Pitching with Pritch
The summer is almost over and fall sports have begun. It was an eventful summer in many different ways. We didn’t travel a lot but got to gather with family and that always makes for a good summer.
We started having some family reunions in 2005 and we would travel to one of the sibling’s homes. That also got us to see some country as at that time our sister lived in Kentucky and my brothers both lived in Texas.
We lost our sister to cancer in 2012 so the trips stopped to Kentucky and just alternated between Texas and Nebraska. This summer we decided to go back to our roots in Kansas, so we met in Pratt, Kan., for a few days.
They say it is hard to go home again and that is sometimes very true. We decided to visit the old farm site and the place where I went to high school. It now consists of a farm site that has one building and a windmill left and a school that is only a picture in my mind because it has been torn down.
Our old football field is a wheat field as is our old practice area. The town of Byers, Kan., just has memories now of Friday night- lights and basketball in the cracker-box gym and the old dirt track where we never had any meets, just a place to practice.
There were very few gyms in those days that had even a regulation 50 x 84 floor let alone a 50 x 94 college gym, as are most of the newer gyms now. The “big” gyms were the ones where the circles didn’t overlap.
The football field had more sticker patches than bleachers and you parked your car around the outside edge of the football field for the games. Our middle brother got to go to the new consolidated school, Skyline, and my youngest brother went there until the end of his eighth grade year and then moved with Mother to Arkansas City where his class was about double the size of Skyline High.
The summer also included going to a couple of alumni banquet gatherings, one in Imperial for the 1977 class and one here in Grant for my wife’s 1967 group. I won’t say what year of honor class hers is because I am pretty comfortable in our house and would like to continue to stay there.
I did a pretty good job of recognizing the people at Imperial in spite of being gone from there for so long. It was a good time at both places. Time at this stage is a blink of the eye.
Now we jump back to the present and the Huskers will have played a game by the time this is published and the Plainsmen football will have played two and the volleyball team is playing, cross country is running and the golf girls are hitting the links and just like that fall sports season has started.
It is fun to look back and visit and see old friends from the past and yet it is a lot of fun to watch what is going on in the present. I am blessed because I have been able to do and watch what I really like for as long as I have. Go Plainsmen, Go Huskers, and come November, Go Rock Chalk!