in my life that I kin remember on,
and don't believe that I ever will forgit that. You see it wuz along
in the spring time of the yeer, and the weather wuz purty warm and
sunshiny, and the boys sed to me, "Uncle, we'd like to have you help us
play a game of base ball." I sed, "Boys, I'm gittin' a little too old
fer those kinds of passtimes, but I'll help you play one game, I'll be
durned if I don't." Wall, we got out in the paster and wuz gittin' ready
to play; we got the bases and bats put around in thar places, and a
buckit of drinkin' water up in the fence corner, whar we could get a
drink when we wanted it. We didn't have any bleachers, but we had thirty
or forty hogs, and they wuz the best rooters you ever seen; jist then I
happened to look around and thar wuz the biggest billy goat I ever saw
in all my life. You ought to seen the boys a-gittin' out of the paster;
I would hav got out too, but I got stuck in the fence. Wall, you ought
to hav seen that billy goat a-gittin' me through the fence. He didn't
git me all the way through, cos I wuz half way through when he got thar;
but he got the last half through. I didn't make any home run, but I wuz
the only feller what had a score of the game; I couldn't see the score,
but I had it. Every time I'd go to sot down I knowed jist exactly how
the game stood.

They hav a good many new fangled games now, but when they git anything
that can beet a game of base ball with a billy goat fer a battery,
durned if I don't want to see it.

The Punkin Centre and Paw Paw Valley Railroad

WONDERS will never cease--we've got a railroad in Punkin Centre now;
oh, we're gittin' to be right smart cityfied. I guess that's about
the crookedest railroad that ever wuz bilt. I think that railroad runs
across itself in one or two places; it runs past one station three
times. It's so durned crooked they hav to burn crooked wood in the
ingine. Wall, the fust ingine they had on the Punkin Centre wuz
a wonderful piece of masheenery. It had a five-foot boiler and a
seven-foot whissel, and every time they blowed the whissel the durned
old ingine would stop.

Wall, we've got the railroad, and we're mighty proud of it; but we had
an awful time a-gittin' it through. You see, most everybody give the
right of way 'cept Ezra Hoskins, and he didn't like to see it go through
his medder field, and it seemed as though they'd hav to go 'round fer
quite a ways, and maybe they wouldn't cum to Punkin Centre