I guess I’m not particularly looking forward to Spring on the horizon when it’s inevitable I will be traveling over to Minnesota to join our croquet-playing group at Carlson’s beautiful Xanadu Farm in Scott County to knock the wooden balls around Doug and Livia’s beautifully manicured double-sized court, where the players will be dressed in all white and acting like some characters out of an Edwardian “Masterpiece Theater” production, making croquet into not just a game, but a pageant and a punishment for those not properly decked out.

It brings back painful memories of the kids on Scranton snickering whenever Grandpa brought the monstrous box out of the old barn and began to set up its contents.    

It was Grandpa’s frugality and wistfulness that elicited all those snickers from the neighbor kids.  Grandpa, of course, meant well when he dragged out the croquet set his father had given his kids back around 1889, when Grandpa was ten. In its day it had been a beauty: Every time he brought it out, I’d ask the eternal question “Geeze, Grandpa, can’t we ever get a NEW croquet set like the one the neighbors have on Blair Street?”

The eternal answer in that hollow old voice of his was: “Nossir, if it was good enough for Father, it’s good enough for you kids.” “Father” was old Dave Wood, my namesake who had died many years earlier. When the neighbor kids began snickering, I wished mightily that the clunky old set had been buried along with old Dave. The set elicited disdain because the paint had worn off the mallet handles and you couldn’t tell from the deep brown patina on the oak starting stakes who followed whom. The croquet balls were oaken and dented from being “killed” for half a century and were twice the size and weight of the new set over on Blair Street.

As I whined about a new set from Gilbertson’s General store, Grandpa set about in his meticulous way to pace off the official dimensions he knew by heart since childhood. He set the wickets (wood, not wire), then, with his huge bony hands he carefully tied strips of old bedsheet to the top of each wicket, so we wouldn’t trip over them in the heat of battle.

Every spring, the older kids would scoff and cross Earle Street where there were glossy new stripes on every ball, colorful stripes on every stake. When all the mallets were gone, the smaller fry and the weaklings trudged back to the Wood manse and settled for the ten-ton Victorian version that awaited us. After a short fight about the order of play we began, and the wondrous click click click of mallet head on ball was heard on Scranton Street and my embarrassment over their advanced age disappeared in a glorious summer Sunday.

The big old wooden cannon balls staggered lazily through the wooden wickets. Mick Johnson “killed” mine driving it into Mrs. Gabe Nelson’s asparagus patch. The sun shone down on our innocence, birds chattered up in the gnarled piss elms that surrounded our house, the mallets and balls went click, click, click until my grandmother went cluck, cluck, cluck and called me in for supper.

But not before we carefully put away the equipment. Grandpa saw to that, packing away the mallets in a huge maple box. When all was safe inside, Grandpa slid the cunning wooden cover shut with a jerk of a leather strap on the open end. Four kids were assigned to horse the box back into the old barn ardware.

Now that spring is beckoning, I recently opened great grandad’s diary to April 1885, when his youngest son was in second grade:

“Went to town too [sic] [railroad] station. Pic’d up crokay game. Will have sport w/ children to morrow.” 

And I suppose I’ll be heading for Xanadu Farm in the not too distant future, ready to be harassed for my shoddy attire and hopeless game.