FRONT PAGE NEWS -- HOLYOKE DAILY TRANSRIPT TELEGRAM -- MASSACHUSETTS

 Those were the days when we had real money.  That 50¢ was enough for five days round trip bus fare from home to school.  Truth to tell, that was the student discount fare.

The bus company was local.  The Holyoke Street Railway Company was the name.  

My favorite story out of all that could be told about that period of notoriety is one that didn't make the papers.  It is the story of the doctor who owned and operated an x-ray lab.  His services were required because after about two weeks the coin proved to be too heavy and too large to be expelled from my stomach to the outside though the bowels.  I was being poisoned by the digestive process taking place in my stomach.

The surgeon who was going to perform the invasive extraction needed an x-ray of the situation.  My father, EFR Dion and I went to the x-ray lab.  The doctor there did not believe my father (no one was about to believe a nine years old miscreant) that I had indeed swallowed that size of coin.  After a short back and forth the doctor said, "If he did swallow a half-dollar coin, I'll pay the tab."  

Click, click, whrrr, whrrr, clunck and hold the x-ray up to the light and...Whooaa, that looks like a half buck!  Reach into the pocket, put a coin up to the screen and the Doc had to pay.  My father and I laughed all the way home.

The next evening they took me to the hospital.  I was there for a full week.  I was on a baby food diet for 8 full weeks.  I missed nearly four weeks of school.  I studied at home after the hospital and passed all the final tests so I did not have to repeat the grade.

The coin?  My father ordered me to give it to the church in the form of a candle offering.  There was no way he was going to allow me to glorify my imprudence.

That was 1946.  I haven't seen a 50¢ piece in decades.  No, I never swallowed another one!

BATTING A THOUSAND

I was looking for a picture for you that would somehow introduce the topic you expect from the title of this post.  So, I went to Google because I didn't have too much time since it is already the middle of the night.  So I put in the three words that you see at the top there. What I saw in ten pages of Larry and Sergei's masterpiece was about four pictures of marginally related baseball pictures and a very large array of naughty things...So, I figured that I would complete the idiocy by taking the picture that you see.  Two French flags celebrating a XXX billboard with Americana...Sheeesh!
It's a good thing that the nun who taught us decimals is no longer with us.  I hope she doesn't get her wings wrinkled by the sass of this little essay.  I bring it up for one reason, and one reason only.  The other day my younger son used the expression "Batting a thousand" to describe the string of bad luck that someone whom we both know was suffering.  It is a part of US culture that I don't hear much any more.  But when I heard it I thought of Sister Robert Marie.  5th grade at the Immaculate Conception school on Summer street in the "Flats" of Holyoke, Massachusetts, down by the canal.  The "Paper City" it was called.  When the times they got a little more brazen, the bumper stickers that they were flashing around read, "The best city by a dam site."  If anyone thought of that in the 40's, they didn't use it for fear that the mayor would have washed their mouth out with soap.  Make mine Ivory, please.  It's 99/100% pure, you know.
Anyway, the good sister decided that it was time to teach us how to calculate our batting averages.  She made the mistake of thinking that she had enough "street" smarts to deal with us wise-acres.  You can all see this coming.  She asks, "If Johnny hits the ball and gets to first base, what is his batting average?"  We all say, "A thousand."  That was it.  She spent at least a half hour trying to  get us to say, 1.000 [one.point zero, zero, zero.]  Forget that noise. She was having a mental breakdown.  She tried to make us say that some batters bat [no, she didn't say "hit"-- hey she was a sister, remember?"] "Three hundred and twenty-five thousandths."  Whoooie!  That went over really well.  We could all see ourselves talking to the tough, "eat-nails-for-breakfast-catcher" that he was batting only "two hundred and ten thousandths."  Imagining the consequences of doing something like that was altogether too much for any of us to bear.  
Actually I remember that a couple of us guys, and even one girl tried to reason with Sister Robert Marie, but this was 1949 or so...You know, "pay, pray and obey!"  Oh, and  keep quiet too.  
Sister took it for a while, but then she changed the subject to geography or some such safe haven of the sort.  We were good with that, along as we had her out of our hair and we could go on using the phrase "Batting a thousand" to our hearts content.


So see, I thought about all of that and still had to suffer through the bad experience with Mr. Google and the French stuff.  But, all in all, it was fun.  We have so little culture here in the good ol' US of A, that when we trip over a bit of it, we have to put it out there, right?  Right.  Now, go to bed, "Mrs. Calabash, where ever you are!"

HOME TOWN -- SOME THOUGHTS --- IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK

Now that you have been introduced to the places where I have lived and seen my opinion about them, which one do you think is my home town?  Well, there are some of you who may already know the answer to that.  That is not because you know where I was born, but because I perhaps have told what I have chosen to embrace as my home town.  I am of the opinion that unlike language, domicile is something that you have the opportunity to choose.  Domicile, in my view, is like marriage. You get to make the vow after serious due diligence.  It doesn't matter where you are born.  It is more important where your heart first took flight and made you a better person.  For a long time I was sure that South Hadley, Massachusetts was that place on earth that had done that for me.  I have to tell you that between South Hadley and the place I NOW know is my Home Town, there is a long, long distance.  The distance is not just mileage, it is a state of mind.  It is a heart anchor and a taste in the mouth that has to be treasured and captured never to go away.  I never, never got this from the city in which I was born.  MJT Dion always told me that I should not say bad things about Holyoke.  She always said that there were a lot of good people who lived there.  I never denied that.  After all, my grandfather lived there with my grandmother, and they were among the Very Best People alive and in my life.  But the city itself?  BOOO, HISSS, WHistle... I was so glad to be able to say that I was from South Hadley.

Since I moved away from there at the ripe old age of 14, I have to admit that I did get to enjoy the "puppy love" moments that other places gave me along the way.  Along that way I started to dream about Rome, Italy.  It consumed a lot of my heart time.  I never thought I would ever get there.  When I got the news that I had been assigned there, I was ecstatic.  Even now, the memory of that moment moves me.  Just thinking about it and the four years that followed, makes me feel light-headed.  It is a home town that I have at another level.  It is a spiritual level and occupies a special corner of my heart along with Jerusalem.  So Rome is not my physical home town, it is spiritual, hand in hand with Jerusalem.

That honor goes to the city in which I have lived for the longest consecutive amount of time in my life and of course, therefore the longest cumulative time in my life.  

San Diego, California has lit my heart on fire.  It has also enveloped me in its warm and charming embrace.  It is more than a city for me, it is family.  Not so much in the people sense, but in the "nest" sense.  For some odd reason I have never generated any desire to grow into a fledgling and leave.  I have lived in other places, away from San Diego, but I always say that IT is where I live.  That makes people to whom I say it shake their heads.  Especially since I tell many people in Moreno Valley that I live in San Diego [100 miles away].  It is true.  And the Voice from the Kitchen is the same way.  So now you know.  I find myself a little bit like the immigrants who constantly brag about the country that they left.  After a while, someone is bound to ask, "You like it so much, go back."  I don't have to tell you the reaction to that, "You crazy?"  So there you have it.  I have a physical/love interest home town and spiritual ones, shown here below.

COLISEUM, ROME, CHRISTMAS

MOUNT OF OLIVES, JERUSALEM