26. Baseball discovers Leigh Neuage

Leigh was getting involved with organised baseball throughout the year and not just during the summer months and by mid-1995 he had a new list of baseball events he was involved with:

In June, he attended another Glenelg coaching clinic with the Adelaide Giants 

Leigh got involved with SASI (South Australia Sports Institute) with their U/14 Division One group and played Winterball at Seaton High School. SASI would become his life for years to come.

On June 7, he tried out for the Seaton High School's Special Interest Baseball Program. Seaton High School was the only school in Australia that was setting itself up as a baseball school. They claimed that there were only three or four in the world that offered baseball as a subject though I have found that there are many more. It would have been more than one-hour drive each way every day but Leigh was insistent that it would be good for his career. I told him he would have to take the bus and he agreed and did not think that getting home every evening late would matter in his quest to become a major league pitcher. We went to the tryouts and Leigh was clearly better than anyone else, regardless of their age.

During the week of July 8-12, when he had just turned 12, Leigh played on a South Australian Baseball League All Stars team against Seaton High School and they trashed them, which made Leigh think that going to this school to play baseball would not be that useful. The South Australian Baseball League All Stars team, Leigh was pitching for played against the East-West Ambassadors, a team from the States, in an Annual Friendship Game, and Leigh won the two games that he pitched in. He was very excited to have beaten an all-star team from the States, especially since he had just turned twelve years old.

July 11 we were informed that Leigh had made the Seaton High School Team but after much discussion he decided not to attend. My thinking was that he would get more accomplished using those hours training at home instead of sitting on a bus. In addition, he did not think that their team was very good, especially after the team he was on had beaten them in every game they played. He did not think the coach of Seaton High knew as much as he thought he did either.

Kris and I got along, for the most part, really well for several months then I forget what happened but we broke up in mid-September.  It was the pressure from trying to finish my thesis that was driving me around the bend at the time. Kris wanted to spend more time with me and I wanted to spend less time with her and more time on my thesis. I was having struggles with getting it to sound right.

My topic, “graffiti as text” was bogging down and I could not get myself into writing the 20,000 or so words I had to write on this topic. I chose this subject so I could be in tune with what Sacha was passionate about. I had given him areas to paint and large pieces of canvases and even said I would do a fence with him if he got permission for it. Sure enough he did and one Sunday morning we were painting a neighbour’s fence. I felt quite foolish and not only was I embarrassed about doing spray painting on a fence, but Sacha restricted me to just fill-in areas at that. He tried to explain that the artist does the outline and me, as the helper, or ‘graf-wantabe’ could not expect to do anything more than fill in the outlines.

Kris did not respond well to my wanting to stop our relationship so I asked for a month and a half of separation so that I could finish my honour’s degree. She told me, following that month, that most days she sat home and cried and did nothing else. I was in love with her but I did not miss her and concentrated on my schooling. We seem to miss another human when we have nothing to do of significance. I have constantly created so many projects in my life just as a buffer against feeling lonely or emotional about missing someone.

Below: Leigh Neuage is the tallest one in the back row at Morphett Vale East School South Australia 1995

One of the strangest parts of being a human is that we can never exactly replicate someone else’s feelings and no one can truly know what we are feeling. We are very self-contained. It amazes me how two humans ever get together. We are all so different. No one can have a clue what it feels like to be me except for what I say it is like being me. Since no one else experience what we do we can only convey a little spark of our essence. We are attracted to another person’s manifestation and that is the extent of it. The manifestation is a result of another person’s essence in an abstract way but it is not really the person. We never will know more than our interpretation of another person and in my case I only know my interpretation of a person’s astrological chart and whatever is at the end of my senses; my fingers, tongue, toes, sight, smell, hearing, twisted thoughts, and on and on and so forth.

I finished my thesis and posted it in hopes that I would get a mark high enough on it to go into the Master’s program. Most people go directly from their BA to a Masters but I did not have high enough marks to do that.  However, this schooling thing was starting to add up as years. Including the years I did the TAFE course “writing for the media” which I began in 1989 I was now up to seven years which was a long time to have done formal study and still be just another single parent student on the pension with no earned income to speak of and I was still waiting to finish my Honours.

