More Than Just A Sandlot Baseball Game

I had not thought of Sammy Carlisle in decades. But one day recently, the memory of our childhood sandlot baseball games came roaring back into my mind, clear as if it were yesterday.

 

I grew up on a busy street and there were plenty of boys in my neighborhood, so we spent a lot of time together playing baseball. Sometimes, we played on a lot behind the Baptist Church four houses down from my home. If my dad had time, a bunch of us would jump into the back of the family station wagon and he would drive us down to the school yard a mile away where we would play “pepper” and run real bases with real baselines and a real backstop.

 

Most of our games were played on two one-acre front yards belonging to our elderly neighbors. Our neighbors enjoyed seeing children playing and would watch us from their front porches. My cousin’s house was right beside “home plate,” so his mom would also keep an eye on us. And of course, if my mom needed us to come home, we could hear her yell for us, or later, hear the dinner bell she rang when she got tired of yelling.

 

Our “field” was bisected by two gravel driveways. Right field was located beside the street and the outfield and left field were deep into our neighbors’ yards. If you fouled it right, sometimes the ball would roll into the street or into a ditch on either side of the road. Our moms had placed the fear of God into all of us about running into the street, so we knew better and the game came to a halt whenever the ball went that way.

 

If you put the barrel on the ball and really tagged it, that ball would sail over those two yards and bounce onto the asphalt parking lot of the churchyard for a homerun. It was the sweetest feeling in the world and I’m sure the decibel level of squealing children ratcheted up enough for my mom to hear it from her kitchen.

 

There was a core group of us kids in our immediate neighborhood, but when we played the team of kids from an adjacent street, we had to expand our reach and invite other kids we didn’t really know or spend a lot of time with to fill out our team. That’s where Sammy Carlisle came in.

 

While the rest of us played with our fathers’ big wooden bats and soiled old baseballs that had seen their share of muddy-water ditches and school-yard clay, Sammy’s baseball equipment wasn’t as well used. He had a kid-sized bat that was easy to swing and his baseball was still white and unscuffed from the street pavement or church parking lot. 

 

We loved swinging Sammy’s bat. His clean white ball was also easier to see. The problem was, if Sammy got upset or angry about something during the game, he would take his bat and ball and leave. Just walk home.

 

The first few times that happened, the game either ended or my cousin Steve would run into his house to rustle up another baseball so we could keep playing. Eventually, we got wise to Sammy’s cry-baby nature and thin skin. We were just kids playing, ragging each other as kids do, celebrating hits and homers and close calls, and drinking Kool-Aid on Steve’s carport when it was over.

 

I don’t know why I still remember Sammy Carlisle. He wasn’t a central player on our team. He wasn’t the reason why we won.

 

But what I suppose I learned from him was that things don’t have to be perfect. The joy of playing and spending time with each other and creating memories – and just appreciating roots-level baseball -- was the important thing.

 

Eventually, we knew that Sammy could take his bat and ball and go home and the game would go on. And as it did, I would swing my dad’s big wooden bat and still think it was the best day ever.

 

- Lisa D. Mickey, Nov. 11, 2020

 

Remembering One Crazy Coincidental Family

I never realized how much a bunch of young golf pros with big dreams would come to mean to me back in 2003 when I started traveling with and writing about the LPGA’s pipeline tour. I was only supposed to go out and cover three tournaments for the Futures Tour that year while they looked for someone to replace their communications staffer. I ended up staying for nine years.

It was certainly different than my previous gigs with the Golf Digest Company, where I covered the LPGA Tour for Golf World for six years and for Golf For Women that final year in 2002. I spent a lot of time and many weeks each year following around and writing about Annika Sorenstam, Se Ri Pak and Karrie Webb. 

I was there in 1997 when Pak changed LPGA history with two major championship wins that opened the door for countless fellow South Koreans to follow. I was also there in 1999 when Juli Inkster achieved her career grand slam, and at Moon Valley Country Club in 2001 when Sorenstam carded her historic score of 59.

As a golf writer, I reported on Solheim Cups, U.S. Women’s Open dramas, LPGA Hall of Fame inductions and witnessed the end of LPGA eras (JoAnne Carner, Kathy Whitworth), rising new dynasties (Nancy Lopez, Betsy King, Patty Sheehan), and emerging next-generation stars (Lorena Ochoa, Laura Davies, Sorenstam, Pak and Webb).

So, I had already witnessed the best women golfers in the world when I arrived in Kansas to spend my first week on the Futures Tour with young pros just beginning their journey. No, they didn’t yet have the chops of those Hall of Famers on the LPGA Tour. Many of them were still wearing the ribbons of their former college teams on their ponytails. Some of them were traveling with parents. Others were homesick. Most were carpooling with fellow players to save money. Some were just a little bit lost.

But what I saw during those years were hundreds of very interesting human stories about how dreams begin for players from throughout the world. And what I learned was how the careers of those highly skilled LPGA players I had previously covered had actually started. Their base of experience began somewhere, and now, I was witnessing the genesis of that process.

I watched young pros who had never faced Texas or Oklahoma winds literally have to learn how to hit knockdown shots. I watched players from other parts of the world struggle with the different grasses in America -- learning to hit their putts hard enough on slow Bermuda greens or how to back off the pace on speedy bent grass. I watched players finally grasp the necessity of mastering their wedge play.

Traveling on tour was hard for all of us. It meant spending 20-some weeks of the year on the road, away from home and away from any sense of a “normal” life that involved friends and families. I traveled in a company van packed with weeks of clothes, laundry detergent, staple food items and whatever was needed to live out of a suitcase from March to September.

