I wonder how many of us in this high-tech world could even fathom what it was like to be Charlie Hale.

Let me paint a picture for you of the beloved long-time softball official in Racine, who died June 12 at the age of 88. It's any given summer night after ol' Charlie had called another game and this most gentle of gentlemen from Jackson, Miss., is sitting pensively throughout the night in his boat somewhere on Wind Lake.

With a line dangling into the darkness, crickets are chirping, there's maybe the stray hoot of an owl and ripples of water are lapping the sides of his boat. Hale is in complete tune with the soothing soundtrack of nature, a soundtrack that never gets tiresome.

To be Charlie Hale was to live in one of those classic episodes of "The Andy Griffith Show," which remind us how delightfully simple life can be. To be Charlie Hale was to sit on a porch on a lazy Sunday afternoon and sink your teeth into a slice of hot apple pie.

We sure could use 'ol Charlie these days, when so many of us switch off the nightly world news in disgust or just plain fear. But all we have left are memories of a most decent man who understood what so many of us don't - that the greatest pleasures in life don't come with a price tag.

"Charlie's life was fishing and umpiring," said Otis Jones, a long-time officiating partner with Hale on Racine's softball diamonds.

Fishing and umpiring. That's about all Hale ever needed in life beyond his family.

"Nothing ever bothered him," said Tom Karkow, an officiating partner of Hale's. "He was just a happy-go-lucky guy. He loved what he was doing and he had fun with it."

Life was seldom dull for Hale because he left no opening for boredom. As much as he meant business working the plate or the basepaths, he would leave room for humor when he occasionally went into his animated Dutch Rennert "Strike!" call.

"A game could get rather dull," said Don Karkow, Tom's father who was another long-time officiating partner of Hale's. "Charlie and I had a signal. He would nod to me and I would nod back. And then he would do this strike call and go halfway to the dugout.

"Some of these teams didn't know this and they would look at him and say, 'What happened to him?' "

But there was another side of Hale which represented old-fashioned values. This is a man who never played favorites, even when it came to his own flesh and blood.

"My favorite story about my grandfather was when he was a City League coach," said Mark Duckworth, a former standout basketball player at St. Catherine's who is now an assistant coach at the school. "From what I hear, he won a couple City League championships and two of his daughters were his two best players.

"It was the day before the championship game and they came to practice really late. They thought they could do that because their father was the coach. And then he benched them for the city championship game.

"He told me how much they cried about it and how he told them it was a learning experience - that it wouldn't be fair to his other players if he played them when these were his team rules. He told them, 'This is something you guys will take with you and use in life as a learning experience.' "

Never was Hale there for his grandson more than during the 2003-04 basketball season. Duckworth was forced to step in as St. Catherine's coach after the Christmas break when Bob Letsch left the team to stay with his seriously ill wife, and the transition was an uneasy one.

Letsch had earned enormous respect after nearly 40 years of coaching by that point. But Duckworth, entrusted with keeping a perennially successful program rolling, had yet to earn that respect.

Was he nervous? You bet he was.

"He knew I was under a lot of pressure," Duckworth said of Hale. "He was big on prayer. He would say, 'If something is bothering you, you pray about it then do the best you can. This is something you love, so it shouldn't be that hard of a transition. I've watched you play and I know how much you're into the game.' "

With his grandpa serving as a guiding light, Duckworth would lose just one game as St. Catherine's coach.

But even though he has passed on, Charlie Hale still lives among us in spirit. He's still there during these uncertain times, counseling us if we only take the time to listen.

All you have to do is reflect on the simplicity and values, mixed with a little humor, that defined his life.

"He touched a lot of lives in this community," Duckworth said. "When I meet older people and I tell them who my grandfather was, they'll say, 'Charlie Hale was your grandfather? Great man! Great man!' "

That he was.

"It's hard to put a finger on a particular aspect of him," Tom Karkow said. "He was just one of those guys who you were glad to have known."

Peter Jackel is a reporter for The Journal Times. You can reach him by calling (262) 634-3322, Ext. 323 or by e-mailing him at: peter.jackel@lee.net