As life in its strangeness would have it, this week; the first week in August 2015, I have worked every day as a TRT (temporary replacement teacher) in South Australia and my income for this week is more than any other week of earnings for me in this country and that covers a twenty-two year chunk of time. I turn 68 in a couple of days and I finally am making enough money to pay my way. Damn!

Leigh tried out for the Under 14 team at Southern Districts with great anticipation. He had attended more coaching clinics and tournaments than the others. I went to all his tryouts and he was clearly faster and more accurate with pitching than anyone else on the team and he was one of the better batters. It was going to be an easy transition to play Division One Under-14s. We attended all the tryouts for a few weeks and he was still there all the way up to the last day of the cuts. His name was even on the top of the list. However, when they called the boys for Division One they did not call Leigh. We listened together, one name after another – there were twelve on the team and when it got to eleven we got a bit worried but it was obvious they would say Leigh’s name next. However, we did not hear the word, ‘Leigh’. We both stood there a bit shocked as the kids who made the team ran out onto the field and we headed toward the car. Leigh had made every team he had tried out for and he was clearly better than the others chosen were. Southern Districts was a very club orientated group of people, I was not a club member, and I never hung out at the club and drank on game nights. All the fathers of the boys who were now on Division One were mates – they stood on the sidelines during the year before when the boys were playing Pee Wee and they drank beer together in the clubhouse. I am sure the reason Leigh was not chosen was because I was not part of the parental group that hung around together. Leigh was devastated and declared that he would become so good that no other team would ever pass over him in the future. We went home and he threw to me until dark and the following day we went out with the Division Two squad. Leigh excelled during the season that went from September 1995 until March 1996 while playing Division Two.

On September 2, days after not making the Division One team Leigh was asked to try out for a squad of 30 from South Australia to play in a pre-season State Series against teams from Victoria and Mount Gambier in Mount Gambier, as a tryout for the 1996 State team. Leigh made the team of 30, played the series in Mount Gambier, and stayed until the final cut for the State Team. Only two others from Southern Districts made the team to try out in Mount Gambier and here was Leigh being chosen for the State team and he was not even playing on Division One. Because he was not on the Division One team he was told that he could not make the final cut. The coach of the State Team had told me when they returned to South Australia that Leigh could have clearly made the team but the team had to be made up of players who were already Division One players for their clubs. We decided to leave Southern Districts but the next nearest team was too far away and I told Leigh that he could become the best in Division Two.

Sacha signed up to sell ice cream at the Adelaide Grand Prix in early November. It was a big affair. Not just because Adelaide had the largest crowds in the world for this race but it was the last race in Adelaide before the Grand Prix was to move to Melbourne the capital of South Australian’s bitter rival –Victoria. There were an estimated 250,000 people hanging around the streets and Leigh and I went with Sacha to help him set up. He had a pass to wear around his neck that let him into all the areas of the race. Sacha was fourteen, he had his first paid job, and I was excited for him. He had a small ice cream cart which kept him extremely busy. Leigh and I did not go to the race, as it would have been some fifty dollars for each of us to get in. I did not follow the Formula One races or any races for that matter but I know Damon Hill (Williams FW17/Renault RS7 3.0 V10 -1:49'15.946 hrs. 180.226 km/h) won the race – because I looked it up on the Internet and the Internet never lies. I think Sacha sold ice cream for all three days of the races and I have no idea what became of his money but I am sure it went to good use as it would with any fourteen year old.