During that time, I saw players fixing flat tires on the side of the road and doing what was needed to go from one tournament town to the next. I saw them eating a lot of fast food to stretch their funds and I joked with some that Panera should be the tour's sponsor because that’s where most of us ate every day. I remember once seeing several players sitting on the curb of a Dairy Queen eating ice cream as if it were the greatest thing that had happened to them all week.

Another time, on a lonely Texas highway somewhere between Brownsville and El Paso, I saw the mother of one player fly by me in her large SUV doing about 110 mph while her player-child snoozed in the front seat. And then there was the time a car drove up beside me on a highway somewhere between Michigan and Chicago and when I looked over, I saw a player driving her car with her bare feet while she took a video of me behind the wheel with her cell phone.

With players from 37 nations and from throughout the United States, there were always interesting things going on. I remember coming upon several young Korean players giggling and stuffing something into a Coke bottle. On closer inspection, I realized they were picking up baby copperhead snakes and poking them into the bottle, which prompted me to shout, “No, no! Dangerous!” 

Another time in Kansas, I had to rescue two players from the People’s Republic of China who had accidentally locked their keys in their rental car. I used my personal AAA card to help them out. They never understood how that worked and tried to pay me. I waved them off and couldn’t explain to them the beauty of AAA for road warriors like us.

I had one player (in her 20s) who would sneak into our mobile office once a week to talk about how she wanted a boyfriend, but her parents wouldn’t allow her to date. I had another player who came to me with tears streaming down her face who asked if I could get her away from her overbearing father. On more than one occasion, I would find an excuse to tell her father she was needed at the tour's mobile office so she could go behind closed doors and cry.

One player, from an affluent American family, received a shipment of new irons every few months from her father. I remember seeing her in the parking lot in West Virginia with irons spilling out of the back of her car. I reminded her there was “no magic in a box” and that the magic was only to be found in the practice areas. I said it in a kidding way, but that, of course, was probably not what she wanted to hear.

We experienced flooded courses in Ohio and Illinois. I remember several players purchasing rafts and floating down a fairway. Another time, in Lima, Ohio, we had a tornado pass through. One player from Italy told me she was holding on to the door handle of her car when the wind blew her feet off the ground, suspending her body parallel to the car door. Another player from California, not knowing what to do when her car started lifting off the road, parked and ran into a local business and crawled under a table with the employees there.

We also experienced death on the tour. One of our most beloved young international pros was killed in a head-on collision as she drove from one tournament to the next. We held a memorial service in the clubhouse a few days later and players sat packed in that room, shoulder to shoulder, not really understanding how to grasp losing a peer. It was beyond sad and extremely difficult as a staff member to “stay strong” for the young pros. 

It was also heart breaking when a man knocked on the mobile office door following the accident and sat down beside me, describing how he had turned off the ignition of our player’s car on the highway and waited beside her for first responders to arrive on that horrible day.

In working with the most talented young professionals, I also had to help many of them learn how to work with news media, understand how to answer questions and to realize how this was now a part of their job as professionals if they were fortunate enough to win. I told them this was practice for what they would experience on the LPGA Tour.

There were also days when I literally taught basic English to top international players and helped them write simple thank-you speeches for awards ceremonies. One Korean player -- who has now won several times on the LPGA tour -- gave her first thank-you speech in New York, and then ran off the stage and buried her head in my chest. To this day, when I see that player at LPGA events, she always comes over with a big hug. Her English is perfect.

So, while my assignment was to write about the tournaments, profile the players and help them learn how to work with sports writers at each tournament site, those nine years became much, much more. I truly saw these players’ growth at every stage. And when you travel and work together, and weave in stress, endless highway miles, bad weather, human tragedy and triumph, you get to know people in ways you never think possible.

I tried to write about these young pros just like I wrote about Sorenstam, Webb, Inkster and Pak. I tried to treat them the same way – only with this group, it often felt like I was writing about little sisters stepping up in a big way. I watched them grow up. I couldn't prevent them from barging into my heart.

That became very clear when I watched 17-year-old Inbee Park arrive on the Futures Tour in 2006. She missed the 36-hole tournament cut in her professional debut in Louisiana, but went home, worked on her game and returned to finish in the top 10 11 times that season to earn automatic 2007 LPGA membership.

Two years later, when Park made the 2008 U.S. Women’s Open Championship her first win on the LPGA Tour, she looked at me with the trophy in her arms and said, “Lisa, can you believe this?” Of course I could believe it. She had committed to her goal. She never gave up.

And while none of the many young pros I met during those years on the Futures Tour would go on to the LPGA’s Hall of Fame as Park did, when I think of them now, I realize they were all equally special.  

I watched some of them throw away opportunity and others find their wings. Some moved on to the LPGA Tour. Some moved on to other careers and other lives. Many of them are moms now. All emerged from this same shared experience.

They were just kids, but they taught me a lot about hope and even more about courage. And during the years I was with them, they scared me to death, made me laugh, frustrated me beyond measure, but made me love them like family. 

Come to think about it, all of us were one big, crazy, sometimes dysfunctional family stuck on a highway somewhere between dreams and a paycheck.

- Lisa D. Mickey, March 1, 2020

Save Your Applause For The Scientists

I admit it. I’m as guilty as anyone else when it comes to admiring top sports teams and appreciating the skills of world-ranked athletes.

