My father just called — he’s having troubles with his VCR and asked if I would tape the Nashville Public Television documentary on Sulphur Dell tonight. He’s hoping to catch a glimpse of his father, my grandfather, who died in the late 1960s. Sulphur Dell was Nashville’s legendary old downtown minor league ball park. Papaw worked for the Post Office, and for some reason having to do with bonding the Nashville Vols hired off-duty postal employees to work the box office back in the day.

My father’s favorite Sulphur Dell story — which I’ve repeated to others myself on many occasions — happened when he was five years old. The family lived in an apartment building, long since torn down, overlooking Nashville’s Centennial Park. My father asked his mother for a nickel so that he could see the ball game. She assumed that he meant one of the ball games being played across the street and that the nickel was for a Coke. (Nowadays, of course, you’d never let a five-year-old go across the street without supervision, but this was a different time.)

My father — five years old, remember — took his nickel and used it to get on the bus. He got a transfer, changed to another bus, and got off at Sulphur Dell, where all of the postal workers / box office workers knew him well and let him into the game. He went to see his father, of course, who immediately called home.

“Where’s Jackie?” asked Papaw.

“He’s across the street at the park.”

“No, he’s not. He’s here with me.”

Mamaw’s immediate concern, on hearing this news, was that my father’s clothes were too dirty to be seen at the ball park!

The irony in all of this is that I’ve set the timer on my VCR. The reason I won’t be home tonight, and I think the reason my parents won’t be home tonight, is because of our church outing to see the Nashville Sounds play at Greer Stadium!

Anyway, I’m curious to see the Sulphur Dell documentary myself.