There was a good atmosphere around the week in November each year for the eleven years the races were in Adelaide. The official title was “Adelaide Alive” and of course that is saying that at no other time is it or has been or probably will be alive other than for a week long carnival attended by famous people and common Aussies at the same time. There were air shows and music concerts and the whole city was a street fair. In the very area that I set up in Rymill Park in 1994 to sell picture-poems on the weekends there were large grandstands and cars going around the corner at a hundred miles an hour. I had set up the weekend after the race the year before but Adelaide was back to its normal self and I sold only a couple of pictures. Sacha did much better in his week in Rymill Park than I did all my weeks together. Why hundreds of thousands of people will come out to the park when some cars go racing around and around for about eighty laps and they will not come out to see my extraordinary creative shit I have no idea. Really – which is better in the long long long term, to have some art on the wall or to have said that you were at a car race back in the 1990s? Of course, to have spent lots and lots of money watching the cars go around and around is idiotic in itself. The first year the race was in Adelaide was the only year the kids and I paid to go in and watch the race. The kids were very excited when we went in 1985. Leigh was two years old and Sacha was four. We sat down and after half an hour Sacha remarked that it was the same cars going around each time. I am not quite sure what he was expecting but he was bored and Leigh was still a baby and in a pusher. Sacha said he did not want to watch the race and so went off to the park and the kids were happier jumping on some inflatable thing set up for kids. We left when the race was half over and drove the hour drive back to Mount Compass with me wondering whether I really had a handle on this parenting thing yet.

Christmas  1995 Hackham , South Australia  with Leigh , Sacha , Kris , Puppy  

Puppy was a well-adjusted dog and was such a part of the family that it seemed he was always with us and always would be. He had his only personal problems throughout the years. When we lived in Port Elliot he wandered off for several days and we thought we had lost him. He came home one afternoon having lost weight and looking the worst for wear. We found out from a neighbour that he had spent about a week in front of their house because they had a dog that was in heat. Puppy had refused food, had a small amount of water during the time, and had just waited for love to come his way but it never happened. He had a rendezvous with a dog in our backyard in Victor once and they were stuck together and I had to throw a bucket of water over the two dogs to get them apart and puppy seemed grumpy with me for a few days. The fact that the other dog was a male caused some deep soul searching of ‘where have I failed’ status. I think if I could have afforded a dog therapist Puppy would have been a good candidate for help. Puppy was a very emotional dog and would not eat for days if something seemed to be bothering him. He was happiest chasing birds on the beach or riding in the car. We took Puppy on camping trips and to the city and he was with me when I collected the children after school.

Sacha   graffitiing over my poem: “I was born this way - Everything else - I make up - As I go”

 When we went to the States in early 1992, I left Puppy with the grandparents. We had made somewhat of a truce and we had a mild toleration of one another. Actually, the grandfather was fine – it was the grandmother whom I had the problems with. She just did not like me and every once in a while she would say things like “why don't you go back to America?” But over the years she realised that I had power and the power I had was that I had control of the children and that if she wanted to see them she had to suck up to me or be nice which was an obvious strain on her.

One of the early things the grandmother had told me was that I would need to beat Lesia once in a while to keep her in control. I had never hit anyone and I was quite shocked with that and that was one of many things that made me angry with the grandmother. I never hit the children, never hit the dog, never hit anyone and the idea of controlling someone through physical violence was disgusting to me. My parents had never hit me though I would have rather had them beat me then torture me with their idea of punishment. If I was so called “naughty” which in their world I often was, they would stand there and pray for me and read from the Bible and tell me that I was bound for Hell and that the Devil had taken a hold of my soul and that if I did not get on my knees right then and there I could die as the Lord could take a person at any moment and then I would spend eternity – which I was assured was a very long time- burning in the lake of fire.

When we were going to the States – the day before our passports became lost at the Adelaide Post Office – my somewhat friend, Ms G... – drove us to the grandparents. Ms G...'s daughter did a radio show with Sacha and I have spoken about that earlier in this short story about how I got to the place in my life that I am currently in. G... was a single mother with an older teenager son and the daughter around Sacha's age. She had taken us to church with her when my father came to visit in October of 1992 and we all pretended that it was a usual event. G... was part of a wealthy family I had dinner with her as a couple at her beautiful home on a hillside outside of Victor a few times and we held hands once on her porch but I felt very much out of my league. I was as poor as one could be and lived in my dumpy house and had a dumpy car and she had a new four wheel drive vehicle so I just put up a lot of walls and whether anything would have developed between us I am not sure. I was also very paranoid about getting involved with someone in Australia because it would not be long before the children and I were going to return to the States and live happily after. I do not recall what I felt about Ms G..., I believe she was several years younger than me and I believe she was attractive, not that looks is the most important part of a relationship. I was petrified of two things: firstly getting involved with an Australian which could mean I would get stuck for more years in that country and secondly that I would appear as some sort of gold digger chasing after someone who was in a much higher social ranking than me and who was also wealthy. The G...s are one of the wealthiest families in Australia. And like rubbing shoulders with the founder of Jurlique years earlier it is good to know that some folks are successful in life. Of course I could have been totally wrong and she just saw me as a charity case. She did do a lot of volunteer work as she did not have to worry about money and perhaps she just invited me to dinner and came to visit me at my house because it was obvious that I was such an incredible loser. I did have dinner as a couple with Ms G... with a couple of other couples at her home one evening and it was quite frightening. Everyone was so posh and I was like the beggar that the rich folks invited in from the ghetto to show that they had a heart.

