When I was a kid I went to pretty much every local ballgame with my dad. The rest of the family didn't care to go as much. Everybody would go once or twice a year and every now and then my brother or my sister would tag along but they weren't really interested in the actual game. They just wanted something to do.
I would be ready and waiting for daddy at the front door pretty much every Tuesday and Friday night in basketball season and Friday's during football season. Just when I was sure that he wasn't going to make it, he would swoop in and scoop me up kinda like Santa leaving presents under the tree. He barely stopped the car and we would be zooming off to the ballgame together.
He would pull up right in front of the fieldhouse and ignore all parking restrictions and we would rush through the door (we had season tickets and they knew us) usually just as the National Anthem was beginning to play. We would pause to pay our respects and hurry to our seats as soon as the song ended. Sometime we would be even later and we would have to rush to the floor to see the first tipoff of the game before we went to our seats.
When tournament time came (we made it to the tournaments every year in basketball) we would head to Charleston with the whole family in tow. Supposedly the games would be sold out and we would need tickets for 5 people. Daddy would just pull up in front of the Civic Center and usually in minutes would have 5 tickets that he bought from scalpers.
One time we went to Williamson to a ballgame. Somebody actually let off tear gas after the game. I was 10 or 12 at the time. Daddy had to carry me out of the fieldhouse. I heard him telling the other men he knew to hold his breath because of his military training. I was too young to know what happened but he took care of me like any father would. Nowadays there would be a big investigation into such a thing. I don't know if anything ever came out of it back then though.
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