“Then they killed Martin, Bobby, and they elected Tricky Dick twice…”
I get up between 5-5:15am during the week. It’s basically soul-crushing. Like 5 days a week I fantasize what it would be like to run away and sleep in without an alarm.
So this morning, as I dragged myself to the shower, this quote popped into my head. Um… strange, but here we are. And then it stayed there and I kept hearing it over and over again. C’mon brain, it’s too early for a stroke. Get it together.
For those of you not in the know- this is from “Field of Dreams”. That’s right. That gem of a movie from 1989 and here we are at 5:15am with this one part of a sentence from a fairly forgettable scene stuck in my head. Repeating over and over again. Sigh.
I watched “Field of Dreams” basically every weekend of my life from age 7-13. My dad’s house didn’t have cable, but it did have a VCR and a beloved copy of that baseball powerhouse.
And at one point, Kevin Costner’s character meets up with James Earl Jones in an effort to get God Jones to go to a ballgame with Costner. The quote is part of JEJ’s explanation of why he dropped off the face of the Earth.
A couple things:
Starting out, I had no fracking idea who Tricky Dick was since most 7 year olds don’t know about Nixon or Watergate. However my dad was really good about answering all my questions about everything, so I probably knew more about that era of politics than most pint-sized folks.
Watergate and Nixon did play a part in “Forrest Gump” which is another movie that I also watched nearly every weekend or so during that same time frame. I made that connection somewhere along the way.
As an adult, I can understand why someone would like to disappear, especially after finding fame. Sometimes I hide from my children in my oversized closet. I’m basically James Earl Jones.
I stand by the idea that if I could defrag my brain and get rid of things like the entire “Field of Dreams” script, I would be able to do things like remembering my boys’ names.
In the book that “Field of Dreams” was based on Shoeless Joe– The Terrence Mann character was actually J.D. Salinger. Think back- you know that name. That’s right- he’s the author of Catcher in the Rye. But because Salinger was known for being very reclusive and litigious, the movie folks changed that element of the movie.
So there we go- Nixon and baseball… at 5:15am. Why am I awake?
