The Song Is Ended...

By Kenneth C. Gardner Jr.

Chris Cockburn was one of the lucky Americans who grew up in a small town in the Midwest between the end of the Korean War and the assassination of JFK, ten years filled with school, Initiation, football, Homecoming, dances, detention, basketball, tournaments, proms, yearbooks, class rings, class night, and graduation. Time marked by family, funerals, best friends, worst enemies, late nights, first dates, first loves, going steady, break-ups, and moving on. A time of hot cars, car clubs, twenty-five cent gas, radios, deejays, drive-ins, hangouts, movies, hunting, swimming, roller skating, picnics, rumbles, after-school jobs, baseball, and comic books. Small triumphs, helplessness, tragic and comic events, all combined to mold a teenagers life, a life underscored by the rhythm of rock-n-roll. A time when, as the poet said, To be young was very heaven.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 31, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462011407

Kenneth C. Gardner Jr.

Kenneth C. Gardner, Jr., was born and raised in New Rockford, ND. He taught at Kenmare (ND) High School in 1966-1967 and at Drayton (ND) High School from 1967-2013. He and his wife Carol have three children—Kathy, Kenny, and Jeff—three grandchildren—Olivia Grace, Caleb James, and Charlotte Dae, plus three stepgrandchildren—Kaelyn, Brooklyn, and Kinley.

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The

Song

Is

Ended…

Kenneth C. Gardner, Jr.

37884.png

The Song Is Ended…

Copyright © 2011 by Kenneth C. Gardner, Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4620-1139-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-1140-7 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 04/09/2018

Contents

Chapter I   Hank And Sean, September 1959

Chapter II   Zane

Chapter III   Neil Gaunt

Chapter IV   A Car Race And The Big Parade

Chapter V   Thanksgiving 1959

Chapter VI   Dotty

Chapter VII   Tiki II

Chapter VIII   The Fourth Of July

Chapter IX   Miss Ashton

Chapter X   Homecoming 1960

Chapter XI   Marcia

Chapter XII   Hunting

Chapter XIII   A Trick And Ole Moon

Chapter XIV   Zane II

Chapter XV   Halloween 1960

Chapter XVI   Being Ill

Chapter XVII   Mr. Winters

Chapter XVIII   Emily Rieger

Chapter XIX   Zane III And Christmas 1960

Chapter XX   Winter 1960-61

Chapter XXI   Basketball

Chapter XXII   High Third And More

Chapter XXIII   Mickey Morris

Chapter XXIV   Characters

Chapter XXV   Proms And Memorial Day

Chapter XXVI   Chisel; Tennessee; Delivery Boy

Chapter XXVII   Sherilynn Carlson

Chapter XXVIII   Gang Fight

Chapter XXIX   The Pits

Chapter XXX   Albighost

Chapter XXXI   Theresa; Danny Clevenger

Chapter XXXII   Cookie; Miss Phillips; Initiation

Chapter XXXIII   Harvest Party; Horse; An Accident

Chapter XXXIV   Rory

Chapter XXXV   Halloween 1961; Caseyville Girls

Chapter XXXVI   Fred Hartson; Retribution

Chapter XXXVII   New Year’s Eve 1961

Chapter XXXVIII   Bethann, January-February 1962

Chapter XXXIX   Bethann—First Date

Chapter XL   Bethann; Donny Stone

Chapter XLI   Sean And The Raid On Caseyville

Chapter XLII   Easter 1962; Rev. Ryker

Chapter XLIII   Into The Amazon

Chapter XLIV   Prom: Donna Mae Downey

Chapter XLV   Prom: A Bad Start

Chapter XLVI   Prom: A Perfect Morning

Chapter XLVII   Clinton Stokely

Chapter XLVIII   April Love

Chapter XLIX   Locker 101

Chapter L   Senior Skip Day

Chapter LI   Leo Church; Class Night

Chapter LII   The Horse; Graduation; Bethann And The Storm

Chapter LIII   Spook Show

Chapter LIV   Buffalo Hump Picnic

Chapter LV   Biondi, Stars, Songs, And Camping

Chapter LVI   Comic Books; Church

Chapter LVII   Movies, Home Life, And A Picnic

Chapter LVIII   Attempted Robbery

Chapter LIX   Mr. Pomeroy

Chapter LX   Patty; Flat Roof; Long John

Chapter LXI   Ice Cream; Hemingway

Chapter LXII   Lake Belland

Chapter LXIII   Hemingway; Little Gib

Chapter LXIV   The End Of Something

Chapter LXV   Goodbye

Chapter LXVI   Burning Bridges

For my teachers.

