Next month, I will retire as an activity bus driver for the Alliance Public Schools. Twenty three years of transporting students to and from their events will cease.
But not the thousands of miles of memories.
Allow me to share one.
On Saturday, April 22, 2006, I took a busload of Alliance Middle School track and field athletes to Gering for a daylong meet. It was one of those incredible spring days that are few and far between in western Nebraska. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the thermometer was inching toward 80 degrees.
As the afternoon matured, I was sitting outside my bus in a lawn chair entranced by what was coming through my portable radio headphones.
The Nebraska baseball team was playing the Texas Longhorns in Austin. The Cornhuskers were having an outstanding season, and a series victory over Texas would put Nebraska in the driver’s seat to win the 2006 Big 12 Championship.
Nebraska was holding a 6-5 lead late in the game, and as I stared at the green grass below my lawn chair, I was firmly affixed to Jim Rose’s description of the action that was taking place on the Texas Forty Acres.
Despite my fixation on the radio broadcast, I caught a glimpse of blue out of the corner of my left eye. I looked up and saw smiling AMS eighth-grader Tyler Jines approach. Tyler wanted to chat a bit, and after a few minutes of updating me on how he fared on the track that day, he returned to an area where cute female thinclads had gathered with a Frisbee.
As Tyler departed, I was overcome with a total sense of relaxation. I knew the Cornhuskers were going to win, and I was certain Nebraska was going to score one more run and win the game by the final score of 7-5. Twenty minutes later, Nebraska won. And yes, the final score was 7-5. Tyler was Cornhusker baseball fate, fortune, and destiny rolled into one neat kid in a blue warm-up.
And here’s why:
Four years earlier, on Sunday, May 5, 2002, I took a road trip from Alliance to Broadwater in my Dodge Caravan. Instead of using the comforts of U.S. Highways 385 and 26, I ventured along several Morrill County gravel, sand, and dirt roads along with cocklebur-lined trails. My van radio was tuned to KCOW and cranked at three-quarters volume. The Cornhusker baseball team was in Austin, Texas and the game was a back-and-forth battle all afternoon long. When the Lone Star dust settled, Nebraska had claimed a 7-5 victory, a series win over Texas, and was one step closer to the 2002 College World Series.
I had a special passenger in the van with me that Husker baseball day. Nursing a 20-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew and glued to the radio’s baseball descriptions was Tyler’s father, Allen Jines.
“AJ” was a wonderful guy. A 1976 graduate of Alliance High School, Allen loved playing volleyball and softball. At least he did before he was stricken with Huntington’s disease, a neurological disorder that robbed Allen of his physical coordination and speech.
Fortunately, the illness didn’t deprive Allen of his love of sports and his passion for radio sportscasts.
Allen was residing at Highland Park Care Center. I would pick him up a few times a month and we would cruise around Box Butte, Morrill, and Dawes Counties. During our escapades, we always had an abundant supply of Mountain Dew and a ball game on the radio. It was a practice we started at Christmas 2001 and continued until Allen took a turn for the worse in the spring of 2003.
I stopped by Highland Park the night of Friday, April 25, 2003, and paid him a visit. It was the last time I saw him; he died the next day. He was only 45.
AJ never complained about his illness. His disposition was as sweet as the Mountain Dew he loved to consume. He cherished his family and proudly displayed pictures of his wife, Linda, and their three children on the walls of his room at Highland Park.
So, whenever I listen to a Cornhusker baseball game on the radio, or if I learn that a baseball game’s final score was 7-5, I think of Allen Jines.
And Tyler, too.