The Lost Continent - Bill Bryson [145]
My father always took us to ball games. Every summer he and my brother and I would get in the car and drive to Chicago or Milwaukee or St Louis for three or four days and go to movies in the afternoon and to ball games in the evening. It was heaven. We would always go to the ballpark hours before the game started. Because dad was a sports writer of some standing – no, to hell with the modesty, my dad was one of the finest sports writers in the country and widely recognized as such – he could go into the press-box and on to the field before the game and to his eternal credit he always took us with him. We got to stand beside him at the batting cage while he interviewed people like Willie Mays and Stan Musial. If you’re British this means nothing to you, I know, but believe me it was a real privilege. We got to sit in the dug-outs (they always smelled of tobacco juice and urine; I don’t know what those guys got up to down there) and we got to go in the dressing-room and watch the players dress for the games. I’ve seen Ernie Banks naked. Not a lot of people can say that, even in Chicago.
The best feeling was to walk around the field knowing that kids in the stands were watching us enviously. Wearing my Little League baseball cap with its meticulously-creased brim and a pair of very sharp plastic sunglasses, I thought I was Mr Cool. And I was. I remember once at Commiskey Park in Chicago some kids calling to me from behind the first base dug-out, a few yards away. They were big city kids. They looked like they came from the Dead End Gang. I don’t know where my brother was this trip, but he wasn’t there. The kids said to me, ‘Hey, buddy, how come you get to be down there?’ and ‘Hey, buddy, do me a favour, get me Nellie Fox’s autograph, will ya?’ But I paid no attention to them because I was . . . Too Cool.
So I was, as I say, desolate to discover that the Twins were a thousand miles away on the east coast and that I couldn’t go to a game. My gaze drifted idly over the box scores from the previous day’s games and I realized with a kind of dull shock that I didn’t recognize a single name. It occurred to me that all these players were in junior high school when I left America. How could I go to a baseball game not knowing any of the players? The essence of baseball is knowing what’s going on, knowing who’s likely to do what in any given situation. Who did I think I was fooling? I was a foreigner now.
The waitress came over and put a paper mat and cutlery in front of me. ‘Hi!’ she said in a voice that was more shout than salutation. ‘And how are you doin’ today?’ She sounded as if she really cared. I expect she did. Boy, are Midwestern people wonderful. She wore butterfly glasses and had a beehive hairdo.
‘I’m very well, thank you,’ I said. ‘How are you?’
The waitress gave me a sideways look that was suspicious and yet friendly. ‘Say, you don’t come from around here, do ya?’ she said.
I didn’t know how to answer that. ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t,’ I replied, just a trifle wistfully. ‘But you know, it’s so nice I sometimes kind of wish I did.’
* * *
Well, that was my trip, more or less. I visited all but ten of the lower forty-eight states and drove 13,978 miles. I saw pretty much everything I wanted to see and a good deal that I didn’t. I had much to be grateful for. I didn’t get shot or mugged. The car didn’t break down. I wasn’t once approached by a Jehovah’s Witness. I still had $68 and a clean pair of underpants. Trips don’t come much better than that.
I drove on into Des Moines and it looked very large and handsome in the afternoon sunshine. The golden dome of the state capitol building gleamed. Every yard was dark with trees. People were out cutting the grass or riding bikes. I could see why strangers came in off the interstate looking for hamburgers and gasoline and stayed for ever. There was just something about it that looked friendly and decent and nice.