Chapter 42
Spring Picnic
One of the next decisions Pa made as mayor was to announce that there was going to be another town picnic on the first day of spring that year. He told us that he’d been thinking about the gathering we’d had three-and-a-half years earlier at the church’s dedication, and thinking it had been too long since we’d done something like that as a community together. So he figured that if he was mayor, he ought to be able to do something about it.
He announced it in church one Sunday early in March.
“On the twenty-first of March,” he said, “that’s on the Saturday two weeks from today, we’re gonna bring in spring with a picnic right out here in the meadow between the church and the town. I want you all to come, and we’ll celebrate the day together. That’s on orders from your mayor!”
Everyone chuckled, and Pa moved to sit down. For the next two weeks, the whole town looked forward to the chance to get together again. Most of the women—and there were a lot more of them now than there had been in 1853!—spent the time cooking and baking. It was almost like getting ready for a fair!
When the day came, it couldn’t have been prettier. There had been rain through the week, and Pa was wondering what to do if it rained on Saturday. But the storm passed on into the mountains and the sun came out Friday afternoon. It was a bit chilly on Saturday, and still a little wet, but so fresh and clean!
As I walked into the meadow that afternoon, there was still moisture and dew all about in the shady places, and where the sun shone the grass sparkled. It looked as if the whole area was covered with thousands of tiny glass prisms, all reflecting the sunlight like diamonds.
We were the first to arrive, and as I walked through the meadow, in the distance by the edge of the woods I saw a deer calmly nibbling on the fresh wet grass. She lifted her head and looked around, her tan coat gleaming when the sun hit it as she moved through the shadows. With each movement her velvet-like body shone with the essence of freedom I had always dreamed about.
I looked up and breathed the crisp air with pleasure. The sky was blue with clouds billowing gently across the sky. A whisper of cool wind blew by me, and I smelled again the fragrance of clean, fresh, springtime air.
Gradually more people began to arrive. The women were dressed brightly in colorful spring apparel, the men wearing dark trousers and flannel shirts. A few of the women were carrying parasols and twirling them around—some red, some pink. As the people slowly came and the meadow filled, all the colors and sounds and sights reflected the joy that was felt by everyone.
The men got tables set up and then we arranged food as it arrived and got everything ready. As the crowd enlarged, most of the younger kids went running off, some playing tag and other games.
“What can I do?” asked Becky, as Almeda was preparing one table.
“Hmm . . . let’s see,” replied Almeda, “why don’t you go see if you can pick me some nice wildflowers to use here on the table.”
Becky was off in a second, glad to be of some help. “But don’t get near those woods again!” yelled Emily after her. Almeda and I both laughed.
After a while we were ready to begin eating. As the men were gathering around the table and the women were spreading out the last of the food, Rev. Rutledge asked if he could say a few words before we began.
“Ye mean we’s gonna have t’ listen to another one o’ yer sermons?” said Alkali Jones, loud enough that everybody could hear.
A great laugh went up from those nearby.
“I will try to make this one as short as possible,” said Rev. Rutledge, laughing himself and joining in the fun.
“You know preachers, Alkali,” said Pa. “Whenever they see a crowd of people, they immediately start thinking of something to say!”
“And if they don’t think of something right off, then they pass the collection plate!” added Rev. Rutledge. His joke got another good laugh out of everybody.
“When I was a child,” the minister began as the laughter died away, “my parents always had a celebration like this to start off the season of spring. Most of our friends remembered the coming of spring on Easter, and in the church we went to, Easter was always a busy day. But my parents wanted to preserve Easter as a day spent thinking only of the resurrection and the true meaning of the day. Thus our family celebrated the first day of spring separately, as we are doing now.”
The minister paused a moment to look around at the townspeople gathered in the meadow.
“Spring is the season of new life,” he went on, “when new things begin to grow and new life bursts forth out of the earth. During springtime we witness the cycles of life and nature emerging in their newness, and all about us we see God’s creation alive in the earth. But spring is also the time of year when Jesus Christ rose from the grave. And so the resurrection is the true basis for what spring means. We can let ourselves be reminded of the life that Jesus gave us when we see the new life that nature gives us during this wonderful green, growing, fragrant time of the year.
“So I would like to give a special thank you to our mayor, Drummond Hollister, for arranging this picnic today. As you can see, it is especially meaningful for me. And I would like to thank you all for being here.”
Then Rev. Rutledge prayed, and immediately everyone began to eat. I don’t know if I’d ever seen so much food before. There was every kind of meat and salad and fruit and bread imaginable. Afterward, people gradually began getting up and going about, visiting, the children playing, men smoking their pipes or chatting and playing horseshoes or discussing their claims and the latest gold prices, while the women worked on clearing up the tables and leftover food.
