Framing a Moment that Became a Memory

I remember seeing it as a kid in the recreation room, a 1950's American home innovation that's hard to explain to anyone who's not from that era. It was a small 5X7 (I'm guessing) black finish frame, with a white mat, that held a ticket stub.

Once I started to read, I learned the ticket stub was from Game Five of the 1956 Baseball World Series my dad and his brother-in-law, Chief (he was my mom's sister, Ann's, husband and his real name was Donald but his nickname was Chief because he had red hair like he was wearing a fire chief's helmet), attended in the (old before refurbishment in the 1970's) Yankee Stadium where Don Larson threw a perfect game to beat the then Brooklyn Dodgers, 2-0.

I say 'my dad' but he was really mine and my sister, Evan's dad although Evan was not much more than a baby having been born the previous December. Chief and Ann had two children at that time as well, Donna a year older than I was and Diane two days younger than me. I can only imagine how thrilled both women were, in households struggling to make ends meet, living in apartments out in Flushing, Long Island, with very young children, to have spouses who went to a baseball game instead of coming home. 

In fairness, it took me decades to arrive at that realization. What came a LOT earlier was wondering why my dad went at all as he was a NY Giants' baseball fan. Mom was the Dodgers' fan. I don't recall ever hearing my father or Uncle Chief say a kind word about the Yankees (I recall Chief, in later years, being a huge Mets' fan), so I've always assumed Chief was a Dodgers fan who scored tickets.

The stub was framed, my father told me as befit a souvenir of a memorable moment because Don Larsen of the NY Yankees threw a perfect game, twenty-seven consecutive batters with a corresponding number of outs. He told me it was a very boring game to watch from the stands until about the seventh inning when, passed from one fan to the other, was word that Larsen was working on a perfect game. The scoreboard operators knew better than to jinx the pitcher by posting anything at all until the game was over and the Yankees' catcher, Yogi Berra, lept for joy into Larsen's arms at the pitcher's mound.

I haven't thought about that picture frame, that house, the ticket, or Uncle Chief and Aunt Ann (or any of their four children all of whose names started with D's) for probably close to sixty years. I've no idea where any of the family are and the framed ticket disappeared long ago (I think the last time I saw it was in the house on Bloomfield Avenue, which was before the house we rented from the Buckley's, or that place in Rhinebeck New York we lived in for a matter of weeks, or the one-year rental in East Rutherford, or the big house on Canal Road or the house I only visited once while Dad was still alive out in the boonies of Jersey).

I'm thinking about all of that right now after reading about the death of Larsen, somewhere in Idaho, at the age of ninety, making one less of us to count down the days until Spring Training starts.  
-bill kenny