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The things you find on the side of the road

4/20/2021

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Charles City Press, 4-20-21

I found a case of cold beer on the side of the road Saturday morning.

That’s my story, anyway, and I’m sticking to it.

It was more than a case, actually, it was a 30-pack — unopened, untampered, cool and delicious — just sitting there. I would guess it was somewhere around $25 worth of beer. Who could have left it there? Obviously, there had been some kind of mistake.

Really, that’s my story. It’s amazing what you can sometimes find on the side of the road.

I had just left downtown Charles City, assigned to take a photo of nine Charles City kids. When I call them “kids,” it’s a comment on my advanced age, and not a comment on their lack of maturity. They are men and women, not children, but when you’ve crossed the half-century mark, everyone younger than you seems like a kid.

And they were kids, not too long ago. Our own Charles City kids, most of them born, raised and educated here. Saturday morning, they were young adults, standing together on a flatbed trailer downtown, on the side of the road. It was the 2021 version of a parade — those being honored just stand there, while others drive by, honk, wave, fly flags and yell “thank you.”

They are members of the Army National Guard who have recently returned from a year’s deployment in the Middle East.

Remember their names, thank them for their service — Austin Ferch, Mitchel Fox, Nick Jacobs, Dallas Nehls and Conor Sherman (CCHS Class of 2016); Dave Dejongoy and Jaden Foster (CCHS Class of 2017) and Marco Concepcion and Elizabeth White (CCHS Class of 2018.)

I met them, I talked with them a little, I joked with them, I took a few photos. There was no way they understood how happy I was to see them, alive, in one piece, smiling — safe home. I’m sure it seems strange that I felt that way. I’d never before met any one of them, didn’t know them personally. I don’t think I even know any of their parents or grandparents.

But I have known people who didn’t come home. And these kids reminded me of that.

On Aug. 2, 2005, U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Michael A. Benson was riding in a gunner’s turret in Baghdad when a suicide bomber on the side of the road, driving a car that was carrying an improvised explosive device, attacked his three-vehicle convoy, resulting in his sustaining severe head wounds.

He was initially transferred from Iraq to a hospital in Germany where he was awarded a Purple Heart, and, while he did not immediately perish from his injuries, he died in a military hospital in Maryland on Aug. 10, 2005.

Mike was just 40 years old. He was in his final year of service. He was my cousin.

He enlisted in 1985, and during his two decades in the U.S. Army, he was awarded at least 23 medals, awards and decorations in recognition of his outstanding military service.

Mike also loved fast cars and spicy foods, and rooted passionately for Dale Earnhardt Jr., the Minnesota Vikings and the Minnesota Twins. When I was just 10 years old, he introduced me to good rock music, and got me hooked. I’ll always be grateful for that.

He had a deep belief in God and country. He was a good cousin, a good brother, a good husband and a good son.

I left those nine kids Saturday, struck by how much they reminded me of my cousin Mike, when he and I were kids. I never really got to know him as an adult, so I’ll always think of him as a kid.

I doubled back a few minutes later. I’ve always thought it was a good idea to double back for your friends, especially if you believe they’d do the same for you.

I doubled back, with my newly-found case of beer riding shotgun, and drove right back up to those young soldiers.

“I found this on the side of the road,” I said, as I set the 30-pack down on the flatbed. “I thought maybe you guys might know who it belongs too.”

Their smiles broadened and a few of them laughed, and that was exactly what my heart needed.

“I’m just going to leave this here and let you guys figure out what to do with it,” I said. I walked back to my car, without looking at them. I couldn’t look at them at that point. I was afraid if I looked into their eyes, I would see Mike.

I was buying them the beer I never got the chance to buy my cousin.

Or maybe, U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Michael A. Benson, KIA 2005, was buying them a beer, through me. That’s what it felt like at the moment.

And I then I went home, opened the fridge, and even though it wasn’t quite noon yet, I had a cold one. I turned on some good rock music, and cranked it up, loud. I thought about Mike. I thought about those kids, all smiles, so happy to be home from the hot hell they’ve been cooking in for the last year.

