Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [10]
Doc would come into his room at about 3:30 in the morning, long before it was light, and wake him. Bobby would get up and dress and they would both quietly slip out the front door so the Robinsons’ chickens would not wake up the neighborhood. Doc would start the 1938 Dodge with the bad muffler as quietly as possible and drive in the dark through the back roads until they came to the river. It was on these mornings that his father would let him have a sip of coffee from the thermos he had brought, preceded with “All right, just a sip, but don’t tell your mother.” This little ritual made Bobby feel as if he and his father were partners in a grand conspiracy. Even though the coffee always tasted bitter and horrible, he endured it without making a face. It was a man thing. Sometimes they would go with Glenn Warren and his son, Macky, but he liked it best when it was just him and his father. He loved having his father introduce him to the other men at the camp as his son. He could tell they all respected his father and it made him feel proud. He also enjoyed going to Old Man Johnson’s fishing camp, where they rented their boat. The ramshackle wooden cabin was filled with rods and tackle. Mounted fish of all kinds and sizes hung on every inch of the wall. Also alongside the fish hung a calendar with a picture of a pretty girl in short shorts fly-fishing in a stream that Bobby thought was exotic. They always bought their live bait out of the cooler plus two cold drinks, crackers and tins of sardines and Vienna sausages for their lunch, and were usually out on the water just as the sun was coming up. Bobby’s job was to row the boat back up into the deep shady places, where the big fat trout and catfish liked to hide, while his father cast his line as close to the bank as possible. The crackers Mr. Johnson sold were stale and the drinks warm by noon but it didn’t matter. Anything tastes good when you are hungry. Some days they would catch a huge string of fish, sometimes just three or four. One day the fishing had been so bad that his father bought some trout from Old Man Johnson to take home. That night Bobby went into such long and elaborate detail about how each trout was caught and how hard it fought that his mother began to suspect something. But Bobby didn’t really care how many fish they caught; he just loved being alone with his dad. A few years before, his father had casually laid out a handful of baseball tickets on the kitchen table and asked, “Son, would you like to go to the World Series with me?” Miracle of all miracles, their team, the St. Louis Browns, was playing the St. Louis Cardinals that year and everybody in the state of Missouri was trying to get tickets. As it turned out, a friend of Doc’s from pharmaceutical school just happened to be Luke Sewell, the St. Louis Browns’ manager’s brother-in-law, and Doc had been able to get tickets from him. Doc brought in a replacement to work for him at the drugstore and Dorothy packed their bags. On October 3, the two of them got on a train headed up to St. Louis with tickets for all six games if it lasted that long and they hoped it would. What a town. What a trip. Just him and his dad staying at a real hotel, eating out at restaurants just like two grown-ups. A Yellow Cab ride to the huge Rexall drugstore in downtown St. Louis to visit his father’s friend and back. He had his picture made under the big steel Gateway Arch, and got a brand-new Browns baseball cap. Each day they took a streetcar from downtown to North Grand Avenue, all the way out to Sportsman’s Park. Going and coming it was always filled with the aroma of Old Spice shaving lotion and cigarette smoke and packed full of loud, exuberant men and boys of all ages headed to and from the game. The sight of the ballpark that first day—the crowds—the noise—the smells—the crack of the bat—the green grass—the hot dogs—the peanuts—that sip of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer! It was all too much. Bobby was so excited he was dizzy. Their team won the first game 2 to 1, which gave them hope, but went on to lose the series as expected.