Every autumn, I take a couple weeks to myself, fill the backseat of my Ford with assorted mismatched clothing, books, dried and canned foods and drive. Just pick a direction and drive in search of yard sales, estate sales, pawn shops, wherever garbage accumulates. Where the treasure lives. Every year save one yielded a rare, and to me, indispensable artifact. In 2008 I bought a Duke Snider rookie card from an old man named Abraham Hostler for $15 and a conversation. He offered it to me with a wizened hand, the skin gone translucent, just brittle bone and blue vein. He told he hadn’t seen a game since the Giants beat the Cardinals one day in May 1968. “It just ain’t the same on television. And my heart can’t take the city anymore.” I replied that I understood, shook his hand and escaped with my prize.
Another year I retreated home with an old mitt, the signature in the palm of the glove worn away save for the last letter,‘t’. I pretend it was signed by Mel Ott. No proof whatsoever. And yet another year, a photograph, black and white of course, of a young boy, maybe 10 years old—a stranger to me as well as to the woman who sold it to me—reaching up to take a signed ball from Mickey Mantle. However, this past year, after two weeks of futile searching with nothing to show but stomach cramps from too much gas station food, two brand new tires, a sprained ankle, and a singed eyebrow (nevermind that) I pulled off of Highway 24, ten miles outside of Murfreesboro, Tennessee and met a man named Glen who took me to a man named Ed’s place who gave me a book. “It may not be no baseball souvenir. No card or trophy or nothing” old man Ed grunted at me. “But there’s baseball in there. And a whole lot more.”
“And you’re willing to part with this?” I asked before even looking to see what was inside. “For how much?”
“You just take it,” he said. “I never read a book twice. Just don’t tell any of them stories around this town. I made some of um my own.”
I took my prize to the car. I had no idea what was waiting inside, but I sensed something special, something I needed to run away with. I didn’t open it until I hit the bluegrass of Kentucky. I pulled off and reserved a seat in a café with a cup of coffee and piece of cherry pie.
It was an old, brown leather diary, faded surely from the deep mahogany of its infancy to a burnt sienna. Small enough to fit the inner breast pocket of a suit jacket. No wording on the binding. Most of the diary was intact, some pages stuffed in, folded and creased, some surely missing. I opened it to the first page:
Some call me Pud Gannon
I’m still alive because every time I woke up, wherever that happened to be, I found myself a mirror, and repeated three times:
“Don’t Trust Nobody.”
And I lived it.
Old Man Ed was right. There was baseball in there. And a whole lot more. I haven’t been able to find any records of Pud Gannon as of yet. But the pages in this diary make me believe, or at least want to believe, that he existed. Every so often, to spell myself from a blog entry, I will present an excerpt from this diary. Let’s call them the Pud Gannon Memoirs. I’ll try to stick to the entries that dance around the subject of baseball. I hope you enjoy as I have.
The Pud Gannon Memoirs #1
I first met Toots Shor stumbling out of an alley off 51st Street. It was one of the rare occasions I didn’t have solid legs carrying me, due to the large amount of blood that had spewed from a mashed nose. I’d surmise at least a pint was decorating my shirt-front. Like all my past injuries, I had earned the small fragments of bone I was picking out of my nostrils. As always, she wasn’t worth it. But when a dame wears a dress like that I see no other option.
I paused a moment, wrung out my handkerchief and wiped at my face. I must have looked like a redskin who didn’t know the bus route. I tilted my cap down, raised my shoulders and walked to the street. A clot drained in my nostril so I leaned toward the pavement and sprayed the mass on the street, looked up just as I ran face first into a lunchbox of a man. My feet gave and set me ass on pavement.
I stared up at my impasse. Two men stood silhouetted against the sun, one tall and lean, impeccably built. The other an oil drum dressed in a flesh coat. Even through half-swollen eyes I admired the former his majestic figure and despised the latter his corpulent repugnance. That fat one said to me:
“Boy, if somebody hadn’t beaten me to it, I smash your nose good. This was a clean shirt.”
“In this heat a man like you’d have to change soon anyway,” I replied. I pulled myself to my feet. The thin man let out a laugh. The fat one chortled, as men who’ve allowed their necks to swallow their throats tend to do.
“A wise guy, I see. A shirt ruined by a wise guy. I can see why your nose got busted.”
“Actually I was being dumb, thank you. One of you fellas spare a cigarette. It’ll take a time before the blood dries on mine?”
The lean one pulled one out for me. I wiped the wet blood from my fingers and took it. For the first time I looked at his face.
“Well shit on my grave. Joe DiMaggio. I’d like to shake your hand, but I’ll settle for a light.”
The Clipper cracked a toothy smile, struck a match.
“I put fifty dollars on your hitting .350 this season. It’s August, and I’m not feeling too good. What do you say you give me the shirt off your back as collateral? I’ll bring it back cleaned and ironed if you make good at the end of the season. I’m hoping to get a date tonight.”
DiMaggio looked perplexed, but amused. In all the ensuing years we kept in touch he was never one to say much. The fat one broke in, laughing, “a real wise guy. C’mon, Joe. Let’s buy this bum a drink.”
I followed them down 51st street to Toots Shor’s place, eager for a drink and perhaps a clean shirt. I knew of the place and the clientele. A few weeks rent would be easily had around such a crowd. I was, however, more than a little disappointed at the staleness of Joe DiMaggio’s cigarette.
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