Going to Williamsport

By Rich Agnello

What would you do if you were the 12-year-old new ace pitcher of a very small town baseball team, and you and your teammates went on in one magical year to represent your far western Oklahoma panhandle roots at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and you were much too embarrassed beyond mere words to see your own mother cheer you on in the bleachers as you take the big stage hundreds of miles away?

This is Sooner’s situation, and his story is Going to Williamsport, as he experiences his mom suffering through acute paranoid psychosis during the early years of deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill in the Eisenhower administration. Without the option to “just put her away” anymore, the only child Sooner sees his own embarrassment and severe contempt for a Semper Fi father who will not deny his marriage vows, nor his unbelievable love for his own son.

Going to Williamsport matters more than anything to Sooner, but definitely not at the expense of seeing “her” in those stands. In his own words, he takes as much as he possibly can, and then makes incredibly clear in the clearest of places that he alone, with his Cimarron Coyotes team is Going to Williamsport, without Dad and certainly without Mom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Nov 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781649790101

Rich Agnello

It’s Time to Introduce My New Almost Best Friend And he is our author, Rich Agnello! Now he likes to be called Rich, so don’t forget that! He’s a native of Webster, New York, outside Rochester, so I guess he’s bummed; my pitching whupped his hometown’s snowy ass. Rich holds an undergraduate degree in speech communication from Marquette University and a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Denver. That basically means he can’t figure out what ‘boomer sooner’ means, so whoop-de-doo to him, too! Whatta mean he resides in Worthington, Ohio outside Columbus with his wife Theresa? Agnello, have you ever been to Keyes, Oklahoma, you booger bear! Oh, we’ve had so much fun this year—haven’t we, Rich! Smile when you say that, mister! But seriously, I hear Rich’s life experience growing up is just like mine! He saw his own mother suffer this way for 37 years, and yet he also saw his two sisters and himself earn two graduate and three undergraduate degrees, and Rich also has 15 years as a select youth soccer coach and Marquette soccer letterman. Okay, can’t figure any of that out, but fine! This is Rich’s first full-length book, and also his first children’s novel. No way—yes way!

Book preview

Yes, My Name Is Sooner!

If I take just one more, just one more 105-degree dang day, I swear I will get in that town pool without my clothes on!

Now really, did you expect me to wear just underpants in the pool? Underpants! Some people in life just make you sick to your stomach. Me, I’m more decent about things. It’s too dang hot, I want to be cool, the shirt comes off, the jeans come off, so do the socks, so do those—yes those. The things parents buy when you’re not looking, when they trot you off to Tulsa or Oak City (that’s Oklahoma City for you Yankees) to buy cute, stupid, back to school stuff supposedly designed to make you look smarter or your folks get their money back.

But in case this is not clear yet, I’m neither cute nor stupid, and my real name is Justin, but you better call me ‘Sooner’ cause, well, that is who I am! I go to Catholic school and I’m in sixth grade now, for crying out loud. We wear uniforms there, not cute, stupid clothes, so let’s say that altogether now, uniforms!

Admit it, mister, I open my little mouth once, and four letters come out of your big mouth—h-i-c-k.

Do you know—do you know I am from none other than Keyes, Oklahoma, population 324-ish? Spell it right, you dummy, because there is another Keys in the state! Ours ain’t like the keys to your car where you spent the last half of your last date, I know that so don’t pretend you didn’t. Let’s try this again, and try not to spill that coffee in your lap: K-e-y-e-s. See, you survived that spelling test, which shows you’re way ahead of my last fifth-grade 65 grade in the subject at St. Lawrence School.

Larry would survive in Keyes, that’s St. Lawrence when the nuns aren’t looking, you know. When it gets hot as a griddle in Keyes, what does Larry do? Get upset? Hell no. Go swimming in his damn underpants? He’s a saint what is your problem? Stay inside and get too much gas drinking Dr. Pepper? I hope not.

Let me help me you here: Larry takes everything off (those too), takes a nap on the griddle when it’s hot as a griddle, and when it gets to be too much here in the Panhandle, does he panic? Did you or did you not get the saint part of this? Larry simply says, Turn me over, y’all, I’m done on this side! Read it yourself, go to Mr. Butler’s book on the saint subjects, and tell me I’m a liar!

See? Now that we’ve established that your new friend Sooner does not lie about saints called Larry that refuse to cool off on griddles in the Oklahoma Panhandle just wearing their underpants; can we go on to the county question now?

