Uncle Cletus Goes to a Ballgame

Today I received the following letter from my Uncle Cletus.

Well, me and the missus finally went to our first professional baseball game last night and boy let me tell you what, it’s no wonder them boys don’t have to sell possum meat to Roy Bob at the Kountry Kitchen. They can play themselves some ball! How much do you think they make? I bet it is upward of 40 dollars.

Say, speakin of money, Kountry Kitchen’s got 2-for-1 garden burgers.

Anyhoo, as you know, Mama and I have always listened to games on our transistor radio, the one the bank done give us for payin back the outhouse loan on time, but no, we never seen a game till last night. Now that was a miracle in itself, due to us gettin pulled over on the way to the park. You don’t ever think a raggedy old truck is gonna get pulled over, especially when a team of mules is tuggin it, but pulled over is what we done got! Course it was our fault. Last week on the way to church we shot that stop sign down with pair of double-barrels, mostly for shits and giggles but also cause we needed the metal on account of the hole in the side of the house. Frankly we didn’t mind the breeze so much as the neighbor watchin us poop.

Well, the cop just give us a good talkin-to, I guess because the cop is also my cousin – you remember Roy Bob? – but didn’t give us a ticket and that was a stroke of luck. We didn’t have any possum pelts at the time, possum pelts bein our main form of currency and thus our main form of mattress stuffin. And why would we carry a mattress to a baseball game? What I’m saying is we couldn’t have paid the fine for runnin a stop sign that don’t exist and therefore would have spent the night in the County Jail ’N Dry Goods Store, which would have been terrible on account of I already own a hammer so why would I need another hammer?

Long story short, we barely got to our seats on time because Mama wanted to go to her first “drive-thru.” Now that ain’t how the Bible spelt it. God his own self uses the word 795 times in the Good Book and not once does He spell it “thru.” But that is cityfolk for you – always in a hurry to get to the next word. So I steered the mules through the drive-thru on account of the drive-thru didn’t have a sign that said “no mules.” We got burgers and they were pretty good, though not as good as Kountry Kitchen burgers – less possumy. I guess I should say less gardeny.

We made it to our seats and took a look around. Boy them lights are bright! I had to wonder where they got that much kerosene. Also we could not believe how short the ballpark grass is. I turned to the guy beside me and said “Where’s all the goats?” He pointed to the first baseman and said “There’s the goat.” I said “Just one?” He said “Yeah of course just one.” He said something about an error but I just kept wonderin how one man could eat that much grass. He was a pretty big man, though.

The game started and my goodness! FAST is how they throw that ball! I mean fast like Moonshine Mike outrunnin the cops fast! (It’s amazin how them cops keep chasin Mike in hopes of gettin a taste.) And them other boys can hit the ball even faster! How do they do that? I once tried to swat a possum with a broomstick and all I got was the bathroom wall!

The radio just don’t do it justice. On radio you hear the crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd and the commercial for Roy Bob’s Good Time Outhouses. But you sure don’t see how great them fellas are. My hat is off to them, though I do not plan to give them the hat. They have got their own hats, and I still need this one.

OK, I will write more soon. I ain’t even got to the second inning!

All I can say is that seein a game is better than hearin a game. Mama gets tired of climbin on the roof just to get a signal and I get tired of fallin off.

Sincerely,

Uncle Cletus