On a town known as Wheeling, West Virginia, pickleball lessons, Seinfeld day at Yankee Stadium, and Opera in the Outfield (vol. xxix, no. 8)

Dear Family:

I picked up a pickleball paddle for the first time in my life at our family reunion at Oglebay earlier this month.

Within about 30 seconds I felt like I more or less had the hang of it, and my brother Matt surmised that my tennis background would likely translate to my becoming a reasonably competent pickleball player.

Matt’s wife Andra, after watching me fumble around the court and inadvertently play several illegal volleys from the kitchen, offered a contrasting view:

“I know 75-year-old women who are better at this than you are,” she observed.

I’m sure she does.

Had it come from anyone other than my ultra-competitive sister-in-law, I might have taken umbrage at being told I suck at something I just started doing 5 minutes ago. But I’ve known Andra for 30 years. She excels at everything she undertakes and has little patience for people who embrace their mediocrity (like me). I’m sure there are plenty of 75-year-old women who are better than me at literally everything I do, and I’m okay with that.

At any rate, I can now say that I have played pickleball. I’ve done it for a grand total of about 30 minutes and can easily envision myself never doing it again. At least not until my joints deteriorate to the point that I can no longer play actual sports.

Speaking of actual sports (and old ladies who are better at them than I¹), my mother-in-law performed rather impressively at U.S. Masters Swimming’s National Championship meet earlier this month. She competed in six events, winning her age group in 200M Fly, 200M Breast, and 200M IM, finishing second in 400M IM, and 800M Free and third in 200M Back.

So how about that?

But back to the Willis reunion, which returned to Wheeling West Virginia’s Oglebay resort for a record eighth time. The Famlet archives confirm that Oglebay previously hosted Willis reunions in 2002, 2004, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2021, and 2023. We experimented with other places during most of the 2010s when we felt our kids had outgrown Oglebay. We had fun at those other places, but at some point the kids (almost none of whom are still kids) started asking why we stopped going to Oglebay. So we returned. We’ll probably keep going there until our kids’ kids outgrow it, which might be never.

Two songs get stuck in my head whenever we go to Wheeling. One is John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” (for obvious reasons — it’s basically the unofficial state song of West Virginia). The other is Billy Joel’s “The Ballad of Billy the Kid” (if you know the song, you know why). I caught myself humming, whistling, and singing both songs to myself throughout the week. It probably would’ve driven the rest of the family nuts if I wasn’t already annoying them for other reasons.

Willis reunions are not overly structured events (I like that about them) and the activities fell into three broad categories: 1) Golf, 2) the Pool, and 3) Other Stuff

Golf
I had a lot of fun playing at least 45 holes of various varieties of golf (real golf, miniature golf, and pitch ‘n’ putt) with my son-in-law Luke. He is new to the game and hits tee shots that can be classified in one of two ways: Findable and Not Findable. He is currently at the level where he judges the success of a round based on the number of balls he finds looking for errant drives net of the number of balls he loses. (Somehow, he tends to come out ahead.) We’ve all been there, and there are doubtless untold thousands of 75-year-old women who play better than both of us.

(Speaking of which, Hannah proudly reports that she has now reached whatever level it is at her workplace that gets one invited on company golf outings during regular business hours. She views this as a positive development. She’s probably right.)

The Pool
The swimming pools at Oglebay and at nearby Wheeling Park are huge.² I have been horsing around with my four brothers in various natural and man-made bodies of water for decades. We are all decidedly middle-aged men with adult children now, and very little has changed. Toss our spouses and offspring (and a football) into the mix, and we put on quite a spectacle.

“Whenever I hear a lifeguard whistle,” Andrew said, “I always assume it’s being directed at me.”

“Whenever I hear a lifeguard whistle,” I replied, “it almost always is being directed at me.”

The Oglebay lifeguards earned their money that week.

Other Stuff
The talent show and usual excursions to Oglebay’s zoo, pedal boats, rock-climbing wall, ropes course, and glass museum were supplemented this year by a scavenger hunt in and around Wheeling.

The scavenger hunt took all day and imposed more structure on the gathering than I would ordinarily opt for. But I didn’t hate it nearly as much as I thought I would. (Though I generally hate everything new, and acknowledging that I hated something less than I thought I would hate it is a little like observing that crime in Washington D.C. is at a 30-year low.³ Make of that comparison whatever you wish.)