You can look up this one as well—this is Cimarron County, and do not, do not forget the second r or you will regret it! If you can’t have a hullabaloo in my city of Keyes, we’ve got 2,500 of us in the county that can show you their truck, or their cattle, or their big ass ranch, or our county seat of Boise City, or their church, which probably isn’t Catholic but whoop-de-doo to them, too!

Look straight north, and that is Colorado. Slightly right from there is Kansas. Turn the hell around, and you would be in the most worthless, God forsaken, underprivileged state in the union when it’s time for Texas-OU weekend in Dallas. Yeah, that one, and we pretend that one does not exist in mine. Look right before you vomit cow dung and you’ll see New Mexico.

Figure it out yet? Having fun in my world yet? Do you possibly think I actually care yet? Don’t get carried away on the friend thing yet, since you’ll really never know me yet or forever.

Dad and Mom? Yeah, I have one of both, isn’t that what the health textbooks say? No brothers or sisters, though. Dad can drive his 16 miles to the county clerk’s office blindfolded after 20 years working there, the first eight after his wedding over in Guymon, then I came along and then there were the next 12.

Do we have to talk about Mom?

What About My Mom?

And why are you here again, and don’t you know how damn scared to death I am at this very moment?

I’m up for school’s first day one second this second Monday of August, one God forsaken second, and already I’m hearing the shouting, shouting, shouting down the hall following an 80-degree summer breeze through the windows that ain’t cool at all. Sooner, Sooner! Lather, rinse repeat that shampoo three more times in case your mop of sandy blonde, curly hair ain’t clean yet, youngster, Sooner, Sooner! Sooner, Sooner! Sooner, Sooner!

Mom, damn it, I know my damn name, and I know what damn time it is, and your damn world may be again coming to a damn end again, and…do not, do not go back outside and start to scream and yell at damn 5:00 am and embarrass me and Dad and the neighbors and the entire damn world and the entire State of Oklahoma in the entire damn process.

Where the hell is Dad and where the hell are the pills? Did she take the pills this time and what were the pills supposed to do this time?

And she is outside now, in her slip and not her nightgown, oh God not again and thank the god St. Lawrence’s nuns teach me about, thank that guy up way up there for a shotgun house that is blocks and not feet from most of the neighbors—the neighbors! The louder it gets, the more I get scared, and scared, and even more scared even still, and now they hear, and I hear before the roosters hear, Sooner, Sooner! Sooner, Sooner! Sooner, Sooner!

Dad, your most grateful son thanks you so kindly for joining this celebration 15 minutes after the fact, now please skip the standard I’m up anyway to get down to work in Boise City and help me, once again, solve this damn problem!

Justin David, what is the problem now? I hear from a father 30 years older than me, just as tall (or short) as me, but wiry stronger than me—and here we go again, the man doesn’t know my name yet again!

Dad, dad…my name is Sooner. Sooner! I’m 12 now, why don’t you get that?

What I do not get is why your mother is outside at 5:15 am, roaming the streets looking for you when you are not out there.

I know a classic comeback when I see one, even if I am a 12-year-old boy damn scared to death. "What I do not get, Dad, is she is your wife, and you don’t know where the hell she is…"

And you, young man, you do not know who your mother is!

"Oh yes I do, mister! It’s that thing, roaming Keyes practically in her underwear, not knowing night from day, and getting ready to embarrass the living crap out of me at St. Lawrence just in time for my first day in damn sixth grade!"

Don’t look this way, don’t…now my new best friend (that’s you, in case you forgot) has seen what I’m so mightily unproud of, my own mom walk my neighborhood all but naked, past at least five St. Lawrence classmates’ houses, and head towards the playground and everything else that is Keyes. No cue is needed, there is a new chant in town and it’s not at 6:15 daily Latin Mass at St. Lawrence, it’s down that aisle of pavement and it’s not stopping the Sooner, Sooner! Sooner, Sooner! Sooner, Sooner!

And it’s not stopping a boy of 12 from a summer thunderstorm of tears, either, as he glances frantically out the window onto Hope St—what a laugh, y’all, my street is called hope—as Dad once again, once more races down hope against hope to catch his wife, and yes my mother, before she hits the main drag of Keyes and the police station to drive Chief Sam Sane (keep that one to yourself, idiot) off his fat butt, and drive her home in the patrol car again so we can hear again the most beloved Keyes Police Chief Sam Sane Memorial Lecture.

Give me a second here while I get into proper character, I’ve heard this one 50 times already. I know she is sick, Mr. Justice, but she is your responsibility and I’m damn sick and damn tired of having my third shift coffee get cold taking care of her because you can’t or you won’t.

