My grandparents, Harry and Tillie Zellers, lived in one of those duplex houses (or half a house as we sometimes called them) on South Race Street when I was growing up. In the other half of the house lived Walter and Ruth Spangler, in fact, if I recall correctly, Walter and Ruth owned the house and my grandparents rented their half from them.

Walter owned some property out back across the alley where the Richland playground was located. He had a bunch of large cages that housed several types of exotic birds.

I only recall two of the birds very clearly.

There was a peacock that stubbornly refused to display its plumage whenever I was around.

And there was a crow.

It was a rather large crow. I understand that there is no consistent distinction between crows and ravens, so it’s possible that this was actually a raven.

But everyone called it a crow. It never said “Nevermore”, so crow it was.

As I said, it was housed in a cage right next to the playground which had a baseball diamond surrounded by spectator seats, where it used to host the Richland baseball games. My uncle Mark used to be on the team. At some point another baseball field was built next to the carnival grounds and the games were moved there, and the Richland playground became exclusively the use of the summer playground.

But while it hosted the ball games there was, of course, an umpire calling balls and strikes and especially foul balls. And that crow learned to imitate the umpire.

I remember well hearing that crow call out “Foul ball!” in an eerie voice that sounded like neither male nor female.

I was told by my peers that it had a much larger repertoire of phrases than “Foul ball”, including some profanity, but I never heard it utter any of those. I suspect it did know a few other baseball terms, but I strongly doubt the profanity.

Sadly, like so many memories from my youth in Richland, I have no photos of that foul ball bird, and the photo above is simply one that I found on the internet.

Below is a photo of the playground that I took when I drove through Richland back in August of 2013. Walter Spangler’s cages are no longer there; they used to be in the distance beyond where those fences are. The red building in the center is, I think, the garage at the back of the property of the Spangler’s house that they shared with my grandparents.

That tree you see in the foreground was not there  in the 1960s; it must have been planted sometime in the 1970s, I would guess. The orangish building on the right (it used to be painted plain white in my day) is the playground headquarters where arts and crafts and other activities were conducted. I wonder if they still are?