“Pickles” Ball didn’t start out having a name belying her major pre-occupation – that came later.
As a child, Lynn Ball was dubbed “Pickles” because of her fondness for the dill variety.
But as an adult, as a community centre manager in Ottawa’s west end, she couldn’t avoid becoming known as the promoter of pickleball and in fact promoted that viewpoint herself. She loved being a big fish in a small suburban pond. A big fish always sporting a thermos of black coffee, a ziplock of cheddar cheese cubes, and a cozy mystery paperback for quiet times; today’s was “Cozy with a Posy, Murder in a Flower Shop.”
Her bedroom closet contained a wardrobe of colourful pickleball t-shirts, size Medium, and today’s bore the message, “If you want a soft serve, go for ice-cream.”
Her voice was powerful beyond her short stature and travelled throughout the gym as she barked orders. When she hollered “Ball on the court!” to alert players of a rogue ball from another court, it startled everyone.
Sure, since she’d become manager, other members of the Ballers thought her uppitty, but they shared that opinion among themselves, not with her. Nevertheless, Pickles privately bestowed nicknames like “Languid Louisa” because Louisa took her time to get moving, and “Arch Rival Angus” because Angus took pickleball competition so seriously. Tilly’s public nickname was the exception; the tall former tennis player was well known as “Tilly the Racqueteer” because of her tendency to intimidate to get her way. She had permanently pursed lips because she’d applied for and hadn’t been chosen for Pickles’ job. The Racqueteer peered out from her Kate Spade glasses at everything on the courts, in case her observations became useful to her in future.
After work, Pickles returned to her brick rowhouse a few blocks away where she lived alone with her cat, Paddles. And just as her closet held the latest fashion in pickleball t-shirts, her bookshelves reflected the rise in popularity of cozy mysteries, and both collections made her very happy. Her living room walls were floor-to-ceiling wooden bookshelves packed with paperback novels by her favourite mystery authors. She dreamed of the day when she too would be able to solve a real mystery.
The only thing not book-oriented in the living room was a large glass bowl on the coffee table, filled with her medals and ribbons from previous pre-pickleball athletic exploits in earlier days, but she didn’t even notice that anymore.
Her gaze always lingered longest upon her collection of dozens of cozy mysteries by American novelist Laura Levine, where the main character, freelance writer and part-time sleuth Jaine Austen -“No relation. My mom’s an Anglophile and a bad speller.” – lived in Los Angeles with her demanding cat named Prozac. The pages were wrinkled from bathtub reading and re-reading, and Jaine’s antics when solving murders never failed to make Pickles laugh. She always solved the mystery before the bathwater was cold.
Back at work, on the other hand, there wasn’t much laughter. Pickles ruled the crumbling Centennial Year-built brick building like royalty and she didn’t care if she stepped on toes, or irritated the neighbours with the summer-long thwack-thwack-thwack on the outdoor courts.
