The Pyramidal Curation of Babe Didrikson Zaharias
And other lesser bodily joys
The whole thing was a shock.
True, true — it was also a thrill and honor — but mostly a shock.
What wasn’t a shock was to wake up as Babe Didrikson Zaharias. That I get. It wasn’t a big deal to be in her house, in her century, in her pajamas. I was good with all of that.
But as soon as I slipped my large Babe feet into the 1940s bedroom slippers, got out of bed, and snooped around the place, it struck me broadside.
Babe is a packrat.
That was my shock.
Say what you like, but I wasn’t going to spend my entire day of relaxation in this chaos. What was all this stuff?? I immediately ran around searching for a phone until I realized it was right next to me on the desk. I’d used one of these phones long ago, but I have phone amnesia. I stuck my finger into a little hole. Nothing happened. I sniffed the big handle. Scentless. I stuck my finger back in the hole and slid it. Voila.
I dialed a series of arcs. A person answered and I said, “Hello! I need a professional organizer to come stat!” I hung up and let out my first exhale of the morning.
I passed by the hallway mirror and rubbernecked. I touched my face. It was a handsome face, an athletic face. And look at these arms, these legs. My butt was good and sturdy. Nice. I could get used to this.
The Shoebox
There was a knock on the door. The organizer already?
“Hi,” I said, pulling open the front door.
“I’m Gertrude. The organizer.” She held out her hand.
“Come in, come in.” I showed her to the living room. “Gertrude, I have an emergency. I need this place put together. As you can see,” I nodded toward the room, “there’s way too much stuff.”
Gertrude was silent, looking around the immediate area.
“I see the situation,” she said, “Where do we start?”
Good question. “Right here?”
With that, we dug in.
Our first decision presented itself straight away. Gertrude held up several medals hanging from ribbons. “What about these? Do we keep these?”
I gasped.
“Heavens yes!” I grabbed them from her. “They’re my Olympic golds. Where did you find them?”
“In this shoebox. There’re all kinds of medals in here. Ms. Zaharias, you keep Olympic gold medals in a shoebox?”
I looked at her like she caught me picking my nose.
“I guess?”
We started pulling out medals that were a confusion of spaghetti. It was too much.
“Forget this box,” I said, “It stays.”
This is when Gertrude moved over to a span of shelves. They were chock full of preposterously random stuff, though it looked like a trophy display of some sort. We started to rummage through.
There were so many golf trophies, Gertrude wondered whose they all were. But the name ‘Babe’ appeared on all. Gertrude counted to fifty-one before I grinned silly and said, “Holy bunkers, Batman!”
But Gertrude raised her eyebrow. “And Catwoman.”
Good point.
The Curation
There were awards falling off the edges of shelves: baseball trophies, bowling awards, basketball plaques, pocket billiards medals. Gertrude held up a Texas State Fair award.
“Sewing champion??”
I shrugged. “You can never have too many clothes? Don’t they say that?”
As we moved into the detail of the chaos, we realized these things weren’t amassed out of disinterest or ambivalence. These were pieces of history that begged for curation, and we were the curators.
This is when I saw a pile of newspaper clippings about Babe pitching for the Cardinals and Athletics during MLB Spring Training in 1934. The major papers followed this unprecedented series of games with excitement, reason, or scoffing — all of which had been carefully underlined in pencil on the clippings.
“Let’s keep these, too,” I called over to Gertrude, who was now arranging the trophies like Legos.
Underneath the clippings was an envelope. Inside was a letter that was crisp as if it’d been read once and put away. It announced that Babe’s application to play in the U.S. Open was rejected, respectfully, as the event was open to men only.
I sat back on my heels and thought for a second.
I snapped my fingers, stood, and started to build a pyramid in the middle of the living room. I grabbed every imaginable piece of sporting equipment I could find and chucked it onto the pile. Boxing gloves, tennis rackets, baseballs, softballs, diving suits, bowling balls, ice hockey sticks, billiard cues, and golf clubs. It was dumbfounding the scope of sports represented.
On top of these, I placed more memorabilia: Associated Press’ six Female Athlete of the Year awards, pictures of vaudeville performances, a Mercury Record featuring Babe playing harmonica, and a Guinness record for longest baseball throw.
As I worked, I could hear Babe in my heart crying out with passionate approval. “Yup! Yup!” she kept saying.
But when I lugged a big javelin over to the pile, I realized it was Gertrude calling.
“Help! Help!”
What in the dickens? I’d buried her in the middle of the living room.
“Gertrude! Grab my hand!”
I pulled her out, but not without tears. She glared at me until I promised to fork over financial restitution. She took a deep breath. We shook on it.
Magnificence
I showed Gertrude my pyramid and we looked it over. Then I placed the rejection envelope on the very top, allowing it to teeter.
“Why are you putting that on top?” Gertrude asked.
“Why not? Sometimes being told we can’t do is what propels us to do.”
This is when we realized we’d done a magnificent thing. We’d curated one of history’s most incredible athletes and made space for the couch.
That night I fell asleep in Babe’s bed with a deep sense of accomplishment and my hand on my sturdy butt. I didn’t want to let go of any of it.
