“Jose Feliciano’s unconventional pre-game singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” aroused considerable controversy, with the Tigers and NBC receiving thousands of angry letters and telephone calls about the performance. Lolich also blamed Feliciano’s unusually long rendition for causing him to get cold after his warm-ups and thus give up three early runs.” (wikipedia.org)

It is September 1968 and I am getting ready to walk to school. School is one long block up and three and a half short blocks over. The blocks in our neighborhood are rectangles and easy to navigate. We make the trek four times a day, morning, then back home for lunch, then back to school, then home again around 4 pm. Looking back it seems very inefficient, but the walking plus considerable recess time gives us plenty of time to play and talk. Our mothers alternate making us lunch, tomato soup and open grilled cheese sandwiches are our favorite.

Every house is different, some with red, white, yellow, brown, or gray colored bricks. Some are two story colonials, and a very few are more trendy – sleek one-stories with glass and sharp angles. Some have stone porches, some have shutters. The shutters wink at me as I walk past. One house has a large gnarled old tree that grew old with it. Inside that house lives an old woman, the same age as the house, perhaps. My sister who has a big heart and is very friendly to everyone visits her occassionally. The old woman still shovels her own snow. She eats grapefruit every morning and tells us to do that too. A few more doors down from her is the perfectly manicured house, where as my mother says, “every blade of grass is cut by hand”. The walk is always shoveled there, perfectly neat, with symmetric piles of snow or leaves on each side, depending on the season.

We walk to school rain or shine, sleet or snow, the proverbial “walking through inclement weather to get to school” story. Autumn is my favorite. We are back at school and fall is always fun, full of new shoes, new dresses, new teachers, and a different desk. We are just starting third grade and the rooms are on the second floor. We are bigger and more important now. We can read chapter books and write in cursive, and walk to school on our own. The air is cool and kind, the trees are shady and the edges of the leaves are starting to turn color. The neighborhood smells like fall, like dry leaves, pumpkins, and pot roast.

My best friend lives next door and sometimes other friends pick her up and they stop by my house to pick me up. There are more girls down the street we can group up with as we walk the first long block. Next to them is a family with ten children so we are never alone. There is always someone walking in the neighborhood. All of the streets except for one have crossing guards, fourth and fifth graders who have been safety trained.

Our house has a mud room. We call it the back hall and it’s a repository of sorts for all of our inclement weather gear. There is a bathroom and a closet where we keep coats, brooms, and potatoes. There is a long rack with hooks along one wall for hanging coats, hats, scarves, mittens. there are several boot trays. There are three kinds of boots: Lined, for winter, over boots with metal buckles, which are also known as galoshes and are unlined, and there are some that were called rubbers (which later made us laugh). They are black and slip on over our shoes to protect them in the puddles. Our back hall is a tribute to east Detroit weather and whatever the season, it is prominently displayed.

It is autumn so the back hall hosts sweaters, shoes, galoshes, and umbrellas. There might be some sweatshirts there too. Our father walks to the bus each morning. He uses the front hall and comes in and out of the front door. He wears a dress hat and a pea coat, which require special care and hanging. There is a little vestibule in the front for inclement weather gear too. Only three people use the front door, my father, my grandmother, and our great aunt. I suppose various other aunts, uncles, and cousins who visit will come into the house that way too. We use the back door, unless one of us is injured: skinned knee, hurt feelings, snowball in the eye, that sort of thing. Then we are allowed to enter the house using the most direct route. All outer footwear must live in either the front or back hall. Our slippers and indoor shoes wait for us while we are gone in case we forget.

My friends clamor up the back stairs to the back hall and I can hear them outside before they ring the bell. We are ready to walk to school. I don’t recall that we carried backpacks or heavy books. Sometimes we would have homework and I think we must have used book straps to carry our things. As we walk we break into pairs along the sidewalk. We don’t step on the cracks and we have a game related to the imprint stamp of the sidewalk squares, telling us when and by whom, each patch of sidewalk was made. 

The leaves are starting to turn and the air is cool and fresh. Soon the leaves will be bright and colorful, falling and fluttering all around us like butterflies. We will play tag football on the front lawn. We will help our Dad with raking and jump into the large leaf piles. We will help him bring down the screens and put up the storm windows, washing each one carefully. With the first frost we might start carrying mittens. With the second, we’ll pull out hats or earmuffs, and by November we will need scarves. The fall progression is predictable and comforting.

