Track 19 – Ssenippah

I was six years old when we moved to our house on Cincinnati Avenue in Anderson, Indiana. This song is about a neighborhood group that I had some great times with there. We had apricot fights and played sandlot baseball mostly. We even played baseball with apricots and I think it helped develop my ability to hit a fastball and to avoid getting hit by pitches during my baseball career.

The New York Blues was one of the sandlot teams. We made “piggy grunts” when our team scored runs, and one of us played in some old tennis shoes that we’d found along the railroad tracks. One of the highlights of those days was buying “Mr. Fudge Bars” from the riding popcycle man, when we could find enough change to pull it off. The sound of that bell dinging and that man riding that little white box around is a memory close to my heart. Even if we weren’t able to buy anything, that sound alone brought a great quench to some long hot summer days.

Back then, “a bit of good news” was our “currency”, since money was certainly not something we knew much about. The song got named “Ssenippah” because one day I saw the word “happiness in the mirror, and that’s what those days looked like to me . . .  a mirror of happiness.