Somebody you barely know is in a dark hallway now, scrunched in a sandy blonde curls caterpillar ball, and his pajama top is drenched in a little boy’s tears. His head is buried looking into the dark hallway that is supposedly on Hope St, and he’s not Sooner, he is not the snot ass boy that thinks he can go swimming naked, no he ain’t Sooner now—he’s Fearer.

How, I pray how in hell can it be, that I am taught by nuns in a Catholic school about goodness, and joy, and what family means? I know the drill, Dad: Stay at St. Lawrence where your good money goes, graduate with your eighth-grade class, and you’ll still have the edge getting into Norman or Stillwater after you go to the public county high school. Fearer, the sandy, blonde curls caterpillar ball, has flushed all that down the crapper again. How, I pray how in hell can this all be?

And how the hell can a woman as small and weak as my mom, barely strong enough to survive my childbirth that sweltering Panhandle August night in that Guymon hospital 12 years ago, go from the most beautiful artist’s brushstrokes of the angels I learn about in Catholic school, to this thing, this humiliating thing I’m supposed to call a mother?

Well, my new friend, we just can’t put her away anymore. If it was up to yours truly, Mr. Justin David Justice, Jr—oh puke, ain’t that another laugh, my family name is Justice—she’d be dumped away by now.

But I was born in 1946, right after the war when Justin Sr. met Precious (please stop laughing) at a Guymon church dance following his release from the Marines, and it’s 1958 now, and how a big, big word that defines the Justins—make that Dad and Sooner—came into our little world.

Just saying it makes me think of those spelling bees at St. Lawrence School, those atrocious things where Sr. Veronica Mary lines up the boys on one side, the girls on the other, they giggle at us, we ignore them, and the words come flying.

There is a new one now: D-e-i-n-s-t-i-t-u-t-i-o-n-a-l-i-z-a-t-i-o-n.

There’re 10 tears for every letter in that word for Fearer, the sandy blonde curls caterpillar ball. 220 more reasons for Fearer to sob his balls off. And there’s more balling where that one came from.

How do you like these spelling apples? I’ll give you 50 more crybabies for A-c-u-t-e, another 80 where that came from courtesy of P-a-r-a-n-o-i-d, and 90 additional big ones just for good measure if you get P-s-y-c-h-o-s-i-s right, and that is Sooner’s mom, and you put every annoying, staring, gawking sixth-grade girl to be in her place in their boring spelling bee universe! And, and…that’s another 220 tears on Fearer’s PJs.

Except Fearer must soon—in five minutes, actually—return to being Sooner. Mom has her pills now, and she has returned to her post-nightmare usual half-asleep, half-zombie reality. What the hell, that gives Fearer another 130 ball busters for yet another spelling bee word carved in supposed justice to make her supposedly normal: P-s-y-c-h-o-t-r-o-p-i-c-s.

But don’t forget I’m Sooner again now, and it’s 5:30 am on my first day of sixth grade at St. Lawrence Catholic School here in mighty, mighty Keyes, Oklahoma. The white dress shirt, blue uniform pants, and cheater SLS emblem tie look mighty, mighty handsome in the mirror, and I have Latin Mass to serve at 6:15 am up at church with the cassock and surplice in the back seat ready to go.

Do you really expect a sandy blonde curl, caterpillar ball to do that while sobbing his ass off or his balls off up on the altar? Even if he could dominate the boy’s side of that spelling bee with 80 more Fearer tears for M-e-n-t-a-l-l-y, and another 30 for i-l-l? Heck, I’ve got at least 680 tears out my eyeballs by now, why I never earned that many indulgences in kindergarten through fifth grade religion classes combined, for Christ’s sake.

I’m coming, Justin Sr, the sandy blonde curls caterpillar ball is coming Sooner than y’all think.

My First Day of Sixth Grade and Two

Bloody Black Eyes!

There is nothing like it. Nothing at all.

St. Lawrence Roman Catholic Church (repeat those last five words slowly for me) in mighty, mighty Keyes, Oklahoma. Nobody’s around, the place is opening up, the smell is just incredible around here, and you’re here to serve Latin Mass.

Nobody here to bother or judge or start rumors about you or your family.

If my first day of sixth grade ended as it began now, well, living hell would not be in my near view horizon.

That’s Latin Mass, folks, by the way, not Howie Holiness or Bobby Baptist or whatever it is they do all over this place called our Panhandle. Now aren’t you glad we have that handle of a pan here in the west, heck otherwise we would be Texans in their big overweight panhandle that sticks right up at us. Oh, puke again!

