We had chosen our baseball teams in the alley behind our houses like always and started to walk down the block to the special lot, the one we still called our prairie; the only open space left in our neighborhood big enough to play any kind of games. Frankie, one of the managers for that day’s game, heard a commotion before we could see anything, so he held up his hand to stop us, just like John Wayne in one of those war movies we’d see at the Saturday matinees.
“What the hell is going on?” he yelled.
As we turned the corner we saw pickup trucks and semi trailers full of building materials lined up and down the street. Loud construction workers pulled materials off the trucks and piled them on our ball diamond.
Jimmy looked at me, “They can’t do this, it can’t be legal.”
“It’s gotta be a mistake,” Joey said. “If we explain to them, they’ll go away.”
Frankie and I approached a group of workers who were wrestling work fencing along one side of the street.
I tapped one of the workers, the tallest one, on his shoulder. Maybe he was the boss. Maybe he would understand. He looked at me and started to walk away.
“Mister, “ I said, “You’re at the wrong place. It can’t be here. We’ve played on this field for years. Our dads played here before the war.”
“I’m sorry, kid, the work ain’t stopping for youse kids, or anybody else” he said. “Stay out of our way. We don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
Backhoes were already starting to dig foundations for more houses and apartment buildings. Like we really needed more houses in our crowded neighborhood!!
We stood together outside of the fence, hoping it was all just a dream. We wanted to tear it down with our bare hands, but knew our parents would never support any kind of hooliganism.
More workers walking by the fence told us to go away. They told us more trailers were coming to drop off pallets of bricks and lumber. More workers would join the people already working at the lot; raucous crews of carpenters and masons to complete the destruction of our ball diamond.
The tall man who first talked to me, he wasn’t so nice when he saw us still standing at the fence. When we threw clods of dirt at the trucks, he cursed and chased us away.
“Get the hell out of here,” he yelled. “If youse don’t go home in five minutes we’re calling the cops.”
All of us shuffled down the street, shaking with rage. We bit our lips, didn’t look at each other, afraid we’d see the tears on our faces. Even though the oldest players on the teams were only 12-years-old, everyone knew that baseball players didn’t cry.
Frank C Modica is a cancer survivor and retired teacher who taught children with special needs for over 34 years. His work is forthcoming or has appeared in Sheila-Na-Gig, The Brussels Review, and The City Key. Frank’s first chapbook, “What We Harvest,” nominated for an Eric Hoffer book award, was published in 2021 by Kelsay Books.
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