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At best this story contains a blurry-eyed, self-important resemblance to The Wolf of Wall Street.  But this story is rarely at its best.

I used to skip school every couple of weeks and kill the hours in a baseball card shop. I didn’t drive there all buzzed-up, zim-zamming through traffic in a Lamborghini. No, I walked through parking lots and empty fields, bramble-bushes extending their habitats by sticking briars to my shoe laces, cuffs of my pants, my socks. The scene did have a sort of Scorcese-feel, soundtracked as it was by the starched arena rock blasting through my headphones. The card shop owner (not Matthew McConaughey doing Bobby McFerrin stuff on his chest) dealt in bulk, and sold the common cards at three cents a piece, maybe a nickel. All I had to do was wait for a player to get famous then my penny stock card would shoot up in value. There is the resemblance to The Wolf of Wall Street, cheap penny stocks, and also don’t forget that rock music blasting.

The shop had recent Topps sets displayed in trays by the long window in back. I loaded up on 1983 rookie cards. Only the cheap ones. Wade Boggs‘ rookie card was $1.25 per card, too expensive for my penny-pinching ways. (Boggs’ card is worth $20 these days.) Ryne Sandberg was 50 cents, which wasn’t a bad price, but they were always out of stock. (Sandberg’s card now is worth $20.) Somehow, the shop owner overlooked Tony Gwynn. I ended up with 13 Tony Gwynn rookie cards. Over the years, those Gwynn cards increased in value. (Currently at $ 32.) When unemployed or under-employed and totally broke living in Providence, Rhode Island, I sold off a Gwynn here and there to re-invest my earnings in six-packs of Hope beer, cans of tomato sauce/paste, garlic, and onions. The cards were worth $15 back then. The Gwynn card was my only good investment. I have at least ten each of Jim Eisenreich, Eric Show, Mike Moore, Storm Davis, David Green, Bud Black, and a couple each of Frank Viola, Willie McGee, and Gary Gaetti (I unloaded Gaetti after he waved around that batting glove). None of those cards paid off in the end. Speculating a total of $20 on rookie cards is only a bad investment when wearing the blinders of hindsight–$20 back then is worth about $45 now. However, I would have been unable to keep for very long that $20 in a money-bearing account, to say nothing of a Charlie Brown bank on my dresser. And for what? A couple of bags of groceries? I am not kicking myself for spending the money all those years ago. It was just the way I lived my life, and maybe still do. Probably I should’ve wised up at some point. Wisdom I am projecting onto Tom Niedenfuer, card 477 from the 1983 Topps set. I have 32 Tom Niedenfuer rookie cards.

Tom Niedenfuer had a solid 1982 season. He fit in with the team – they gave him the nickname Buff because they said he had a big head like a buffalo. His place in the Dodgers bullpen for the 1983 season was safe. So safe that the 23-year old Niedenfuer got married before heading off to Vero Beach for Spring Training in 1983. Why not? He had a nice job in LA, the team was successful, his teammates liked him, he was earning good money, his path through life would be briar-less. Over the next few years he became the Dodgers closer whenever Steve Howe battled drugs. Often. Niedenfuer was the Dodgers’ closer at the end of the 1985 season. He had a rough time in the National League Championship, twice giving up leads late in games, which ultimately sent the St. Louis Cardinals to the World Series, where they lost to the Kansas City Royals. Maybe Niedenfuer’s wife didn’t support him after he gave up those big home runs in the 1985 play-offs? By 1986 they were divorced. There is probably a reason more primal than unkind fates for the divorce. LA nightlife and proximity to Hollywood starlets might’ve turned Niedenfuer’s big buffalo head. After the 1987 season Niedenfuer married Judy Landers, the actress, Stacks from BJ and the Bear, Angie from Vega$, Sara Joy on Madame’s Place and a guest on almost every other TV show from about 1981 to 1988, half of the famous Landers sisters. Judy Landers.

