Just Rambling — By Tommy Purser

Let’s just ramble for a few moments today as my column idea machine has run out of juice.
There’s a fly dive bombing at my head as I type away at this column, which brings to mind the fact that my namesake son gave me a gift a few months back that promised to be “The most fun you’ve ever had sober.”
It’s kinda like a harmless shotgun. Instead of gunpowder and shot, the gun uses air and salt. I guess you would have to call it a “saltgun.”
That’s right salt. Fill it up with salt and if one of those pesky flies, mosquitoes, wasps …. whatever, starts annoying you, you pump up the gun with air, and blow the little pest away with a blast of salt.
Sounds like fun but I haven’t given it a try yet since we are just now getting into the fly/mosquito season. Like I said, it sounds like fun but whether or not it’s the most fun I’ve ever had sober ….. well, we’ll just have to wait and see.
On another subject, in my almost five decades of covering high school sports as a weekly newspaper guy, I’ve noticed that the crowds change as children grow up and graduate.
Jeff Davis County families, I’ve observed, are mega-supportive of their children, proving the adage I’ve used as a guiding principle in presenting this newspaper to the community each week — Small town life revolves around its children.
As our children grow older, many parents move on to other things but the good wife and I have just shifted gears as our lives began to revolve around our grandchildren, and still do.
When our latest hometown, baseball-playing grandchild graduated from high school, the good wife moved on to other things but I, on the other hand, have spent too much time and effort over the years in supporting our community’s children to quit now. Don’t get me wrong — the good wife religiously listens to every game on the radio, but I prefer going there in person.
I still go to the baseball games but the crowd has changed. It’s a different bunch. Oh, yes, there are a lot of people like me who just enjoy the thrill of watching children have fun and they continue to go to the games to support those children whether they are theirs or not. Actually, I think I and they consider these children “ours” whether they are or not.
It’s a bit disconcerting that many of them have no idea who I am or who those other long-time youth supporters are. But I, and my compatriots in the realm of youth boosterism, know who all of them are. They’re ours whether they know it or not.
I enjoy youngsters, and love to watch them play, especially play sports. I identify with that because, you see, I may be old and gray-headed, wrinkled and slowed by age, but I am a youngster at heart.
I hope you are, too.