When no one else was around him for a minute, Mr. Royce walked up to Pa.
“Hollister,” the banker said, “I think the time has come for me to acknowledge what you did for me at the town council meeting.”
“I meant what I said,” replied Pa.
“Nevertheless, I want you to know that I’m extremely appreciative.”
“It was for the good of the town.”
“And for me,” said Mr. Royce. “Your vote more than likely saved my bank, and my whole future. And I want to say thank you.”
He extended his hand. Pa took it and gave it a firm shake. Then the eyes of the two men met. Pa still held on to Mr. Royce’s hand.
“I meant what I said about loyalty, Royce,” said Pa. “And about being a friend and neighbor to you.”
“I know you meant it, Hollister. You’ve proved yourself a man of your word. I didn’t think I could admit this several months ago, but I have to say now that the best man won last November. Miracle Springs is better off with you as its mayor than it would have been with me.”
“Well, I’m just glad you’re on the council,” said Pa, “and that we can start working together on the same side from now on.” He relaxed his grip and let the banker’s hand go.
“Well, thank you again, Hollister. And as for the question on interest rates, I’m looking into all that. I want to be fair to the people. If you’ll just give me some time to get the details worked out—”
“Certainly, Royce,” answered Pa, then added with a smile, “just don’t wait too long. The people are all anxious to know what you’re going to do.”
“I’ll move along as quickly as I can, believe me. Just tell the people they can count on me.”
“Done!” said Pa. “They will appreciate it, Franklin.”
The picnic that day gave us our first sight of someone who would be part of the Hollister future, though we had no idea of it at the time. There were quite a few people at the picnic that I didn’t know. New families were coming to Miracle Springs regularly.
After we were through eating, I saw Zack over on the other side of the field throwing a ball back and forth with someone I didn’t know, a boy who looked about Zack’s own age. Then a while later, when I looked at them again, there were four or five others who had joined them scattered about. The stranger was hitting the little ball with a stick and the others were chasing after it. A few minutes later Zack brought the new boy over to where Pa and Almeda and Emily and I were seated on the grass. He was every bit as tall as Zack, and wearing a straw hat with a white shirt and blue knickers (which I found out later to be of some significance). He had light brown eyes and curly red hair with lots of freckles on his face.
“This here’s Mike, Pa,” said Zack. “His family just got here from the east.”
Pa stood up and shook his hand. “Mike what?” he said in a friendly voice.
“McGee’s the name, and baseball’s the game,” the boy replied. The instant he let go of Pa’s hand, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a little white ball, the same one they had been playing with earlier.
“Baseball . . . what’s that?” asked Emily.
“What’s baseball!” exclaimed Mike McGee. “Why it’s just the newest, most exciting game there is. They call me ‘Lefty.’”
“Well none of us have ever heard of it,” said Pa. “Why don’t you tell us about it? Is that stick you got there something to do with it?”
“This stick,” said McGee, holding up the rounded piece of wood, “has everything to do with it! This is called a bat, and you’ve gotta hit the ball with the bat.”
He took a few steps away from us, then tossed the ball up into the air, slung the bat up over his shoulder as he grabbed it with both hands down near one end. As the ball came back down, he swung the wood around fast. It hit the ball with a loud cracking sound, and the ball went sailing out across the meadow in a big arch, landing over next to the woods.
“Just like that!” he said. Tad, who had just walked up to join us, was off like a flash to retrieve the ball and bring it back to Mike. By now a few more people were gathering around, but something told me young McGee was paying more attention to my sister Emily than all the other people put together.
“You hit it a long ways!” exclaimed Tad, running up puffing with the ball.
“That’s nothing. You should see how far they hit it in a real game. My older brother Doug took me to see the first baseball game played between two regular teams. He played for the New Jersey Knickerbockers himself. That was back in ’46. I was just eight then. They played against a team from New York.”
“How’d it turn out?” asked Zack.
“I was nine before the game ended,” replied Mike. “That first game took almost a year because they’d stop and then start again later. Nobody really knew how to play, so there were arguments and disputes through the whole game. My brother was so sick of the arguing, on top of losing the game 23 to 1—”
“Tarnation, boy!” exclaimed Uncle Nick, “that ain’t no game, however you play it. That’s more like a slaughter!”
“That was the score, all right. And my brother said he’d never play baseball again. So he gave me this here bat and ball and uniform. Now, do any of you want to get up a game?”
“But how do you play?” asked Zack.
“I plumb forgot—none of you know how to play!” he said. “Well, one team hits the ball and tries to run around the diamond and score an ace.”
“What’s an ace?” asked Emily, looking up into Mike’s face.
“That’s what it’s called when you score a point by running in from third and touching home plate.”