And looking at his life through a few websites, I surmise that he made his true match with Judy Landers. My imaginings carry a lot of weight in this matter and saying that he wised up by marrying a Hollywood starlet could be misguided. And yet, 27 years later Tom Niedenfuer and wife Judy Landers are still together. They are parents to Lindsey and Kristy, another set of famous Landers sisters. These Landers sisters are in the band Official Hot Mess, which seems to have gone dormant after releasing Fallin’ Angel (2007) and doing an apparent residency at the Playboy Mansion. I’m over-reaching here (and I’ve done it before–I thought Willie Nelson wrote Red-Headed Stranger in the misery of a divorce, then found out he and his wife hatched the song cycle road-tripping back to Austin after a ski vacation in Colorado) but maybe Tom Niedenfuer realized his first marriage was a mistake, and in meeting Judy Landers he changed his life, maybe he’s gone vegetarian like his daughters, maybe he does yoga, maybe he always did, what do I know? I hope he’s happy. (He is.) Just on the surface of his life he did things about which many people fantasize: being a big league pitcher and marrying an actress. And he retired before he was 32 years old. He never became a Hall of Fame pitcher, his rookie cards didn’t buy me a nice car, not even a six-pack of beer. I still have all 32 of those cards.

The current value of Niedenfuer’s rookie card is 29 cents. I’m too lazy to figure out how greatly they’ve appreciated in 2014 dollars. There is no need. Does a market exist for 32 of them at 29 cents a piece? Having them, holding on to them, knowing which box they are in, is just a reality I’ve made in my life. I cannot discard things. Baseball cards are flash cards to me. Or family photos. And a person can get stuck in one deep rut looking at 32 of the same photo. I hold onto the past. If it had been me giving up those home runs in 1985 I’d be dwelling on them still, studying news clippings, VHS tapes close at hand to mull over which pitch I should’ve thrown to Ozzie Smith or to Jack Clark, or trying to will a bird into the path of the ball.

A movie of a teenager sorting through baseball cards alone in his green-paneled bedroom doesn’t have the glamour of Leonardo DiCaprio throwing a party in a Manhattan office. And the bald future of that kid (maybe not hounded by the FBI and maybe not jailed for money laundering) wondering why the things he put stock in didn’t pay off…hey, shit, well maybe that is a movie to which we can all relate?

COMINGS AND GOINGS:  

     Ms. Stockton Beautiful, Kay Lee Page sent out a thank you letter to all attendees of the beauty pageant. She invited everyone to attend the annual talent show. It will be held March 15th and 16th at the high school auditorium (gym), unless everyone decides to attend. Should the line on March 15th stretch out to the parking lot or even beyond it, chances are pageant organizers can scare up a larger venue for the second night of the talent show, March 16th. This year’s theme is Stockton Does Dallas.  Page will be dressed as Michelle Stevens.

     Some city employees are going to a Las Vegas retreat. It is a virtual retreat attended by pulling their chairs into the conference room to stare at a computer screen after putting in another soul-crushing eight-hour workday. Employees from cities, towns and tribes across American will be there at the virtual retreat, Our Town, Your Town.  Mayor Shortall points out that this a way to cut down on the city’s carbon footprint. She added it is a wonderful savings for Stockton’s taxpayers as it saves on travel costs and lodging. It is an even better deal for those who don’t pay their taxes but take city services.

     Social Science teacher Daniel Stollen is going to the Great White Way! Well to East 42nd Street at least.  He’s going to the United Nations in New York City.  He has promised a slide-show presentation accompanied by his homemade music on the hammer dulcimer and acoustic guitars. Look for the announcement pinned on the bulletin board near the rest rooms in the Stockton Public Library.

