Romanticizing Truck Day
Today I’m leaving the bones un-eaten…
Let’s jump in the way back machine and go to August, 1992. The more astute among you will remember that was last time the Red Sox finished in the basement of their division. I was eleven years old, and true parlance of all of those who were once eleven in the Greater Boston area, I loved the Red Sox.
Three days before my twelfth birthday, my parents told me they were getting divorced, which kind of took me completely by surprise, seeing as though I was eleven and didn’t understand the nuances of grownup relationships. Baseball didn’t really seem that important anymore. For the rest of that summer the Red Sox just didn’t matter. That winter, I didn’t pay attention to the Patriots (this was easy because in the pre-Parcells era, almost none of the home games were televised anyway). I still watched the Celtics with my grandparents, but I didn’t care.
Back in August, we moved (my mom, brother and I…my dad moved to our town a few months later) immediately. I was thrusted into new town, and new school with the specter of my parents split up dangling over my head. I was already kind of a shy kid, and I had trouble finding my niche. Basically, what I’m saying is that 1992 was the worst year of my life.
After a few months of just walking the earth, the fall gave way to winter, and eventually February came. Every morning, my mom sent me to school with The Boston Globe, so I had something to read between classes and other down times (this obviously did not help my reputation. I was too nerdy to know better). So I was sitting at lunch with a few kids I was friendly with and I was perusing the sports section on Truck Day. This was kind of a conversation starter, as they generally didn’t care that I was a baseball fan, and I didn’t go out of my way to let them know. We talked about baseball with the normal sophistication that twelve-year-olds talk about everything. That wasn’t the point…baseball made me feel more comfortable, and it was much easier adjusting to everything once the 1993 season started. It didn’t even matter that the Sox weren’t good again. I not only had baseball, but I had people to discuss it with.
Fast forward to the fall of 1999, I moved onto a hall that was basically intact from the last year…well, of the 26 or so people on the floor, I think there were five freshmen or someone that didn’t know someone else. Still being somewhat tentative around people I didn’t know (I wasn’t so much shy anymore), baseball was my in again. The floor was a nice mosaic of Red Sox, Yankee, and Met fans, all three teams in the playoffs. The floor was entertainingly festive for that whole week. And I was in the thick of it, with some people I still consider my best friends. Among those was my current girlfriend, who was a Yankees fan. Of course, she unyoked that particular brand of fascism and joined the Red Sox fandom after a particularly Grady-rific loss in 2003. I’ll probably unleash that story at another time.
Normally, I hate the stories that wax poetic about something that is generally just entertainment at its face. But today is the day that the trucks leave Boston for Ft. Myers. A little waxing is allowed on a day like today. Opening Day is but a mere month and a half away.
I love that I became “unyolked”. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before, or since.
Things like Truck day make the Sox special to me, as sappy as the whole tradition is.
I enjoyed the story. Truck Day is like New Year’s Eve, technically, it’s just a day but it symbolizes that idea of anything being possible.
You should read _Fever Pitch_ if you haven’t already. It’s really the life of the fan. Nick Hornsby relates all the events of his life to Arsenal football games, and I understood, because that’s what baseball means to me.
I hate Jimmy Fallon.
I read it before I went to college. I’ll have to see if I can find my copy when I go home again.
You need more stories about the A’s and curling.