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

-Mark Twain, Introductory Note to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The reading of this book should not be attempted by ladies of refinement, those persons who are easily offended, or by children.

-The author

"Heard melodies are sweet,

But those unheard are sweeter."

-John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

"The Colgate Sports Newsreel featuring strange and fantastic stories, some true, some legends, others mere hearsay, but all so interesting we’d like to pass them on to you."

-Bill Stern, part of the opening for The Colgate Sports Newsreel, NBC radio, 1939 to 1953.

"If music be the food of love, play on,

Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die."

-Duke Orsino in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Act I, sc. 1

I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in the world, and in the very nick of time, too.

-Henry David Thoreau, Journal, December 5, 1856

"The song is ended,

But the melody lingers on;

You and the song are gone,

But the melody lingers on."

-from a song with music by Irving Berlin and lyrics by Beda Loehner, 1927

CHAPTER I

HANK AND SEAN, SEPTEMBER 1959

"Sean Patrick Sullivan, 53, of Torrance, California . . .

My Black Irishman was dead. Sitting in a pew and reading his obituary from the funeral program in St. Andrew’s didn’t make it any more or any less real. Of course, I was sitting in a Catholic Church, so I guess that was a form of progress over the past thirty-odd years.

 . . . graduated from St. Ignatius of Loyola Academy in Menninger, North . . .

How many years had gone by? When had I last seen him? It was . . . . . . enlisted in the Marines in 1962 and served in Viet . . .

1962. That long ago? Yes, it had to be 1962 because he took off right after the hearing and never came back, not even for his family’s weddings or funerals.

 . . . was the manager of a Vons . . .

I started working with him at Hank’s in the fall of 1959. Of course, I knew him a little before that—the dark kid with the big smile in a family of red-haired, freckle-faced smilers.

Survivors include his mother Mary Sullivan of Menninger, brothers Brendan (Allison) of Boca Raton, Florida; Quinn (Rebecka) of Bismarck, North Dakota; and Doyle of Reseda, California; and sisters Doreen (Daniel) King of Monrovia, California; and Kelly . . .

One morning the p.a. called me to the superintendent’s Office. When I sat down, trying to think of an excuse for doing something I couldn’t remember doing, Olger the Ogre said that Hank Simonson needed a carryout boy at the Super Saver who could handle the job without sacrificing his studies, so he had recommended me.

He was preceded in death by his father Patrick and . . .

I talked to Mom at noon hour and she said the job was fine, if I didn’t neglect my grades and didn’t mind not going out for basketball that winter. I hadn’t gone out my freshman year, but I had been thinking of trying out again. However, since I wasn’t that good anyway, I said I wouldn’t mind, so after school I walked down Lamborn to the Super Saver.

Hank was up in his office. He’d been born and raised on a farm in the hill country northwest of Menninger. While serving in Europe during what he called the Big One, he’d been blown up and came home with a hook for a right hand and a metal right leg that forced him off the farm. He moved to town and bought a corner grocery store from old Frank Weisphennig. Later on he got an artificial arm with a steel hand that worked. When he spoke, Hank always talked with his hands. As he described the work I would be doing, his left arm waved and circled in the air. His right arm rested on the top of his desk, but the metal fingers kept opening and closing like the pinchers on a crab. I tried not to stare: Mom had said to be polite.

When he finished, he asked me if I would like the job. When I said I would, he stood up and put out his left hand. Awkwardly, I shook it and he said, Welcome aboard, Christopher. Go find my Black Irishman in the backroom and tell him to show you the ropes.