But back to Latin Mass. I look just plain wonderful in my altar server duds, considering I turned 12 only last week. Yes, for my birthday and all, I should or could be a seventh grader by now. Didn’t happen, y’all, because the mother you’ve already been grandly introduced to was afraid—screaming afraid, over and over again—I was too young to start when I could’ve started.

I remember that horror scene, too, and once again, Dad dear Dad took the happy wife, happy life route, and Justin David Justice, Jr. before he was Sooner spent another year as Fearer crying and wetting his damn pajamas in more ways than one during the Sooner, Sooner! daily grand parade.

But I left all that at home this morning now, didn’t I? Sooner’s here now, and so is server number two, Earnest Jones, a big, ugly bully of a kid a year older and yes, two grades older in eighth grade. I’m paired with him even if I can’t stand the big booger. He’s supposed to keep me from screwing up this thing called a Latin low Mass.

What is Monsignor Powell expecting, Earnest asks me for the 45th time since I carried my black cassock and white surplice over my shoulder like an altar boy pro, down the St. Lawrence Church center aisle at 5:45 this morning? Oh crap, I have a week of this with him! Every, school, day, until this Friday.

Mr. Sixth-Grade Rookie replies rather impressively, Light only two candles on the high altar, four is for a high Mass on Sunday, and six is for a Solemn high Mass on Christmas Eve. Memorize and pronounce your Latin at the foot of the altar perfectly, just perfectly, come with black shiny shoes and your cassock covering your black not shiny socks.

And so forth and so on, until the brain of this altar boy is about to split into a million pieces. But not good enough for my dear pal Earnest, no sir, as he continues the Kneel when, Justin? Genuflect when, Justin? routine until 6:10 am, and yeah I know, he didn’t get the Sooner memo, either.

He’s got the Sooner something else coming, though, just you wait and see.

Monsignor Powell is not concerned, not at all. Really tall and really fat, he’s really old, too, having been our pastor for over 20 years. Down in the Oklahoma City archdiocese (that’s up here, too) they call him a lifer. That basically means we’re stuck with him until he croaks and goes six feet under.

How, you may ask, how is it that Sooner can be looking a low Latin Mass in the sandy blonde curls altar boy face, five minutes in front of him, and have a phenomenally outstanding potty mouth and seemingly total lack of love in his little boy heart? Will you, of all people, will you give Justin David Sooner Justice, Junior, a break?

Will you? I do love this place. I love serving Mass, even with Earnest. Can I show you why as we go out there, as the Monsignor dons his black cap with the black tassel on top; vested to impress?

The quiet is just amazing. I have the prayers at the foot of the altar exquisitely memorized, the bows, the lean to the right (or left if you’re Earnest) on my knees exact as exact can be. Are we something or what, left hand over our heart, right hand under the water or wine cruet?

High Mass is five times as good as this, and Solemn high Mass 10 times better than that, even when there is so much more to learn. Maybe I can serve for the Oak City Archbishop one day, since we do this through high school up here. Can’t believe the city slickers in our state capitol quit this thing in eighth grade since they’re so busy and important in their high-nosed Catholic high school of 1000 scholars or whatever.

Whoop-de-doo to them, too! I am quite whoop-de-doo generous, ain’t I?

And no, no, don’t say that my favorite part of serving Latin Mass is holding the paten when everyone receives Communion, and that’s receive, not take, brother! Now that we got that straight, I just deal with the paten. Follow Monsignor Fatso left to right and hold the paten directly under the guy or girl kneeling, and no you dirty sinner, I do not stare at the girls my age as they stick their tongue out at the rail. What do you make me out to be, anyhow? I’m Sooner, not Earnest dang nab it!

Before I truly understand or dread what kind of first day of sixth grade this will become, Mass is over, it’s only 6:55, and St. Lawrence School in the mighty, mighty does not have a first bell until 7:55. Dad grabs the altar boy things, the white dress shirt, blue uniform pants, and cheater SLS emblem tie are in place, and I’m back in the servers room until the school is unlocked at 7:30.

That’s 35 minutes—count ’em, 35 big ones—in the unofficial St. Lawrence altar boy clubhouse with none other than Earnest Jones. And here we go!

Earnest does not live in my hope against Hope Street neighborhood, but this is Keyes, jerk. He knows the story, so does the Monsignor, and the principal Sister John Peter, and every nun in the place, and my God, the whole parish and town and county knows!

Can you possibly guess what happens when I try to sit on the other end of the clubhouse, to pretend his ugly ass is nowhere to be seen? It starts at the 35-minute mark on the timer ready, get set, damn you moron, go!

