Home Visit

I lay in bed listening to the day begin. It's been thirty years since I lived here, before the call of the world took me out of my home with adolescent fervor. The sounds really haven't changed much.

I grew up in a house that backed up onto an alley, which backed up onto a huge field, where the neighborhood gang of kids played late into the night, or until the street lights came on. We dug holes, covered them up with branches and twigs to capture any trespassers. Our dirt clod fights took place on this open field. Soon the bulldozers came, and replaced our battlefield with a modern post office. Their boxy vehicles, with the steering wheel on the wrong side, were lined up in rows. Five days a week, I would listen to the carriers as they loaded up their trucks for daily deliveries. For eight hours every day the parking lot was empty, and we had our field back.

Saturday the front office was open, but the trucks weren't used, and our desire to perfect our baseball throw got the best of my younger brother and I. With gloves and baseball in hand, we hit the field....the postoffice field and started throwing between trucks. Our accuracy was perfected and our confidence grew...until one wayward ball went crashing thru the windshield. The sound of broken glass, not only ended our perfect inning, but shattered our young consciences. We froze. We stared at each other. With gloves hanging sadly by our sides, we slowly walked to the front door and stood in line behind customers buying stamps. What a sight we must have been! Two barefoot kids with baseball gloves looking scared to death.

"Uh, Mister" I stammered. My little brother lost his voice and stood right by my side. "We were playing catch in the back, and we accidently broke a window." The man without a smile, in a government issued uniform, stood behind a tall counter looking down at us through reading glasses that perched on the tip of his nose. "We're really sorry, and we would be glad to pay for it." A slight curve formed on the outer corners of his mouth. "Name please. Both your names. Phone Number. What's your parents name." I answered all the questions, and the last thing I heard him say was "I will need to call your parents."

I don't remember ever playing there again. We found a safer place in the field next door, before the office building went up.
It was also the place my older brother used to hang dummies from the branches of tall trees to scare passing motorists. When the post office was closed, and the trucks were not used, you could hear the sound of a tennis ball hitting the brick wall over and over again. The perfect backboard for a future Billie Jean.