Ladies and gentlemen, as I sit on the porch of the Mother Thompson Home, chatting with the daughter of early temperance crusader Eliza Jane Trimble Thompson, I talk with her about the historic edifice.

“The ‘sober after-thought’ of this great movement had crystallized into the ‘Woman’s Christian Temperance Union,’ and Mother’s temperance work now was the presidency of the Hillsboro Union, attending national and state conventions, a correspondence in all parts of our own and other countries with the temperance workers and the highest work her prayers for the cause and the laborers.”

“The ‘sober after-thought’ of this great movement had crystallized into the ‘Woman’s Christian Temperance Union,’ and Mother’s temperance work now was the presidency of the Hillsboro Union, attending national and state conventions, a correspondence in all parts of our own and other countries with the temperance workers and the highest work her prayers for the cause and the laborers.”

“I loved it so much I never stopped playing it,” Wooten said. “From the Clowns to semi-pro ball with the Goldsboro Braves, to softball, I played until it got to the point where the doctor said, ‘If you don’t stop playing, with that knee, you’re going to end up in a wheelchair.’ So after about two or three more surgeries on it — it’s bone on bone now, and I’ve got arthritis in it — I stopped when I was about 47, 48. I could still hit, but they’d throw me out at first base from the outfield, so it was time to go.

"I use my single windup, my double windup, my triple windup, my hesitation windup, my no windup,” Paige said. “I also use my step-n-pitch-it, my submariner, my sidearmer and my bat dodger. Man's got to do what he's got to do." And for more than four decades, Satchel Paige did just that – and then some.

Ladies and gentlemen, when he played with the Indianapolis Clowns back in the 1960s, Hubert “Big Daddy” Wooten wasn’t a big man by any means – he stands just 5-foot-8 (“maybe 5-foot-8 1/2,” he laughs). But there wasn’t a ballpark that could hold him if he got into a pitch.

Ladies and gentlemen, nearly three quarters of a century ago, Cincinnati had a pair of professional baseball teams. Of course, there were the Reds, but some might not realize there was another ball club called the Clowns. The Clowns had built a following as one of baseball’s favorite entertainment attractions during the 1930s.

Fidel Castro was Cuba’s prime minister, and the Red Wings were going to play a game against the University of Havana, just as Clyde King and the Dodgers did during spring training in 1947. King told me he was the team’s pitcher that afternoon in ’47 and posted the win as the Dodgers beat the Havana team. “Can you believe that?” King laughed. “I beat Fidel Castro.”

How great would it have been to have stood on the pitcher’s mound, ball in hand, or in the batter’s box in Crosley Field, or Ebbets Field, or Forbes Field, or the Polo Grounds, or Sportsman’s Park in the 1940s and 1950s? Clyde King got to see all of those places – and many more – during his six-plus decades in baseball.

The baseball was a rock, some twine and black tar tape. Their bat came from a tree limb. The ball glove came from an old leather sofa the boys found sitting by the side of the road. “We got my mother’s scissors that she sewed with and cut some of that leather out. We put some padding in there, I remember it was cotton, and she sewed it up for us and we had gloves.” – Clyde King

“Your life will encounter nothing new; you will be furnished the same materials that countless generations before you have used. But you are a freewill product; will you choose the pleasing, helpful patterns? The bright threads? Will you weave sunshine into the fabric of life? Or will you produce only the cerements of sorrow?"

I recently recalled and pondered an offering I penned a few years back that lamented how few pro sports players there were that were my age or older. Well, as you might imagine, that list has gotten quite a bit shorter.

“Yes, I probably did look a bit bizarre,” I reply. “But thanks to you and the uptown Hillsboro business folks, I’m dressed to the nines and ready for Christmas.”

As I lace up the new old shoes I just purchased at the Smith & Moore store, I decide this is way too much fun to stop now. Let’s do a little more Christmas shopping in 1899 before we go back to the future.

In the spirit of the holiday season, let’s take a trip back to 1899 for a bit of Christmas shopping in uptown Hillsboro. A time where more than half of the people in the United States lived in small towns of fewer than 3,000 people; a time before television or radio; and a time when horses and buggies traversed the town’s streets.