I thanked God that they all were able to return home, and whispered a prayer for all the young men and women who never did. Then I had a second beer. I figured that would be enough, and it was.

They say if you drink alcohol before noon, you might have a problem.

Saturday morning, it was a good problem to have.

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Baseball, America, and playing for the team

4/6/2021

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Charles City Press, 4-6-21

When I was 9 years old, I truly sucked at baseball. In the summer of 1977, I had one base hit, all season.

That one base hit was a good one, though, and I’ll tell you about it in a minute. It rounds the bases in the memory diamond of my brain every time April rolls around and baseball season gets started.

Youth baseball in the town I grew up in was kind of messed up back in those days. You had a couple years of T-ball, a couple years of underhand slow-pitch ball, and then when you were 9 years old, you were playing fast pitch — and you were playing against kids who were 10, 11 and 12.

I mean, that’s really messed up. When you’re 9, 12-year-olds were pretty much men to you, and really intimidating. Our starting first baseman had a mustache, our center fielder had already spent a couple years in juvie for drug trafficking, and I’m pretty sure our relief pitcher worked the night shift at the local machine shop driving a forklift. Our shortstop played bass for Springsteen whenever Bruce went on tour.

It was a rough town.

I was scared of most of these kids, and that’s my excuse for sucking at baseball when I was 9, although there were other kids my age who were good enough to compete with the older kids. I just wasn’t.

In the field, I was a disaster waiting to happen. At the plate, I was able to take a few walks, and reached base a couple times on errors, because there were plenty of other disasters in the field like me. Usually, though, I struck out. Occasionally I made contact and popped out to an infielder.

Then there was the base hit. When you only have one, you remember it.

There were two outs and the bases were loaded, in a middle inning and my team was down one run. As I nervously started to walk up to the plate, one of my teammates — a 12-year-old who had been bullying me for years — grabbed me and looked me in the eyes and said the only encouraging thing he ever said to me.

“Dig in there and get a hit, Grob,” he said. “I know you can do it, you do it in practice all the time.”

I was terrified of this kid at the time, but I laugh about it now, because in six years I would be 6 inches taller than him and outweigh him by 100 pounds, and after picking on me every day throughout grade school, ever since he’s realized I became that much bigger than him, he’s somehow managed to completely avoid me for over 35 years.

I think he knows what’s coming to him.

Anyway, he told me to dig in and get a hit, so I did. On the first pitch, I ripped a line drive to right-center and knocked in two runs, and our team won the game, and I was rewarded with a lot of slaps on the back and head rubs from the big kids.

And moments like that are what make baseball truly America’s game. It’s a game where individual achievement is measured and rewarded, but the success of the team is the most important thing. You might hate your teammates, you might be scared to death of them, but you support each other for the good of the team.

There’s a famous monologue in the great movie “Field of Dreams” by the character played by James Earl Jones that sums it up better than I can.

“… The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again. …”

So when it comes to Major League Baseball pulling the annual All-Star game out of Atlanta, due to Georgia’s voter suppression “can’t give people a drink of water law,” I totally understand that it’s upsetting to people when professional sports applies punitive political pressure to state governments via the threat of economic damage. I can see how it just doesn’t seem right.

This is not a new thing, though — the only reason Atlanta even has a pro baseball team is because in 1965, the city was forced to agree to allow black people to sit with the white folks in Fulton County Stadium, as a condition for the Milwaukee Braves to move there.

Atlanta was told, if you want a team — and all the money that comes with a team —you’re gonna have to integrate. We don’t care how powerful and influential your segregationist senators think they are.

Dig in there, Atlanta, and get a hit. We know you can do it.

And Atlanta said, “Never, Never, Never — well, OK, we’d like the cash.”

When you can’t persuade people with moral or ethical reasoning, you persuade them by threatening the fatness of their wallets. It’s not “cancel culture,” it’s just culture — in a capitalist society.

It’s what baseball and America are both all about.

We’re all in it for ourselves, sure, but we’re also in it for the team.
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