Funny how much I’ve been thinking about my dad lately. I used to keep my trophies at his acreage and, one day, we had a minor earthquake. Boxes fell off the top stall shelf. Some of the little figurine basketball guys atop wouldn’t finish the season, losing an arm or head. I’ve actually played with teammates who didn’t have a head. It didn’t seem to affect their game one way or the other.  Pops called to report some of the squad were in pieces. I said I’d be over the next day to give the guys a pep talk, glue-up and rebox. I’m in my mid-30s then, just about past whatever thing that could pass as prime. A decade earlier, I was playing five times a week. We had a super tough team in the 6-&-Under League. My sibling-like substance, Willie Peters-Boston, was constantly nagging me that I was closer to 6-foot-2 because he was 6-foot-even. I’d gently correct Willie, noting that he was 5-foot-10, which made Willie stamp his foot and giggle.  I can appreciate Wilbur’s point. When we’d go to the park office to be officially measured, I may have shrunk a little. You see, there was this tiny 5-foot-zip Park Lady who measured us. She had to climb atop a chair to get a better view. As she bounced to get on top of the seat, I might have (in a wee Irish brogue) bent my knees a pinch to droop down to 5-foot-11. Willie’s in line, hands on hips, did the Death Scene from “Camille.” But, he never tattled.  “Who’s a good boy?!?!?! Who’s a good boy?!?!?!?!”  Willie.  We went through the league over the years like a tornado through a Honby trailer park. That most of us, besides Willie, were 6-foot-2, helped. A team of Division I all-stars from the San Fernando Valley heard about us, issued a challenge, and limped back to Canoga Park with painful wedgies and the stern message of, “Don’t come back up here unless you want more of the same.”  I played on the Adidas team where we’d change jerseys and last names. We won the top open division for the state championship — twice.  When I got to Dad’s spread, to my undying shock, I discovered my dear sweet father had thrown away four dozen basketball and other garish honorariums, some a yard tall. Serious jock strap loot. I even got an award from AYSO for handing their weekly scores to typesetting. What hurt even more, Dad had tossed a made-up award my mentor and Signal Editor Ruth Newhall had custom-made for me. It was this Frankensteinian tribute the size of a stout sixth-grade boy, made from the spare robot parts of R2D2 and a spinning and glowing electric Coors beer sign with the inscription, “An Award For The Most Awards.” Including beloved former wives, it was my most-prized possession. Unlike my former wives, it still lay decomposing in some landfill.  To this day, I’m convinced there was some deeper, Freudian motivation on my father’s part. I asked him why. As he often did, he shrugged, turned and walked away in silence. Dad did that after he shaved my dog and painted my racing Alfa Romeo Pepto-Bismol orange — with a large house-painting brush.  Today, I have no proof that I was a crackerjack cager and could jump out of the gym. But, I still have a few remaining journalism awards from the once-total of 119. I probably shouldn’t count Ruth Newhall’s beer distillery sign because Ruth wasn’t like on the Pulitzer Committee. Years ago, the unnamed owner of a local storage rental yard gave the Food Pantry the unit next to mine, where they kept open silos of grain. It attracted rats. One January morn, I opened up the sliding door to my rental space and it was a scene out of a Steven King novel. Dozens and dozens of rats were scurrying about. Rat poop was everywhere, including where they gnawed through boxes of trophies, certificates and articles I had written, into the thousands. My friend and attorney had a swell comment, meant, of course, in complete support.  “Did you ever think that it was your newspaper columns that were actually attracting the rats?” he asked.  Ha. Huh-hah. Huh-hardee-har-har …  I still have some of my trophies and certainly thousands of the columns I’ve penned, some more than 50 years old. Maybe every two years, I’ll go to the storage and open up a banker’s box, read something about Nixon (former president?) or the wisdom of yet another war or a harsh diatribe on dumbbells posing as educators. After a few minutes of nostalgia, I’d replace the box lid and forget about history, nostalgia and a thousand opinions on the Santa Clarita Valley or the Euro.  I’m thinking about just throwing out the half-ton of newspaper pulp and my grown-up version of journalism AYSO trophies (thank you for participating!).  Friends have counseled that I should at least keep them for my daughter, so that someday, she might throw out HER back lugging them from Point A to Shelf B. She’s all the family I have left, and, we’re wonderfully close. But I could tell you what she’d have to say about my written thoughts on Watergate — “Uh-huh. Dad? Can we go to Starbucks?”  If I were a bad father, I could threaten, “Only if you read 10 of my columns from 1972 …”  It’s not like my girl Indiana is 6 anymore. Soon, she’d figure out, “Hey! I’m 22!! I can now DRIVE to Starbucks on my own …”  I once had the nicest and longest chat with Gene Autry after an awards banquet. Sat in Oklahoma’s National Cowboy Museum next to Will Rogers’ grandson and chatted. Traded jokes with governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown at L.A.’s Biltmore. I have hundreds of thousands of wonderful journalism memories that can’t fit into any box or 400.  But, they fit into my heart, where they belong.  Perhaps it’s time to play Feed The Dumpster — if it promises not to spit them back out …   Visit John Boston’s bookstore online at johnlovesamerica.com/bookstore.  The post John Boston | The Tossing of AYSO Trophies Into a Dumpster appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal. ...read more read less