Revisiting our ‘Wonder Years’ one tall tale at a time

Hung out in Lexington with some old friends today from my “Wonder Years.” That’s the age between around 12 and 20, the teenage years, when life comes at you like a Nolan Ryan fastball. That’s when we are trying to figure it all out, like girls, how to hit a baseball to opposite field and, did I mention, girls? We didn’t have Google in the 1970s. Life was hard.

We had dudes older who, for lack of a better word, were our mentors. Two of them – Kevin Sutton and Tim Wallin – were at our get-together. Looking back on those “Wonder Years,” I wondered why my little band of brothers were allowed to hang with these guys who were three years older.

My brother was their age and that may have been the connection. Kevin hung out with my brother, who was also three years older. But my brother was more interested in music than sports (he had little interest in sports) and Kevin was leaning more into sports. We assumed that’s how we cracked the circle.

They may have just needed a few more players for whatever game they were playing at Stafford’s Field, our two-sport venue. We always had a handful around the neighborhood, so we could at least give them numbers.

Left: (front to back) Keith Daniel, Bill Hornbuckle, Kevin Sutton. Right: Mark Maynard, Tim Wallin, Mike Staten.

Stafford’s was made for tackle football, a long stretch of ground with a huge tree on one end that served as a goal line.

When it came to playing baseball, the dimensions were tougher because of the narrowness of the lot, but the tree remained important. Hit it into the tree and it was a home run (it took most of us years to put one in that giant tree). Perhaps the biggest and most dangerous obstacle for the baseball field was traffic on the road that ran beside the lot. Kevin collided more than once with cars while going after balls. He came away fine from the collision. I couldn’t always say the same for the cars.

Tackling Kevin was like grabbing onto a runaway freight train and Wallin was like trying to catch a jackrabbit.

We had other “arenas” too. East Jepson Street was perfect for Wiffleball as was Greg Estep’s side yard where we played countless two-on-two games with obstacles like pine trees and a straight-line row of bushes to keep hitters honest. When basketball came around, we had courts at Estep’s driveway and Jerry Henderson’s backyard. No matter what the weather was, we were there when it was basketball season.

We played baseball on what we called the Sand Dunes too. The field was exactly what it sounds like. Nothing but sand. We played until the last ball was lost or the last bat broken (we used wooden bats because that’s all they made). Kevin said he still has a Johnny Bench model bat but it’s not for swinging purposes now. A friend got Bench to autograph it for him and made him a bat holder that he could showcase it on a wall at his home.

Our older friends were good teachers and resourceful. They taught us to not hit the ball on the label. Sometimes we didn’t listen. More than once those guys pounded a nail into a cracked bat and wrapped electric tape around the handle. But once the ball was lost – usually after Kevin or Tim sent it into orbit – the game was over.

The mischievousness in them came out at night as the many stories told Saturday would suggest. I’m not going there to protect the innocent, which these guys were not. They told stories that would make the Myth Busters blush.

It could be that their influence on us was not on the athletic fields. My group, which included the unflappable Bill Hornbuckle, could match them story for story. We won’t go there either because most of what was told would not hold up in court and besides, it has been 50 years since most of our mischief was perpetrated on the streets of Ashland. Surely there is a statute of limitations?

One thing that’s not a wonder is that Kevin and Tim enjoyed long and successful careers in law enforcement in Lexington and Ashland, respectively. I mean, talk about criminal minds!

We laughed and laughed as one story after another was delivered by each of us – Kevin and Tim, Bill, Keith Daniel and Mike Staten, whose backyard was another playground for us. We had another five or six of the old gang invited for our “reunion,” but they could not make it for one reason or another.

It was a day that was good for the soul, reminiscing about our “Wonder Years” in a much simpler time, sharing stories that hadn’t been told for maybe decades and picking up right where we left off.