My paternal grandfather, Iris Harmon, was a man of great humor and an equally great storyteller. He’s been gone for more than 35 years now, but thankfully, he recorded a story that he titled "Hooked on Baseball," which I have transcribed here in his own words. I hope you enjoy reading it!

"I growed up a-way back in the mountains and hills and hollers; not a whole lot to do -  run through the woods, act sort of like a wild man.  Sometimes I wonder if I wasn't about like Tarzan.  Wasn't a whole lot of work a-goin' on.  About all I had to do was do that, throw rocks, and fight copperheads and rattlesnakes.  They was plenty of them.   

"And I got to hearin' about a store over across from where my daddy lived.  Sold everything and bought everything, even roots and herbs.  So, I had a friend back there; I'm a-gonna call him Barney.  That wasn't his real name, but I had saw Barney Googles in the funny paper, and he made me think of him a little.  His eyes tooted a-way out.  And we got to talkin' and we decided now let's go pull us a bunch of beadwood leaves and take 'em over there at that store.  So, we got out and pulled a big bunch, put 'em in the barn loft and let 'em dry.  Got us a big ol' sack apiece and headed across there about twelve one day.  Got over there at that store, and it was a big one.  It looked like they had everything you could think of in there.  And we had our leaves weighed up.  I forget what they brought.  Seems like both sackfuls brought around sixty cents.  We bought 'er every bit in cheese and crackers.  Cheese was cheap - ten cents a pound.  So we got 'er all in cheese and crackers.   

"Come outside, and I said, 'Barney, let's ease up the road a piece and look this country over.'  Big, flat country; a lot of fine houses up through there; big white houses, barns painted red.  Every one of them places had a little white house a-sittin' out to the side with a half-moon on the door.  I didn't know what it was then, but I do now.  And they had a high school they said, but it didn't look any higher than any of the rest of the buildings to me much.  

"Well, we went on up the road a piece.  Looked over in a big, flat field, and they was some boys over there a-playin', scufflin'.  Playin', throwin' a ball, and havin' just a time it looked like.  Well, they saw us and started hollerin' and motionin' for us to come over there.  Well, I didn't know hardly what to do, but I told Barney, I said, 'Barney, let's ease over there.'  Me and Barney both was a little big to our size and a little heavy to our weight, so I figured we could hold our own pretty well.  We went on over there, but while we was goin' I said, 'Now Barney, we may be a-walkin' into trouble.'  And I said, 'If they are, half the battle is to attack first.'  And I said, 'We'll have half of 'em whipped before they can get organized, and we can outrun the other half.'  But we got over there and they was nice, friendly boys.  And they said what it was that they was a-playin' was baseball.  So, I'd never heard tell of that, and they had a ball there just as hard as a rock, and it had a leather cover on it.  They said it was horsehide, and they was goin' to play nine endin's. 

"So, we started throwin' around, they said practicin', and we throwed around and carried on there for a while.  And I could throw a baseball - just put it right where I wanted it.  And I had good control and plenty of speed.  I guess I'd throwed ever' rock back where I was raised from four pound on down to a small one as much as three or four times to each rock.  And we played around a while.  So, one of 'em said, 'Let's choose up and have a game.'  Well, one of 'em got a bat, pitched it out in the air, and the other one caught it.  They went up that bat fist over fist until they come to the end of it; no place for that other boy to get his hand.  The one that had his hand on the top, he got to pick his first player.  So, he said to me, 'I'm gonna pick you.  I want you to pitch for my side.'  So, he picked me, went around and showed me the bases.  He said, 'Here's first, here's second, here's third. This is home plate. Here's where you stand to pitch.  You throw it to that feller behind home plate.  Throw it right over that plate.'   

"Well, them batters would come up, and I'd throw 'er through there, and it was swing and miss, swing and miss, three times and they hollered, 'Out!'  Well, they called it strikin' and fannin'.  And finally, here come one ol' big boy up, got up right nearly on the plate and stuck his head out.  One of the boys on my side said, 'Get him off of the plate.  He's crowdin' the plate.'  I said, 'What do ya mean?'  He said, 'He's crowdin' the plate till you can't throw it over there unless you knock him off.'  And I think that was the second baseman that was tellin' me that.  Well, I said, 'I can knock him off then if that's what you want done.'  So, I fired down and took the old boy in the side of the head.  He went rollin' back behind there, and we gathered in, and there he laid with his eyes rolled back in his head like a dyin' calf.  But after while he got up.  The man that was a-callin' the game, the "ump" they called him, he said, 'Take your base.'  Well, he went wobblin' off out to first base.  He wasn't actin' too pert, but he got out there.  They said, 'Now watch him; he'll steal second base."  Well, I looked around.  Second base was an old big, round rock that would've weighed about a hundred pounds.  I said to myself, 'Now they no way that that feller can steal second base here in broad daylight and all this crowd and get away with it.'  But I learned later on that stealin' second was when your pitcher throwed the ball, and you headed for second.  If you could beat the throw there, why, you was safe.  And that's what they call stealin' a base.  But I didn't know much about it then.   

"So we played on till pretty late.  I said, 'Barney, we better be a-headin' for home.  It'll be dark before long.'  So, we was gettin' ready to go, and them old boys ganged around and told us to come back.  And I said, 'We'll be back over to play some more with you.'  Well, we went in on home, and I got to studyin' about that baseball game.  Now I'd played cat paddle, but that's all I'd ever played, and we done that with what we called a yarn ball.  What it was, the women would take sheep wool, and they'd card it, they call it, between two things like curry combs, roll it out in a little roll, and then they had an old big spinnin' wheel, hook it on a thing there and spin it into an old big, soft thread.  Then they'd take knittin' needles and knit a yarn sock out of that that come plumb to your knees.  They was warm; they was good socks.  Well, when they finally wore out the foot on 'em, they'd give us that old leg to make balls out of.  We'd ravel that thing out and wind him into a good hard ball as tight as we could get it, then sew him all around with a thread and make us a ball to play cat paddle with.   

"But I'd got hooked on baseball.  And we got to learnin' a little more about it and got us up a team they called it - they was several boys back in there - and got to playin' baseball.  Well, first thing you know, they was baseball teams in every settlement around, and we got into baseball heavy.  It was every Saturday, sometimes on Friday evening; didn't play on Sunday - our parents wouldn't allow that - but we played baseball; it was a sight in the world.  And went on, I pitched baseball for I don't know how many years, probably twenty years.  Never did play anywhere but just pitch.  And I pitched some along up till I believe the last two games I ever pitched, I was around forty-nine or fifty years old, and I won both of them.   

"But they was tellin' us there when we first got over with them boys about goin' to play nine endin's.  Well, we played till almost dark, and them endin's never did come.  I don't know what happened to 'em, but they just didn't make it."

[For those who may be wondering where this story took place, it was in the Bethel community of Watauga County, NC.]