The Hits Just Keep on Coming
Even at 85, my mom still surprises me. She and my stepfather live in Florida, but they’re still pining for spring to arrive.
Last year, for the first time in her life, my mom became a baseball fan. Sorry, Red Sox Nation, she couldn’t care less about Boston. But ask her about the batting order for the Tampa Bay Rays, and she’ll start dishing about her favorite players.
This from a woman whose only previous experience watching baseball was a half-century ago when she joined other moms to work at the snack bar while my older brother, Steve, and I played in West Side Little League in Manchester.
(My “minor league” career — I was one of those two innings and out bench-warmers — included a season playing for
St. Mary’s Bank.)
My mom would relish the spirit of baseball captured in this month’s cover story by writer Brion O’Connor and photographer Mark Bolton about the Coastal New England Baseball League. The story was inspired by Paul Milone, our sales and events manager, who plays in the amateur league. Paul also wrote a sidebar about his lifelong love for the game.
What moms want
My mom raised three sons and a daughter by herself, so those times she volunteered at the Little League canteen still resonate with me all these years later. Back then, she didn’t get much time to herself — among the favorite “gifts” moms would like to receive for Mother’s Day, as Assistant Editor Emily Reily notes in her essay.
Might we also suggest freshly cut lilacs or a new bush to plant?
“In New Hampshire, these woody shrubs bloom for about a two-week period with richly hued flowers in shades of deep purple to light lavender,” Matthew Mead writes in his “Living” feature.
Oh, the best places you’ll go!
This year’s Best Places feature — written by Reily, fellow Assistant Editor Elisa Gonzales Verdi and Managing Editor Emily Heidt — makes me pine for great summer days gone by.
In honor of my mom’s 85th birthday, her brothers and sisters and many of their children gathered at an Italian restaurant in Venice, Florida. Although we were 1,400 miles away from the Granite State, family vacation spots in New Hampshire loomed large in the stories we shared that night.
During the eight years before my mom remarried, we didn’t have a car, so we relied on visiting aunts and uncles to pack us into their station wagons for visits to the lakes, mountains and beaches. Our favorite destinations included Greenfield State Park, which my mom loved for its grassy fields — perfect for a game of wiffle ball with the cousins.
We also made trips to Newfound Lake, Lake Sunapee, Hampton Beach State Park and Pawtuckaway State Park in Raymond (back when the lake included a giant boulder you could dive from.)
When they visited from Wisconsin, my Uncle Roland and Aunt Catherine and their four children always made White Lake State Park in Tamworth one of their destinations. We loved how we could hike all the way around the 125-acre glacial lake, which features a 2-mile loop trail. It’s a great place to picnic, though one year, there were so many bees we couldn’t close a jam jar without trapping one inside. (But no one got stung.)
Crunch time
The best place to be in New Hampshire on May 2 happens to be my hometown. That’s when the Greater Manchester Chamber hosts “the world’s largest taco tour.” To gear up for the downtown party, former Assistant Editor Caleb Jagoda chronicles his culinary adventure from last year’s Taco Tour Manchester, and Gonzales Verdi helps you size up your particular brand of tortilla-ness with her Taco Quiz.
And that’s how we take a few big bites out of May. Enjoy.
