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I've always heard that you can't take it with you.
That can mean a lot of different things.
It
usually means that you can’t take your money with you when you die. You
usually hear this statement from somebody
who is trying to sell you something.
I
learned another meaning. Like many of the things I’ve learned, I learned it
the hard way.
I've played a lot of softball in my life.
I
started out young and by the time I had graduated from high school, I was
playing for a very good team.
I
was the baby of the team, with most of the other players being nearly twice
my age. Many of them were married. They
teased me some because of my youth, but it was a good bunch of guys.
It
was a team made up of people from many different occupations. People who
played ball together, but had many different interests.
Other than the game of softball and breathing, they did share one habit that
could be best described, even by those who
partake of it, as disgusting.
They chewed tobacco.
Not Copenhagen, which they called snoose. Copenhagen was something you used
only when spitting was a problem--like
when you were in church or during a meal when company was present.
These guys chewed real tobacco--Red Man and Beech Nut. Leaf tobacco that
one should leave alone.
The bigger the amount of this tobacco, called a chaw, that you could cram
into your mouth, the cooler it was.
I
was taken by the sight of a field of softball players with cheeks stretched
taut with chaw.
In
the hopes of proving myself a true team player, I entered the realm of
chewing tobacco and vowed to practice spitting it
for both distance and accuracy.
I
thought chewing tobacco made me look suave and debonair. I expected the
young ladies to swoon when they got a look
of the juice running down my chin and staining my uniform a stunning shade
of brown.
I
trusted that chewing tobacco would make me look like a grown-up, because I
sure didn't know how to act like one.
I
purchased a small pouch of Red Man.
It
wasn't that cheap, especially to a chronically cash poor almost to be
college student like me.
I
opened the pouch and took out a big gob of chewing tobacco just as I had
seen my teammates do. I plopped the pile into my mouth.
My
mouth responded by producing enough saliva to fill Lake Superior twice.
In
a few days, when the dizziness had nearly subsided, I tried it again.
Little by little, I became accustomed to the nasty stuff. I was finding
that it wasn't easy for a man to enjoy himself. Nobody
said being a man was easy.
I
still had the problem with my cash flow. There wasn't any.
Necessity might be the stepmother of invention. Frugality might be the real
mother of invention.
I
found that if I chewed a little bubblegum and stretched it over the chaw; I
could increase the mileage of the chaw to at
least two games.
I
could take the chaw of tobacco with me.
I
learned a lot about chewing tobacco that year.
There was apparently no end to the amount of juice that one large chaw could
produce.
It
was a definite over-achiever.
One night, we were in a close, hard-fought game with one of our biggest
rivals.
I
was on first base, looking dapper in my tobacco juice-stained uniform and
with a gum-wrapped chaw the size of a small watermelon in my mouth.
The first base coach reminded me to go hard on the ground and to break up
any chance of a double play.
The batter hit a groundball to the third baseman.
The third baseman threw the ball to second base.
I
went hard and slid right at the second baseman in the hopes of preventing a
double play.
I
put the pedal to the metal.
It
was a bad slide, filled with enthusiasm, but lacking in technique.
The double play was averted, but in the process, I swallowed my chaw--gum
and all.
I
immediately knew that wasn't a good thing, but being a good Minnesotan, I
thought that things could be worse.
I
thought that.
It
was then that things became worse.
I
didn't want to make a scene, but I did.
I
was going to take that chaw home and use it for one more game.
But I learned something that night.
You can't take it with you.
©Al Batt 2004 |
