Mary and I have been giving away hundreds of items (books, clothes, old toys etc) over the past few weeks as we prepare to put our house up for sale.

One item I will be keeping, however, is this little plaque.

Yes, they spelled my last name wrong — there is a “t” in our family’s spelling of Johnston — but that doesn’t matter. One gets used to that with Johnson, Johnston and Johnstone as options.

I have nothing but fond memories of my baseball-playing youth, capped off by our team winning the Truro championship and me being given that little plaque. Handing it to me in one of the photos is Ron Williams. He and Gordon Schurman were the co-coaches.

The coaches’ sons, Butch or Ron Williams Jr. and Wayne Schurman, were the two stars of the team. Each was a dominating pitcher, and I was usually their catcher. But sometimes I played shortstop and pitched once. That one outing happened to be in the deciding game for the west end championship. Butch and Wayne had pitched all the innings they were allowed, so someone else had to be on the mound for our team. It was me. The game was close but our team prevailed.

All happy memories.