Sean was singing. In fact, he was singing, humming, or whistling most of the time, when he wasn’t talking. Right then he was just finishing goin’ to Kansas City, which Wilbert Harrison had been doing all summer.

After I explained why I was there, he looked me over and asked, Ever hefted a hundred pounds of spuds?

No.

Looks like I’ll still be the delivery boy then. C’mon.

We walked out to Aisle Three which had the cereals, cake mixes, and other boxed products. This’ll be your aisle. Keep it stocked, dusted, and faced.

Faced?

You know, pull the boxes up to the front of the shelf like this. He demonstrated with a box of Jets cereal.

Aisle Two with the cans is Bobby’s; mine is Aisle One with the glass and the pop. When we get our aisles shipshape, we all take care of Aisles Four and Five. If we get low on bread, like we usually do on Saturdays, there’s extra loaves in the walk-in freezer in back. And there’s milk in the walk-in cooler. C’mon, I’ll show you how to pack.

For the next three years the Super Saver was like my second home, and Aisle Three was my room. Sean worked Aisle One, dusting and facing until the late afternoon sun appeared to set the glass on fire. Aisle Two had a variety of boys—Bobby’s family moved away; then my friend Ronnie Kerr came, but left after a week to work across the tracks at our rival store, Hogan’s Harmony House of Food; Tom was a farm kid who worked one winter; then there were Joe, Andy, and Bugs in quick succession before Sean got Hank to hire his kid brother Doyle, although Andy and Bugs were still called in for sales and to fill in for anyone who was sick.

One New Year’s Eve we were taking inventory. I was in Three. Sean had finished his aisle and was helping Doyle in Two. Sean wanted to ask me something and yelled, Hey, Cockhead! The ck in my name, Cockburn, is silent, but when he was in a teasing mood, Sean couldn’t let it be silent. I refused to answer so here it came again. Hey, Cockhead! No answer. I could hear some whispering and then Doyle said, Hey, Chris! I was pleased that I had won so I yelled back, What? But just as I answered, Sean’s voice yelled out, Hey, Cockhead! It sounded like I was answering him after all, and Doyle and Sean broke up laughing. After a few seconds I joined them. I loved that Black Irishman’s sense of humor.

That first day he showed me how to unload a grocery cart onto the conveyor belt (Put all the glass on the inside, so it can’t fall off and break.) and how to pack grocery bags with the crushables on top and to put the frozen stuff in a freezer bag. All of that under the watchful eye of one of the checkers, Mildred, the wife of my history teacher.

When I’d finished, Sean and I went up to Hank’s office, where Sean gave me a favorable grade and went back to work. Hank reached over for some forms I had to fill out, and I could see the purplish scarring under the right side of his jaw and down his neck. The rumor had it that the whole right side of his body was one big scar. I looked away, but he saw that I’d been staring.

Don’t let it bother you, Christopher. It doesn’t bother me anymore.

What?

My . . . looks.

I stared at the floor. They don’t . . . It doesn’t . . . I mean, it’s just . . . so different.

He rocked his chair back and let out a small laugh. That it is, all right, and I pray to God that you and Sean and all the other young fellows don’t ever get ‘different.’ Here, sign these forms for the government. I’ll start you at fifty cents an hour, and after two weeks, I’ll either let you go or give you a raise. Agreed?

I looked him in the eye. Agreed.

He put out his left hand and I took it. Come in after school as soon as you can, and be here by eight on Saturday mornings.

As I went up Lamborn, I saw that my new job would require Mom to alter her grocery shopping since she generally traded at Hogan’s, as did most of the Protestants because Duke Hogan was a Lutheran. Hank was a Catholic, so most members of that church came to the Super Saver. It was like the Northern Pacific tracks split Menninger into contending theological food camps: Catholics buying on the east side at the Super Saver and Protestants shopping west of the tracks at Hogan’s, or to a lesser extent at Ralph’s Purple Cow (Ralph Standish was a Holy Roller, so he had a very small foundation from which to draw in the theological food war; plus his store building was old, poorly lighted, and had a produce supplier that was at least a week behind everyone else) or Albert’s tiny store.