I love seeing them work together as a team to win championships or close games. And I enjoy watching individual professional athletes perform extraordinary feats.

Certainly, as a sportswriter for more than 20 years, I have seen my fair share of record-breaking performances, met some exceptional athletes and seen history made in athletics that will forever be on instant replay in my mind.

But in recent years, I’ve met some new superstars who work in virtual anonymity and deserve far more attention than any of them would ever want. Their names are not well known and they don’t reap lucrative benefits for the long hours of plying their craft even though they are among the world’s best. There’s no confetti, headlines or applause from thousands of adoring fans for these people.

In fact, most of the time when they perform their best work, they are alone, dirty, bloody and in environments where even their best friends might decline to go. Their incentive is not fame and fortune, but rather, an intrinsic curiosity to answer questions, solve problems, and detail those findings in documents that can be used by others.

Who are these people? They are scientists.

And these scientists are everyday people who are committed to research often involving specific species and specific habitats. They regularly deal with evolving changes that affect the living organisms they study and they are unabashedly passionate about the focus of their studies. Their fist pumps are cerebral, at most.

For example, I recently reached out to the scientists at the Smithsonian Marine Station in Fort Pierce, Fla., to inquire about a blue land crab (cardisoma guanhumi) that was showing up in my neighborhood in Central Florida. Scientist Sherry Reed kindly responded and informed me that Hurricane Irma had spawned a migration of these crabs as they move from salt marshes to the ocean at this time of year.

Reed provided the information I wanted, and in a follow-up email, she called these crabs “beautiful creatures” (they are!) and admitted they were “especially near and dear to [her] heart.”

That kind of passion for a species and commitment to understand their existence is exactly why I believe we should thoughtfully consider who our real heroes are -- and why.

Scientists most often specialize in a focus area and spend countless hours and years documenting their species. Both when things go right and when things go wrong, they still seek answers to questions.

How many times have I listened to Lori Morris of St. Johns River Water Management District passionately discuss the importance of seagrass in the Indian River Lagoon? And when an algal bloom in 2011 killed 47,000 acres of precious seagrass in the estuary, why was I not surprised that Morris was out in the water with other scientists, hand-planting grasses and later snorkeling to monitor its progress?

How can I not get excited about oysters and shoreline restoration when Dr. Linda Walters of the University of Central Florida starts talking about the work she has done with oyster-shell recycling for nearly two decades? If you ever work with her on one of these shoreline projects, it’s like spending a day with the Johnny Appleseed of oysters.

I’ve also logged time on the water with Wendy Noke of Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute looking for sick and injured dolphins. I’ve watched Wendy suspend her great affinity for specific animals she had monitored for years when it came time to perform necropsies to determine what had killed them. A few years ago, when a deadly virus swept the offshore dolphin population, I knew I could find Wendy with a scalpel in her gloved hands, harvesting tissue for pathology results – sometimes twice a day. Maybe even Wendy wanted to cry at the loss of so many magnificent animals, but there was too much work to be done in the name of science.

If you want to get excited about sharks, listen to George Burgess talk about his favorite species. Burgess is the director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, Fla. He has spent his career following these animals and documenting their behaviors and statistics. He can tell you where not to swim in New Smyrna Beach, based on shark-bite statistics and baitfish prevalence, but he can also espouse the miracles and mysteries of these animals from a lifetime of research.

A few times, I’ve had the privilege of walking at the elbow of Dr. Jane Brockmann, a professor emeritus at the University of Florida, who has studied horseshoe crabs for more than 30 years. Once I was with Dr. Brockmann when we found spawning horseshoe crabs on an atypical shoreline. These animals are thought to have been in existence for more than 445 million years, so to observe the surprise and delight of a veteran scientist who was seeing something new after three decades of study was better than witnessing a half-court buzzer beater.

Sometimes I have dinner with another professor, Dr. Hyun Jung Cho, who teaches integrated environmental science at Bethune-Cookman University, and I find myself marveling at her commitment to study wetlands and aquatic vegetation at all times – even if she’s wearing a dress on her way home from church and happens to spy a retention pond with interesting grasses. “That’s why I keep rubber boots in my car,” she said matter-of-factly, when I asked if she really waded into these ponds in her Sunday clothes.

Research ecologist Gina Kent, of the Avian Research and Conservation Institute, monitors the nesting habits, migratory patterns and the habitat challenges of swallow-tailed kites. When these magnificent raptors return to Central Florida from South America to nest each year, Gina is collecting data. And with the information I have learned from her and shared with others who live where these birds nest, now my previously uninterested friends are excitedly offering regular reports to me about “those birds with the interesting tail feathers.”

Even away from the institutes and universities, the scientists among us help shine a spotlight on our world and its living organisms that really should be valued and cherished more than any homerun, slam-dunk, 60-yard field goal or ace in the hole.

Michael Brothers, of the Marine Science Center in Ponce Inlet, Fla., for example, can look at a gathering of 10,000 seagulls on a beach and identify several different species with one quick glance. Chad Truxall of the Marine Discovery Center in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., can lead a group to a sandbar and suddenly unveil a host of creatures just under the soil’s surface that could otherwise easily be overlooked.

Maybe I’m slowing down as I round the bases in life, but I can “see the pitches” better than ever. These scientists clearly demonstrate skill, knowledge, experience, commitment and passion – asking for nothing and giving everything they have every single time they perform.

That’s why I say, if you want to applaud someone for a genuine superstar performance, save it for our scientists. They do their excellent work for the species they study, but more importantly, for the roles their species play in the world.

