"I'll give you a Rocky Colavito and a Juan Marishal for that Willie Mays," I said to my boyhood friend.

"Okay," my friend said. He handed me the Mays card and I passed the Colavito and Marishal cards to him.

"And...," he said while fanning through his cards, "I'll give you a Stan Musial and a Yogi Berra for that Mickey Mantle."

"Deal," I said as I passed the Mantle card to him. He took the Mantle card out of my hand as I took the Musial and Berra cards out of his other hand.

The trading day was over and we were both happy with our new acquisitions. Both of us had traded our multiples for cards we didn't have. We were content. That's the way it was done back in the late 50's and early 60's in Central Florida. Maybe not trades for those exact same players, but you get the idea. The baseball card business was over until the next time we received our allowance and hiked to the Ready Market out on the highway to purchase another five Topps cards with the big flat piece of bubble gum included in the pack. With a new purchase, we might get more multiples that we'd be willing to trade on another day.

Back in those days, the value of collecting baseball cards hadn't yet filtered down to the younger generation. Yes, we all played Little League baseball and rarely missed games that were televised Saturday afternoons on NBC and announced by Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese, but the cards had no real value to us. They were like a game, just something to do with our time. The cards of the most well known players, we would keep. The cards of the lesser known nobodies, would be clipped to the fender brackets on our bikes with wooden clothespins so we'd sound like motorcycles as we peddled speedily around the neighborhood.

Baseball cards were just pieces of cardboard with recognizable faces on them, not anything of extreme value like my grandfather's gold pocket watch that was passed on to me. Actually, when at the Ready Market, I preferred to spend what little money I had on a Black Cow, Sugar Momma, Bit-O-Honey, or a handful of Mary Janes. If I had extra money, the waxed paper wrapped baseball cards with bubble gum would be my last pick before laying my coins on the counter.

I had been thrilled to make the Little League All-Star Team for the city I lived in. We ended up being the county champs, but that was about as far as we got. When we played the All-Star Team of a county north of Orlando, we were whupped, and I mean whupped bad. Those boys were huge. None of our team players or their parents were convinced that those boys were all under twelve years of age. I think we were pitted up against a team of ringers. When I reflect back on it, if they were under twelve, they had to be nuked, corn fed, or on steroids.

My baseball cards? Well...later on, they were discarded into the galvanized trash can behind our house. Remember when the garbageman actually had to walk behind your house to retrieve your cans of trash? I don't know, but possibly that was the city's preventive measure against the curiosity of curb cruising dogs of the neighborhoods. Anyway, I discovered a few furry rodents had gotten into the two brown paper grocery sacks that I kept the cards in. That showed what little value I placed on them at the time. Rodents, cards, and sacks were all placed promptly into the trash can and the lid pressed on tight. Decades later, I still kick myself for that, but I do wonder if the rodents ever got out.


* * *


Funerals. Just the word still gives me chills. For lack of a better phrase, they just creep me out! My father died when I was seven. I adamantly refused to go to the funeral. Thankfully, my mom didn't force me to. I felt if I had, I would've ended up losing my mind. I might have been forced into an institution with people who drooled, slapped themselves, and screamed out for no apparent reason. Funny, at seven, I felt a funeral might do that to me, but I must have thought strongly that it would have. I guess I was around fifteen before I ever mustered up enough courage to attend a funeral. It was my grandfather's funeral. Thinking back, it was good I attended since I did inherit his gold pocket watch.

I just don't understand all the hoop-dee-do and the expense involved. People will say they just need closure. They will say they need to express their last good-byes. Like that dead person lying there is going to hear them...hello? It's just a shell, a container the person's spirit lived in. The spirit has left the container, gone on to a better place, or is in limbo still waiting to cross over. I'm not sure, but it's definitely not in the lifeless body lying in that casket. So, what's all the fuss about? Still, people will gaze down at the open end of a casket and make comments like...

"Doesn't he look natural?" said first mourner.

"He looks so peaceful," said second mourner.

"He looks like he's just sleeping," said third mourner.

What? Natural, peaceful, sleeping? Well, maybe I'd agree somewhat with peaceful, but not natural and sleeping. How natural does every man look lying there in a suit? Maybe a church deacon or a business executive, but not the common man. The suit on a common man has probably been hanging in his closet for the last twenty years, the one he might have been married in, or it was just purchased for this occasion. That's natural? I don't think so. What was he wearing the last time you saw him alive? That'd be a natural looking outfit. When I die, if I must be buried in a casket, just dress me in a Dale Earnhardt t-shirt and an Atlanta Braves ball cap. Now that'd look natural.

As to the comment, "He looks like he's just sleeping". When was the last time you saw someone sleeping in a position like that? Doesn't look realistic to me. Dress him like I mentioned and place him on his side. Have one arm under the pillow and his mouth open with a bit of drool seeping out the corner. Maybe even imagine him snoring a little, and I say, that's sleeping.

I'm a simple man. I don't want my relatives going to any undue expense or into debt just to dispose of my remains when I die. A pine box and an unmarked plot in a potter's field would work for me, whatever is affordable. Hell, I don't even have any objections to being cremated. Being an acoustic guitar player, they could just scatter my ashes over the Gibson Guitar Company's site in Nashville, TN. Wait, the plane rental might cost too much. Better yet, open up that trash can and scatter my ashes all over those baseball cards and those rodents. If I'm lucky, maybe they'd cough and gag on me while they puttered around the bottom of the can on their mini-bikes with my baseball cards flapping in the spokes.

Want to comment on this Essays? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Essays and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...