On being a baseball mother...

Here's a swell photo (taken by my pal Ann) of Dan getting ready to make a play at first base.
I've never liked watching sports, and baseball was always the worst because it takes so long. Plus when the game is tied you never know when it will end. I'm usually just content for one of the teams to make the tie-breaking run.
Then it became apparent that baseball was going to be Dan's favorite sport. Ugh. To cope, I knew I had to do 2 things: not wear a wrist watch to his games and learn to keep a score book. Oh, and I also learned to eat sunflower seeds (discretely, of course).
On the up side, baseball has been great for my social life. As parents we all experience the boys' peaks and valleys together. At the risk of sounding like a sap, we are like a big family. Life is good.

Rooster Farm

Dan's baseball team travels to one community where the ball field is next to a cock farm. Amidst the umpires' calls of "safe" or "out," is constant the sound of "cock-a-doodle-do" by about 30 roosters.

They each live about 3 feet off the ground in a steel barrel and are tied to posts. Looks about fun as a calf being raised for veal. Of course, my mind goes straight to the gutter when wondering about the purpose of such enterprises (blood sports).

Can you imagine the guy who operates this farm? He probably prides himself on selling big, loud roosters. I'm sure farmers' wives are so glad when then their husband comes home with a new rooster. "Yup, he was the loudest one of the bunch, honey!"

Yellowish-colored Corn on the Hill

As a native New Yorker, I still find this grain farming gig somewhat puzzling.

Tom sat on the front porch the other day pondering his brother’s corn field. He said, “do you see the yellowish colored corn there on the hillside?” First of all, who has ever seen a hill in Illinois, much less in this section of his brother’s corn field? I did, however, finally see a slightly discolored bit of corn. He got out the farm notebook where he records when and what types of seeds he plants in each field.

This brings up another problem: seeds. In New York we call them corn seeds. Just like tomato seeds, green bean seeds, etc. In Illinois they are called seed corn. To further complicate matters, there are several kinds of seed corn in his brother’s field, and each type has a different number. His farm notebook indicated that the yellowish corn had been seed corn number 8920…funny, he remarked, he would have guessed that the yellow patch would have been 9107, not 8920!

Farmer out standing in his field