My best friend Tom Erdman, who lived down my block, and I were playing softball in the street with John Welter at his house in the six hundred block of Brighton Avenue, two blocks away from my home. Unintentionally, my ball went into John’s neighbor’s yard across the street. Mr. Hitchsky was a grouchy old man and would give us hard time about playing ball in the street and the ball occasionally rolling in his yard. Several times that day our ball ran into his yard. We’d run over and retrieve it. We didn’t hurt his yard. Then it happened: he came off the porch and took our ball and wouldn’t give it back.