When we arrive at school we all play in the playground until the first Bell. Then we get in line. We have ten minutes or so to get to our class, hang up our things in the back and take our seats before the second Bell. We must be seated, ready, bright and earnest before the second Bell. Then we stand for the Pledge, and maybe sing a verse or two of “My Country ‘ tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty”. Some people have brothers who have left for Vietnam. One brother won’t return. We had all watched the 1967 riots unfold on small black and white TVs with rabbit ears and tin foil receptors the previous summer. Some of us saw the National Guard tanks make their way down East Jefferson towards the heart of Detroit which was on fire. It’s discussed in current events, but the discussion is guarded too. 

We are learning multiplication tables. My best friend and I are very good at math and memorizing just about any list in front of us. We have spent the summer memorizing the names of all the Presidents and Vice Presidents. Now we are working on the First Ladies. We have spent the summer playing and climbing trees, and riding with our families to the neighborhood pool. We have gone to lakes up north and stayed up late to catch fireflies. At the end of summer we were all glued to TV’s with pictures of Vietnam, discussions about riots, or the Detroit Tigers. Our parents deliberately keep the channel on the Tigers.

We have memorized the names of all the players and their stats. There is the main hero, Al Kaline. There is the slugger, Willie Horton. Another slugger who plays catcher is Bill Freehan. At Short stop is Micky Stanley, Eddie Brinkman, the smaller player who chokes up on the bat but makes up for it in speed and agility, will come later. There is our favorite, the handsome third baseman with the black glove, Aurelio Rodriguez. He arrived after Don Wert and Eddie Matthews who played the series. Dick McAuliff plays second. Sometimes Ray Oyler plays infield. We met him at our school the last year and I still have his autograph. The indomitable Norm Cash is at first, and Micky Lolitch and Denny McClain are the infamous pitchers. All eyes are watching, young and old, and all racial and socioeconomic differences in Detroit are momentarily gone. We are all united, rooting for the Tigers this year. Every car has a Tiger tail hanging from the tank.

My mother had been in the hospital for minor lung surgery. My third grade teacher asks me how she is. I think she is fine, I say. They have told me it is nothing to worry about and so I don’t. She is recuperating on the couch when I get home. Game three of the series is on. She is talking about Al Kaline, and the other heroes we see. I climb up next to her and we watch. “How was school today”, she asks? “The girls won at multiplication flash cards”, I say. My mother has a hard time with me because she wants me to act and dress more like a girl, and I prefer wearing a baseball cap and play clothes. So our mutual love of the Tigers has temporarily erased this issue and I can wear my cap all night long, I think I even slept in it.

The final two games of the series are so exciting and so important that they even wheel TVs with rabbit ears and tin foil into our classrooms. The teachers can hardly contain their excitement. It is all Tigers every day as we line up outside after recess. We stand in line for the multiplication contest. We’ve been memorizing factors of nine and we are unbeatable, just like the Tigers.

The day the Tigers won the series I was so excited to tell my Mom that I came bolting in the front door. She was so happy too, I think she got up and danced a little jig. I had watched her recuperating and something about the way my teacher asked me made me think she was sicker than my parent’s had let on. She was better now, and there would be no more worrying. The tumor was something called “benign”, they said. Our Dad took us to the small town center near our house to see the Tigers celebration. In Detroit there would be riots, and houses burning, but here in the suburbs it was more buttoned up – there were toilet paper rolls and Tiger Tank tails and hats and long strings of confetti being thrown into the air. The night was striped, blue and orange, just like the Tigers.

We walked to school the next morning through colorful confetti intermingled with orange and yellow leaves. We lined up for the first Bell. I looked up to the sky and noticed the clouds were lining up too, getting ready for winter and the second Bell. They were the long, skinny blue-gray clouds that come in the fall before the first snow. My favorite clouds. My little world with brick houses and rectangular blocks and grilled cheese sandwiches and predictable seasons was going to be all right. The world series win and the good news about my mother all lined up, reassuringly. I looked at the clouds, now marching in straight blue-gray lines across the sky like striped Tiger Tank Tails. The Tigers won, I thought, my smile big, underneath my blue cap. My mother had let me wear my baseball cap to school, just this once, this marvelous fall day, with leaves and confetti, the day after the Tigers won the ’68 series.