Riddle me this, friends and neighbors: What was the best day of your life? Was it the New Year’s Eve you did the town, the day you tore the goalposts down, the night you broke the bank at Monte Carlo? Spare us the cheesy stuff about the day you met Sally Ann and knew she was The One or the beatific morn your first gremlin was born, everybody feels obligated to mention one of those. This decision requires a deep dive into the murky waters of your ebbing memory banks, an ability to contrast and compare, perhaps raising something you’d prefer your husband or wife not know about.
Maybe it was the day you kissed the Pope’s ring and got a special deal on a lakeside lot in heaven. Perhaps it was the time Myra the Prom Queen surprisingly agreed to go with you to the movies. Could be the day you got hit by a pitch to drive in the winning run against your traditional high school rivals. Anything goes, except sexual encounters. This is a genteel column, after all, and besides, male specimens tend to place too much value on the hit-and-run play.
My sister Kathy was sitting at home one day, minding her own business, when an old workmate called out of a clear blue sky. Turns out several years before she had married a close friend of the owner of the New England Patriots. Would Kathy like an all-expenses-paid round trip to Super Bowl LIII, on the Patriots’ plane, no less? That sort of thing would qualify, especially since the Pats won. Still, I’m not even sure that would be Kathy’s top choice. Maybe she would prefer her exciting experience in getting lost in the wilds of Nevada after my third and last wedding. Possibly she’d prefer the day the brakes went out on her zipline in sunny Belize. It’s impossible to know what rings the gong for someone else.
To help you decide, Bill will recall a few of his own Best Days, weigh them carefully and choose a winner. Some long-time followers will have heard one or more of these tales, but that’s the price you pay for being a loyal reader. We hope that your treasure hunt will bear fruit and you will share your best experiences with The Flying Pie. You can leave out the incriminating parts unless they are especially juicy.
Take Me Out To The Ball Game
The winters in New England are long and icy, but the population grits its teeth, piles on the blankets and looks daily at that circle on the wall calendar. February 14th, 1946 is not just Valentine’s Day, it’s the day Red Sox pitchers and catchers report to work in sunny Sarasota. Kids gather by their radios from Presque Isle to Providence to hear the latest advisories from broadcasters Jim Britt and Bump Hadley as they bask in 80-degree weather and share their secrets. If the Sox are slapping the ball around in toasty Florida, can the Spring be far behind?
In days of yore, there was no television but we managed with the radio and Boston’s three newspapers, the Post, the Globe and the Record-American, a Hearst tabloid which placed the sports section on its back pages, easy to access. The forties were not the Days of Wine and Roses, the country having just dusted off after a war and a grinding depression, so a visit to Fenway Park for a Red Sox game might as well have been a ride to the moon. Nonetheless, when I reached the age of five, my father decided it was time I got initiated. When you’re five years old and going to a Sox game at Fenway it’s easily The Best Day Of Your Life.
Not everyone owned automobiles in those days, so the Boston & Maine Railroad was the transport of choice. I watched the backyards of hundreds of people pass by as the train bounced straight south from Lawrence to The Hub. At the railroad terminus at Boston’s North Station, we jumped on the MTA and rattled under the town to Kenmore Square. All of this was a new and wondrous adventure for a wide-eyed kid who thought a 20-mile trip to the beach was a big deal.
We emerged from the subway into the sun and the unlit lights of Fenway were almost immediately apparent. This was exciting stuff. If someone jabbed me with a few shots of adrenaline, I couldn’t have been more keyed up. When we neared the park, though, something didn’t seem right. Where was the ballfield? What was this odd red-brick wall that surrounded the light towers? My father, Tom Killeen, was a serious man, not given to wasting one of his limited number of smiles on small stuff. but he almost grinned. “Wait until you get inside, Billy. You’ll be a little surprised.”
Call that one the understatement of a lifetime. When I walked up the ramp toward the field, it was as if someone opened a curtain on a brilliant stage just after the scenery was polished. I stood there slackjawed, blinded by the absolute green of the field, the perfectly drawn baselines, the famous left-field wall looming in the distance. The home team’s uniforms weren’t just white, they were luminescent, glowing under the early-afternoon sun. For some reason,, I thought of my first-grade catechism. “Dad,” I said, looking up, “This place is better than Heaven!” He looked down at me, happy to have received the expected result. “Yeah, Billy,” he said. “I’ve always thought that myself.”
The Envelope, Please
Growing up, I rarely felt close to my father, but alternate role models were available. Physically, there was more resemblance to my maternal grandfather, Bill Gosselin, after whom I was named. Grandpa was a hard-drinking bar-owner and whippet-racer who brooked no sass from anyone, including his wife, but he doted on his namesake from the day I was born til the day he died. I was only five on that foul afternoon. My Uncle Arthur took over after that.
