A ‘professional gamer’ in the barn yard of life
- Tom Rife: Livin' the Team
- April 15, 2021
- 857
Can’t afford to spend a lot of time thinking about it. Yet it is mind-bending knowing in today’s world there are screen-agers banking six-figure salaries as “professional gamers.”
They call it a career — no secondary education necessary. Who says times haven’t changed? As youngsters down on the farm in South Central Ohio, one of the first banks we learned about was the “soil bank.” As I understood it, the government actually paid us not to grow crops — as long as we kept the Canadian thistle under control.
(Was that the early form of a stimulus check?)
My older brother whacked the thistle with an ageless tractor and a rickety machine that seemed to break down about every two laps around the field. The old orange Case had one headlight that still worked, and for some reason he enjoyed mowing in the cool of the night.
Even from a distance, we could hear him out there, whistling a happy tune over the drone of the engine and the bob whites and whippoorwills.
After he departed for the University of Cincinnati, I inherited the grass-cutting detail, but only in the yard, which, by the way, was huge. I earned enough to spend my own money on a new basketball at the annual “88-cent Toy Sale” every spring at the Cussin & Fearn hardware store in town.
Granted, you didn’t get much of a basketball for 88 cents. They were far too rubbery, wouldn’t stay round, leaked air and were easily scuffed when errant shots landed on the old tin roofing “stored” next to the unpainted garage, to which the netless hoop was bolted.
There was no door on the building that housed various worthless treasures that Mom, my classroom teacher in the fifth grade, thought of as antiques. The Case was partly protected from the wintry elements in there too.
The slightly sloped, grass basketball “court” was my version of “professional gaming.” It was the perfect spot to swish imaginary buzzer-beaters just like the ones Oscar Robertson was sinking for the Cincinnati Royals. A cheap transistor radio, hidden under the pillow, was just good enough to pull in an abundance of static and the faint play-by-play.
The barn-lot “arena” was where I perfected my Jerry Lucas-style hook shot. “Luke” and John Havlicek were Ohio State heroes before moving on to the pros.
Yes, the primitive basketball court did have its drawbacks. Among the things a kid had to watch out for were snakes that lived in large holes in the garage-floor dirt. Copperheads also enjoyed lounging around under those aforementioned sheets of tin roofing alongside the dilapidated structure.
So when that coveted 88-center caromed in that direction, you had to be very, very careful not to stir up one of the poisonous reptiles who were just there minding their own slinky business.
Basketball wasn’t the only “professional gaming” that went on in the farmyard. It was where my brother taught me to field hot grounders just like Reds shortstop Roy McMillan. The adjacent barn was good for pitching practice with a 25-cent rubber baseball. Rusted nails in the weathered wood framed a strike zone Jim O’Toole and Bob Purkey couldn’t miss — no catcher required.
Trees in the nearby apple orchard served as the home run fence in right during classic Wiffle Ball skirmishes. A tater to left was a more daunting feat because the ball had to clear high power lines that ran parallel to steep, unkept banking along Route 138. The abrupt drop-off was the exact opposite of the famed terrace at Crosley Field.
For the record, left-handed slugger “Vada Pinson” preferred going voom toward the orchard. From the right side, teammate “Frank Robinson” always went yard in the power alley to left, where retrieving the ball from the prickly vegetation at the bottom of the banking was an arduous necessity.
The barn yard was where I learned to “race” a royal-blue '53 Plymouth two-door with an odd 3-on-the-tree transmission that didn’t have a clutch. (For a while, that was the same vehicle Mom drove to school on workdays.)
Outdoors was where we were trend-setters way ahead of our time, staging friendly one-on-one soccer matches. We knew nothing about “friendlies.”
In the winter the action featured sledding at breakneck speeds — or so it seemed. When things warmed up, we rode “motorcycles” that were actually just bicycles with slivers of cardboard clipped with clothespins close to the spokes.
Drone racing? Oh yeah, we sorta did that too — with flimsy balsa-wood aircraft powered by rubber bands you had to wind up with your finger. On a breezy day, those planes would glide darn near out of sight.
“Professional gaming” also included bowling with plastic pins on the front porch. Mocking Don Carter’s trademark “pendulum swing” was a must.
No six-figure salaries.
Just pennies in a hand-me-down piggy bank.
And when there were finally 88 copper coins rattling around inside, it was off to town for another new basketball.