But everyone else seemed to love it, and I actually enjoyed getting to learn and discover a lot of things about Wheeling that I otherwise would not have. So we’ll probably do another scavenger hunt in two years. Someone suggested we do one to explore Pittsburgh — about an hour east of Wheeling. Knowing me, I’ll complain about it for a while, ultimately enjoy myself anyway, and all will be right with the world.

And then there was the one question that I imagine dominated summer reunions of families like ours the world over: “Do you have the new temple garments yet?”

Jessica, taking advantage of her parents’ recent return from their three-year stint as mission leaders in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa,⁴ appeared to be the only one who had them and spent the week proudly flaunting her scandalously bare shoulders. Alas, I guess numbered are the days of being able to recognize our co-religionists from across a crowded theme park on a hot day simply by what kind of top the mom is wearing. It’s probably for the best. The Church is a logistical wonder, but I honestly don’t know how it’s going to keep the new garments in stock when they roll out in the U.S. later this year.

Three Trips to the Ballpark

Sophie and Luke flew into town on Saturday, August 2, for the reunion and wanted to see the Nationals play for some reason. And so Crystal took them directly from the airport to the ballpark for a Saturday afternoon tilt against the league-leading Milwaukee Brewers.

I had my temple shift that afternoon and went to the stadium directly from there. (More accurately, I drove to the Forest Glen Metro station — about a mile and half from the temple — skillfully changed in the parking lot from my temple-going clothes into more suitable attire and then rode Metro to the park.)

I arrived during the first inning with the Nats characteristically already down 3 runs. (They would go on to lose 8-2.) My late arrival meant I was not one of the lucky first 10,000 fans who got a free Jacob Young bobblehead.

“Who is Jacob Young?” you might ask.

“Exactly,” would be my response.

Jacob Young, who I imagine will go on to have a fine major league career with some other team, was not in the lineup on August 2nd. It’s not hard to see why — he’s currently batting a smooth .229 (.576 OPS), which basically makes him the worst hitter on the second-worst team in the National League (thank you, Rockies) — but you’d think the Nats’ soon-to-be-fired interim manager would put Jacob in the game on his bobblehead night. But what do I know?

But even when the home team is terrible, I always thoroughly enjoy myself at a baseball game. Something about it just makes me happy. It was even more fun being there with Sophie and Luke and Luke’s parents, who joined us for the game and afterward for KFC (Korean fried chicken) at Bonchon, just outside the ballpark. I’d never had Korean fried chicken before. It was great!

We should do this more often.

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A little less than three weeks later, my friend Richard and I rode Amtrak three hours north to a somewhat more iconic ballpark.

The Yankees were playing the Red Sox. Boston won a reasonably entertaining back-and-forth game (that we bailed on after the seventh-inning stretch) but we didn’t really care about that.

We went because it was Seinfeld Night at Yankee Stadium and Richard and I wanted to get our hands on two of the George-Costanza-napping-under-his-desk bobbleheads they were giving away to the first 18,000 fans.

The George Costanza bobblehead at Yankee Stadium ginned up considerably more fan interest than the Jacob Young bobblehead at Nats Park did.

First pitch was at 7:15, which ordinarily would translate to the gates opening at 5:45. They moved it up to 5:00 to accommodate the Seinfeld mob. Richard and I arrived at a few minutes after 3:00 and the place was already a zoo. We found a line that wrapped maybe a quarter of the way around the stadium, parked ourselves at the end of it, and spent the next two hours barely speaking to each other. I think we were both too nervous and too busy trying to count and figure out whether there were more than 17,998 people ahead of us at our entrance and all the other entrances.

The throng of people only grew over the next two hours. By 4:30, the sea of humanity had expanded to fill the area surrounding the stadium as well as the nearby sidewalks. Brazen line-cutting was rampant. Some idiot right in front of us allowed a half-dozen of her drunk, jackass friends to join her. They became increasingly obnoxious as they consumed one vodka seltzer after another.

Our anxiety grew.

After what seemed like an eternity, the line finally started to move. The drunks who had cut in front of us somehow weaseled their way into the handicapped line (I mean, they were clearly impaired, but I’m not sure why that counts as being handicapped.) We angrily watched them slither into the stadium, wishing all kinds of ill upon them as we slowly progressed through the regular line.

But we eventually made it inside and got our @#$% bobbleheads.

If you don’t understand the Seinfeld reference behind our wearing Baltimore Orioles caps to a Yankees game, then we probably don’t have anything to talk about.

