The Great Plotnik

Monday, February 20, 2006

1957

Miz Sparker sent The Great Plotnik a class assignment this morning that she had written concerning the year 1957. The other students in her class had to look up 1957 on the internet. Miz Sparker remembered it well and wrote a very funny paper, especially the part about the martinis and the t-shirts.

The Great Plotnik was already 6,000 years old in 1957. The year started out badly. 1957 was the year public domain and the Ventura Freeway ate his childhood home in Sherman Oaks, a section of Stiletto City where there hadn't been oak trees for fifty years, and his family was forced to move further West. When they got to Encino the oaks were still tall and ancient ("Encino," in fact, means Oak in Spanish), and the dry, rolling land was lovely. His parents bought a house with what seemed to be an endless backyard.

But by the following year the freeway had pushed ten more miles westward and this time it chopped down a stand of oaks and went right through the Plotniks' backyard. There were now fifty feet and a mound of earth between the 101 and the Plotnik back door. Walking out that door you heard a constant "WHOOOOOOOOOOSHHHHHHHHHHH..."

Plotnik remembers the lemon trees on that little mound that overlooked the new freeway. Incredible as it now seems, he and his friends would fill a large paper bag with hard, yellow lemons, walk up onto the freeway overpass, and heave the lemons, one at a time, at each Chevie Impala, or Ford Fairlane, or Packard Clipper, or Nash Rambler, or Chrylser Imperial passing by below. At the time, it seemed like some kind of vague protest. It is miraculous they never hit or killed anybody.

In 1957 Plotnik rode his bicycle down to the Little League Field to try out for the local team. In the previous year, he had grown from a little kid into a fat kid. Yes, The Great Plotnik was, for a year or two, The Fat Plotnik. He hadn't had time to adjust to his new body yet, until the moment the old, bald-headed coach with the Brooklyn Dodger baseball cap threw the first pitch to him at the tryout. Plotnik had bad eyes and had never been a very good hitter, but his fat, new arms slugged that ball, crushed it. It flew 'way over the wall in right field, out into the weeds. Everyone watched in amazement, Plotnik first amongst them. He couldn't believe what he'd just done. It dawned on him that being a big kid had a lot more potential than being a little kid.

His team, the Oak Park Little League Yankees, got to the Championship Game in 1957. It was the same year Plotnik had discovered Anti-Plotnikism. His greatest tormenter, the huge kid who had tried unsuccessfully all year to catch Plottie so he could beat him up, was the star hitter of the other team.

This is the stuff dreams are made of. With Plotnik's team ahead by one run, in the last inning, Clyde the Nazi came up to bat. Two outs. Winning run on third. Plotnik playing shortstop.

Clyde smashed one into the hole. Plotnik dove to his right, stopped the ball, then got up and heaved it with all his might to first base. Luckily, Tony Barlow was the Yankee first baseman and he was the tallest kid on the team. Tony leaped up, caught Plotnik's throw and crashed into Clyde before he got to first. Game over. Yankees win. They carried Plottie on their shoulders into the dugout.

Do you know tears of joy? Does everyone know tears of joy? 1957 wasn't such a terrible year after all.

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