The journey continues….
Sunday: Rib still hurts, but as long as I don’t try to breathe deeply, or turn to my right, or cough, or roll over in bed, um, well, it hurts.
My dad offers me a wrap around the upper chest he used when he cracked a rib a few weeks before. It helps.
I spend the day chauffeuring my brother to our parents’ home, where we had Sunday dinner and visited with my sisters.
Sorry if this sounds like the old-timey society columns. I remember our elderly neighbors had some kind of shindig and my brother went. I didn’t, for reasons I forget, and his name was part of the item in the paper and I remember being a little ticked off about it.
When we lived next to them, their house was about 60-70 yards away, and on summer nights, Mr. Youngs, who was in his 80s by then and almost deaf, would turn up the radio so he could listen to the Tigers.
He did this every day, but on hot summer nights, the windows were open, and we could hear Ernie Harwell almost as well as if he were sitting in our bedroom describing the game.
So my mom would call and ask Mrs. Youngs to have him turn down the radio.
This usually led to them yelling at each other over the radio about turning down the radio. We would laugh and then the radio would be turned off and the night’s last stand against sleep would be over.
Monday: An emergency brake job, and about 15 other things, delays my departure until nearly 5 p.m.
It is in my plan to get to Cooperstown, N.Y., to spend a couple of days at the Baseball Hall of Fame.
It’s dark well before 6, and when I get to Port Huron, I’m thinking of the Brighton hockey bus trip to Houghton, specifically Sunday morning.
That’s the day the bus departs for the return trip, and mostly what you see is the lighted portion of the pavement in front of the bus for the first two hours.
That was the view until I got to the hotel in Cooperstown at 2:30 a.m.
One thing about Ontario: They don’t mess around when it comes to speeders. If they catch you going 50K over the speed limit, they confiscate your car and license on the spot, and tack on a fine up to $10,000.
I stick to going 10 km over the limit. About 66 mph. Cars whip by me. Trucks tailgate, and not just to expand the field of viewing the blacktop, I suspect.
It seems like New York is Michigan East, in that there are so many towns there that have namesakes in Michigan. Unadilla, DeWitt, Rochester, Utica, etc.
Tuesday: I wander around Cooperstown for a few minutes. It is cloudy and foggy; the big hill on the east side of town has a cloud bank between the street and its peak.
The Hall of Fame is across the street from the post office, and allows plenty of time for moseying through the exhibits.
There are plenty of baseball-themed stores in the downtown, which mostly consists of three-story buildings on Main Street. A few are closed, but there are a couple of hat stores that have all kinds of vintage hats, including those umpires used to wear. That’s deep retro, in my opinion.
December in Cooperstown is hibernation season, it appears. The parking lot at Doubleday Field has kiosks to pay $10, but they are covered in tarps. Several stores are closed for the winter, although they have websites.
As for the nuseum, there are a few items from the Tigers, including the “440” marker from the centerfield fence at Tiger Stadium and some old seats from Navin Field. Not the old seats from Tiger Stadium, but decades before.
Wednesday: Another cloudy, gloomy day, perfect for museum wandering.
I leave to get lunch and look to get something to eat.
I turn on a side street and see a place that sells burgers. Then I look up.
Next door is a sign for a Chinese restaurant.
“Foo Kin Chinese Food,” it says.
As I was not in the mood for Foo Kin Chinese Food, I decided to go to the burger place.
It’s closed for the season, but the owner did have a little business where he sold slices of pizza.
I guess I should have gotten a Foo Kin Chinese Food menu, (“Eat In or Take Out” the sign said), but I decided to head back to the museum and make a final round of the museum.
On the way back to my truck, I turn up the street, and the 13-year-old in me looks around, sees no one on the street, and snaps a photo of the Foo Kin Chinese Food sign.
Yes, I probably could have mentioned the name once and it would have been enough. But it was too much fun to resist.
And, once I snapped the photo, like the moment the radio was switched off, it was time to shut things down.
