Delmar and the Playtime Killshot

One of the Delmar Little League Fields. I wonder whether the person who put up the “These are kids” sign also put up the “KEEP OUT” sign.

Tires screeched as the pickup corrected, having overshot the entrance, then the engine revved twice and the truck fishtailed its way up the gravel drive at an impressive if not dangerous speed and skidded to a stop near the playground by the picnic tables. One of the two guys who had been waiting rose and shoved the picnic table upon which he sat back into position using body English and youthful exuberance to keep from sliding off the cement slab.

“Where you been?” he shouted over the idling engine.

I didn’t hear the response, but I knew the answer. He’d been tooling around town, provoking complaints for the speed and volume at which he was traveling. And he was just getting started.

Over the next 10 minutes, he and the two boys who’d awaited him in the Mason -Dixon park in Delmar affixed American and Confederate flags to the back of the truck and continued their joyriding. That a proud son of the South would sully his pickup truck with the flag of his oppressor has always confounded me. But then again, no one who flies a Confederate flag is worried about being mistaken for sensible.

Some of my neighbors were out in the street, and I heard them ask about the commotion. For my part, though, I think that the mayor and town council would have been relieved to know they weren’t playing street basketball.

I wrote the notes for this scene as it unfolded on Aug. 26, 2022, just before I decided to stop writing about Delmar politics. It was to be the opening for a criticism of the town’s recent reminder that it was illegal to play basketball in the street.

They enacted the law in 1985, the year Michael Jordan won Rookie of the Year and almost certainly because too many kids were playing in the streets. Enforcement had fallen by the wayside, and I suspected the new town manager resurrected it.

Jeff Fleetwood (formerly of Berlin, Maryland, where I worked as a reporter for the better part of a decade) had taken the reins following the ouster of the “overpaid” Black woman who’d held the position for about two decades.

You can always tell a new manager’s competence by how thoroughly they need to establish control. I thought little of Jeff in Berlin, (although he didn’t strike me as a thief) who inherited the now-famous revived downtown. With a gun at my head, I’d say it was 2011-2013, but I won’t bother checking.

Last spring, the Delmar mayor ordered the chief of police to help a street preacher avoid a fine for blasting his hate speech too loud. The chief showed the preacher how to turn the volume up to the maximum level on his PA equipment without breaking the law.

As I said, I wasn’t going to bother writing any of this. Delmar is precisely the way its residents want it to be. If you want to fly a Fuck Joe Biden flag or scream at children that they’re going to hell, or a town manager that’s whiter and has stickier fingers, the mayor and commissioners have your back. If you don’t? Move. Since the residents are content to let some half-wit developers buy the town council for their less-intelligent vassals to play with, who am I to complain?

Two things happened recently that made me decide to share this, though. The first was the news that Wicomico County took possession of properties that used to be houses.

It will use those former tax-paying homes as more convenient parking for softball tournaments held at the (soon to be redeveloped in partnership with the town) Mason-Dixon sports complex, which backs up to where I live.

I’m pretty sure the powers that be discovered there were two playing fields left in the region that weren’t locked and gated, and they needed to put a stop to it. They certainly put a stop to the informal men’s soccer games that used to go on there. That’s the second reason I wanted to put this all down. For all the pearl-clutching about how kids don’t go out and play like they used to in the 70s, Delmar seems pretty committed to killing unsupervised play.

Sports in Delmar must take place behind locked gates, which is a relatively recent development. The town locks the basketball courts at dusk and reopens them whenever they get to it in the morning. The lone soccer field (slated to be turned into a baseball field) is police-taped in a not-so-subtle reminder that if you’re not wearing a uniform, and you haven’t paid a participation fee, you’re not welcome.

The same mouth-breathers who complain that everyone gets a trophy are the ones who include it in the registration price and make it illegal to play just for fun.

In Delmar, Maryland, once you’re too old to play on the swings and slides, the town decides where, when, and how you play. I’m sure they say it’s safety- or insurance-related, but Christ, they don’t think about what they say, so why should I?

“Follow our very strict, specific, arcane rules for your own safety” is becoming as American as the Confederate Flag, and I wish it bothered people more. It doesn’t.

Baseball season is getting ready to start here, and I genuinely love baseball. Back before cowardly members of the “Delmar business community” bought the town for some idiot fascists, that would mean kids getting up games and giving one another batting practice on the extensive fields at the Mason-Dixon park.

Not anymore.

If you want to play now, you better have a coach, a uniform and written proof of the times you’re allowed to be on the field. That’s what came to me as I watched those kids attach the Confederate flag to their pickup and drive unmolested through the streets. There’s very little you’re “allowed” to do unsupervised in Delmar, and it’s all awful.

Keep the Faith,

Tony

Postscript

I’m hyper fascist aware this week having read The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis, by Jared Yates Sexton.

I reviewed it for the New York Journal of Books this week. What I wanted to say in the review but didn’t is, it almost reads like a reminder of a history degree. Each section feels like a short-answer or potential essay question in the best way. As you read it, you think, “Oh, yeah, this…” but as he contextualizes it in the larger picture you get a different sense of some of the events then maybe you might have in the past.

TR