That summer of 1957 while we were living in the apartment on the second floor of the Klopp’s house, I remember playing a game of softball.

Well, it wasn’t really a game. It was just a few guys and me pitching and trying to hit a few balls, nothing special.

It was my uncle Reed (my mother’s brother, three years older than I was, so he would have been eleven at the time), and a couple of his friends. I can’t be sure which friends were there on that day. It was definitely a Sunday, of that I’m sure.

That day I kind of think it was the Botz boys (the twins Ronnie and Roddie) that he brought along, but I wouldn’t want to swear to it.

The property next door to the Klopps was Werner’s Grocery Store, and they had a largish yard out back. It wasn’t ideal for playing a real game of softball because it had some weird kind of metal wickets strewn around the yard. Almost like a croquet court, but the wickets, if that’s what they were, were too narrow for any croquet balls that I had ever seen to get through. So I never had any idea what those metal things were.

But though the yard wasn’t any good for a softball game, it was fine for playing a little catch and tossing and hitting a softball. Just a little bit of fun.

Of course, I was absolutely no good at hitting or tossing or catching a ball, so I have no idea why Reed had brought his friends over to me for softball. They had much better places to place catch and hit and toss in just about any other place in Richland if that’s what they wanted to do.

All I remember is someone tossing the ball (maybe Reed) and someone else trying to hit it (maybe Ronnie), and you know how those foul balls go way up in the air and behind the hitter and in a regular ball park, like a little league park, there will be a net behind home plate to catch those stray foul balls? Well, of course, there was no such net in that yard behind Werner’s Grocery Store, and whoever was trying to hit that softball managed to hit one of those stray foul balls that really went way, way up in the air and back, back and with a precision as if it had aimed in just that direction, it sailed directly into and through the lone window at the top of the back of Werner’s Grocery Store.

The back of the store was wide and tall and there was one tiny window, only one, near the top, and somehow that stray foul ball had made a beeline right for that window.

Needless to say, that ended that game of toss and hit and catch.

To our credit we decided we would go to the store the next day and fess up and try to pay for the broken window. We’d all meet the following morning and pool whatever funds we could scrape together, then go see old man Werner.

Later that day, it must have been a Sunday as Werner’s was closed, I saw Randy and told him what had happened. He looked grim. He said we were in big trouble now. In those days he liked to use the Dragnet theme for emphasis. Dum, duh, duh, dum. Before talking to Randy, I thought that by fessing up we were doing the right thing, but afterwards, I was worried and thought perhaps we had better leave well enough alone and let the broken window be forever a mystery. Would old man Werner call the cops on us?

The next day, as promised, Reed and his two companions came over and we pooled our cash resources. It didn’t come to much more than a dollar in coins as I recall. Maybe a buck sixty-eight?

But into the lions den, meaning Werner’s Grocery Store we went.

And we didn’t even have to ask for Mr. Werner. He was standing right there when we entered. Old man Werner turned out to be a relatively young fellow, probably in his late thirties, I’d say.

He took one look as us, and with a big smile on his face, he said, “I think I know what you came for.” And he disappeared into the back of the store.

He re-emerged moments later, still smiling, holding the softball in his hand.

We offered the coins to pay for the window but he waved them away and said we didn’t have to worry about it.

For a long time thereafter, whenever I’d travel that alley and go past the back of the store, I’d check to see if that window had been repaired.

It never was.