I began to see that, perhaps, I was a pawn, a Protestant one, in the food fight since I couldn’t recall any carryout boys at Hank’s who hadn’t been Catholic. If that was the case, it didn’t bother me because Hank seemed to be a decent boss regardless of his religious views.

I also determined that I would work hard and prove myself worthy of my hire, for it dawned on me as I walked up the hill toward home, trying to whistle Sleepwalk, that each Saturday evening my paycheck would be a step toward independence.

CHAPTER II

ZANE

It wasn’t just that Menninger was split into Protestant and Catholic camps over groceries; in the Fifties the two groups didn’t get together much socially. The exceptions were the American Legion Club, where the denominational lines seemed to disappear for some reason on Friday and Saturday nights, and the American Legion Baseball Team, for which both Catholic and Protestant boys played in the summer.

Most dating was along piscatorial lines: if both of you ate tuna or salmon on Friday, you dated; if you each ate hamburgers, you dated. Most couples did not mix fish and beef. But there were a few exceptions.

One of these was Zane.

Zane had been an across-the-street neighbor of mine for awhile, and even after he moved to the west end of town, we remained friends, although he was three years older than I.

When I was a third grader, Dad bought me a second-hand Monarch bike, which was too big for me to ride, so Zane ended up peddling it around town with me side-saddled on the bar. He didn’t have a bike himself (his family was too large and too poor), so he seemed to enjoy driving me all over, even uphill, and he never complained.

In the fall we’d go through alleys and ride under trees, reach up and grab bunches of reddish crabapples on the fly, easily outdistancing the yells of any fruit owner who happened to be in his backyard.

And we’d use those same alleys to check out the gardens, which we’d raid just after dusk, but before I had to be in, chomping down dirt-covered carrots and fresh-from-the-pod peas with the fall air in our faces.

The next spring we started the riding all over again, and in June we saw some girls in my class putting up a pup tent in Darlene Thomas’ backyard. We talked to them and they said it was for a sleep-out. That evening after supper Zane and I took off on the bike and ended up in the alley by the tent. Zane put the bike on its side in some grass by the fence. He told me he wanted to talk to the girls some more, but when we opened the gate, he dropped down and started bellycrawling. He told me to do the same. It was exciting to hear the girls’ voices in the tent and see their silhouettes when one of them would turn on a flashlight. It was just like listening to Bobby Benson or Sky King on the radio.

Suddenly, the backdoor opened and Mr. Thomas threw a beam of light onto Zane and me. Hey, you boys! Whatta ya doin’ there?

I thought Zane would answer that he just wanted to talk to Darlene, but instead he shot to his feet and ran out the gate and down the alley. I followed, but started searching for my bike. I gave that up when I saw Mr. Thomas’ light as he came through the gate; then it went out when he stumbled over my bike and fell.

As I ran down the alley, I heard him yell, Run, you little son of a bitch! I’ve got your bike!

When I got home, I had to tell Dad and Mom what had happened, stressing that Zane and I had only wanted to talk.

The next day Dad drove me over to the Thomas’ house, where I had to go in alone and apologize directly to Mr. Thomas, who then took me out to the garage and gave me my bike. I had to walk it home.

After that Zane was never allowed to ride me anywhere, but later that summer I taught myself to ride, first by coasting down our backyard (gentle slope), then down Fourth Street East (moderate slope), and finally down Salem Street (steep slope).

After I started at the Super Saver, Zane began dating this girl from St. Ignatz (that’s what everybody called St. Ignatius of Loyola Academy, the Catholic school up by the Gold Star Highway, even those who went there) named Bonnie O’Toole. Zane had dropped out of school his senior year, but this was a year after that. Bonnie was a junior, and her folks didn’t know anything about her and Zane.

One night Zane and I were riding around in his ’49 Ford (he was working on a farm out by Cipango, a little railroad stop on the Soo southwest of Menninger, and it was the best he could do), when he started talking about this girl he was going with, and how he was beginning to think she was loony. A couple weeks before, he’d told me he was trying to  . . . give O’Toole the tool, which I thought was pretty crude of him to tell me, and then hadn’t spoken about her since.

