Balls to the Walls for 2007

Here's a book recommendation for you as the New Year begins,"The Life and Times of The Thunderbolt Kid" by one of The MassPube's favorite authors, Bill Bryson; his memoir of growing up in the 1950's in Des Moines.

The MassPube grew up in the 1950's too and , even though I lived basically on a kibbutz in West Philadelphia, it was just like growing up as a nice Gentile boy in Des Moines. The book was laugh out loud funny. It put me into a nostalgic mood as 2007 begins.

I told my 19 year old son to read it. He said , as he was instant messaging, that he doubted he would find it funny and that basically it would be simply the written word of the dialog between myself and my oldest friends from the old neighborhood when we get together. I wonder what his memories will be.

As a group, I assume they'll talk about the days when video games weren't holographic and then head into their 'orgasmatron" for relief from the boredom.

Since I grew up on on a city street in a row house and our parents actually didn't give a shit what we were doing all day, we managed to make every part of the city landscape, including junk, into a ball game using nothing more than a pinky ball ( and when it died, we'd break it in half and play something called "Half Ball" which was baseball with half a ball, the undescended testicle of city sports.

But if we had a whole ball, we'd play.....

Awning ball (nobody has an awning anymore) where you throw the ball on the awning, it rolled back and you hit it back onto the awning with the palm of your hand,

Wall ball where you threw the rubber wall against the bricks of the house and depending on how far it went, that's how many bases your runner went unless it was caught.

Step ball same as wall ball, but ingeniously we used the three front steps as opposed to the wall since Louis Bonder missed the wall and broke somebody's storm door window,

Curb ball ...see how we're working our way out into the street....same as wall ball and curb ball except now we're in the street and throwing the ball against the curb hoping to hit the point of the curb, sending the ball further.

Wire ball which consisted of the throwing the ball straight up, hitting the electric wires and if you didn't catch it, the amount of bounces moved the "runner" forward

and then , the king of them all....

BOXBALL, fully in the street , a parody of baseball where the bases might consist of "third base is the headlight of the Cohen's new Ford".

The equipment for all these games is pictured below:

Now games which simulate sports cost $45.00.

FYI... Our 'Orgasmatron" back then used the same equipment as pictured above, minus the ball. Primitive, but it worked.

Oh well, on to 07. Let's see how we can screw up the future together! HAPPY NEW YEAR !