Cecil's Other Park

As mentioned before, Benji Borden has a Facebook site entitled Cecil's Park; there are numerous pictures and memories about Cecil's park. I grew up before the full development of the park, but
for those boys, and it was just boys then, growing up from ca. 1947 to 1958 in Plantersville, Cecil still had a major impact.

I composed a few thoughts about my years with Cecil and especially at his other park:

Cecil became a factor in my life some time in the late 40s when our park was a baseball park or field located behind the Parker’s Blacksmith shop on land I assume belonged to the Parker family. I don’t know when the park was constructed or who constructed it but during my time, Cecil maintained the park, and it was, as you might guess, one of the nicest, if not the nicest, in north Mississippi.
The infield was dirt but smooth as Cecil had a Model T Ford which he used to drag the infield every day, and one of our great pleasures was riding on the Model T or on the sled or whatever it was, boys being the ballast.
A wooden fence about six or eight high stretched from right field to left center; however, for reasons that remain unclear, there was no fence in left field; the grass was cut short up to where the fence should be, but beyond that was a pasture where we often wandered in the tall grass and weeds searching for a lost baseball, and sometimes someone had to go ask Jiggs Monts who was blessed with almost super human eye sight to come find the baseball for us.
I don’t know many people the stands would hold, but to a young boy they seemed large.
I was told that in the 30s, probably 1935 or so, the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago White Sox played an exhibition game on the field and that Paul Richards, a journeyman catcher, but later a very successful manager, hit a home run that either landed on the blacksmith shop or sailed over it depending on who was telling the story.
I saw the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro Baseball League play there and think maybe the Birmingham Black Barons did as well. The House of David performed at the park at least once that I remember, and I think Tupelo had a semipro team that played there some.
Plantersville’s youth baseball team always faired well since most of the teams they played were coached by men who didn’t know nearly as much baseball as Cecil and most of the other teams practiced Saturday morning before the games on Saturday afternoon while Plantersville practiced every day and often twice a day. We spent a lot of time at Cecil’s other park.
At some point, Cecil began to have difficulty finding enough boys to field a team and Plantersville merged with Brewer coached by a Mr. Flynn, I think. If you knew Cecil, you know that he didn’t care to share responsibility and eventually Tack Grant took over coaching the team with Cecil assisting, and at some point the games moved to behind the school,
After summer ended, some of us went to Cecil’s house where we played catch and various games. A select few of us were allowed inside the old Johnson family house to play cards and games and view Cecil’s many treasures.
Cecil took us trot line fishing ( I thought it was trout line, which I found strange since we always caught cat fish), and our catch was cooked in big black pots at the baseball park. We went camping; I’m not certain where, but assume it was the state park, and he took us to Memphis to the Chicks’s games and to the zoo. There’s a picture somewhere on this blog of Larry Mims and me from one of these trips.
Cecil mowed the cemetery and we would tag along as he worked, and for a time he manned a fire tower which we climbed several times to visit with him.
In the late fifties, 1956 or 57, Cecil built the tennis court and around the same time he tore down the old Johnson house and built the smaller one.
If memory serves, when I left to enroll at Ole Miss in September of 1958, the tennis court was still the only attraction at Cecil’s park.

I’ll be seventy in about a month and am subject to frequent senior moments so please correct or add to my memories of Cecil’s other park.