Childhood Memories Started in Mobile

While we wait for the weather to clear just now having experienced 24 plus hours of thunder storms with down pours and lightning to go with it, we are anticipating LEAVING later this week.... if all the promised shipments show up. It is another "we'll see" moment but we remain hopeful.

As we wait and travel the Mobile area, we came across Henry Aaron Stadium along Highway 65.

Henry Aaron was one of Bob's childhood hero's when he played for the Milwaukee Braves. Having been born in Wisconsin and loving the game of baseball, it was a natural to be a Braves fan. The year that I remember the most was the 1957 season when the Milwaukee Braves won the National League pennant and the World Series.

Henry Aaron was born in Mobile and is a local icon as you may expect having played in Atlanta for a number of years when the Braves left Milwaukee in 1965. Recently the local minor league team, the Mobile Bay Bears, moved his family home to a site at the stadium. The home, which is extremely modest, was built by his parents on a piecemeal basis.

His father would collect wood and add on to the house when there was enough wood available.The two windows on the front porch are the only windows in the home.

It was a thrill to sit on the same front porch where the Aaron's lived and Hank learned to play the game of baseball. Despite the opportunity to do so his mother never moved away from the home.                                               

The 1957 season is memorable to me in that I spent a month or so visiting family in Wisconsin during the summer. I had a Great Uncle Dan who shared the love of the game. We would sit out on the porch in the evenings and listen to the games on the radio. He would keep a score book and taught me how to do that using all the symbols that are part of the game. He also would be smoking and chewing on a cigar all the time as he was not allowed to smoke inside the house. He did not teach me how to do that!

On April 8, 1974 Henry Aaron broke Babe Ruth's home run record in Atlanta's Fulton County stadium hitting number 715. He finished his career with 755. 

They have some of the seats from the old Fulton County stadium as part of their collection of Henry Aaron memories.

This was an unexpected and wonderful surprise to find this memorial to Henry Aaron.

Nautical Word For The Day: [from seatalk.info]

Picaroon:

1. A pirate.

2. An 18' wood launch designed by Sam Rabi in 1926.

From Great Loop Jargon:

3. A cookie made for the boating community.