Baseball

To be totally honest, I'm not sure if Dad really loved baseball, the game, as much as he loved baseball, the memory maker.  It's possible he really loved the game too, maybe even likely, except that outside of watching or attending games, I don't remember him ever actually talking about baseball.

When we were little, we watched baseball games on TV often enough that I remember them.  Remember again, we are talking about the mid and late 1970s, when the Seattle/Tacoma broadcast TV market consisted of only five channels until 1985, when a whole new 6th local channel came online!

Later in life, Dad didn't watch much TV, but he still loved attending games at Cheney Stadium in Tacoma, as long as a bunch of family was there to enjoy it with him. I'm certain all of you attended at least one of those, probably more than one.

Back when I was a younger teenager, Dad would pick me up from home in his Tacoma City Light work van, and we would hang out through his entire shift.  As a Substation Operator, most of his work routine was performing switching if something was going on, but mainly was collecting readings and doing substation inspections, setting up equipment for next day work, or resetting equipment after work was completed earlier in the day.

After those chores were done, which usually took less than a couple of hours, he was basically on standby for the rest of his shift, and could more or less do whatever he wanted within his service territory.  When he got hired, there were three substation operators on duty by day, but within a few years, there was just one, which meant he could pretty much go anywhere in the greater Pierce County area as long as he wasn't doing anything obviously sketchy.

He had two favorite substations.  Cushman Substation was once a central power station in Tacoma, constructed with beautiful architecture, such a far cry from today's gray or tan metalclad control houses that are pure function and no substance.  Cushman was spooky, and old. So many things in there just got put down one day and never picked up again, it was like a time machine.  I remember when he showed me the old operations daily logs from when it was staffed 24/7 decades ago.  I thumbed through them looking for historical dates to see if the operators had noted anything. I remember finding fun comments on the day of the first Moon landing, and sober comments on the day of JFK's assassination, and on Pearl Harbor Day.  Certainly there were more.

While Cushman was romantically historic and delightfully spooky with the ghosts of power company guys of the last century, his most favored was Pearl Substation, and I admit I don't really know why.  Others were more remote, or more comfortable.  Maybe it was convenience?  Something must have happened there that made it dear to him, because that is where we ended up, more often than not.  It is not nearly as beautiful as Cushman, but still old enough to not be boring.  But compared to Cushman, it is a tiny building.

I have memories of going to Pearl frequently, but not until after stopping at the store for supplies.  Hot dogs, buns, soda, snacks. Then upon our arrival at Pearl, we would haul everything in, including the black and white TV that went almost everywhere with him when he was working.  You see, while we didn't have access to the 500 channels that we have today, the channels you did get were transmitted from towers like radio, and you could pick them up anywhere within range with your TV, all you needed to do was plug it into the power outlet. No cables. No WiFi. Just true broadcast television!

And there we would park ourselves, hotdogs and drinks and snacks, watching the baseball game on his black and white TV. At the time it was so cool to be with Dad and do that. I mean, who else gets to hang out in a forbidden substation building where most people can't go, just to watch baseball. But looking back, I know I didn't appreciate it as much as I should have, and would give anything to be able to do it again.

But going back to those earliest days of watching baseball on TV at home, and eating dinner in the Family Room (what today would be called the Den).  Aunt Karen and I had these little footstools that converted into tiny chairs.  On the seatback it reads "My little stool will help me wash and brush and watch TV".  Back in the days when excessive TV wasn't considered a bad thing, I guess.

I found this picture online, and this is exactly the same footstool, but I believe Dad still had my actual one, so if it turns up and any of you want it, let me know. In this configuration, it is a chair, but if you fold the seatback down, it became a little helper step up so you could stand on the chair seat.  To help you get high enough to wash and brush in front of the sink, of course.

But Karen and I used them differently than intended, and who knows which one of us started it.  We would put them on the floor in front of the TV, with the seatback down so it was in footstool configuration, but then we'd use the helper step as a bench seat, and the top of the thing as a tabletop.  Yes, if you can picture it, we'd wiggle our legs through the nearly impossible gap, and then we were all set with these adorable little table/chairs.

Rounding up our footstools for a baseball game was an occasional ritual, one that definitely made enough of an impression to remember it after all this time.  I also distinctly remember the last few times I did this, because getting into it to sit on it that way became increasingly difficult, and getting out of it was an even bigger production. Alas, we had grown too big. We still used them as tables for a bit after that, but sitting next to them instead.

In retrospect after writing this out, I do recall him having baseball games on the radio sometimes even when no one was around, so I'm pretty confident he genuinely loved the game.  But that just plays into everything else about him, how he loved to share his interests with those he loved.

Aunt Karen intends to keep attending games at Cheney Stadium with Uncle Brian and their friends who always went with Dad, because that's what he would want, for them to keep making memories. I hope to join them sometimes too, and hopefully some of you can as well.