The little boy in the photograph is named Tim Shearer. He is 11 and is a very lucky boy. That is his father, Jeff, next to him on a tee at Lost Dunes, a magnificent private golf course carved out of what was once a sand mine in Bridgman, Mich. Jeff Shearer created and owns the course, having made a lot of money in retail and restaurant businesses.
Lost Dunes would be a great place to spend the summer, and father and son did spend a lot of time there. But they also took road trips. This is something Shearer also did with his older son, Ryan, who is now 23. They traveled mostly in the winter, as Ryan was a hockey player and fan.
Tim is nuts for baseball, so over the last three summers he and his dad have gone to such major league towns as Detroit, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, Washington, Cleveland and San Francisco, and to such AAA-team towns as Lehigh Valley and Oklahoma City.
“But these trips are never only about baseball,” says Shearer. “It is important that we also discover and explore historical sites.”
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And so father and son have visited, in no particular order, Ellis Island, Bunker Hill, Ben Franklin’s grave, Arlington National Cemetery (and the grave site of Tim and Ryan’s great uncle, a Marine), the Negro Baseball Museum, Fisherman’s Wharf and Alcatraz. “And we caught a foul ball in Baltimore,” Shearer says proudly.
With Chicago having two major league teams (go ahead and moan or roll your eyes), they have also explored this city. Shearer told us that his kids seem to enjoy the historical elements of the trips almost as much as the games.
His rewards have been considerable: “Spending time with your sons, traveling with your sons, watching how they grow from year to year. Time for real discussions during driving hours, sharing excitement of baseball/hockey games together, laying in hotel rooms and recanting the day’s festivities, making a ‘bed’ in the car for daytime power naps by Tim or Ryan, chances to visit relatives if they are lucky enough to be on our route.”
This is a wonderful thing for fathers and sons (and mothers and daughters too), to enrich every fun journey. Even those without the financial wherewithal to travel the country can do it.
When I was a boy and my brother and I were riding in an old, white Studebaker of my dad’s, we would scream, “Dad, where are we going to go? Dad, Dad … side streets, side streets!”
And our dad would, of course, take these strange routes through the city, pointing out various things. The story of one building would lead to the story of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, which would lead to something else. There we would be, standing on the Michigan Avenue bridge hearing him tell tales of the massacre at Fort Dearborn. There we were, driving down 63rd Street listening to stories about the amusement park named White City, which led to stories about the first Ferris wheel and the World’s Fair of 1893, which led to …
For Tim Shearer, the scores and stats may fade, but the other memories will linger forever.