The Coulee
'a massive glacial lake containing more water than all the lakes on Earth today'
Gary Smith: Maybe, if you were lucky, you had one too. Maybe you had your own patch of earth where your legs and mind might roam and you could make a sport your own.
I once had such luck. It came in the unsightliest of forms, a crater bulldozed in a field of weeds where workers at the cemetery behind our house dumped the browning wreaths and flowers that had been left upon the graves. What else, to my 12-year-old eyes, but a baseball stadium?
The embankments created by the earthmover became my backstop, my bleachers, my outfield walls. The wreaths became my bases. I cleared away the stones and withered sorrow, burrowed a hollow in the dirt wall along the first base line and roofed it with scrap plywood: my dugout.
No parents or pressure ever approached my ballpark, no meddling or minivans, just me and a buddy and our imaginations.
What follows is the story of a family, someone else's, perhaps the most remarkable sporting clan in the United States.
But it's really an ode to a ditch.
Posted by
T. Lake on 01/28/10 at
17:40
|
Comments (3)
|
Trackbacks (0)
Comments
Re: The Coulee
I chatted about this story with Kruse briefly today, but he hadn't read it yet.
I told him I can only think of maybe one or two Gary Smith stories that I don't like. This is one of them.
It just didn't really move me.
Posted by:
Dave
at January 29,2010 01:07
Re: The Coulee
Can you put your finger on it? Is is the structure? The subject matter?
I found parts of it very powerful, especially the descriptions of all the kids playing hockey on the coulee.
The thing that I'm amazed by, time and again, when I read his stories, is the near-photographic detail of the memories he's able to coax out of his sources. I try that stuff all the time, and it's very, very hard.
Posted by:
T. Lake
at January 29,2010 16:44
Re: The Coulee
I completely agree that the level of detail is as impressive as it normally is from Gary. I thought the scene of the one kid trying to commit suicide and emerging from that stronger was great.
I thought the idea was interesting, but maybe there were just too many people to get a good enough idea of everyone. Yeah, you get the stuff about mom and dad driving everywhere, but there was never any real explanation of if they wanted to create this weird family dynasty that they have going on.
I also was a little put off by the ditch idea. I think it was a good one, but it's really only written about three times. I didn't think it was enough to hold the story up. And although it was an ode to a ditch, in his words, I didn't really think he held it up that way.
The story impressed me with its language and attention to detail, it just didn't move me like "Higher Education" or any number of his stories before have.
Posted by:
Dave
at January 29,2010 18:56
None
Post a comment