Whoa! I just awoke from rare 2 hour “nap” in the middle of the afternoon and I’m dizzy as heck. And we score early!
I lived in a strange alternate universe where two old time stadiums were crammed right next to each other - only a few feet apart - and were connected by a creaky, old-fashioned delivery elevator that served as a space-time cosmic wormhole.
It was a slow, noisy delivery elevator, big enough to hold a model T auto, with an imposing gate that automatically rose slowly and loudly making frightening grinding noises every time you ascended to a new floor. Everything smelled of polished oiled wood and was permeated by the exotic smells of an early 20th century tobacconist shop.
There was a news stand off the delivery elevator and it looked like something out of a movie from the 1920s. There were newspapers in foreign languages I couldn’t understand on racks in the news stand, and some of the papers were printed on vibrant yellow or pink newspaper like sports-oriented newspapers of France and Italy. Prominently displayed was the newest issue - 1920s - of the Sporting News printed in St. Louis.
The teams were the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals but the ballparks were ancient yet well-maintained. It was definitely not 2025.
Out of the delivery elevator as it rose to different floors I could look down upon the ballfields of either stadium if I glanced to either my left or my right and the stadiums were empty as if I had arrived hours before game time, or as if they were yet to be populated because I was in between space time moments where only something or nothing at all could occur.
I was hoping to rent a flop house room in one of the hallways off the delivery elevator for $2 dollars a night and was planning to get a shave and a haircut at the barbershop with a hypnotizing, revolving red and white barber pole before the games began and was trying to decide which game to attend when I woke up.