During the early 1950's, a boy named John and I were classmates at Sacred Heart Catholic Elementary School. The red brick school building had been build in Festus, or since the demarcation line separating the Twin Cities along Brierton Lane slants radically to the right, the scuttle-butt was we were actually educated in Crystal City, Missouri. Looking at a map it's hard to tell where the boundary lies. Directly across the street from the elementary school, ruling high on hill overlooking Bailey Road, is the monument to salvation: the Sacred Heart Catholic Church. That's where John and I served as altar boys.
Over the last seventy years, the bright young lad who graduated from West Point with honors and I have gone our separate ways. We've remained friends, sort of, just not up close and personal, like the time we were sitting in the same stuffy classroom listening to Mother Virginia conjugate verbs. These days, although we're separated by hundreds of miles, John and I are friends on Facebook.
With the heady perfume and excitement of Major League baseball spring training in the air, John has been posting old timey photos of baseball players on fb. The lengthy list of the game's greatest stars include well known players such as Daffy and Dizzy Dean, along with the lesser known Burleigh 'Ol' Stubblebeard' Grimes, who became recognized for throwing baseball's last legal spitball. Also on John's retro baseball list is Willie Mays and Mike Trout, the only two players in baseball history with the most seasons (2) at least a .320 batting average, 25 home runs and 30 stolen bases. Free agent, Matt Kemp, who's no relation to the author and who was last seen wearing a Los Angeles Dodgers uniform, had (1) season with those fantastic numbers.
Matt Kemp is best known for explaining his passion for the game this way. "If a player doesn't understand what's happening, he get's frustrated. If he knows it all, or thinks he does, he gets bored. The Sweet Spot is called 'fun' that exists between both extremes". Unlike most Major League baseball players who look at the game primarily as a business proposition, Matt Kemp is intent on having fun. But Kemp also admits that the object of playing the game is that you come out a winner.
When viewed from outside the realm of sports, a Sweet Spot can be the instant someone falls in love for the first time, the birth of your first child or closing on your first home sweet home. Those are personal memories with high notes played out in the symphony of life which reminds me of time spent on my favorite Sweet Spot the gravely banks of the Castor River.
While I attended Sacred Heart Elementary School, it was during the summer months, when all the family loaded up the '52 Chevy Bel Air, roared out of Crystal City and sped toward Marquand, Missouri, where we spent long fun-filled weekends fishing, tubing and swimming in the Castor River. One Saturday afternoon, I sat on a bleached tree trunk that was half submerged in the clear free-flowing stream teaming with aquatic wildlife. Along with the enticing sweet smell from sycamore trees, the calmness made the place almost holy.
I tightened my grip on the bar of Ivory Soap in hand. It was time for my once a week Saturday river bath. "This would be impossible in the Sahara Desert," I thought, probably because the last book I'd read on my summer reading list was Beau Geste by P. C. Wren. Beau Geste is the story about three brothers who join the French Foreign Legion and are sent to the Sahara Desert. The novel first published in 1924 is filled with exciting passages, particularly the one when Digby Geste gives his brother Michael 'Beau' Geste a Viking funeral. "What a way to go," I thought, closing my eyes while lathering the back of my sun-burned neck with foamy soap suds. "I could be dead tomorrow. I want to be laid-out on a burning barge with a dead dog at my feet. What more could I ask for, except, thirteen singing Spanish angels to serenade me across the river Styx? Everybody needs music at their final going away party, don't they?"
It's been over 60 years since Wren's Beau Geste inspired me and my burning desire for a Viking funeral. But what seemed like a good idea at the time would be frowned on today, not only would the local authorities butt-in but the environmentalist as well. In the end I suppose it doesn't make a bit of difference if the fuel is natural gas or wood, after the cremation ashes are ashes and dust is dust, right? In any event, I can't imagine a better Sweet Spot than the heavenly Castor River to spend a peaceful Eternity.