Arthur Wickey was a seaman and a roustabout, an excellent painter of signs, which he kept in various stages of completion all over his South Union Street upstairs apartment. Arthur had a statuesque Italian wife named Rose, who loved him like crazy and put up with all his antics, remembering her wedding vows instructed “For better or for worse.”
Arthur Wickey was a big kid and a full-fledged member of Uncles ‘R’ Us, whose members swore a secret oath to allow their nephews and nieces carte blanche behavior with no thought of turning them in to their parents. If you were with Uncle Arthur, you could do roughly anything the law allowed and a few things it didn’t. You could go on forbidden rides at the amusement park, you could have a few sips of his beer….you might even be able to let a couple of cuss words loose every so often. “Uncles don’t tell” was his motto and you knew you could go to him with any problem without threat of exposure.
My father was more like the warden. You were expected to follow the rules, and if you did everything would be alright. Offenders, however, were treated harshly. There was solitary confinement in your bedroom or, if the crime was especially heinous, there was The Belt. You did not want to feel the sting of The Belt, so you followed orders. Tom Killeen was very consistent, however. He expected everyone else to follow the rules, as well. Once, when Pope Pius XII gave Catholics a special dispensation from the Friday meat ban, he bristled “Who does he think HE is?” No one, not even the Pope, was changing the rules on Tom Killeen. We ate fish that Friday.
Dad would teach his kid about baseball. He knew every minuscule rule, don’t bother to argue. When you played catch with him, you had to throw the ball right to him. If it went past him, you were required to run after it. If you complained, he would remind you, “I never throw the ball past you, do I?” Point taken. There was a price to pay for screwing up and you learned to do things properly. What seemed like a pain in the ass at the time was the inculcation of dependability and good behavior. Sooner or later, you figured it out.
Not that any of this endeared you to the man. I never felt close to my father. There was respect, of course, but affection lingered. That said, like almost any boy, I wanted his approval, the elusive paternal imprimatur, some pride in his son. There were, of course minor accomplishments. I was a good student, a pretty fair first-baseman, an aid to my mother. I knew as much as he did about the Red Sox, which is saying something. But no major accomplishments, nothing to set the world on its ear. Then came grade-school graduation.
Growing up in the 1940s, it was not easy for a kid to achieve a lot. You went to school for 12 years, then you worked to support the family. College was unheard of for most of us….a pipe dream….a world of aliens. You were one of the bees in the hive, expected to deliver your share of the honey. The first opportunity most of us had to be in the spotlight was our grade-school graduation day from St. Patrick’s.
Graduation was held in the stately Church---St. Patrick’s, of course—where we spent all of our Sunday mornings and too many other occasions. It was presided over by the saintly Monsignor Edmund Daly, who looked a lot like God after a rough day and would certainly be beatified some day if the nuns had anything to do with it.
The place was packed to the gills with everyone dressed in their finest togs, including Mr. and Mrs. Thomas J. Killeen. The two graduating classes, girls and boys separately, sat about two-thirds of the way back from the altar, where the Monsignor looked down from his throne. Our parents were all pleased as punch, of course, even the mothers and fathers of dumbheads like Chuckie Sullivan, who was almost old enough to join the Army and Leo Monte, who defied the Law of Averages by never having a correct answer when called upon for 8 long years. “I thrive on consistency,” smiled Leo.
Near the end of the ceremonies, Monsignor Daly would announce the annual winner of the whoop-de-doo megabucks scholarship to Central Catholic High School. No big deal to most of us since it was certain to go to John Barry or David Kiernan, the two kids with the best grades in the class. I turned to the boy next to me and said, “I can spell better than both of them put together,” and we tittered.
In seconds, giggling turned to shock. “The winner of the Central Catholic scholarship for this year is William Thomas Killeen,” the monsignor anointed. I almost fell off the pew. Turns out, Barry and Kiernan had received scholarships to Andover, the posh prep academy just down the road, but had told noone.
I suddenly realized I had to get up off my seat and go get the thing. Walk down the aisle in front of all those people and visit the scary guy on the throne. I gathered my wits and put one foot in front of the other. “Congratulations, William,” the Big Guy said with a tiny smile. “Thank you, Monsignor,” I managed, clutching my prized envelope. Then I turned around and walked back to the eyes of the approving parents and probably a few quiet wisecracks from the other graduates. I could see my mother and father in the distance, sitting on the aisle. As I neared my row, I noticed my mother was teary-eyed, as might be expected. And my father…he was smiling…a big one, an exceptional smile he’d been saving for 13 years for just such an occasion. As I got nearer, he raised his right hand in front of his chest in what I took to be some sort of blessing. My heart skipped a beat and I turned into my row smiling. The scholarship was a nice touch but I had just received the Ultimate Reward. It might even have been The Best Day Of My Life.
That’s all, folks….
Next Week: Three more entries in the Best Day pot and then the final decision. We’d like to hear a few of yours, the scarier the better. Extra points will be awarded for good penmanship.
