West Morris has higher profile in summer

Wells Park in west Morris has been a chief venue for little league baseball and elementary softball. (B.W. photo)

Summer is fully upon us in Morris. The graduations are done and the high school athletics action wrapped up with the state track and field meet. Congrats to Cody, Rachel and Tristan on the heights they reached.

The sports are a little more low-key now. Wells Park takes its place in the sports fabric. Generations of Morris youth have experienced the highs and lows of little league baseball there.

I have occasionally suggested that west Morris could have its own festival like Prairie Pioneer Days. Call it West Morris Fest or West Morris Days. Wells Park would be a nice home base.

Close your eyes and imagine the flea market and other doings there. How about a parade along Park Avenue?

Remember, Morris was set up with the idea of the east and west sides being co-equal. The blueprint was much like for Benson but Morris veered off on its own path.

East Morris became the hub for commerce and public institutions.

And west Morris? It didn't really take a back seat, unless you consider the rich residential life to somehow have a back seat.

West Morris is a celebration of the residential life. As such it probably just prefers "quiet." A man's home is his castle.

An event like Prairie Pioneer Days would probably seem like an intrusion. Nice event to visit but you wouldn't want to live around it.

Little league baseball is as close as you'll get to a real public spectacle there. I doubt the surrounding neighborhoods really have an issue with that.

I played little league baseball there in the years before the kids got those nice major league facsimile uniforms. We had team T-shirts.

Girls didn't have a comparable outlet back then. Girls sports took time to work up a head of steam.

It's amazing how backwards our society was at one time. The government had to assert itself for girls to get equal footing.

People who are left of center politically are always the ones giving the push for this type of change. Republicans never do. The change process can be uncomfortable and always runs into naysayers.

Once the change is complete and the public accepts it, Republicans act as if they never would have had a problem with it. Like for Medicare which was dragged into reality in the mid 1960s.

If you have any doubts about Republicans' inclinations, look at what they're trying to do with Medicare today.

Title IX really carried the banner for girls sports. I remember when girls elementary softball came on the scene at Wells Park, overseen by Morris Area Community Education.

I remember the "GEO girls" coached by Sharon Martin. I think the GEO initials have kind of come and gone in carmaking. The sponsor I'm alluding to is Heartland Motors.

The shrieks of fan/parents are just as audible for girls as for boys sports at Wells.

I played there in a less progressive epoch.

Baseball/softball at that level is a laboratory for learning life's lessons. You have to function as a group (team). There is an authority figure (coach) who can be a pain.

There are pecking orders. Emotions get aroused. There is the pressure to perform. Players sprint around the bases to score and commit errors.

I remember playing first base and moving into the hole between first and second to try to field a grounder, only to get reprimanded because apparently I should have let the second baseman try to make the play. First base was left abandoned.

"Play first!" the pitcher barked.

But the pitcher should instinctively run to first to try to cover on plays like this.

This is the kind of finger-pointing that becomes a laboratory in preparing for the "real world."

One of the most commendable things you can say about sports is that the feedback is immediate and direct. It's not done with a memo left on someone's desk. Your mistakes are in full view.

Generations of Morris kids have gotten nurtured this way at Wells Park.

I was playing first base one evening when the sun was getting low toward the horizon, making it hard to see the ball on a pickoff try. Really, pickoff plays at this level can be more trouble than they're worth.

I actually tried "shaking off" the pickoff play (like a pitcher shaking off a sign from the catcher). The pitcher, whose identity I remember, didn't get the communication. The ball got past me and the runner advanced.

Should I report the pitcher's name here? Oh, why not. It was Nick Kieffer.

Wells Park is located close to the railroad tracks and close to where Park Avenue and Pacific Avenue start out on the north end. These two arteries start out in the same place and fan out.

Eventually the east-west streets had to intersect the two, of course. Not the easiest proposition for achieving 90-degree angles.

Didn't Jesse Ventura once joke that St. Paul must have been designed by drunk Irishmen? West Morris prompts the same type of thought.

A businessman friend of mine jokes that west Morris is marked by "five-way intersections." It's an exaggeration but it's inspired by reality.

Whatever the case, west Morris is a prime refuge for families to rejoice in the residential lifestyle. No intrusion of anything like the "cemetery chimes."

I love the hypocrisy of some people who praise the cemetery music and chafe at the irritation some have felt toward it. They'd never tolerate such sounds in their own neighborhood. Hey, people live in east Morris too.

It's just that east Morris is accepted as the place for our main public institutions. Goodness, we almost got a 40-bed jail constructed there. Pinch me to see if I'm dreaming.

I still view the chimes as totally unnecessary, sorry. A knowledgeable source once told me the chimes were first offered to UMM and UMM refused them.

When I was in college, the "loud stereo" was a campus cultural fixture. I suspect that more students were annoyed by this than ever let on.

We let this "squeaky wheel" have the grease because it was some sort of cultural statement. It was a statement of rebellion. I doubt they helped anyone study any better. The Edgar Winter Group's "Frankenstein" might cascade across a campus.

In my assessment, this was a cultural statement only by the students who owned the loudest stereos and felt restless enough to want to be exhibitionists.

There, I've just said the emperor has no clothes. I do that quite often with my fellow boomers, you pot-smoking fools (many of you anyway).

Remind yourself that summer is here in Morris. The weather hasn't really suggested that. It's been an atypical summer with cool and moisture prevailing.
The last couple of days have been ungodly wet. Maybe we're all about to develop fins.

If there's any doubt summer is here, the Morris High School Class of 1971 just had its reunion. A class member approached me at the local greasy spoon Saturday. I "sort of" recognized him but he had to tell me his name.

It turns out he rode school bus with me, although I often elected not to take the bus. Too much bullying. I reflected on that with him. He was not one of the bullies.

He smiled when I was able to successfully spell his last name ("Hartsuiker").

I recalled a common bullying tactic: flicking fingers on the ear of a kid sitting in front of you. Very painful.

I told him that maybe I should have gone to authorities about this behavior, but if I did, I risked getting "beat up in a back alley" sometime.

I don't think "conflict resolution" was a buzzword yet. It was the laws of the jungle.
But we all love 'ol Motown (Morris), don't we?

Enjoy your summer.

- Brian Williams - morris mn Minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com