          City officials bungling into a surplus on the holiday budget helped with the roads. The surplus, which was thrown down in grit and salt, came from shuttering the gas-guzzling cherry pickers. The cherry pickers are used after the holiday season to take out of misery the sodden snowmen lifting their old top hats while trying to twist their necks into the metal cables hanging from the lamp posts, cable latches clanking like death knells, snowmen up there still smiling and still lifting but no longer merry on dead January nights. The shuttering of the cherry pickers was a direct result of the high covering of snow piles in the middle of Main Street. City workers scampered up the snow piles, unlatched the ornaments, then slid them down to a waiting co-worker for loading into the back of a city truck. That was a happy accident of the massive snowpiles. The bad accidents were the car crashes due to city plowmen being overzealous in their plowing. It became sort of a wager between them to see who could make the biggest pile without causing an avalanche back onto Main Street. In the wager ‘someone’ inadvertently covered up the traffic signal over-hanging the corner of East Main and Stockton Avenue. For a few hours the top of the snow pile glowed green, yellow, red, before new snow smothered it completely. Then came the car crashes from drivers not knowing who had the right-of-way. No major injuries were reported, a blow to local attorneys.  There are always whispers though. In a stop-gap measure the city set out yield signs, propped up in Christmas tree stands (they’d been clanging around in the back of a city truck since workers dismantled Santa’s House a month ago.) ‘Someone’ shoveled out the traffic signal. Only one signal cover was cracked during the shoveling. The situation, though avoidable, had been growing for a while, and not just from the record amount of snowfall this year. Old-timers might remember when plows pushed snow to the sides of Main Street downtown. Accordant civility saw people parked over the outside lane on Main Street, basically moving the parking spots into that lane. Stockton City police knew the parking spots were plowed in, so they issued no tickets. It was a certain precaution one took while living here in these seasons. Those ancestoral plowmen, spurred on by competition and No-Doz, were just as zealous, maybe overly aggressively so, as their modern-day sons. Gathering late at Messiahs’s after a night of plowing, laughing over beers, legs jittering like crazy under tables, talking too fast about how ‘someone’ pushed snow right up against the doors of the Jacobs Pharmacy. That’s how they were, half-plowed themselves, in those wildcat days of the Plows-Down ’80s. So geeked on pushing snow off the outside lanes and over the marked parking spots that invariably snow would get shoved, like a pillow-y twerp, partway over the sidewalk. Forcing the early morning shoveling of doorways by merchants and their staff, those were the twerps with their little bellies and soft chairs behind cash registers. The Downtown Association of Merchants complained of hampered trade. The solution from the one council member was to suggest bikini-clad gals behind them cash boxes. The snow problem was resolved by re-directing the angle of the snowplows.  Now shooting snow in the middle of the Main Street creating snow piles on the inside lanes instead of on the outside lanes. Parking spots and the all-important sidewalks left as clear as a conveyor for shoppers. The height of the snow piles this year look fantastic, but with most fantastic-looking things they are dangerous. It is difficult to see around them, the snow piles, not that fantastic-looking guy, fit and rippled in a perfectly-tailored shirt, hairline like a novel, who invited you in all those years ago, it was Italy and you thought you’d have opportunities like this your whole life. Who could ever know? You got older, your mirror took your looks day after day. Why is it always about looks? But it is and you got older. Oh please just one day from the past. You got older. You have to wear glasses because your eyesight has weakened. The glasses magnify the gray wrinkles under your eyes. You have trouble seeing around the massive snow piles downtown. You aren’t the only one. There have been more car crashes in this winter season than ever before. Even that sentence got mangled. 

          BE ADVISED: The clear roads in Stockton are causing some drivers to act as if they are dressed in sandals, shorts, tank top, and headband, driving, that is, as imprudently as if it is summertime.  Black ice doesn’t happen in summertime, people. The roads are dangerous even when cleared in these seasons. Especially in the darkness, alone, car stereo pulling down “Strangehold”, first your mind drifts, then your headlights slink over the center lane. When you notice and make a quick lurch to get back into your lane–BLACK ICE–those brain waves may your last. Don’t do that. Also, our roads don’t plow themselves before, during and after snowstorms–watch out for those ubiquitous plows!

City Council meetings have gone surprising well of late, highly attended by council members and the Stockton citizenry.  Usually these mid-winter months see listless meetings lightly attended. Cold weather and snowy roads have been the pests in the past. No one knew while driving to the meeting, or anywhere really, if they’d slide off the road or get stuck on some snow mass. Also, the meeting room is overheated, adding another lumpish wintertime burden, shedding layer after layer to regulate one’s body temperature. And for what? To hear a neighbor and some disagreeable local politician bleat on about the lowest bid for chain link fence? Slushy shoes dampening socks during the meetings was a whole other thing. The itch from foot mold can drive a person nuts, kicking walls or bathtubs in an attempt to re-direct the pain of the fucked-up itch. However this year, even with all the snow and cold, attendance has been up.  UP.  At the most recent meeting the Stockton citizenry, along with the council members joining in finally, gave a standing ovation to Road Commissioner Dick Booker.  “Way to go Dick,” rang through the function room in the civic center.

    Clear roads or not, winter still imperils drivers.                                  Middle school teacher Kris Richards complained that there are not enough spaces at the middle school. A grumble was heard, get there earlier, we know why you are late, cough cough. Richards continued by saying, the streets around the school are either already marked as no parking to keep away those creeps from last year idling in their cars 101 feet from the school property line, or the streets are plowed high with snow. She had zero interest in discrediting the hard-working plowmen, knowing that the snow must be pushed somewhere, nevertheless there should be some uniformity in parking places for the teachers.  School Parking Lot Headmaster Neil Turner had no mercy for Richard’s plight.  He warned, There are certain precautions one must take out here in this season.  You park in the wrong spot you will be towed. Well that pissed her off, she raised her voice saying that her car has been towed twice since school reconvened after the winter break. Towed away she suspects by the plowman with whom she argued.  She hit him with her purse like Ruth Buzzi. School Parking Lot Headmaster Turner had no mercy for that reference either.