“Home plate . . . diamond . . . third? You’re not makin’ sense!” said Zack.
“And in the meantime,” Mike went on without paying any attention to Zack, “the other team tries to catch the ball and throw it ahead of the runner so one of his teammates can tag him out before he gets to the base.”
“It sounds mighty confusing,” said Pa laughing. “I doubt if you’re gonna get many around here to play. We can’t understand a word you’re saying! How many does it take to play?”
“Eighteen—nine on each team.”
“Eighteen! You’ll never get eighteen people in all of California to make heads or tails of what you’re talking about!”
“If nobody knew how to play for that first game, how did anybody know what to do?” asked Emily.
“It sure sounds like one side knew how to play, judging from the score,” Uncle Nick said.
“To answer your question, Miss,” said McGee, “all the fellers who were there knew how to play, but everybody had their own brand of the game, coming from different places. You see, it was already played a bit before that, but not in an organized way or anything. That’s why the game took so long. The arguments got so fierce they had to keep stopping it and figure out a way to agree on the rules before continuing on. The one game had three different sessions to it, like I said, stretching for almost a year.”
“Well that’s about the dad-blamedest kind o’ game I ever heard of!” piped up Alkali Jones. “Weren’t no game at all, from the sound of it, but more like a war. Hee, hee, hee!”
Everybody had a good laugh, and after a little more talk, Mike managed to get half a dozen or so of the boys to join him. They walked over to the far end of the field where he began explaining the game to them. Emily followed to watch.
I got up and walked toward the hillside overlooking the meadow, where over three years ago I had looked down on the gathering we’d had to celebrate the completion of the building of the church. That other day seemed so long ago and much had happened since. Yet up there on the sloping hillside, everything still looked the same. It reminded me of how God had watched over us during the years since then.
Wild lilies were in bloom, and the birch trees were just beginning to get their fresh growths of new bark and tiny green leaves. The wildflowers brought back to my mind Rev. Rutledge’s words, “We can let ourselves be reminded of the life that Jesus gave us when we see the new life that nature gives . . .”
I walked up the hill, turned around, and looked down on the meadow just at the same spot I had that day three years before. When I was alone, questions about my future always seemed to nag at me. I wanted God to have complete control over my life in whatever I did, but I couldn’t keep the fears and anxieties from bothering me from time to time.
Down on the field I watched the group of boys playing with “Lefty” Mike McGee. Every once in a while I heard his voice yelling out some kind of instruction to them, or pointing to get them to go stand someplace else. He didn’t seem to be having much success explaining the game of baseball to them. I couldn’t help laughing a time or two as I watched.
Zack and Tad were in the middle of it. My eyes followed Zack around. I knew that occasionally he struggled with the same kinds of questions that I did, although being a boy I don’t suppose his anxieties went as deep. Boys have a way of being able to take things more as they come, while girls have to think everything out on a dozen levels.
“What are you going to do, Zack?” I asked him once.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we can’t just stay at home and live with Pa and Almeda forever, you know.”
“There’s the mine,” he said. “I figured I’d work the mine with Pa and Uncle Nick.”
“No mine lasts forever. Then what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t you find yourself wondering about things, about other places you might go, things to see, people to meet?”
“Not much. I like it here in Miracle. But I reckon you’re right, we can’t just live with Pa when we get to be adults.”
“Hey, I’ve got an idea, Zack!” I said. “We could go live in Almeda’s house in town. It’s been empty all this time. Then we could stay in Miracle and do whatever we’d be doing, but it’d sorta be like being on our own.”
“You think she’d let us?”
“Sure. She’s said once or twice what a shame it is for the house not to be used.”
“But what if one of us gets married?” suggested Zack.
“Well I’m not worried,” I answered. “There’s no fear of that about me! You’re the one some girl will come along and want to grab.”
“Nah, not me! I ain’t gonna get married.”
“Then what are you gonna do if the mine plays out?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Little Wolf and I will raise horses like his Pa. And we’ve talked about going riding together, but I don’t know where. I reckon you’re right—there is a heap of world to see.
“What about you, Corrie?” Zack asked. “You got plans? What’re you gonna do?”
“I don’t know. I want to keep writing. But it’s hard to say if something is always going to be what God wants for you. I’d like to travel.”
This conversation was the most I’d ever gotten Zack to talk personally about himself, and I hoped we’d have the chance to talk like that again.
I didn’t stay up on the hillside for too long, just long enough to quiet myself down. I got up from the base of my favorite old oak tree, gave its gnarled trunk an affectionate pat with my hand, and then started back down the slope to rejoin the picnic.
In fact, I thought to myself, maybe I’d go join in whatever Lefty McGee was trying to teach the others about his new game. I’d like to see if I could hit that little ball with that stick!