told about a frantic postman going door to door inquiring…’is this little guy yours?’ Three year olds falling out of wagons and hitting their head on cement curbs can be likened to football players getting their bell rung after catching passes across the middle.
We still are in shock at the catch that Chatterton made in 1961 and will always remember the gentle spirit of Mrs. Fasone.
*** I nearly forgot. The look on good friend Cheryl Spicer’s face when we met her and husband Bill at the airport in Brisbane. How could she expect a first meeting to be embellished by her faraway friend who happened to be wearing Big Bubba teeth…you know, those unsightly nicotine stained ones with the huge gaps in them.
Time passages and snippets from the good and not so good old days.
What You’re Saying