Weeds in Bloom (2 page)

Even now, I still remember all of their names, and faces, and the positions they played.

None got paid.

My gods played baseball like a religion. No other reason. They practiced on Friday night, after a day of long sweating hours in wet work shirts. I’m uncertain whether the players wanted us kids to hang around underfoot, staring up at them with our adoring eyes. Yet they tolerated us, protected us, shared their baseball prowess, and gave each one of us a treasure to keep.

A busted bat.

Few of these men ever faked any social polish. They were tougher than the land they lived on, Vermont, and could endure the mills where they labored for a lifetime. Sometimes, following a swing and a miss at batting practice or a bumbled hot grounder, a salty word popped out.

“Hey,” another player would remind, “there’s kids here.”

Such standards ordain ordinary sinners into sanctity. Some of them drank spirits, chewed Red Man tobacco, and did a lot more than merely wink at the women. Yet among them they adhered to a code of righteousness, owing an unspoken duty to the knee-high parishioners in their outdoor chapel. To them, we were cherubs on the ceilings of their souls.

They’d spit on home plate.

Not on us.

These dons of dignity had been knighted by the holy hickory sword of a Louisville Slugger bat, purified by the royal orb of a horsehide sphere. Their armor was flannel; their gauntlets were cowhide gloves, webbed between thumb and forefinger. They were uncut diamonds, worthy of worship, far more precious to me than Tinker or Evers or Chance, the famous double-play trio.

Norm Catlin was our pitcher.

He had freckles on his face and hands, I clearly remember, because Norm had taught me how to grip a curve, a fastball, and a drop. Today it’s called a sinker. One time Norm actual gave me a brand-new baseball, virgin white, to keep for my very own. Never had I owned a baseball (except for an old dog-chewed one I’d found), and here it was, all mine.

It slept under my pillow.

Norm was the best player on our team. So good that when he wasn’t pitching, he played right field to keep his bat in the lineup. He pitched right and batted left.

Now, whenever Norm Catlin commanded right field, it meant that it was Bick’s turn to pitch. He was our left-hander. A southpaw. In a way, I almost loved Bick more than I did Norm, because we all knew that Norm was strong and solid, while our lefty had a sorry flaw.

Bick could handle a baseball, but he could not handle a bottle.

One time, in broad daylight, I saw Bick so drunk that he couldn’t stand up. He kept falling. The smell was awful. And there was dried puke staining the front of his good shirt. I ran all the way home and punched my fist through a small glass window in the chicken coop. My hand bled and took sewing. But the hurt of Mama’s stitches wasn’t the reason I was crying.

Mama and Papa both asked me why I’d on-purpose busted the window. I couldn’t tell them the straight of it because I felt too ashamed for Bick, and they final quit asking. Maybe they reasoned that even a kid has a right to a secret.

Bob Klein arrived.

Mr. Klein was a jovial man.

Everyone cheered him, even though he was the in-uniform manager of a visiting team. We all knew that Mr. Klein was well-to-do, as he’d sprung for spanking-fresh uniforms for his entire ball club. He’d made his fortune with a product called Save The Baby, which, I recall, was a bottled syrup that relieved cough, croup, fever, spasm, colic, and other childhood maladies.

If his pitcher threw wild and walked a few of our hitters, we’d see Mr. Bob Klem waddle out to the
mound. This was a cue for our crowd to sing the well-known radio jingle:

This always made Mr. Klein smile and wave, as he appreciated the free advertising. By the way, Bob’s brother, Bill, was a big-league umpire, well known and respected. Mr. Bill Klein umpired in the National League, starting in the year 1905. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1953.

Bob Klem had no such big-league aspirations. He just loved baseball enough to be a benevolent manager for a hometown amateur team in the little town of Putnam Landing.

His opposite was Joe Gilbo.

Joe, known in the north country as the Grand Old Man of Baseball, was a dedicated student of the sport. But as manager of the Port Henry team, he never wore a uniform. Just baggy clothes. People said Joe Gilbo was part Indian. (So were a plenty of Pecks.) Several of his sons (and a grandson) played for him.

One of his sons pitched. And if we loaded up the bases during one of our lucky innings at bat, Old Joe would plod slowly out to the pitcher’s rubber to
confer with his battery (pitcher and catcher). This private conference on the mound always prompted the familiar catcall remark that was hollered, all in fun, by the players in our dugout:

“What’ll I do now, Pa?”