Scientists are looking at history, the present and the future with the hope their respective work can help us better understand our world and what we can do to assure a viable planet.

And the passion they show for their work is contagious – kind of like that wave that starts in a stadium and brings true fans to their feet.

- Lisa D. Mickey, Oct. 8, 2017

Goodbye Yuku Tanaka, My Sensei, My Friend

I met Yuku on a one-mile boardwalk loop called Cranes Roost Park in the early 1990s when I lived in Altamonte Springs, Fla. We were both runners and it always seemed that we ran in opposite directions. We would pass each other and wave, usually six times each morning.

I didn’t know her name and I didn’t know she was nearly 30 years older than me. I just knew she was a determined little Japanese woman who could put down the mileage and never change expression.

Eventually, I bumped into her at an Orlando road race. She said, “I’m Yuku. I see you at Cranes Roost.” The next race I saw her and she asked if I would like to join her for lunch with the Japanese runners who were visiting from Urayasu – Orlando’s sister city.

I had no idea what I was getting into because those Japanese runners wanted to go to HOOTERS! So I sat there eating chicken wings and watching jetlagged Japanese male runners stare at Hooters waitresses as they pounded down beer. Yuku just giggled and told me, “Japanese people, they crazy.”

Yuku and I would go on to run a lot of road races together throughout the years. She was in her mid-60s and I was in my mid-30s. We didn’t run the same times, but she would usually win her age group, and if I was lucky, I might finish in the top-10 of mine. But she always won trophies, and when we carpooled to races, we had to hang around to the end so she could pick up her prizes. Yuku was among running royalty in Orlando.

If we weren’t running road races, we had another Saturday ritual. I would pick her up at her house and we would go to the Winter Park Farmer’s Market, then go to lunch at some new restaurant she had read about in the newspaper, stop by Track Shack, our favorite Orlando running store, and end the day with a visit to Dong A, a rambling Asian grocery store loaded with exotic foods and goods from throughout Asia.

Often, Yuku would pick up groceries at Dong A and cook for me later in the week. I fell in love with her traditional Japanese cooking with such dishes as chirashi (a tossed sushi), hijiki (a seaweed), goma-ae (spinach), spicy gobo (burdock root), miso soup, mochi (pounded rice) and yosenabe (a type of hot-pot soup).

She would tell me stories of how “the mochi men” came to her family’s home when she was a child to pound rice with wooden mallets into a sticky glutinous brick, which was an important food during the Japanese New Year’s celebration. She would also make “rice ball” for me, showing me how to hold the formed rice in her fingers just so, and how the sushi rice needed the right amount of sweet and rice vinegar. She said she made her rice like her mother and that everybody’s rice in Japan was unique to the family’s taste.

We both loved Thai food and once, we ordered a spicy whole fish at a local restaurant for lunch. The dish was so spicy I felt like my inner ear was sweating, but we picked one side of the fish clean, then flipped it over and with our chopsticks, polished off the other side. As we sat there staring at the skeleton of the fish we had just woofed down and dabbing our faces with paper napkins, Yuku laughed and said, “Looks like raccoons were here.” Yes, and they had chopsticks.

I eventually got a job with another magazine and moved to Connecticut. I kept in touch with Yuku and visited when I could get to the Orlando area several times a year. Whenever I did, Yuku loaded up my bags with homegrown pumelo from her fruit trees and homemade inari sushi – my favorite.

She was diagnosed with cancer while I was in Connecticut and had a kidney removed. She also underwent chemotherapy, so I teased her and said her hair would come back blonde or curly. She just laughed.

After her treatments were over, she telephoned one day and said she had decided to run a marathon for the first time. She was now 77. I told her if her doctor said she could do it, we could enroll her in a marathon-training program and then I would run a marathon with her. She did, and we ran the New York City Marathon together in 1998. I had already run that race two previous times, so I knew this would be her race and our celebration that cancer was gone. We would start together and finish together.

Yuku was determined and she ran well, but she got tired late in the race. I encouraged her, walking with her when she needed to slow down, and picking it up again after water stops. Nearing mile 26, Yuku said she didn’t think she could finish. “Yuku, you didn’t beat cancer to quit now, and you didn’t do all that training in the Florida heat to fly up here and not get across the finish line. So let’s go!” I said. I grabbed her little arm and off we went -- Yuku smiling at the finish line and later, staring at the finisher’s medal hanging around her neck.

She went on to run more marathons and when the Japanese runners came from Urayasu to run the Disney Marathon, Yuku and I would usually meet up with them for a meal before the race and then go with them for Chinese dim sum (dumplings) after the race. Most of the time, I had no clue what was being said, but it’s amazing how you can share a meal together and language barriers don’t matter. Good is good, no matter which language you speak.

I ran the Disney Marathon eight times, always starting with my friend Yuku. I remember seeing her in the race and yelling for her. I also remember seeing some of the Japanese runners who drank beer the night before the race struggling on the course. I yelled out to one, “Mr. Kobayashi, drink water, not beer!” He laughed and waved.

Later that day, as we entertained the Urayasu runners over dim sum at Orlando’s Ming Court, I watched a tired and still-jetlagged Mr. Kobayashi’s head sink closer and closer to his plate. He eventually went to his rental car and fell fast asleep in the parking lot. Yuku just laughed and once again uttered her favorite expression: “Japanese people, they crazy.”

Time passed and we shared many more episodes of joy and despair. She was so happy when I was finally able to travel to Japan on business. She was thrilled when I brought her fresh plum mochi from the city I had visited and she listened intently when I described how elderly women were the ones who dove into the deep, dark water for the cultured Mikimoto pearls.

