For Clarence these were truly good times. In June of ‘51 he and Carol bought their first house, a small Cape Cod style advertised as “the perfect starter home,” at 435 S 68th Street in West Allis for $12,500. Then on Feb 11, 1952 a second daughter, Diane Margaret, was born, immediately adding more energy to an already active household. Meanwhile, the job kept him on the go, often requiring travel throughout the state in support of veteran’s job training and financial assistance programs. And as if that wasn’t enough, about this time he started what would become a ten-year stretch of taking night classes in the areas of insurance, business law, accounting, public speaking, even a Spanish class, though by his own account that last one didn’t go so well.
He was now a busy, family man and clearly family life sat well with him from the beginning. In the coming years, as the girls began to grow up, he would be only too happy to take them skating or hiking at nearby Greenfield Park on the weekends. He himself was almost childlike in his enthusiasm for anything having to do with Christmas time.
And along with a very understanding wife he had his sense of humor. Unfortunately here is where the written record falls short. But anyone who ever knew C.J. remembered how he could laugh – and make others laugh. One quick example was a line he wrote in a letter to his brother-in-law, Hugh McDaniell, in 1959. Recalling Carol’s first attempts at learning how to drive a car he joked about “how nice it was having fresh meat on the table every night.”
For fun he still had his monthly poker parties with some of the boys from the office. And whenever he got the chance he liked to take in a Packer game at State Fair Park in Milwaukee, or a Badger football game in Madison.
Then there was baseball. When the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1953 it introduced the city to major league baseball, and vice versa. The Braves became tenants of the newly built County Stadium and C.J. quickly became a frequent visitor. It would prove to be a brief, star-crossed love affair between Milwaukee and the Braves. Within four years of their arrival the Braves put the city on center stage, winning the World Series in ‘57 and almost winning it again in ‘58. Future Hall of Fame players like Warren Spahn, Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews became, in those less cynical times, true sports heroes, men who were looked up to as a matter of civic pride. And County Stadium itself became a sports fan’s paradise, where every home game was an event, a packed house full of boisterous fans. In May of ’54 Time magazine went so far as to call the stadium “an insane asylum with bases.”
But the joy, while intense, didn’t last. By the beginning of the ‘Sixties the fortunes of the team began to fade and the support dwindled. In 1965 the Braves played before smaller and smaller crowds, and it was after that season that the team quietly left town and became the Atlanta Braves. For local sports fans it was a painful divorce. Still, no one who experienced firsthand the heyday of the Milwaukee Braves in the 1950s, and C.J. was in that crowd, would ever forget what it once was like.
No comments:
Post a Comment