A WASTED SUMMER

1960

     During the summer I worked for Dad and played American Legion ball for West Anaheim. Three mornings a week I followed Dad in my Chevy to arrive at the store at 7:30, where a dozen or so shoemakers awaited him in eager anticipation of donuts, coffee and kibitzing, Dad’s mood was instant sunshine the second he arrived, no matter how worried or pissed off he was about other matters. These men were not customers of Dad, but friends whose life breath was attuned to their morning visits, which were lively and full of laughter and gossip, led by Dad, who always had new stories, jokes and “hot poop.” He made a fuss over each shoemaker, as if they were special, and it occurred to me that they were, and that he found something in everybody to appreciate or like, even his so-called “Cheap Sams” who squabbled over every cent and felt they were getting screwed; even the characters lacking any amiable traits, even the assholes.

     When Dad became nervous and flustered during hectic rushes when we wrote up orders together, I often went too fast and he occasionally lashed out and sometimes exploded at me to “slow down and stop making mistakes,” because any tiny mistake was a catastrophe of massive proportions and drove him into rages. I yelled back at him and he threatened me and I held my ground, knowing to back off from the beast was total submission, and we went chin to chin in blood-curdling, snarling-dog screaming matches, driving his beloved shoemakers outside or to the back of the store until the two of us cooled off and acted like the confrontation never took place, like a switch was turned on and off, and as the shoemakers trickled back to the big wide counter up front business resumed as usual, as if nothing so volatile had occurred, almost as if these grimy, hard-working mostly Italian American men were used to it and even understood and enjoyed the spectacle.

     When Dad asked what I wanted to be paid, I told him to give me what I deserved or the minimum wage. He insisted I was worth more than the minimum wage despite being a chronic pain in the ass because I did work hard and besides needed a little extra money—for the girls. But I had no girl friend. Most of the girls at Western High looked upon me as a clown-around-baseball player or a morose idler in class, staring at breasts and asses and fantasizing. Whenever I worked up enough courage to talk to a girl in hope of perhaps making a date, I was gruff and blurted out questions or statements, not about to be some mawkish lover-boy kissing ass, and was doubtlessly regarded as a pestilence. Oh well.

     I began boozing with Sturrock, who’d graduated and worked steel downtown days, and a Legion pitcher named Mike Shaw, who worked for his Dad who managed a drugstore. We found any number of local drunks to buy us beer and Southern Comfort and drove around with no special destination or direction in the flat drab O.C. wastelands, chowing down on burgers and talking sports and women, though both these guys were already hog-tied by girls who had planned their lives together since junior high and kept a tight wary eye on them to make sure they didn’t stray, distrusting me as a threat to their dreams.

     Our American Legion team was as big a mess as the high school crew, with a sprinkling of Junior varsity players and John Huarte, a jut-jawed All American high school football quarterback from a nearby Catholic school. A pitcher with mediocre stuff, he was a phenomenal football player headed to Notre Dame and the Heisman trophy and became our unquestioned leader who tried not to show his disgust when we flailed miserably and I continued kicking at things and flipping my bat and cursing savagely, feeling like a penitent little boy beside John, who was the epitome of excellence and character. But I couldn’t help myself, was like a tortured dog biting himself up and down

gnawing at fleas.

     Our coach, Frank Blunt, a tall bulgy man who loved baseball but had never played much and knew less, was too intimidated by my being the son of Murray Franklin to offer me advice on how to play and conduct myself. He’d enlisted an assistant coach named Bill Lentini, a small, curly-headed man with intense brown eyes who owned a tire store in Stanton. Lentini was a street guy who knew little about baseball, had never played much, but, like Blunt, was so in love with the game he donated free balls and bats and helped run practices. He was excited about all aspects of baseball and indeed possessed a visceral instinct about the guts inside a player, and a person, and stroked me with flattery every time I screwed up, almost as if he was trying to single-handedly rebuild in me what had been reduced to ashes. Bill became friends with and worked as a bird-dog for Chicago White Sox head scout Doc Bennett and reiterated to me over and over that “You have everything there is to be a great big leaguer—those wrists, those wheels, your instinct…”

     I felt he was making this up to salvage me, but much later I learned he meant it. Meanwhile, I began to consider getting away from baseball for a while and was forced to suspect I lacked some vital ingredient to succeed in this game, a mental make-up that held me back, which caused me to lose hope when things went bad, to get too down on myself and distrust the encouragement of a generous, compassionate man like Lentini. 

     But without baseball, what would I do, and what was my life, other than a passage not worth living? And how would Dad feel about his son being a quitter?

     (Next Sunday installment: Mr. Korfman plants a seed)