When I asked him why she was loony, he said, Now don’t say nothin’ to anybody, but when we’re . . . in the back seat . . . you know . . . doin’ it . . . I hear her whisperin’ . . . to girls.

What? That was loony.

She’s sayin’ girls’ names.

Like what?

Well, I heard her say ‘Mary’ and ‘Grace’ for sure and maybe ‘Bess.’ It’s gettin’ so I don’t even wanna do it anymore ’cause I keep hearin’ this whisperin’, and I know it’s about girls when she should be thinkin’ about me. And she won’t let me use a rubber ’cause she’s a Catholic and all, and when we’re done, I get scared she’ll get pregnant. . . . I don’t know what to do.

I didn’t know what he should do, either. If it had been me, I’d have quit screwing around, but I didn’t think Zane really wanted to stop, so why suggest it? Instead, I said I’d try to figure out the connection with girls’ names.

Sean and Bonnie were classmates, so I started edging her name into our conversations at the store. Sean thought she was a little weird since she was the only one who ever challenged the priest in Religion class. Whenever he made a statement about sin or sinful acts, she piped up and made him defend what he said with Scripture references. She wouldn’t accept Popes or Saints or Tradition, and the priest had brought her parents in a couple of times for a talk, but nothing they said had any effect on Bonnie. The other class members were getting on edge because they wanted to doze with their eyes open during Religion, but couldn’t because of Brimstone Bonnie, who, they were certain, would be spending countless centuries in Purgatory.

When I finally worked up the courage, I asked him if Bonnie had any friends with the names Zane had given me. He said there were a couple of Marys at St. Ignatz, but they didn’t hang around with Bonnie.

He continued, There’s no one named ‘Bess’. Who names a kid ‘Bess’? There’s no ‘Grace’ in school, except maybe in our prayers.

Whaddya mean?

There’s plenty of ‘grace’ in the Hail Mary.

What’s ‘Hail Mary’?

When he realized I was completely ignorant about that prayer, he took out his marking pencil and wrote it on a paper bag. Early that Friday night I gave it to Zane, and he read it over so many times that he had it memorized in five minutes.

The next night a car pulled up beside me as I was walking home from the movie Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure (it was pretty good, with location shooting and Gordon Scott as Tarzan) at the Blackstone. Zane told me to get in.

I broke up with her.

When?

Last night.

Why?

You know why. All the time we were doin’ it, she was prayin’ that Hail Mary thing. We went out to the ball park, and after we got in the backseat, I put my ear right next to her mouth, and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t word for word. Some of ’em I couldn’t quite hear, but the rhythm was there. I was goddam screwin’ and she was goddam prayin’. I’ll tell ya, I never even finished; I just rolled off and started puttin’ on my pants. She was askin’ what was goin’ on so I told her I wanted to break up. She starts cryin’ and asks why, so I told her I didn’t want to go with no goddam hypocrite—either she should be a Catholic or she shouldn’t be. She couldn’t have her cake and eat it, too. She had dried up by the time I got her home and she got out without sayin’ a word. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. I’m glad to be shut of her.

He thanked me for my help when he let me out. I was glad he wasn’t mad at me. After all, Bonnie was real pretty, but I could see where what she had been doing could be distracting to a guy like Zane.

Zane and Bonnie were the exceptions in Menninger, because most couples weren’t doing it, even the ones who belonged to the same religion. Most of the boys probably would have if their partners were cooperative, but the girls had their reputations, which they held pretty high, to look out for.

While Zane had gotten what we boys called a home run or to home plate, most of us were lucky to get to first base, which was a kiss. Those boys with steadies would eventually get to second base under their girlfriend’s bra, but nice girls kept their legs together and avoided third base altogether, while a home run with a nice girl was unthinkable.

CHAPTER III

NEIL GAUNT

One event brought the Catholics and the Protestants together—the funeral of our mayor.

