By the time you read this, I will be traveling in my motor coach to Prince Edward Island. Merlin is going in his coach, also. It is a Newell Motor Coach rally from June 22 to 26. As of this date (June 4) we know of over 40 Newell Coaches making the trip. It is approximately 1850 miles from good old Brooklyn, Iowa. New York is about the half way point. We go over a new nine mile bridge to get to the Island. This bridge was just completed and had a 200 million dollar overrun. (That’s a little more than Manatt’s Inc. ever had on an overrun!!)
           We plan to visit Nova Scotia while in that part of the world, as we have never been in that part of the US and Canada. We may come back through a good distance of Canada and cross over to the USA at Detroit. Quite a trip, and I’m looking forward to it!
           Think how much the employees around Manatt’s Brooklyn office and shop look forward to me being gone. Nobody to constantly hassle them. Also, the farm help people. You would think they would all go together and finance my trips, just to get rid of me.
           Since getting home from Florida at Easter time, I have been going to the farms most days. It has been a wet spring and it was very trying for our people to get the planting finished. My job has been “go-fer”, but it can really keep you busy at times. I do enjoy the farming.
           Now to change the subject - I go to quite a few high school baseball games. (To my eagle eye the umpire doesn’t call all of them right.) I was sitting there the other night thinking about when I was their age, or a little older. We played about every Sunday in Gus DeMeulenaere’s cow pasture. You had to be a little careful because the cows might have left the area shortly before the game. You might think you were sliding into a base and instead you might have been sliding into something the cows left.
          Going back to the umpires, when we played on Sundays, we didn’t have any equipment for our umpire to stand behind the catcher, so he stood behind the pitcher, called balls and strikes and could call all the bases. Now that was efficiency in action.
          Another difference between now and then, the umpire didn’t get paid and if you argued too strongly against his ball and strike calls from 70 feet away, he might walk off the field and you started looking for another umpire.
          I hope this brings back some good memories of fun times when participation in baseball was more fun than sitting in front of the TV watching it.