I HAD heered a whole lot 'bout them games of foot ball they have in New
York, so while I was thar I jist cum to the conclusion I'd see a game of
it, so went out to one of their city pasters to see a game of foot ball.
Wall now I must say I didn't see much ball playin' of any kind. All I
got to see wuz about fifty or sixty ambulances, and I think about that
many surgons and phisicians. Wall, from what I could see of the game
I calculate they needed all of them. I saw one feller and 'bout fifty
others had him down, and it jist looked as though they wuz all trying
to get a kick at him. They had a half back and a quarter back; I suppose
when they got through with that feller he wuz a hump back. Anyhow, if
that's what they call foot ball playin', your Uncle Josh don't want any
foot ball in his'n.
I never played but one game of ball in my life that I kin remember on,
and don't believe that I ever will forgit that. You see it wuz along
in the spring time of the yeer, and the weather wuz purty warm and
sunshiny, and the boys sed to me, "Uncle, we'd like to have you help us
play a game of base ball." I sed, "Boys, I'm gittin' a little too old
fer those kinds of passtimes, but I'll help you play one game, I'll be
durned if I don't." Wall, we got out in the paster and wuz gittin' ready
to play; we got the bases and bats put around in thar places, and a
buckit of drinkin' water up in the fence corner, whar we could get a
drink when we wanted it. We didn't have any bleachers, but we had thirty
or forty hogs, and they wuz the best rooters you ever seen; jist then I
happened to look around and thar wuz the biggest billy goat I ever saw
in all my life. You ought to seen the boys a-gittin' out of the paster;
I would hav got out too, but I got stuck in the fence. Wall, you ought
to hav seen that billy goat a-gittin' me through the fence. He didn't
git me all the way through, cos I wuz half way through when he got thar;
but he got the last half through. I didn't make any home run, but I wuz
the only feller what had a score of the game; I couldn't see the score,
but I had it. Every time I'd go to sot down I knowed jist exactly how
the game stood.
They hav a good many new fangled games now, but when they git anything
that can beet a game of base ball with a billy goat fer a battery,
durned if I don't want to see it.
The Punkin Centre and Paw Paw Valley Railroad
WONDERS will never cease--we've got a railroad in Punkin Centre now;
oh, we're gittin' to be right smart cityfied. I guess that's about
the crookedest railroad that ever wuz bilt. I think that railroad runs
across itself in one or two places; it runs past one station three
times. It's so durned crooked they hav to burn crooked wood in the
ingine. Wall, the fust ingine they had on the Punkin Centre wuz
a wonderful piece of masheenery. It had a five-foot boiler and a
seven-foot whissel, and every time they blowed the whissel the durned
old ingine would stop.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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