She drove us to my children’s grandparents before we left for the States. The grandmother loved to feed people and in her Russian hospitality format she would have a table full of food. She reminded me of Hyacinth Bucket in the English television sitcom, “Keeping Up Appearances”. They had come to Australia as refuges following World War II and she worked very hard at learning English and at becoming a Western type of person with all that they could accumulate. She was always concerned about what the neighbours thought and if I was in the backyard she would come running out and tell me to lower my voice as the neighbours could hear me. She thought Lesia was too good for me and was quite insulting about my life. She was proud of the wine she made by hand from pressed grapes or whatever fruit she could gather.

Here was one of the more wealthy women in South Australia, who owned some of the finer wineries in the state being offered something that tasted like vinegar. When the grandmother went out of the room we made some joke about watching out for any toenails in the wine and we proceeded to eat what we could. (Sacha was visiting last weekend, at the end of July 2015, and recalled this story) The grandmother made a lot of chicken wing type of dishes and because I did not eat meat my plate was always heaped to the ceiling with mashed potatoes and well over cooked peas. Ms G... said she was not hungry but it was clear that none of us wanted any of this Ukrainian – Russian feast that was in front of us.

Ms G... eventually went on her way and I kept sort of an acquaintance friendship with her when I returned and we must have still been friends eight months later because she took us to her church in October of that year. Of course writing this now I wonder if my life would have been different if I had gotten involved with her – but maybe there was never a chance and she would have been horrified if I had shown romantic interest in her. Life is so full of “what ifs” and I think the only way to write stories is to have a hypertextual format where one could go off in different directions then come back and try out another path. If only life could be like that, though some schools of metaphysics teach that every path and every possibility is lived on some plain in some dimension. We live lives that go sideways and above and below. I personally do not believe any of that but I find it a pleasant and fanciful notion that perhaps somewhere in creation I am living out this other path.

Puppy's immediate fate was that he was to live with the grandparents for the weeks that we were wandering around the planet. The grandmother had me talk into a tape recorder and she was going to play it for Puppy in hopes that he would not miss us. I thought it was nuts but that was how the grandmother thought. She was strange with animals and had a few cats that she kept locked up in a small room. The cat she had at the time she had sort of catnapped. She said when she had gone out into her backyard there was a stray kitten looking for food so she brought it in and feed it and put it into a spare bedroom. She said later in the day she had seen the mother cat but it was obvious she did not know how to take care of her kitten so the kitten grew up to be a psychotic cat living in a small room never being allowed to go outside in fear that it may run away. Lesia told me that she was twenty-one when she finally left home – she had climbed out of a window and left.

27. Master’s degree program at Deakin University Geelong Australia

Terrell Neuage, (dual citizen USA/Australia) is a South Australian/New York poet, writer, and digital artist known for his evocative poetry and extensive research on conversational analysis in on-line communciations (including communication in the AI era; from sharing information to making sense of it). His best-selling autobiographies;Leaving America (Before the After) & Leaving Australia (after) – exploring life as a hippie, brother in a California Cult (Holy Order of MANS) as Brother Terrell Adsit, Astrolger (40-years) to non-believer, and adventures in Australia, single parent, tofu manufacturer/street artist, China, the USA & fifty+ other ountries. From high school drop out, Shenendehowa Central School, Clifton Park, New York at age 16, back to school at age 44 (BA & Masters from Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia) to PhD from the University of South Australia at age 58 to knocking on your door at age 77.