Pokey Harris is the local sports hero. He played pro ball for 15 years. He only had 50 games in the major leagues but that was still 50 more than anyone else around here had. While he never made the big bucks he still made more than most of the folks in Wabash County. He managed to bring some of it home with him.

Pokey owned a bar. It was called Pokey’s. It was very successful and Pokey lived pretty good. Pokey was married to his high school sweetheart Mary Ann and they were very happy together. Mary Ann worked the bar during the day while Pokey took care of the nights. Mary Ann was very popular and treated with respect in the bar. When she wasn’t Pokey would beat the daylights out of the guy not respecting her.

Pokey liked to talk baseball. He liked to talk it so much that over the years his stories began to grow. Some folks would have called his stories lies; other would have called them exaggerations. They were lies. If you listened real close Pokey would have had to have been in the majors for his whole career. He’d been on speaking terms with all the greats of his time.

“Me and Hank Aaron was havin dinner once. Hank was havin a dry spell. Couldn’t buy a hit, as they say. I’d noticed he was standin a little farther back in the box than normal. So’s I told him even though we was on different teams. Shoot, that very night he clobbered two homers. He took me out to dinner in return. Well, shoot, I was just glad to help.”

No one believed Pokey ever helped the great Hank Aaron out of a slump. Very few believed Pokey had ever had dinner with Hank Aaron. Most folks believed that Pokey had never even met Hank Aaron. No one ever said so since that wouldn’t be polite. Besides, Pokey told the story well.

Pokey was a big hit on Wabash Railroad Days. He had his own booth where he signed autographs. He’d been doing this for ten years. It was a small county and most folks had a dozen autographs by now. But, being as Pokey was popular and folks were polite, they kept asking for them and Pokey was happy to oblige. He never heard the little kids walking away and asking paw who Pokey Harris was.

Pokey was one of the few people around that drove a car not held together by rust and tape. He usually worked on it himself because he liked too. He only did it in his garage. Snookie once told him that it was one thing for a guy to fix his own car if he was poor but it wasn’t right to do it if he wasn’t. That was taking money that Snookie could use to keep his family. Pokey figured that was b.s. if he ever heard any but he did keep working on his vehicles quiet.

Pokey ran for the state legislature once. He figured his name would be a big asset. He knew he was well liked and had no enemies. He knew he wasn’t running as some radical. He figured he had a good chance of winning. He got five percent of the vote. Five!!

Pokey had made the mistake of running for the legislature as a Republican. Wabash County was 95 percent Democrat as Pokey found out. No Republican had ever held public office here. Pokey wasn’t going to be the first no matter how well liked he was. Some folks wondered if his wife, Mary Ann, even voted for him. Pokey was one of them. Mary Ann wasn’t saying, secret ballot and all that . She was just glad Pokey got more than his own vote. It would have made things a little awkward otherwise. Pokey did give a nice concession speech, though.

“I lost. The drinks are on the house.”