In the back of our fourth-grade "reader" at P. S. 217, there was an appendix containing proverbs and other jots of wisdom. Most of these were commonplaces: "look before you leap"; "a stitch in time saves nine"; "empty barrels make the most noise." Many of these gnomic bits mystified me. For example:
For all your days prepare,
And meet them ever alike.
When you are the anvil, bear.
When you are the hammer, strike.
I had no idea what an anvil was (now I own a beauty!!) but I understood that it was something to beat with a hammer. For what purpose? I had no clue? But I was a moderately progressive youth and I couldn't grasp why we anvils were being urged to "bear." It seemed like a reactionary idea then and still seems so now. Way too passive, I thought. Why shouldn't the anvils join together and form a united front against the hammers, or whatever capitalist oligarch controlled the hammers? Why did my grandparents come to America if not to free themselves from the perpetual anvilhood of sorry Ukraine?
Moreover, I completely missed the mark on "strike," which I interpreted to mean "go on strike." An easy mistake, because the only other meaning I knew of strike was the "three strikes and you're out" of basebalI. Even naif me knew that baseball had nothing to do with anvils and hammers or fourth-grade readers.
The poem was therefore incoherent. Endure and suffer when you're an anvil, but get on the picket line when you're a hammer.
Why couldn't anvil and hammer unite and resist their oppressors together?
I should also confess that anvil and hammer fused and mingled in my youthful brain with a Phillies shortstop of the period named Granville Hamner.
Damn it, yes! He sent Abrams home with zero outs and Ashburn playing shallow. It should have been bases loaded with nobody out in the bottom of the 9th in a 1-1 game. Surely, the Bums would have pushed a run home and won that game, forcing a one-game playoff against a Phillies' team that would have been shot. Curt Simmons was in the army. Who would have started the next game? Konstanty? Up to then, he had been used strictly in relief. Oh, the agony of '50 and '51.
Posted by: Don Z. Block | August 26, 2020 at 03:17 PM
Sent Cal Abrams home.
Posted by: Vivian | August 16, 2020 at 05:41 PM
Yes, it was Goliat, a weak hitter but not against Don Newcombe. You know your stuff. Now what did Milt Stock do that ensured his place in the Brooklyn Hall of Infamy and ruined what had started out as a bearable third grade for me with Mrs. Schwartzberg?
Posted by: Don Z. Block | August 16, 2020 at 11:02 AM
Mike Goliat
Posted by: Vivian | August 13, 2020 at 04:27 PM
Hamner is probably remembered by Brooklyn Dodger fans because he was one of the Whiz Kids, a very good Phillies' team in 1950 that won the pennant on the last day of the season in Ebbets Field when Dick Sisler hit a 3-run homer in the top of the 10th. Robin Roberts pitched a 10-inning gem but should have lost the game in the bottom of the 9th. Does anyone remember what Coach Milt Stock did that cost the Dodgers a chance to win the pennant? And does anyone remember who played 2nd base for the Whiz Kids?
Posted by: Don Z. Block | August 13, 2020 at 04:08 PM