A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was asked to throw out the first pitch at the last home game this year for Centralia College’s Lady Blazers. It was a great doubleheader with the Blazers playing much higher than their standings in the league would indicate. Dakota Brooks allowed only one hit in the first game while also contributing a home run to the winning score of 8-0. The second game was also won with an 8 run lead.
My own contributions to the proceedings were not as stellar. After all, it’d been a good number of years since I had even touched a softball. I predicted in a previous column that I would consider it a success if the ball got to home plate with only one bounce. The toss I made could not be considered to be in that category. The ball left my hand, traveled about fifteen feet before it contacted the ground and rolled the rest of the way to the catcher.
What did you expect, Randy Johnson? As a consolation, I was given a softball signed by the home team ladies. At least I’ll have something to practice with if I’m ever foolishly asked to do it again.
Sitting in the bleachers and looking at the complex of ball fields, each with its circle of lights, took me back over 35 years to when I was serving as mayor in the three-member commissioner form of government in force at that time. In those days the area was known as Ed Wheeler Field, named after a man who had spent countless hours working on it. Note that I used the singular designation; there was only one field back then, and any games had to be played during the day because there were also no lights.
Fellow commissioner Bill Rickard learned of a field that was replacing its lights and we acquired the old ones. I can’t remember if we paid anything for them or if they were donated; the latter is probably what happened. Members of Centralia’s City Light department worked (some of them on their own time) to install poles and the lights and that was the start of the magnificent complex you see there today.
At least that’s the way I remember it.
Speaking of memories, a random thought crossed my mind last week. I suddenly realized that next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the year I graduated from Centralia College. I was already 41 when that happened, working afternoons and evenings while attending classes in the morning and doing my homework between records as the KELA’s evening DJ.
You don’t have to count on your fingers to realize that 1969 was the end of the 60’s and should be honored as such by all ex-hippies, even elderly ones. The memories—ah yes, the memories—come trickling back into my mind such as puffing on my pipe in the lunchroom where every table had an ashtray, performing and directing plays in the old high school home economics classroom, watching Katherine Kemp striding regally down a hallway with the students parting in front of her, looking like Moses had just caused the waters of the Red Sea to part.
Should there be a 50th year reunion? Could those of us in our 70s (and beyond) get together to share our own memories, whether they actually happened or not? I recently visited the college, but so far no one has shown an interest in starting to work toward such a gathering. The program for the 1969 graduating class lists indicates that there were 217 members in the class. We ought to be able to have a small party, at least.
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Bill Moeller is a former entertainer, mayor, bookstore owner, city council member, paratrooper and pilot living in Centralia. He can be reached at bookmaven321@comcast.net.
