If I went to go looking around this place of mine hard enough I’d re-find a small commemorative magazine from the mid 1950’s that is all about the Centennial of New Lisbon, Wisconsin. And when I turn to the back page of that magazine I’ll find a picture, a black and white picture, of a group of New Lisbon’s finest men of that era, virtually all of them with beards at varying degrees of growth and fullness, standing in front of one of the towns’ finer drinking establishments. Men of all ages are standing there but two men in particular might catch your eye, not because of them but because of something they did for that once in a lifetime photograph, they made sure their sons were standing beside them when it came time to take that picture.
Wallace Bornmann and Gordon Washburn drove trucks for Glendenning Motorways which was headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota but had a station in New Lisbon. More significantly than that the two men were best friends and of that I am certain. Why they were the only men to have their sons standing next to them for that photograph I will never know but for them it was important and so however such thing work they made it happen that day when the men of New Lisbon gathered together on the steps of that saloon and posed for a photograph. For all eternity there would be a photograph of these two small boys surrounded by the rest of the men in that small town on the celebration of the towns’ Centennial.
I collected baseball cards as a kid. It was a passion of mine and I’d find any way possible to get a nickel and run to the Five & Dime to buy another pack of cards with that slab of bubblegum inside. How was I to know that I should have treated each and every one of those cards as pieces of future gold? No, for me they were not to be hidden away somewhere only to sell one day on eBay for small fortunes but rather to be viewed, fussed with and sometimes clipped to the forks of my bike to make that sound that only baseball cards in bicycle spokes can make. And sometimes I’d play baseball games with them.
“I’m going to Mike’s house.” And with that I was off with my shoebox full of baseball cards for the block and a half walk to Mike’s house which was right next door to one of those meeting halls like the Masonic Lodge or something. In all my years in that town I never ventured inside that building and honestly never had much interest in it since it seemed as if it was never used. If it was I never seemed to be aware of it. But Mike lived next door to it and that was my destination.
Mike was a year or two younger than me but we spent a lot of time together in my early years. Later, for whatever reason, we’d drift apart and for me it would be as if we became strangers to one another but when I had my baseball cards tucked securely under my arm and headed to his house there were games to be played and fun to be had.
The two of us had some sort of baseball card baseball game that we came up with. We’d take our favorite players cards and put them in their positions on the floor of Mike’s living room. Then once we’d gotten our players all in position we’d start the game. Now this is the point in time when recalling such moments makes me cringe because the way the game was played you’d use your baseball card as a bat. Cards that one day would be worth way more than the nickel we’d paid for them were being cupped in our hands and used to hit the wadded up piece of paper we tossed each other’s way. I’m not sure of the rest of how we got hits and outs but I’m pretty sure if you hit that paper wad over the back of the couch it was a homerun.
For me in those days most of my favorite players came from the Milwaukee Braves and the National League. It made sense to me to love the Braves because they were in Milwaukee and all of that. The trouble for me was that Mike didn’t care one lick for the Braves; he loved those damn New York Yankees! For the life of me I couldn’t understand it but Mike once said something in his defense that I still remember today; he said he liked the Yankees because they were winners.
It just so happens that the Yankee’s have just won their 27th World Series. I don’t know if Mike still pulls for the Yankees because as I understand it he had a son who one day became a professional baseball pitcher but hasn’t yet pitched for the Yankees yet. When the Yankees won the other day I thought of Mike and his love for the Yankees and I remembered those baseball games in his living room. Our teams were All Stars of our choosing but I can’t tell you today who won or who lost. All I can tell you is I remember those times with a smile.
I doubt that those two little boys standing with their fathers in that old picture will be back for the next centennial photograph of all the men in New Lisbon, Wisconsin. They were not men, only boys, but they stood there next to good men, men who thought enough of their sons to include them in that historical moment.
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