What Else Happened During the Summer of 1946?

Let's see... Well, I turned twelve that summer. Early in the summer I was taken to McKinney for hernia repair surgery. This was something I had been troubled with since birth as far as I kmow. Anyway, the surgeon in the hospital there did well by me. No more problem.

I was on my back in the hospital for a week. Boring? Of course. I read a lot. Somebody brought me a "big little" book which I still remember the title of. It was called "War in the Jungle," a Terry and the Pirates story. What else? I don't recall.

I has a baseball magazine and used it while abed to write for autographs of my favorite players c/o their clubs. E.g., an address might read:

Dixie Walker
Brooklyn Baseball Club
Brooklyn, New York

I only got one response, an autographed picture of Hank Greenberg from the Detroit Tigers. Otherwise the whole experience was a huge disappointment.

Grand Prairie's swimming pool opened that summer. While I had to take it easy so as not to rerupture the rupture, I was allowed to ride my bike and to swim. I taught myself to swim that summer. No doubt I had a great tan spending as much time as a did there. Popular music hits
were played over the loudspeaker, and two I recall being played a lot were "Pretending" by Andy Russell and "To Each His Own" by the Ink Spots.

Other than a lot of swimming I don't actually remember a whole lot of what I did that summer. Exceot dor keeping up with baseball. I'd get up in the mornings, go outside and bring in the Dallas Morning News, and devour the sports section. Normally there would be twelve box scores in the paper: four Texas League, four National League, and four American league. And I would go over them all line by line. Usually in that order. At night I'd listen to the Rebels games, sometimes the Cats. I heard the major league All Star game that July, including Ted Williams hitting the homer off the "balloon" ball, as they called it.

Once school started I played softball even though my folks told me not to. The feared I'd tear my stitches loose. But I didn't. I was center fielder for Mrs. Thompson's seventh grade boys team.