William Gaunt was a big shot in the Menninger Amalgamated Farmers, serving as manager of their oil and gas business on the corner of Dunnell and Chicago. On Sundays when everything else in town except the Blackstone Theatre, the eating places, and Blackie’s up on the Gold Star Highway was closed, the AF would be open. Sometimes I’d drop in for a candy bar and a pop. The bottles were in an electric cooler, up to their necks in cold water. They were in rows with a metal rail guide on each side of their necks. You’d put in your dime, and a loud click told you that the locking mechanism had been released, so you’d slide your selection out from between the guides and into the lock. When you pulled the bottle out, the mech locked back into place, and you’d dry the bottle off on a towel. There was a built-in bottle opener on the side of the machine. My favorite was Cream Soda with a blue cap or Mason’s Root Beer with a red, yellow, and blue cap, but you could also get Coke, Pepsi, 7 Up, or if your taste ran to fruity or berry flavors, there was Donald Duck pop or Fuller’s Spring, with an Indian maiden kneeling beside a stream. Fuller’s Spring was bottled in Kingston, sixty miles away.

Bill Gaunt was a regular churchgoer at the Congregational Church on Villard, but he had no religious prejudices, and neither Catholic nor Protestant farmers felt ill at ease in the AF. He was active in the Kiwanis, the Lions, the American Legion, and the Toastmasters, as well as the Hospital Board. He had served one term on the Park Board and then been elected mayor without opposition when Old Man Johnson retired after being mayor since World War II.

Bill was a driving force behind the Boy Scout and Girl Scout benefit drives and the campaign to get an old folks’ home in Menninger. The boys in town respected him because he’d been in the St. Louis Cardinals’ farm system (though he’d never made it to the majors), and he went to every high school football, basketball, and baseball game, and every American Legion game he could.

Bill Gaunt’s wife Betty had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and had grown pretty weak over the previous few years, but the town knew how much time Bill devoted to taking care of her because there would be lights burning in their house until the small hours of the morning. Some of the old ladies called him a saint.

One of his boys, Neil, was in my class and he had twin boys in the fifth grade. Neil was smaller than most of us, and he refused to take showers after Phy. Ed., so he had to write health reports in place of the showers or the teacher, Mr. Lee, would have flunked him. The Gaunts went to church every Sunday, with Bill sometimes helping Betty walk with her crutches or later pushing her wheelchair.

So it was a great shock to the community when Bill Gaunt and his next door neighbor, Phyllis Howard, were killed in a car accident coming home from a Halloween masquerade party held in a bar in Overton, a little town north of Menninger. Gaunt’s car had skidded and hit a bridge abutment, killing the couple upon impact. It took until around noon on Sunday to identify them because they were mangled pretty badly and because they had makeup on—he was all red and black like the Devil, and she had on a witch’s costume with a fake chin and nose.

School was let out for the Wednesday funeral, which was held in the gym. Old timers said it was the biggest one in town since my Great Grandfather Bear’s back in ’33. (That was his nickname because he was so big.)

It was awfully quiet in our morning classes, what with Neil’s desk empty and everyone thinking about the afternoon. The whole high school student body and the faculty walked across Villard to the gym at 1:45 and sat in chairs near the front, right behind the relatives. Harold Hanson, a senior, played The Navy Hymn on his trumpet, and just about everybody started crying before the minister even got going.

Rev. Amos Livingood took as his text the Bible passage about the good and faithful servant of the Lord and said Bill Gaunt was such a man. He touched on just about every good deed Gaunt had ever done in the community and how those deeds of kindness and love had touched everyone’s lives.

Then he spoke about Bill Gaunt, the family man. How his wife and sons meant everything to him, and how Bill’s love for his family was a reflection of the perfect love of Jesus for the human family. He talked about Bill’s devotion to Betty, and how he really meant his wedding vows of in sickness and in health . . . in good times and in bad . . .

Betty was hidden from my view, but I could see Neil in the front row off to my left, and his head was down and his shoulders were shaking. The twins, Randy and Richie, were sobbing out loud, as were Bill’s mother and most of the other relatives. I was wiping my eyes, but I was determined not to make a sound. And I didn’t, not even when the last chilling note of Taps blown by Harold ceased echoing around the gym.

