COMMENTARY: Field of Dreams, Hoops, and Hopes

By WAYNE CREED

June 21, 2013

I spend most of my days driving across the Bay, going to work in Norfolk. Once back on the Shore, in Cape Charles, I tend to do what I really do best: nothing. Sometimes, once I park the car on Friday evening, I don’t get back into it until the next Monday morning.

It sounds boring, but there are many things that fill those empty moments. One of them is taking my beloved Labrador Retriever, Chloe, on walks through the old baseball field, to the fire road that winds through the woods back there. Full of scents and action, on a good day she might even jump a rabbit or a deer.

One Saturday in May I took her back to her haunt, and was surprised to find that the old ball field had been tilled, in preparation for planting summer cotton.

Chloe was unperturbed, nose to the ground like a good gun dog. I, on the other hand, was affected by the turned-up field. Looking past the tilled ground, to the old dugouts, a feeling of emptiness and loss began to spread over me.

Back from the walk, I sat on my porch, watching my son Joey and his friends, Max and Finn, playing baseball in the grassy knoll in front of my house on Monroe Street.

It was becoming overcast, and the slow feeling of dread began to mount. I remembered how, before the high cotton was planted, we used to have the Cape Charles Little League and a ball field, but the Town got rid of it.

We had soccer goals: now gone.

Then the basketball court, part of the old Cape Charles High School: gone.

When I heard the pop of the strike as it hit Max’s catcher mitt, I was jarred again. Why had the majority of people in this town been deaf to the plight of the kids of Cape Charles, and taken sides against them in favor of out-of-town developers?

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For the last year and a half, the citizens group Old School Cape Charles has been involved in a street fight to save not one but both basketball courts for the kids.

While warriors like Lenora Mitchel and Debbie Bender expended huge amounts of physical, spiritual, political, and financial capital in this effort, most of Cape Charles was on the sidelines..

Joey, Max and Finn continued play (in their minds just like Derek Jeter or Cal Ripken Jr.), and I noticed that, for just three kids playing ball in the grass, they were pretty noisy.

Then I thought about how would we ever be able to replace the basketball court after the Town gave it to Echelon for $10, and who would be the unlucky resident that gets it right next door to their property, getting to hear a ball bang off the iron all day.

The beauty of the old court was that it was in the park and it had the big brick school wall to enclose the sound of the game. (If the fallacy promoted by the Town that the court and school were not part of the park — the major premise for their illegal spot zoning — does not disturb you, it should.)

Joey threw another pitch, high and way outside, and Max muffed it, letting it run off into the street. I thought, what about the rest of the kid — the whole kid, the life of the mind? Where was the concern about the loss of a platform like the school that could have enhanced their entire growth: its classroom space, indoor gymnasium, labs, assembly space?

Is there no concern for the lessons are kids are going to be taking away from the Town’s abuses during the Old School gentrification debacle? No concern that they are growing up in a place where the precedent is secret meetings, half-truths, Comprehensive Plan violations, FOIA abuses, self-serving deals, and the list goes on. Will they grow up thinking this is how government is supposed to work?

The fate of the Old School has not entirely been decided. The idea that the citizens of this Town don’t “have standing” in regard to quality of life, pursuit of happiness, property values, etc., is a guiding motif and status quo OSCC feels is well worth challenging, and thus has taken it to the Virginia Supreme Court — not just for the basketball courts in Cape Charles, but for all citizens, property owners, and taxpayers’ rights in the Commonwealth.

It was starting to rain now, and claiming the ball was too slick to throw, the kids borrowed some money, jumped on scooters and zoomed off to buy out the candy shelf at Shore Treasures, where, stuffed with sugar, they would go on to wreak havoc in some other part of town.

Noticing the thinness of my wallet, I wondered just how much the Town pulled from our pockets to take the basketball courts away from our kids in the first place.

Including what our Muni insurance kicked in to high-priced Richmond attorneys, citizens have to be into it for close to $300,000 in attorneys’ fees alone. Add the $900,000 assessed value of the property, loss of $41,000 in insurance, as well as a year and a half of our Town’s highest paid employees working on the deal, and the real loss to taxpayers starts to mount.

For so many years, the Mayor and Council claimed they didn’t have the money to fix a single broken window, or clean out the trash they had dumped in the school. Where all of a sudden did they get the money to protect a Richmond developer? And who authorized that expenditure? Doesn’t anything over $50,000 require approval from the elected body? Did Council vote on and approve this? If so, when?

It was starting to get dark, so I told my wife that I was worried about Joey, Finn and Max, and I had better go out and look for them. I instead went to the Shanty to drink a few martinis and try and shake this funk.

Sitting at the bar, I remembered a story how back in the day, the Town had tried to give away to the railroad all the property that surrounded the harbor. Realizing how stupid it was, several citizens fought back, and forced the Town to reverse its decision. This is the exact property that the Shanty now sits on.

You never know what you will need in the future, so smart policy dictates holding onto, even acquiring, public assets like the Old School.

The rain was starting to pick up when I got home, and Joey and Max, sans Finn, were already home, eating supper (big plates of Hamburger Helper, which they endearingly call “Jail Food’). My wife was marginally annoyed, but after a little 3-Stooges-style justice (a kick to my bad knee and a frying pan to my head), she was ready to forgive my dubious dallying.

They all moved into the living room to watch a movie, but still restless, I put Chloe on her leash, and took her outside to walk in the cold, spring rain.

I walked to the end of my street and looked at the Old School. It seemed a bit forlorn, even anxious. It was raining harder now, and even as much as she enjoyed being immersed in Labrador quintessence (being totally wet), Chloe gave me a look that said we should just go home.

But it felt good be soaked and cold. I looked up, through the streetlights, and let the rain fall onto my face. No, she was right, it was time to go home now, where it was warm inside and my family was watching a movie and eating popcorn. It’s time to put it all down for a bit, and just breathe — just breathe.

Wayne Creed is president of Old School Cape Charles, LLC.

Submissions to COMMENTARY are welcome on any subject relevant to Cape Charles. Shorter articles will be published as a Letter to the Editor.