Bluster County Blues: Cannonball's Run
Cort "Cannonball" Coleridge -- He was the kid everyone talked about. Built small, thin, but, even in basketball, he held court. Owned the court, in fact.
Cannonball was a scrambler, and that’s how he would steal the ball -- sleek like a garter snake with feet, more agile than a thirteen-lined ground squirrel, and sneakier than a red fox scoping out a park district garbage bin. Sleek, small, and sly.
Just as solid with a three-pointer, his aim was dangerous with two minutes to go. It took everything he had to deliver the ball that far, but for a 10 year-old, he was the one you wanted on your team.
He was quick with a fake, and quicker to the rebound. It helped, I suppose, he was 4’3” in a five-foot world. No one suspected much from the little kid. At least not the first quarter. Naturally, he was a passer. Dennis Rodman meets Toni Kukoč, without the feather boa or Croatian accent. You’d shoot the ball, it would rim off into the key, and our young hero would be there to grab and pass before it would bounce. He could do that.
In every other sport, from real ones like bombardment and running bases, to fake ones existing for only an afternoon, Cannonball reigned. He could jump, wiggle, squirm, and, if under a fair amount of genuine duress, writhe.
He was the champ... of everything. Don't think for a minute I am exaggerating. Far from it. Kick the Can. Bombardment. Running bases. All of it.
Few kids were as sinewy as Cannonball. This meant that though his scrawny body weighed little more than a parakeet’s, all of it was muscle. So when it came to elite grade school splash jumping, where he lacked in body volume, he made up for in height and technique.
We call him Cannonball because of his prodigious ability to splash when he jumped into the water. Usually, the technique of cannonballing involves jumping as high as possible, then drawing in and clutching your legs with your arms so that you look like a tight ball. Cort, always grandstanding, would stand at the beginning of the diving board, look right, and look left, wave his hand into the air, and run full-speed ahead toward the pool. Not the first time though. That one was bigger, wetter than any other dive in the history of the world.
Early one July, and the point of this story, is what happened in a whale-shaped pool not too far from Route 56. Cort -- that's what we still called him at this time -- stood on the grass across the driveway next to the gate leading into the pool. Or, in other words, about 100 feet away.
“He can’t. He wouldn't,” said Kirby, a tanned hulk of a fourth grader, looking up from reading a comic book.
“He’s gonna. I think he will,” whispered a brown haired third grader named Chulay, who dreamed of being a bleach blond.
They thought more about this than Cort. He ran.
I lied. It wasn't much of a run. It was more of a gangly flopping of feet and flesh. For all Cort's speed, he did not run with the grace of a gazelle. His form was closer to that of an emu, only with his arms windmilling in a countervailing direction. The emus would do this too if they had arms.
The blacktop driveway had been absorbing heat all morning. This was high noon, but, for Cort, there was no dignity as he stepped on with his bare feet. He went from the less-than-dainty form of an emu to ungraceful goose stepping. His face winced, having not thought this through. Nonetheless, he was committed.
From the driveway, he reached the gate. He intended a Hollywood entrance, but the result was more akin to an Alcatraz entrance. His body was not cooperating.
From the gate to the painted concrete poolside, he engaged into a burst of kinetic energy. His tiny, restless, flailing body rose into the air -- shot into the air. Those in audience went from embarrassed to impressed as Cort's fingers reached skyward, followed by his driveway-burnt feet. His head brushed the leaves from a maple overhanging the pool before making a descent.
At first, we all thought he would spike the water, but he bent into a mummy. Of course that would splash big, but, no, he folded into a can opener, holding one leg with the other out. We were stunned, but was Cort done? With 12 feet yet of air between him and the waiting water, he flipped. He completely flipped, and it was clear he would be in position to land a perfect watermelon.
He wasn't.
Angling right, then left, around, and then into a spread eagle. Oh, the flop on the ready, the pain, the sting, the mark it would leave. If he survived. A belly flop with the inertia Cort had... there was no way he would, or could, tell the story that afternoon.
We cringed, tensing for the hit.
Why, we asked? The watermelon was beautiful. So was the can opener, and all the rest. What story could result that would not end in this horror?
No, this was no to be in Cort's tale. With an uneven second still airborne, he flipped again. The somersault was sheer art. New Trier High School diving coach and former Olympian Bruce Kimball would have gasped in joy to see the diving acrobatics.
Cort hit. Water forced up, strangely displaced in amounts greater than the few pounds Cort had to give it. Water hit Chulay. Water hit Kirby. Water hit Kirby's comic book. Water hit the maple on both sides. Water hit the grass where Cort started. And water was found dripping from the roof of the Peterson's house two doors down.
That's how Cort ran, and how Cort jumped, and the splash he made that day in July. He's been Cannonball Cort ever since. Now you know why.
Bluster County has talked about it ever since, and there is even a cannonball commemorating this event. Colonel McCormick's people were, like you are now, amazed by his legend and thought they could help highlight such history.
If you go to Cantigny and see the First Division Museum, you might not see the cannonball. It used to be there in a glass case in the middle of one room, with a sign telling the story much as I am telling it here. I expect they keep in careful storage, for safekeeping, and because it really was not involved in the kinds of wars they know more about. But it is there. Ask them.
These are the days in Bluster County which give me the blues, but I would live nowhere else. The sun rises an inch higher here than anywhere else in the world, making every day brighter.