     Cranes may be circled around the Old Lutheran Church and Rectory, but demolition plans have been frozen for now. Both hands of God came down, divinely heaving aside the wrecking ball as if in a game of totem tennis, wrapping it around the crane. One hand came down with COLD across the knuckles. It dropped mountains of snow and ice. No crane operator could work in such baleful conditions. The other hand came down with LAWYER UP on the knuckles and the valleys-between-the-knuckles. It dropped a lawsuit on the desk of city attorney Patsy Grobble. Turns out the Old Lutheran Church and Rectory is occupied by a couple, stinking of mold and scabs, and they say somewhere in one of the stacks of old TV Guides and baskets of bent tacks, old clothes and hymnals, they have a valid renter’s agreement from the owner of the property.  They are taking the city to court. City attorney Grobble says there is no documentation listing the Old Lutheran Church and Rectory as rental properties. It’ll be quite a court case when no one has any papers to support anything. The owner of the property Ted Ruston bought the buildings and land from the city twelve years ago. He burbled about plans for retail spaces anchored by a punk-rock aerobic workout center, which were so hot back in the early days of the Iraq War. Like most workout plans, his sunk out of sight forgotten. Before long the structure took on a sorry state. Sometimes after a good rain the Old Lutheran Church and Rectory will catch a glimpse of itself on the surface of Joseph Street.  Then it will shake tears from the belfry and more down the steeple, crying over how out-of-shape it has gotten, like you, seeing your reflection on your computer screen, late, after wasting another night searching for references from around the time of the Iraq War. Attempts to reach Ruston to discover why he let it fall into disrepair were as successful as his plans for a punk-rock aerobic workout center. He keeps no local address. As for the couple living there they said their communication with him is done over the phone. When asked how they pay their rent, they said over the phone. It is likely no renter’s agreement is in place and that they have been squatting in the rectory for God knows how long.  Though petitioned, God was unavailable for comment. But the couple said they have been living there for over nine years. Action on an eviction notice takes seven months to complete and the rights of squatters to claim a property kick in at ten years. Meaning, of course, they’d take claim of the property before they can be run from it. Attorney Grobble is convinced the squatters lawsuit will be thrown out of court, like Ron Artest, Stephen Jackson, Jermaine O’Neal, Ben Wallace, Anthony Johnson, Reggie Miller, Chauncey Billups, Derrick Coleman, Elden Campbell and poor David Harrison after the Malice at the Palace back in the early days of the Iraq War. However, to further scuttle demolition plans, the owner Ruston has a pattern of paying his property taxes every 30 months. Tax evaders in Stockton take note: Property taxes that go unpaid for 36 months put a property into foreclosure, which in this case would hand the Old Lutheran Church and Rectory back to the city. Ruston is in month 29 of his most recent cycle.  In what must be a first on city records, Stockton is hoping a homeowner doesn’t pay property taxes. The city plans to demolish the Old Lutheran Church and Rectory, rendering it into junk, piling it somewhere to rot out of sight, then pave down the spot for another parking lot.

10-year-old hunter KEEGAN WHEELER is quite a shooter.  Wheeler went out hunting with his step-father VERNON HURTSBEE, former owner of Hurtsbee Liquors. It was the young hunter’s first time with a muzzle-loader.  And he killed his first ever deer, a doe. He’d bagged turkeys and geese previously, and a few fish with his b-b gun.   Most impressive was the fact that Wheeler felled the doe with his second shot, second ever with a muzzle loader.  DNR authorities confirmed the killing but were more concerned with the fatal wound suffered by Vernon Hurtsbee.  DNR investigators learned that Hurtsbee fired a shot that entered the neck of the doe, and they also confirmed that Keegan Wheeler’s initial shot with the muzzle loader badly missed the doe.  Tommy’s second shot blew apart the head of the doe that he stood over displaying not a whit of nerves.  Keegan Wheeler was surprised as anyone that his not-so-good-stepping-anymore step-father died in the hospital.  He thought he killed that son-of-a-bitch in the field.