But there were also dark days. Yuku’s husband died after his own battle with cancer. Then her house was severely damaged when the 2004 hurricanes ripped off her roof and she was forced to move into a hotel for nine months while her home was rebuilt. Her son also died and she went into self-imposed isolation for about a year. And then thieves stole her car from the driveway and took it for a joy ride.

Her late husband’s best friend Hank also got sick on a Thanksgiving morning when Hank and Yuku were planning to drive over to the beach where I live and join me for the holiday meal. Instead, Yuku and I spent Thanksgiving in a hospital emergency waiting room. The surgeon eventually emerged, telling us Hank had colon cancer and had just undergone major surgery.

In spite of so many bumps in the road, Yuku stayed active and determined. She walked road races into her 80s, went to the JCC in Maitland for “Silver Sneakers” senior workouts, loved to go out to lunch, read the Orlando Sentinel every morning, showed off new cookbooks every time I visited, and could tell you every point of tennis matches she had watched on the Tennis Channel.

But then the cancer returned. It was discovered a few years ago when Yuku fell and broke both wrists while running. As doctors tried to determine why she was stumbling and falling, a tumor was discovered in her brain. Again, she underwent treatment, including radiation. And again, Yuku appeared resilient, rallying as she had done so many times before.

This time, however, the tumor was growing rapidly. Yuku’s once remarkable balance and grit were now being usurped by the mass in her brain. This tumor didn’t care what she had already been through in life. It didn’t care that she had done more in 86 years than most people could even imagine.

This was the woman who once told me she had seen bombers fly into her Japanese city many years ago, and how the citizens would hide under cars or whatever they could find when they heard the roar of the incoming planes. The American bombers were “so close, you could see their eyes,” she said. She remembered the bombing of Nagasaki in 1945, and the pain of war.

But Yuku would go on to marry an American sailor and move to the United States. She would follow him around America, learning English and learning American ways. She was with her husband in 1964 when they were based in Alaska and a magnitude 9.2 earthquake shook the Alaskan coastline. With a resulting massive tsunami on its way, Yuku hurriedly took her cat and a bag of rice and headed for the top of mountain to wait out the destruction that would ultimately kill 119 people.

Even for a woman who lived through war, natural disasters, loss of loved ones and property -- and sometimes, social acceptance because of her heritage -- my friend Yuku showed me an unparalled tenacity. As the tumor pressed against her brain, she struggled to find words during my visit to her hospital room in December 2016.

She looked weak and tiny. She was confused. She was tired. She looked at me and said, “What can you do? Sometimes it just is.”

In her final days, Yuku didn’t recognize her friends anymore and her family was half a world away. Now, she spoke only Japanese. She also crawled deep into a place so distant that she was gone before any of us knew it. Her long race had finally come to the home stretch.

Years ago, Yuku asked me if I would take her ashes back to her home in Kyushu Island to the Tanaka family cemetery. That request seemed so far away at the time. I viewed her as a runner who only saw the road before her and feared nothing.

But now, it is here, and when the time is right, I will take Yuku home to Kyushu. I’ll do it both with great sadness for the loss of my friend, but also with tremendous gratitude for all she has taught me.

Arigato, Yuku-san. Domo arigato.

- Lisa D. Mickey, March 5, 2017

More Than Just Tacos

It started with a conversation about fish tacos and how so many restaurants get it wrong.

“They put cheese on the fish and use lettuce instead of chopped cabbage,” I fussed.

And they miss the whole point of its simple and rustic origin.

Amanda nodded and smiled at my empty plate.

I had just polished off a couple of her spicy “Bang Shrimp Tacos” on homemade corn tortillas with cabbage and lime juice. It was my once-a-week stop at her Honduran taco stand in New Smyrna Beach after the Sunday beach mass.

But as much as I love Amanda’s fish and shrimp tacos, what I truly appreciate is the conversation that happens over plates of real food cooked with real love.

Amanda has been running her little taco and ice cream shop for about two years. It’s something she never could have envisioned way back on the dirt roads of Honduras where she grew up.

Her family didn’t have electricity, so their food was always fresh. There were fresh eggs from the hens and if they planned to eat chicken that day, they’d catch one, slaughter it and have it in a pot stewing for lunch.

“So, how do you catch a chicken?” I asked.

“You have to be fast,” said Amanda with a huge smile.

Amanda’s mother made cheese every two weeks from the cows in their yard, which also provided fresh milk for the kids. Queso blanco, as fresh as you could get it.

Her mother also made her own corn tortillas -- first roasting the corn ears, and then grinding the kernels into a corn masa for the fluffy, slightly fire-tinged tortillas considered a staple in her family’s modest home.

There also was no running water. They drank, bathed and washed clothes by hand in the same river.

Where Amanda grew up, kids went to school from kindergarten to fifth grade. After that, there were no schools in the area, so children either went to schools in far-away cities and stayed with relatives, or found jobs.

Sometimes, it was nearly impossible to go to school and to stay awake because of the jobs they had. Most of the time, girls got married early.

Amanda left home to work as domestic help for a family several hours away. She worked every day from 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. She cared for children, cooked and washed clothes by hand on a scrubbing board.

She was paid $20 a month. The family allowed her to go home and visit her mother every two years.

Eventually, Amanda found a better job working in an ice cream shop. That job led to an even better-paying job working in a gas station for a Peruvian owner.