First, there’s the insulting laugh that makes an overage 12-year-old boy’s face turn deep fire engine red. Soon comes the mocking tone, and you know what’s next, kid: Sooner, Sooner! Sooner, Sooner! Sooner, Sooner!

2100 shit-filled seconds a day, 10500 for the week to come that we think is coming, from an eighth-grade boy who’s supposed to be my role model, man ain’t he outstanding.

By this time, of course, my new friend out there may be wondering why I don’t just kick the living crap out of him. Consider where we are, in a church, for one thing. But you also don’t know the build or lack thereof of this sandy blonde curled, sixth-grade, 12-year-old specimen of boyhood that resembled a caterpillar ball only two or so hours ago.

It ain’t much: Five-foot, pencil thin, maybe 100 pounds with a quick cheeseburger from the Dairy Queen of the mighty, mighty, but they don’t open till 11, and I’m stuck here at St. Lawrence eating unnormal food packed by a unnormal mother, who’s cuisine is limited to peanut butter and a knife. So, let’s just call it five-foot and 90 on the scale to be fair.

7:30 am on Monday of that first day finally comes! I know enough not to extend the clubhouse party, especially with another set of servers coming in for 8:00 am Mass. Out the door I go, across the parking lot the front school entrance doors are in sight, and taped to their inside is my sixth-grade class assignment. Curious minds need to know, you know.

Oh, joy and a half! I get Sister Ignatius for sixth grade, the Sis Ig around these parts. None other than the Atilla the Hun nun!

Who gets to join me in my misery to come, in their fellow white dress shirts, blue uniform pants, and cheater SLS emblem ties? God is on my side for two of its members. Jim Dayle, all 150 sixth-grade pounds of him at four-foot-nothing, will also join the Sis Ig ordeal. Jim’s okay, though, he just takes forever getting around since there’s so much of him. And my closest forever friend Kenny Wayne will also join my class. The other 12 guys in the future class I know, since everybody in Keyes knows…everybody in Keyes, but I don’t really know the rest of the cheater tie brigade.

How do you know anyone, anyway, when you’re Sooner on the outside and Fearer on the inside?

Yes, there are 30 in my Sis Ig class, and 30 minus 15 is still 15 after fifth grade math, and the other 15 wear positively unattractive gray plaid jumpers down below their knobby knees (and I have not peeked under) with stiff white blouses, and this gender is not as St. Lawrence School spiffy and sharp as those of us with white dress shirts, blue uniform pants, and cheater SLS emblem ties.

Can’t help it, y’all, just love the wardrobe around here—at least for some of us!

And don’t you dare bring that up again, yes, some of the unattractive gray plaid jumpers do go to Communion every morning at 6:15, and no, I don’t have their open mouths and stuck-out tongues memorized like Latin! And I know, I know, next year in seventh grade the button-down blouses and uniform skirts will be there to see. Stop hanging around Earnest, will ya!

My year-round Lenten penance formally known as my sixth-grade classroom is assigned to Room 205, middle of the second floor facing a humongous cattle ranch nearby, and I’ve been told there will be some class changing to get to Reading on the first floor.

My heaven-sent inspiration Earnest once joked in the server clubhouse that going up the stairs provides a unique perspective on the opposite sex when the white dress shirts, blue uniform pants, and cheater SLS emblem ties follow strategically behind—way behind. I would love him to follow ahead, so a certain white dress shirt, blue uniform pants, and cheater SLS emblem tie with sandy blonde curls can strategically offer his worst nightmare wedgie to his bedtime prayers.

Just imagine, boys and girls: Now I lay my bloody ass to sleep, pray the rectal bruises forever keep! I love Earnest, I really do.

Much sooner than I imagined, it’s 7:55 am, the St. Lawrence School buzzer bell is here once again, Kenny arrives and Jim labors all of him in, and Sis Ig joins the 30 of us.

Don’t worry, next best buddy to be, I will not bore you with school day particulars from day one of grade six. It’s harder than fifth grade but not as hard as seventh grade, you know that already.

But I know you have this question ready; I know you do: How it is that Mr. Potty Mouth Latin Mass Altar Server can have such a voluminous command of words, but still only manage 65 on his spelling tests? Dad don’t like it, either, but he can’t really talk to me, and I can barely talk to him because of her. Of course, no one really talks to her but herself. Still, he thinks I will come around, and the magic scholarship to Norman (oh yes!) or Stillwater (not happening!) is just a matter of time. Now that answered your question, didn’t it?

And even if I didn’t come close, it’s lunch time already at St. Lawrence School, the home of the Leopards (Were you expecting the Leotards?), and we will ignore the bozos at