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When Children were Children
Happy Days are here Again
by Sharon Hopper
It is March. I am going into the corner of the garage to get out my
baseball bat, gloves, and balls to get them oiled and ready for the
spring season. I am excited because playing 4 man baseballs was one of
my favorite things to do. Once in a while my dad or uncles would join
in on a family game.
When I was young we did not have little league or ball diamonds
everywhere. Only at school and the boys who played for the school team
were about the only ones who played there other than the “town kids”. I
was a country kid. We had a big back yard and you could not hit a ball
to the bottom of the grass area. However; you could lose a ball in the
wheat or corn field if you hit it to far right. We developed our own
rules as to how the game would be played and scored. As you can imagine
the rules were quite different except three strikes and you were out.
We made bases out of flat rocks and there were three boys and I who
played ball every night. I cannot remember how many times my dad had to
replace a pain of glass in the utility room window. My little brother
and his friend were our “ball runners”. I can remember when he finally
got big enough to start hitting the ball and running the bases.
In addition to playing ball at every opportunity my family was avid
radio fans of the Cleveland Indians. Every summer we would get to go to
the ball park in Cleveland. That was our exciting summer event and we
were allowed to get a soft drink and hot dog at the ball park. We did
not have fast food so that alone was a real experience that I looked
forward to. That was a real trip and we hollered so much we could
hardly talk on the way home. Spring was a wonderful time of year. Of
course we lived in northern Ohio so it was not unusual for a big snow
storm to put a damper on the spring activities, but I knew it would not
last and that was just how life was. We played ball till swimming
season every chance that we could. Oh that is another story which I
will address later.
So welcome March and playtime.
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