Amanda worked hard and cared about her work, which was noticed by an American who was visiting in Honduras with a church mission program. A mutual friend introduced the two and they began dating.

They married in July in Honduras and her husband took her home with him that autumn to Albany, N.Y., where they had another wedding service.

Amanda experienced her first winter that year in upstate New York. She asked her husband when it was going to be warm again. “In a few weeks,” he told her. Those weeks turned into months and mercifully, finally turned into spring.

Shortly after that, Amanda became pregnant with their first child. Slipping on ice one day during her pregnancy, she fell face first into icy snow as she used her hands and arms to protect her protruding belly on impact. Looking at his wife’s bloodied face, her husband agreed to look for work in Florida.

The two arrived in Central Florida and for the first year, Amanda focused on getting her family settled. Then, Amanda began dreaming about the food from home that she missed.

She wondered if she could transfer some of what she had grown up making back home into this modern world where she now lived? She wondered if Americans would appreciate the nature of something as simple as a taco?

She could have bought tortillas and salsa from the food distributor for her restaurant, but to Amanda, the commercially produced products were not how the food should taste.

Instead, she arrives at her restaurant each morning and chops tomatoes and chili peppers. She doesn’t roast the corn as her mother does, but she makes her own tortillas, turning each one over the fire until flames singe the edges.

She also carefully shapes tamales and stuffs them into the banana leaves that she buys at the local Latin grocery store. There are no banana trees in her back yard and the store where she now shops would dwarf the closest tienda back home.

But Amanda lovingly prepares her food for strangers in the way that she knows. It’s done in the same way that sustained her family, offered comfort and rendered memories.

She doesn’t expect the out-of-town guests who are used to large American restaurant chains and cheesy dishes to always understand her food, but she likes it when their plates are clean.

And she likes it when the locals return, week after week.

After all, what Amanda crafts in her kitchen is simple and basic. Handmade. And every detail is carefully considered as she chops and cooks in the rhythm of her daydreams.

She remembers where she’s been. She thinks she’s now where she’s supposed to be.

And she marvels at how dreams and tacos can turn into friends and livelihood.

Or even how conversation can link worlds and people who thought they just came through the door to eat.

- Lisa D. Mickey, September 12, 2016

Remembering A Soldier: Young Widow Turns To Pro Golf

In May 2007, while working for the LPGA’s FUTURES Tour, I had one of the most unforgettable interviews I’ve ever had with a young professional golfer. Jenny Hansen of Nebraska had qualified for the Futures Tour and had left home to test herself against other young pros. But Jenny had already encountered arguably the greatest test of her life. She had just buried her husband, a soldier who was killed in Iraq.

Jenny played professional golf for a few years, but eventually returned home to Nebraska. She later remarried and is a mom now.

I always think of Jenny and her late husband, Jeff Hansen, at this time of year. This story was written years ago for the Futures Tour’s website and probably only a handful of people read it, but Jenny’s story has stayed with me for all of these years. I hope this story will remind you why we celebrate Memorial Day. - LM 

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May 28, 2007 -- Last Memorial Day, Jenny Hansen went through the motions of celebrating the national holiday just as many other Americans do every year. There were flags, fireworks, ice cream and neighborhood cookouts for the official kickoff to summer. And in her hometown in Cairo, Neb., a town of nearly 750 residents, everybody knew the ones who had served their country and the ones who were now serving overseas.

But Hansen’s world in small-town America changed dramatically last August. She was working as a manager at an Appleby’s restaurant, holding down the household while her husband, Jeff Hansen, served a tour of duty in Iraq with the National Guard.

The former University of Nebraska-Kearney golfer had no way of knowing how much her life would change when the telephone rang at work one day and the soldier’s voice on the line said, “There’s been an accident. We need for you to come to Germany.”

So many thoughts raced through her mind as she stood amid the clanging hustle of the busy restaurant, clutching the telephone that had just delivered words too potent to completely process. She pondered the weight of the words and the nature of the accident. She thought of her husband waiting for her in a hospital bed, far from the homey comforts of Nebraska.

Jeff Hansen was a police officer in Kearney while Jenny was a college student. They met at a college football game and hit it off. Jeff later asked Jenny if she’d like to go for a walk. The two had their first kiss at the fountain on campus. When Jeff proposed to Jenny during her senior year of college, it was on the 18^th green after the final round of the 2002 NCAA Division II Women’s Golf Championship in Grand Rapids, Mich.

“Being with him was just easy,” said Hansen, 27, a rookie on the FUTURES Tour this season. “Jeff came and watched me play college golf and he loved it. He was simple and happy.”

But two weeks after the 9/11 attacks in 2002, the National Guard called him to serve in Germany as support for U.S. troops. Jeff asked if his deployment could be delayed. Jenny and Jeff were married on October 12, 2002, and he was deployed two days later on October 14^th.

Jeff was sent to Bosnia, where he served for 10 months. He consoled his new bride and told her it was “not a big deal,” and that everything would be fine. When he returned home to Nebraska, he became a federal police officer and went to work at the local veteran’s hospital.

“We were on the fast track,” said Jenny. “I had a great job managing the restaurant and he had a great job. We had bought a house, had cars, a boat and a dog. We were getting ready for the next thing.”

But the next thing was a new request by the U.S. Government. Jeff left for Iraq in October 2005. Along with so many other families in the area, Jenny said goodbye to her husband at the air base in Lincoln, Neb.

