Blog Post

I was watching a Sunday afternoon baseball game when I realized the regular season is

two-thirds over. The Yankees, Astros and Dodgers have huge leads in their divisions so unless they have late-season meltdowns, they’re likely to be their division winners. The Mets have a several-games lead and the other divisions have several teams only a game or two out of the lead.

When I was a youngster the middle of August meant I still had two weeks or more of

summer vacation. In the middle of the 20th century, we didn’t start school in the fall until the

Tuesday after Labor Day. Kids could count on having summer vacation from Memorial Day toLabor Day. Today’s education cycle is much different. In many parts of the country the teachers have been back at the schools for a week or more, getting ready for the students. Some schools have switched to year-round schedules, giving students two- or three-week breaks between sessions.

I was a farm kid and the last two weeks of August meant I would likely be doing field

work, mostly driving a tractor. I might be plowing under stubble from the fields where we had harvested grain or I might be hauling bales of hay and straw from the fields to be stacked near the barnyard as winter feed and bedding for the livestock.

We had AM radios on our tractors. My dad purchased car radios and antennas from an auto

salvage yard and mounted them on the tractors. They were powered by the tractor’s 6-volt

battery, just like in cars. Sometimes we could get stations that were 60 or more miles away. That meant I could listen to baseball games nearly every afternoon while I was driving a tractor. The only problem was the radio volume had to be turned all the way up to hear it over the roar of the tractor engine. Sometimes that wasn’t enough, even when I leaned close to hear it. Unfortunately, we didn’t have earphones in those days.

Thinking of baseball reminds me to tell readers I’ve recently published another baseball

story, the sixth book in the George Grant series. This is probably the last book in that series.

George has retired from playing baseball and returned to farming. This book, The Assistant

Coaches, is about George, his brother Roy and their friend Willie Anders being hired as interim coaches when their friend Toby Corbet is seriously injured in a plane crash and is unable to coach the State University Tigers. Toby had great expectations for the team this year and hoped they would earn their way to play in the College World Series. George, Roy and Willie commit to try achieving Toby’s goal. As expected, things aren’t always as easy as they might appear.

As with my other novels, this book is available as a paperback on Amazon and as an ebook on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other digital ebook outlets.