Warm & Rainy Memory

Recently, granddaughter, Loren asked some questions about my grandparents, E.V. And Mammy Bennett and Frank and Rosedelle Roustio. I was happy to share some of my recollections about my youth and the specific impact of my maternal and paternal grandparents.

I suppose Loren's inquiry lingered because a few days afterward, I thought of some special childhood memories.  One of those memories was created by 'rain.' That's right, a 'rainy day memory' as a young ten-year old boy.

The year was 1949. My parents, four year old brother, Tom and I lived on the corner of 55th & Hallows in East St. Louis, Illinois. The small comfortable home had a screened in sunporch adjacent to the kitchen. The neighborhood offered plenty of playmates. The home was within walking distance to a drugstore, grocery store and Woodrow Wilson Grade School. There was also a nearby drygoods store and like most neighborhoods back in the day, one could easily find a corner tavern.

I was into baseball and made my first Little League team (Jaycee League ages 10-13). Of course, I was one of the two youngest kids (10) who made that team. I played sparingly behind the older more skilled kids but I was hooked. I could always find a summer sandlot game at a nearby diamond. It was there that I began honing skills.

In the summer late afternoons, my mother began preparing family supper in anticipation of dad  coming home from his work at Monsanto Chemical Company. On a rainy day, I would locate on the screened-in sun room porch with my homemade 'spinner baseball-game' and a stack of baseball cards. Those baseball cards were most often the St. Louis Cardinals and the Brooklyn Dodgers. I can still recite those lineups this day: Brooklyn>  Reese (s) Hermanski (of) Snider (cf) Robinson (2b) Hodges (1b) Furillo (rf) Campanella (c) Cox (3b) Newcombe (p); Cardinals: Schoendienst (2b) Marion (s) Musial (cf) Slaughter (of) Northey (rf) Jones (1b) Kurowski (3b) Rice/Garagiola (c) Brecheen (p).

I can close my eyes this moment and hear the cadence of rain falling atop that porch and the voice of my mother singing along with the voices of Bing Crosby or Vaughn Monroe blaring through the small counter-top Admiral radio. It was the next best place for a 10-year old boy aside from that dusty diamond of dreams.

There's a song called the 'The Best Things In Life Are Free.' It mentions many little things we take for granted but fails to mention a summer's rainy day.
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Best Things In Life Are Free