There wasn’t even a bunt of hostility in this bit of friendly joshing. During the week, our guys and the Gilbo men worked together and were brothers under the horsehide skin.

Sportsmanship existed in the crowd as well as among the players. Believe it or doubt it, whenever a baseball player from either team made an outstanding catch in the field, or belted a homer, our hometown rooters would always applaud his play. Why? Because we respected the game above winning it.

Our team had a unique defensive weapon. We called it our Irish Combination: an able third sacker, Tickle Gunning, and a first baseman, Lefty O’Doole O’Roark. A grounder to third, followed by a crisp in-time peg to first, allowed local rooters to wink at one another, because our Irish Combination had nipped another opposing batsman.

Saturday, to me, was as special as Sunday. Because on Saturday a small pickup truck came to drag our grizzled infield and smooth the dirt for Sunday’s game.

Kids, if lucky, got to be weights.

Ballast.

Seated on the husky drag boards overlapped to form a skid, we held on tight, inhaled diamond dust and Ford exhaust fumes, bruised our bottoms, and hooted in rapturous glee. It was dangerous. Hardly the type of excursion a sane mother would condone.

Mr. Ray Catlin (Norm’s pa) resided in a tiny shanty close to the ballpark. Its only resident. His job was to chalk the lines. Home to left field. Home to right. He used a one-wheel dispenser over a stretched length of twine.

I helped Mr. Catlin, for free.

In a way, he was a Renaissance man. Owned a big black Belgian plow horse named Dobbin. Could fiddle, and also blow a spirited “Oh, the Moon Shines Tonight on Pretty Red Wing” on a tarnished key-of-D harmonica. Sometimes he’d clog-dance while he wheezed “Turkey in the Straw,” get winded, and have to stop to haul in a breather.

All the kids loved him.

As a cook, he seldom bothered with a skillet or a griddle. Instead, Mr. Catlin poured his pancake batter directly onto a hot stove top. He’d wait until each flapjack was riddled with holes before flipping it over. They were so tasty that they needed neither butter nor maple syrup. Just for deviltry, I sometimes teased Mama that even though her pancakes
were delicious, they weren’t quite the same as Mr. Catlin’s.

I’m sure she understood why.

It had to do with baseball and getting coated with diamond dust and Ford fumes, fingernailing a knuckler, trying to tack and tape a broken bat, sleeping with Norm’s ball under a muslin pillow stuffed with straw, being hoarse many a Sunday evening in summer, or pretending to knock mud off my cleats (even when I was barefoot). And learning how to spit.

A wise mother rarely tethers an unshod boy whose worst fault is worshiping his earthy August gods.

C
ONSTANTINE WAS HIS FIRST NAME
.

However, as I was a little boy and he a mature man with white hair, I called him Mr. Carliotta.

So did everyone. He certainly wasn’t the type of senior gentleman that you would greet with a casual “Hey! Hiya, Constantine. How’s tricks?”

As a summertime-only resident, he owned a modest white cottage on a pond near our family farm. He arrived around the middle of June, stayed alone all summer, and departed in September, after the Labor Day rush.

He was my boss.

For him, I handled little odd jobs, all of which he kindly designed for a willing youngster: weeding, raking leaves, and generally tidying up outside. I never entered his cottage. Not even once. Only two people did such: Mr. Carliotta, and Mrs.
Filput, who came to clean house on Wednesdays.

We locals all knew Mr. Carliotta was wealthy.

Everybody swore so.

He drove a long, large automobile, and it wasn’t a Ford like Dr. Turner’s. This was a Cadillac. At the time, during a 1937 rural depression, people who had to travel rode a wagon (usual pulled by a yoke of oxen, mules, or draft horses), a pickup truck, or tractor. Mr. Carliotta’s car was the only Cadillac I saw for the first two decades of my life. His auto was big and black. So were his clothes. Black suit, black hat, black shoes. Inside the baggy suit was a white shirt, buttoned all the way up to his neck. Never a tie.

“He’s a foreigner,” people said. Yet he was a gentleman, and everyone seemed to agree on that.

Our local Italians claimed that he wasn’t one of them. No, he wasn’t. Mr. Carliotta was originally a Greek. He’d come to America, he told me, as a boy about my age, without a penny and not speaking a word of English.

