“The coldest winter I ever spent,” Mark Twain is credited with quipping, “was a summer in San Francisco.”
The great writer apparently never spent an autumn day at a Cleveland Indians (now Guardians) game, in the old Municipal Stadium, with an arctic-like wind whipping in off Lake Erie. Nine innings at nine-below-zero is how I recall an abominable day when I was eight.
I have long forgotten whom the Tribe was even playing, but I remember rushing to the men’s room more frequently than an elderly man with a troubled prostrate – not to use the urinal, but because there were electric heaters on the ceiling.
It was my first time to a Major League Baseball game and since you can’t watch a home run from the men’s room, when the Indians came to bat I would trek back to my seat like Robert Peary braving the elements on the way to the North Pole.
By the bottom of fifth inning, I was rooting for the Indians to go down 1-2-3 so I could seek warm refuge again.
By the seventh-inning stretch-and-shiver, I had stuffed crumpled pages from the game program inside my sweatshirt for insulation like a homeless person using a newspaper as a blanket on a Twain-ian summer night in San Francisco.
“Hey, Mom,” I mumbled from blue lips when I got home. “Check out the souvenir I got.”
Mom, excitedly: “You caught a foul ball?”
Me, with teeth chattering: “N-n-n-no, I caught frostbite!”
In the half century since, I have never felt colder. And yet the other day, in our Pacific paradise, my mind flashed Erie-ily back to Cleveland’s “Mistake on the Lake” Stadium.
A friend and I had planned to get together at a local brewery. However, with coronavirus surging we decided – despite both of us being fully vaccinated and boosted – to instead meet up outdoors at a park.
Rain threatened our new picnic-table plan. Indeed, I got soaked and chilled to the bones on my daily run beforehand. Then the clouds suddenly parted and our happy hour was happily back on.
I thought I was bundled up sufficiently in my cozy “Ol’ Green” Patagonia wool pullover – that, coincidentally, my friend’s wife expertly darned a hole – over a long-sleeved shirt. Alas, as the Lake Erie-like coastal breeze began to pick up, and the temperature fell into the 40s, I began to shiver.
“You’re freezing,” my friend said. “We should go.”
“N-n-n-no, I’m fine,” I replied stubbornly, not wanting to cut our visit short. I was reminded of when my son was 5 or thereabouts. At his favorite buffet restaurant he always filled a bowl with a Matterhorn of vanilla soft-serve frozen yogurt and before even half-finishing his teeth would start chattering, his body shivered in the air conditioning, but he kept on devouring the treat.
That is how I felt now. I wanted to keep eating up our conversation even as my shivers persisted. As great a storyteller as my friend is, and supreme listener as well, here is an example of what makes him a friend of friends: with a summer-bright smile he offered me his winter coat …
… and when I politely declined he took it off nonetheless and wrapped me in it.
I am not exaggerating when I say it is The Warmest Coat that I have ever worn. Putting it on was like easing into a steamy bath. I think it must be stuffed with polar bear fur and penguin feathers and infused with the hot-chocolate breath of unicorns.
Warmer than any coat, of course, is a great friendship.
* * *
Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn
Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.
Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com