Whirlybirds

If you were a kid growing up in Ohio, you know what these are. I suppose others had names for them, helicopters comes to mind but not much else. I was always fascinated with them. Each spring they come around and fall from the skies right as baseball season starts kicking it into high gear.

If you haven't figured it out yet, whirlybirds are the seed pods that drop from silver maple trees. They have a 'wing' of sorts on them and they casually glide to the ground. We had one in our yard when I was growing up. It was a difficult tree to climb as part way up the truck split into two main trunks. It wasn't long after a large piece hit the roof from a large storm that my father had it cut down.

For my brother, North Of 50 and I it was hours of swing practice. We would stand beneath the tree and take a swing at the falling seed pods with our Whiffle Ball bats. We would do this for hours, and no, that's not an exaggeration. It was a way to pass the time. We didn't have all the electronics back in those days to kill off an afternoon. It wasn't long after that we'd start playing a one-on-one whiffle ball game in the back yard. One would pitch while one batted. The catcher was a lawn chair up against the pine tree in the back yard.

Each place in the yard had a designation for either a hit and the type of hit it was or an out. Over the house was a home run as was over the garage and into Mr. Siliman's yard. Often that entailed chasing their dog around the yard getting the balls back. Following the rules of baseball, three outs and change places. The only thing that generally stopped play would be when too many balls hit the aluminum siding on the house and Dad would finally put a stop to the game.

Today my yard has three silver maples. As we were playing catch with Ragin' Cage in the yard today, all those memories came flooding back. I wish every kid has whirlybirds in their yard at some point in their childhood. It is a point of fascination to me to this day.

Happy Spring...and baseball season.