We still had two hours to kill before the game started. Fortunately, Yankee Stadium is basically a temple to baseball and we had fun kicking around and almost buying lots of different Seinfeld-themed Yankees merch before thinking better of it. We had acquired what we came for.

By the middle of the game, the bobbleheads were going on eBay for between $180 and $240. It occurred to us that we could probably recoup the cost of the trip, but what would have been the fun of that? We ultimately decided the bobbleheads were worth more to us than money. (I mean, if someone wants to offer $100k for mine, I’ll probably sell, but I’d want to see the cash first.)

Richard’s bobblehead is now on display in his office at the State Department. Mine is in an undisclosed location, but if you come over I might let you touch it.

After the game, Richard and I spent the night at a Residence Inn in the Bronx.

The next day, I took some work calls in the morning (it was Friday, after all) and we had lunch at Tom’s Restaurant — the uptown diner (at 112th St. & Broadway) whose exterior is used to establish Monk’s Cafe in almost every Seinfeld episode.

It was an absolutely exquisite day (not hot, hot humid, not a cloud in the sky) and so we wound up walking more than 6 miles (carrying our overnight bags and our precious Costanza cargo) from Monk’s all the way down to Penn Station (33rd St.) traversing the full length and breadth of Central Park along the way.

We caught a 4:00 p.m. train back and were home for dinner. It was pretty epic.

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The next morning, I ran a little race (my first of three Saturdays in a row when I’ll be racing behind a wheelchair)…

Then, after my temple shift, I changed my clothes (in the Visitors’ Center parking lot this time) drove over to Forest Glen, hopped on the Metro and joined Crystal, Ari, Grace and the Eskelsens at Nationals Park for Opera in the Outfield.

The opera this year was Porgy and Bess. I have long felt that loving this particular opera is part of my duty as an American. But I’ve never loved it as much as I feel like I’m supposed to. Sometimes I wonder if the music is just too sophisticated for me to appreciate.

The kids set up camp in the actual outfield…

…meanwhile, I arrived after everybody else (because of my temple shift) and set up along the third base line so I could put my feet up on the visiting team’s dugout.

I was subsequently joined there by Crystal, Jon and Emily. Somebody probably has pictures of all of us together, but I don’t.

And that’s a wrap on summer. It’s been a good one! I guess there’s still this weekend, but Grace drove back to SVU on Monday and started classes Wednesday. Crystal’s back to teaching and Ari is back to before-and-after-school nurturing.

Happy fall! The best of all of the seasons and it looks like it might be starting a little early here. Nobody jinx it!!

Love,
Tim

1. My considerable pride obligates me to point out here that I currently swim faster than my 80-year-old mother-in-law does (except maybe in 200 Fly — 200 Fly! — I’ve never even tried to swim more than 100 meters of butterfly at once, and never will, so we’ll never know for sure) but the unforgetting annals of the internet make it abundantly clear that I am quite a bit slower than she was at my age.
2. Imagine a full, truly Olympic-sized pool (50 meters long, 25 meters wide). Now imagine it without any lane lines painted on the bottom. That’s the Oglebay pool. (I don’t think anyone in West Virginia swims for exercise.) The pool at Wheeling Park is just as big, but with an awesome water slide.
3. Much is currently being made about the increased federal law enforcement presence in the Nation’s Capital — mostly, I can’t help but notice, by people who don’t actually live here and have no idea what they’re talking about. Speaking as someone who breaks the law in D.C. an average of 20 times per week (depending on how well I time the traffic lights bicycling through Georgetown between Rock Creek Park and the Key Bridge on my way to work), the only difference I’ve noticed is that instead of running red lights in front of a police officer, I’m now doing it in front of 2 or 3 police officers. The end result is the same — i.e., nothing — and I don’t get the sense that the stepped up enforcement is doing all that much beyond further enraging certain people who are already maximally outraged to begin with. (If you’re wondering what kind of person I am, I put myself in the “moderately outraged” category. I’m pacing myself, and the federalization of law enforcement in the federal district is not something I’m going to invest a lot of energy getting upset over.
4. When the Church announced that it was initially rolling out the new garments in certain hot, humid climates, which included Africa but not Maryland, I was reminded of a conversation I had with our Ghanaian next-door neighbor more than 20 years ago on a particularly miserable afternoon. I asked him if the weather reminded him of Africa. “Yes, a little bit,” he initially replied. Then, after a pause, he added, “Actually this is much worse.”