Highways and Byways: The Pickle Bucket Drummer

By Maik Strosahl

Mom didn’t buy us clothing that had logos on them, but she knew I liked baseball at an early age and bought me a dark blue shirt with the shape of a man holding a bat to his shoulder, one word below spelling “Sox.” If she had realized that stood for the Chicago White Sox, I am sure it would have stayed on the store shelf.
    Dad wasn’t a fan of organized sports, so I didn’t get to go to my first MLB game until I was a teenager, and I didn’t get to choose the place, tagging along with friends to the friendly confines of the Northsiders.
    By the time I finally got to go to a White Sox game, it was in New Comiskey Park, opened in 1991.
    Baseball on the Southside of Chicago is more gritty. I remember parking on the west side of the railroad tracks and walking under the old bridge to the game, while unofficial vendors would try to sell you souvenirs, food, and beverages, and musicians would play for tips. Everything would echo under that bridge.
    I tried several times to write something about my favorite of these musicians, the pickle bucket drummers. It wasn’t until a couple years back, after reconnecting with a junior high friend and drummer, Jeff Dick, that I was able to make it work. I remember listening to the 40 rudiments of drumming on YouTube, just to find the drum strokes that captured the sounds I was hearing.
    I hope you can put yourself there on 35th Street, see the crowds excitedly heading to the game, and hear all the action from under that bridge as you read “The Pickle Bucket Drummer.”

The Pickle Bucket Drummer

Everything has a rhythm.
everything has a beat
just dying to be played—
tires paradiddle
over an asphalt pock,
a diesel engine revs above,
one-hundred-fifty tons
feeling the strain of
seventy-four cars
loaded and northbound,
churning a growing flam
as it counts the rails with
an increasing click,
pounding the load
across the rust and cement
of this ancient bridge,
even every step
of the Southsiders
making their way up to Comiskey,
with the occasional shuffle
of a child’s shoe
trying to keep up with daddy
while staring at the old man
banging the pickle buckets
for the money they might throw.

The old man’s hands keep sticking,
his feet keep
kicking at the bucket,
kicking up the lip from the ground
and letting it slap back down
with the next stroke.
His eyes have been closed,
his soul is
playing somewhere else,
maybe out east in Jersey,
and man,
the band tonight,
are they tight!
Rocking up some jazz piece
with a heavy groove,
and the packed house is just
drinking it all in.

A drop of water
from the tracks above
and another,
slaps unexpected ghost-notes
into his solo
and his yellowed eyes open.
Going to be
a disappointed crowd soon,
back from the park
as the rain picks up,
and he pauses a moment
to pick a new beat
from this wall of sound,
modifies his left grip,
cross-sticking his way
into a new tune
for those returning to their cars,
for those crossing back under
his 35th Street bridge,
and he closes
those brown old eyes,
loses his soul once more
as another train rumbles through,
as the thunder joins with a crash,
as another tire
splashes through the pothole—
the returning steps are his rhythm,
and their shoes have the shuffle.
_______________
Previously appeared in the Tipton Poetry Journal, issue #35

Copyright © 2021 by Maik Strosahl Michael E. Strosahl has focused on poetry for over twenty years, during which time he served a term as President of the Poetry Society of Indiana. He relocated to Jefferson City, Missouri, in 2018 and currently co-hosts a writers group there.