Days of Wine and Roses, and Vasectomies

Baseball

The longest game ever played by the Rochester Red Wings was against the Buffalo Bisons at Silver Stadium sometime in the ’60s.  I’ve not been able to confirm it, but my memory is that it lasted 26 innings.  Steve and I were there with Uncle Ron and Don King.  In front of Steve and me was a heavyset man in his 50s, who wore a hat with a deep brim and sat there not moving a muscle all that time.  Steve and I had a big bag of peanuts, and we amused ourselves by dropping the shells in the man’s hat brim.  The adults didn’t notice until we had it pretty much filled all the way around, from ear to ear.  They chewed us out sotto voce and we stopped, but they didn’t have the nerve to correct the situation.  I have tried to imagine how they would have done it.  Would they have leaned forward and quietly whispered to the mob boss not to move, and explained the situation to him?  Whatever they might have done, they didn’t, and we all slunk away at the end of the 26th inning.

Elden with his Uncle Ron (in the Rochester Red Wings shirt).

One response to “Baseball”

  1. Richard Mattersdorff Avatar
    Richard Mattersdorff

    Wonderful story. Condolences and best wishes to all family.

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About THE BLOG

Thanks for making your way to the The Days of Wine and Roses, and Vasectomies, the personal blog of Elden Carnahan. My dad has been composing these stories as long as I can remember, either on paper or aloud around the dinner table. “You should put all your vignettes together into a book so we can sell it,” my mother would suggest from time to time.

For Christmas 2021, my sister gave Dad a Storyworth account–an online writing platform that sends you a weekly writing prompt in the form of a question. After a year or so of questions, the responses are all assembled into a hardback book. Dad took on the challenge with gusto, answering scores of questions, which often lent themselves to retellings of some of his favorite vignettes.

We’re using this blog to deliver the stories to a broader audience. Some of the posts are direct answers to Storyworth’s questions; others are stories that he wrote for other purposes. I’ll try to provide context and explanation where appropriate. Many of the images accompanying these stories were produced using DALL-E artificial intelligence, using prompts related to the stories.

Please feel free to engage with us by leaving comments, and enjoy!

-April (daughter of Elden)

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