As a Cavalry scout, his job in Iraq was to go ahead of troops or units of soldiers to secure an area for others to follow. The job was dangerous and this time, Jenny knew her husband was using his experience as a police officer on a much larger scale than anything he had ever known back home in Nebraska.

“He was never scared to go,” she said. “In fact, he wanted to go and believed that’s what he needed to do. He felt he was in Iraq for me, just as he was there for the children of Iraq. It was like he always had a bigger purpose.”

One of Jeff’s duties in Iraq was protecting a specific canal. One night last August, he and three other soldiers drove their Humvee alongside the canal during a fierce sand storm. Suddenly, their vehicle hit a large sinkhole and the Humvee flipped over, pinning the soldiers under water.

Jeff Hansen normally rode in the front of the vehicle, but when he was pulled from the water, he was in the rear of the Humvee where the other soldiers normally rode. The three other soldiers were rescued, which the U.S. Army believed were likely freed by the Nebraskan. Jeff was eventually airlifted from the accident scene, but that evacuation was hampered by the raging sand storm.

“They resuscitated him, but they couldn’t save him,” said Jenny.

Jenny boarded the plane to Germany, not really knowing what she would find. She rode alongside her mother, Becky Deines, and Jeff’s father, Bob Hansen. Jeff’s mother had succumbed to cancer two months earlier, so the members of the two families clung to each other as they crossed the Atlantic, hoping for the best and dreading the worst.

“I convinced myself that he would hear my voice and it would be a medical miracle,” said Jenny. “When we got there, Army ministers briefed us on what we would see. I went into his room and he was lying there, hooked up to a machine. He had a scar on his chin and I kept touching the scar and just trying to believe it was all going to be alright.”

But in that hospital room, the soldier’s bride and former NCAA Division II All-American golfer, came to a sudden crossroads in her young life.

Gone were those easy days of dogs barking across whispering cornfields or shouts of touchdown triumphs for the home team. Gone was the laughter and the kiss at the fountain. Gone was the uncomplicated innocence of small-town America.

This was Germany, miles from home. This was war. This was the most unbelievable circumstance she could ever imagine.

And now, at age 26, she was being forced to make the biggest decision in her life. Jeff Hansen, at age 31, had made the ultimate sacrifice. And as she stared across the hospital bed at the man with whom she had planned to spend the rest of her life, Jenny knew that her husband would never really come home.

“Sometimes, you just make a decision,” she said quietly. “It wasn’t an option. I guess I can second-guess it for the rest of my life, but we found peace with the decision we had to make.”

The breathing ventilator was turned off. The family huddled together. An hour later, Jeff Hansen was gone.

“It was like he was waiting for it to be OK,” Jenny said.

Four days later, Jeff Hansen was buried with military honors at the Lutheran Church in Minden, Neb. A group called “The Patriot Guard” escorted the family to the burial services, keeping their roaring motorcycles between the family and anti-war protestors.

It was surreal. It was numbing. It was something for which she could never have been prepared.

And then a letter arrived at Jenny’s home. It was from Jeff.

Weeks earlier, she had asked her husband what he thought about her trying to play golf professionally. She wanted to test herself and see if she had what it took to compete on the next level. Jeff had written to his wife to say that he was glad she had refocused on golf. The timing of the letter was uncanny. He was gone, but his words of support were as strong as ever as she struggled with what her future held.

“The letter told me to find the focus and dedication that I needed in my life and if there was something I wanted to do, to just do it,” she said. “I still read that letter all the time. I think Jeff wanted me to find new meaning in my life and to not be afraid to try.”

As chance would have it, Hansen traveled to the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship last October, where she met teaching professional and former LPGA Tour member Sue Ertl. Ertl was moved by the Nebraskan’s personal story and her determination to begin taking bold new steps in her life.  Ertl began working with Hansen as her golf instructor.

“It’s easy to watch TV and to know there’s a war going on from afar, but it’s a lot different to know someone who’s been personally touched by this and to see her make a life transition because of it,” said Ertl, who played on the LPGA Tour for 11 years. “I guess none of us can relate to what she’s going through, but she’s committed to chiseling out her new life. Jenny’s using golf as a bridge between now and what’s next.”

What’s next for Hansen took her out of Nebraska. She earned playing status last November at the FUTURES Tour’s Qualifying Tournament and moved to Florida to live with an aunt so she could practice and compete during the winter months. Hansen turned professional in January this year. She has gotten into tournament fields twice this season on the FUTURES Tour, missing the cut in both, but walking away with the assurance that this is a personal challenge she must attempt.

“I’m proud that she felt strong enough to be able to try this,” said Jenny’s mother, Becky Deines. “Jeff always wanted Jenny to play golf and she knows this is what he’d want her to be doing. I don’t want her to look back and say, ‘Why didn’t I take a chance?’ Maybe too, it will help heal the hurt and allow her to move on.”

Hansen knows that being successful on the tour is a long way from her days as the individual champion of the 2002 Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference and the 2002 NCAA Division II Western Regional Championship.

She knows there is much to learn as a young pro. And she recognizes that there are still plenty of days when she longs for a life untouched by war and unmarred by heartbreak.

“You always know in a marriage there’s going to come a time when you have to say goodbye, but you think you’ll be in your 70s or 80s and that maybe you’ll live with the loss for only a few years,” she said. “I’ll deal with this for 70 years. You don’t really move on. You move with it.”

Hansen wears her husband’s military identification “dog tags” underneath her golf shirts and carries a Ping golf bag that has a digital military print on it. She has received some 3,000 letters, 20 handmade quilts and a gaggle of crocheted angels and butterflies from supportive military families and individuals around the nation. She appreciates each gesture and knows the last nine months would have been even more difficult without the help of others.