Now he was a citizen.

Every morning he hoisted our American flag to top a white pole. Often I watched him look upward at the red, white, and blue, removing his hat in reverence. At sunset he hauled the flag down, folded it slowly into a triangle—stars on blue—and toted it inside his cottage.

“To be an American,” he told me, “is to feel so far richer than any other person on earth.”

“I don’t feel so rich.”

He shook his head. “Oh, yes you do, Robert, because I sometimes listen as you work, and I can hear you whistle. Or hum. A songbird might be treasured for the same reason.”

Sighing, I asked, “How did you get so rich, Mr. Carliotta? I’d like to learn.”

“Discipline,” he said. As I made a face, he raised his eyebrows. “Robert, do you know what discipline is?”

“Sure do,” I told him. “It’s when a grown-up makes me do what I don’t hanker to. And if I don’t do it, I sure get sudden corrected.”

Mr. Carliotta nodded. “Well,” he said, after a pause for thought, “when you’re a child, discipline is directed at you from several sources. Your mother, father, older sisters and brothers, and your teacher. Perhaps even our town lawman, Constable Noe.”

“That’s right. I catch it from all sides.”

Mr. Carliotta pointed a finger at me. “Someday,” he said, “you will be a grown man. Then you’ll realize that there’s only one discipline that counts. It is self-discipline. You’ll decide for yourself what you ought to do, because you know it’s right.”

“But that’s not how I’ll get rich. Is it?”

After a moment of silence, he said, “Come and
let’s walk to the edge of the lake, sit down on that fallen log, and talk.”

In a hot rush, I ran barefoot. His big black shoes, beneath the thick cuffs of trousers that always appeared too long, scuffed along over the pebbles, and then stopped. We sat, about seven feet apart.

Selecting a small stone, Mr. Carliotta tossed it into the water. Plop! A ring grew and then melted away, ignoring its cause.

“Robert,” he asked, “where is the stone?”

“Gone. It sunk.”

“All of it, or just a part?”

“All. The whole thing.”

“That,” he said, “is what can happen to the money most people earn. It has a way of vanishing. Never to be reclaimed.” Not understanding what Mr. Carliotta was explaining, I told him so. “Well,” he said, “first let me invite you to throw a stone into our little lake.” I picked one up, cocking my arm. “Please do not throw it out into the deep. Instead, drop it very close to the shoreline, into an inch of water. And no more.”

This I did.

“In a sense,” he said, “we still have it. Close enough to fetch back to possession, anytime we wish.”

I agreed.

“You are a polite boy, and you’re not afraid of work. So I will tell you my secret. Not really a mystery at all; easy to understand, yet difficult to master.” I leaned closer. “A fellow who earns money may often complain that he doesn’t earn enough. Because the money is soon spent, and nothing is left. Were his employer to double his wage, or triple it, nothing would be left to save.”

“I don’t get it.”

“His problem, Robert, is not the level of his income. It’s the level of his discipline.”

“You mean he throws it all away.” I pointed at the lake. “Like your stone.”

Mr. Carliotta nodded. “The secret is three little words.”

“What are they?”

“Always … save … half.”

It was my turn to nod.

“The poor man who only saves pennies will become far richer than the highly paid man who spends every dollar he earns.”

“That holds sense.”

“Learn,” he said, “to deny yourself. People who must
have
a lot of things end up having very little.”

I informed Mr. Carliotta that I was saving the loose change he paid me. Already I almost owned a dollar.

“Do you have a bank?”

“Sort of. It’s a little tin box that used to have chewing tobacco in it.”

“I also started with less than a dollar. As soon as you save five dollars, go to the bank in town and save your money there, where it will grow. It’s time you learned the difference between income and capital.”

I grinned. “A capital is like Montpelier.”

Slapping his knee, Mr. Carliotta smiled at me. “Income is what I pay you. Capital is having that money in the big bank, where it will earn you interest. The bank pays you money to keep it there. And someday, when you are my age, your capital savings will have grown so large that it will pay you all the wages you’ll ever need.”

I said nothing.

“Income is what you earn. Capital is what you save. And if you deny yourself and wait, you will prosper. Discipline plus patience equals wealth.”

“Is that how you did it?”