Fully realizing this is a middle class guy problem, but I am going to need to get somebody to fix the traffic lights on Line Avenue.

Immediately.

I believe in many things and one of them is the right to have relatively synchronized traffic lights on main thoroughfares. It’s just the correct thing to do. Ever since 1969, this standard line has applied: You mean we can put a man on the moon but we can’t …(sync up the lights on Line Avenue.)

Lord knows I’m not asking for much. Press a few buttons in the gigantic traffic control center (wherever that is) and make it happen! We can figure out to the millisecond when an eclipse is going to hit 40 years from now, so somebody out there can run the numbers.

I’m not asking for every light in the city to be lined up (though it would be nice), just the major roads. If the speed limit 35 miles per hour and it’s a certain distance from Light 1 to Light 2 to Light 3, assume everyone is driving 35 and start crunching.

Forget my personal sanity; it just makes for a better quality of life (you might think I’m kidding, but I’m not). Consider the fact that half the people on the road can’t drive properly in the first place (texting, taking up both lanes, Sunday driving on a non-Sunday, etc.) and it’s chaos out there. And now you want to make us stop and start every six blocks?

I’ve got LOTS of driving issues to discuss with y’all, but I’m going to do you a solid and save it for another time. For now, let’s get the lights lined up and traffic flowing freely, an inalienable right guaranteed to us in the Bill of Rights (vehicle edition.)

I can’t remember where I got the catcher’s mitt pictured on the left. (The picture on the right is not a catcher’s mitt. It is a first baseman’s mitt. Or a box of Cracker Jack. If you do or don’t know the difference, keep reading anyway.)

My first catcher’s mitt was bought at Hayes Hardware in Lake View, S.C., population 700ish. In Hayes Hardware, you could buy a chain saw, a hammer, a wash tub, or a catcher’s mitt. And that’s where my glove was hanging, up there with the wash tubs. And what a fine glove it was, a cut above what you’d find in your ordinary sporting goods store, much less what you’d find in a store where you could buy a flathead screwdriver and a pipe wrench.

I remember it was a Saturday morning and my dad took me to Slate’s to eat breakfast — you could buy two over-easy or a washing machine there, I swear (this was a very rural town) — and then we ambled down to Hayes Hardware. I think my dad took me pretending he needed vise grips or something but all along he knew I’d had my eye on that catcher’s mitt.

It served me well. Lord how I wish I still had it or knew where it darted off to. She was a good mitt, and I praise having known her. That was a great Saturday.

The mitt pictured above has been re-strung twice. She was good too. On the Homer American Legion team of 1977, a team that lost only once, 1-0 (dang!), seven of the nine starters made all-district or all-state. The only two who didn’t played third base or catcher. Guess who played third base or catcher, depending on who was pitching? If you guessed me, correct.

Me and that pictured mitt.

Our best times were still ahead, catching Little Leaguers as their coach. It should be illegal for a grown man to have that much fun.

Oh…the Cracker Jack box. The other day, the box above was handed to me. Joy! Ecstasy! But it wasn’t the same. Not many peanuts. The prize was a tattoo. BOO!

But the glove. The smell. The way it feels. The way it looks. All the memories it caught for me. The glove is still the same.

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