“I know things are going to be up and down for a while and I’ll give myself time,” she said quietly. “But I don’t feel like I walk alone. I have an angel walking every step with me.”

- Lisa D. Mickey, May 25, 2015

Dinner At Pauline's

Pauline pushed her way through the swinging doors with a steaming tray of kale in her hands. She carefully lined up the buffet as customers – no, call them neighbors – showed up for dinner.

Even at 69, Pauline has a youthful way about her. Wearing a sundress and padding in and out of the kitchen in her bare feet, she greeted her guests in the same way a cousin welcomes a cousin into their home on a Sunday afternoon.

Only this was not Pauline’s home. This was actually the small church that she grew up attending in the tiny community of Samsula, literally an agricultural road in Central Florida 25 minutes south of Daytona Beach, an hour north of Orlando, and a short imaginary gentle horse trot from a manicured golf-course community in New Smyrna Beach.

The church was going to be torn down because termites had unleashed a relentless taste for this place of worship in a tiny community of Slovenian farmers and ranchers. Pauline used to cook for friends and neighbors in her house next to where the church now sits, but three years ago, her house burned to the ground when she walked a family member to the nearby elementary school and forgot that a frying pan of bacon was cooking on her stove.

With the help of friends and neighbors, her house was rebuilt, but it was not large enough for Pauline to cook like she enjoys cooking. So when she learned that her childhood church was going to meet the bulldozers, she bought it, moved it across the street and across the cow pasture from her new home. It’s close enough that if somebody wants hot sauce on their food and she has run out, she can send her boyfriend across the pasture to her house to retrieve a bottle.

Of course, there are countless home-cooking kind of restaurants, but Pauline’s kitchen -- which is not advertised, does not have a website and officially, does not have a name -- is one of those special places that only the family and neighbors know about and selectively bring others.

She serves a buffet on most Thursday nights and breakfast on most Sundays. On a recent Sunday, it was obvious that word had leaked out to the wintering snowbirds as cars with license plates from Ontario, Massachusetts and New York lined the church’s gravel parking lot.

Pauline’s food is plenty good. On “Slovenian Night,” she offered kielbasa and homemade kraut, beef tenderloin, German potato salad, several other entrees and kale from her garden. She also served a cream of broccoli soup with broccoli she picked from her garden, and homegrown lettuce in her salads. Her homemade apple strudel with ice cream was good enough to qualify as sin on a plate.

But as tasty as it is, it’s not the food at Pauline’s that makes this visit to the old church so special. It’s the fact that this spot is where family, friends and neighbors happily and gratefully spend time together. It’s where her little cousins come to celebrate their birthdays and where, during one of those celebrations, Pauline came through the swinging kitchen doors with a homemade sheet cake in her hands decorated with small plastic horses.

It’s where old men come to dinner with grandsons who can afford to buy them dinner. It’s where friends and neighbors talk across the room to each other and ask about the family, the farm, the cattle and the mud hole that filled up in the road with the last rainstorm.

It’s where teenage girls talk about their horses and teenage boys compare details about their ATVs. It’s where plans are made for weddings, anniversaries, reunions and funerals. It’s where memories fill a room and future plans are laid out on tables decorated with Easter bunnies. It’s where old china plates are filled with buffet items and where cut-crystal dishes of homemade preserves appear with steaming homemade biscuits at Sunday brunch.

“See that room over there?” said Pauline, pointing across what used to be the tiny sanctuary. “That was my Sunday school room when I was a kid. When I heard they were going to tear this place down, I knew I had to buy the church. I knew I could cook here.”

As the Thursday evening dinner crowd thinned out, Pauline strolled the sanctuary/dining area with a beer in hand. She asked her guests if they got enough to eat and if they liked their food. She thanked them for coming over. She asked questions and listened for answers.

She also talked about needing to work on the family tree that she hangs on one wall of the old sanctuary, adding “there have been additions to the family ” and that she needed to get it finished by the next family reunion this summer.

Walking out into a cool spring night, her customers/family members gathered on the front porch talking. Nobody snuck glances at cell phones. Nobody texted or snapped “selfies.” These were people who had known each other their entire lives who were still engaged with the every-day concerns of their family and neighbors.

Talk spilled into the still night air and laughter was genuine, comfortable, easy. As the adults talked, teenage girls climbed over the pasture fence and played with some goats.

Somewhere down the road, a cow uttered a low bellow and a peacock shrieked, probably as it climbed into a tree with the setting sun. Loose gravel turned and crunched as cars rolled out of the driveway.

Driving home, I turned off the radio, rolled down the windows and smelled the country air of Samsula. People go to bed early here and rise with the sun. They have horses and cows to feed, sod to mow and cut, feed & seed stores to run, and vegetables to grow.

This is a tiny spot on the map and if you don’t know it’s here, it’s easy to drive right on by. And if you do know where to find Samsula and you ever encounter the forgotten feel of community, it’s amazing to recall that something that was normal 40 to 50 years ago, still exists here as a matter of daily routine. People here still care, still talk to each other and still listen.

No wonder Pauline bought the old church. No wonder she loves nothing more than to share the food her family grows.

No wonder her sanctuary is a familiar place that has welcomed friends, family and even strangers for decades. And no wonder we all consider ourselves lucky to be neighbors, even if we don’t share blood.

- Lisa D. Mickey, April 10, 2014