Hank loved to shock people. He once had a pet rooster that he led around on a leash. He would take Roger the rooster to the ball field in his old green Ford and then proceeded to take him everywhere he went on the ball field. He always had to be different.
Hank’s look was different, too. His face always had day old stubble, and an unlit cigar would dangle from the corner of his mouth. He would chew on that cigar so much that you could see the tobacco fall apart in his mouth and lodge between his teeth. He always had on long pants and a long sleeve shirt and his shoes of the dress type and always polished. His complexion was rough and ruddy. His body and face looked much older than the forty-something that he was. Caring what others thought of his appearance never entered his mind though.
His speech was rough and, at times, he would stammer a little. His eyes would either flutter or close with each stammer. When making a point he would sometimes grit his teeth and every muscle in his body would tighten.
And the way he always blew his nose. Hank would grab his nose between his forefinger and thumb, lean his head forward a little, blow his nose, and let it drip to the ground. I don’t think I ever saw him use a hanky. And he seemed to blow his nose a lot. He never had an embarrassed look on his face about anything that he did.
At times, I thought Hank wasn’t a very understanding man. As time went on, I found that he understood people all too well. He wasn’t afraid to let anyone know how he thought about relevant or irrelevant issues.
We very seldom saw him in the fall or winter. I guess that Hank pursued his other causes during baseball’s off-season. He never spent much time watching other sports unless he had an idea to share about baseball or wanted to make a statement about something that he thought was wrong with our society.
You see, Hank saw things in a different light. He was not concerned with material things. Hank was only concerned with a few simple things like baseball and nature.
Not too many people would listen to him because of the way he looked and dressed and because he had no regular job that he could lay claim to. Most adults are concerned with issues like the type of car you drive or how much money you make and have. People also give you the “looks test” without even knowing they are doing it. It reminds me of the story about the Little Prince where there was a man dressed in Turkish or Indian garb. This man was addressing a very important meeting but no one took his ideas seriously because of the way he dressed. This same man, in a fancy three piece suit and tie, addressed the same meeting years later and talked about the same ideas in his speech that he had given years before to the same group. This time his ideas were received with open arms. Most of us fall into that trap. Not Hank, what you saw was what you got.
Hank didn’t like the long hair of the 60’s. I really think he didn’t like it because it took away from the clean-cut image baseball had. Anyway, Hank ‘took a stand’ against long hair. As I said before, we didn’t see Hank at basketball games in the winter. But, there was one time when he attended a game and he carried a mop with him. Hank was known to carry unusual items with him so it wasn’t too much of a surprise to see him carrying a mop with him at a basketball game. I bet some people did wonder what he was going to do with it. Maybe he thought the team or coach was horrible and needed mopping up. It didn’t take very long to find out the use of the mop, though.
Hank sat down in the middle of the gymnasium on the front row of the top section. He stood the mop up, with the head of the mop up in the air, the handle resting on the wooden floor. Hank then took his hat off and draped the mop head over his head forming a crude-looking sort of wig. Some people were confused and didn’t know what it stood for. I don’t know whether I heard it at the game or later at school just why Hank wore that mop. You know the old saying that has something to do with the hair looking like a mop. Someone figured it out. I don’t think Hank ever said why he did it, but Hank was showing all those long-haired hippies just what he thought they looked like.
Hank frequented some of the local drinking clubs and would on occasion let his opinions flow. He was so fed up with some of the customers and their long hair that one day he took his gun in with him and laid it on the counter right next to a couple of guys with long hair. He proceeded to talk about how he hated long-haired people and that he had the cure for long hair. Those guys all scattered very quickly and never had much to do with Hank after that.
I wonder what Hank would think of other crazes or fads like tattoos, guys wearing earrings, and earrings being worn on all sorts of body parts. I am sure that he would have come up with some way of making a statement. He would probably lead a pet pig with a nose ring and earrings or he himself would have worn the largest, gaudiest clip-ons all over his clothes and body. He might even put a large ring around his neck to top it all off. And the tattoos, he would probably wear a full-faced tattoo in the likeness of Ronald Reagan or George Bush. I am not sure how many times Hank used the mop head to make his point, but it certainly got the message across, and it was an event that many still remember 30 years later.