Finally, it was over. I was hollow inside, but I knew I couldn’t eat anything they had prepared back in the school Activities Room, so I walked the block to our house and crawled into bed until I went to work at four. Nobody joked or horsed around at work, not even Sean, and all the customers were pretty grim-looking.

That Saturday night I went roller skating as usual. Roller skating was about the only really fun thing to do in Menninger, and I’d been skating so many years that I’d gotten fairly good, and that made it even more fun.

Ronnie Kerr, who worked at Hogan’s and was so blonde that even his eyebrows had no color, and I generally arrived about the same time and would skate around together, talking or participating in the various skates, such as Couples Only or Ladies’ Choice. That night we avoided any comment about Bill Gaunt or about Neil, who hadn’t been in school the rest of the week, and just tried to have fun.

Skating ended at eleven, so we jumped into Ronnie’s Dad’s Plymouth to box the town. That meant you could make a little box as you drove around the main block on Chicago, Lamborn, Dakota, and Villard; or you could make a big box by going from the main block up either Villard or Lamborn to the Gold Star Highway and then back down the other street to the main block again. Either way you’d soon know who was out and if anything was happening.

After we made two little boxes and saw no one, we went up Villard to start a big box. We passed the Gaunt house with the porch light on, which was unusual, and we guessed that Neil must be out. Sure enough, we saw him under the light at Villard and Sixth East. Ronnie pulled up and I got out and asked Neil if he wanted to ride around. He didn’t say anything, just got in between us, and Ronnie drove up to the highway.

It was an awkward silence by the time we turned down Lamborn on the third leg of the box. Ronnie knew Neil even less well than I did (Neil didn’t have a really close friend since he spent so much time at home), so I figured it was up to me to break the ice.

Neil, I’m really sorry about your Dad.

Me, too, chipped in Ronnie.

The silence returned. KING radio in Kingston was reprising some hits of the past summer, and the Flamingos began singing I Only Have Eyes For You. When they finished the fifth sha-bop, sha-bop, Neil said, Mom says that song was popular when she was my age. The stars were shining, though the trees and street lights blotted many of them out, and we settled in to listen. It was easier than talking.

We were just going by my house when I heard a sound. I looked over and Neil was crying. I caught Ronnie looking at me, but he didn’t say a word, so I said, Take it easy, Neil. It’ll all work out.

His shoulders started heaving just like they did in the gym, and I put my left arm around Neil, thinking that I could settle him down. Instead, he turned slightly and threw himself against me just like a girl. I yelled at Ronnie to take a right. I wanted to get off Lamborn before someone saw us and thought we were fruity.

Heading down the big hill on Glen Haven, I was thinking of some way to get Neil away from me. He wasn’t crying as hard, but his tears had soaked through my shirt. When we hit the level, I said, Neil, I . . . Ronnie and I . . . both liked your Dad. He was real good . . .

Before I could finish, Neil had pulled away. He spit out, Not you, too! and threw a left that landed on my chest. I was so stunned I just sat there, and he nailed me twice more in the chest and shoulder and once in the nose. I saw white spots and could feel the blood coming. I put my right arm against the door and pushed. I was skinny, but I outweighed Neil by a good twenty pounds, and I pushed him right into Ronnie.

The Plymouth skidded left and Ronnie yelled, Look out, we’re goin’ in the river! He pulled the wheel to the right with Neil’s head in his lap and me on top of Neil. Ronnie was cursing, and I could feel the car leaning into the right ditch, but he straightened it out and we hit the old Steel Bridge with a bump, bounced, and came to a stop.

I sat up. I thought I could smell burned rubber for a second, but maybe I didn’t because my nose was filled with blood, so I jumped out and hung my head over the bridge rail. When the dripping lessened, I got out my handkerchief and tried to stuff it up my nose.

When I turned back to the car, Ronnie was looking for blood on the upholstery with a flashlight. There wasn’t any; it was all on Neil and me.

I took a deep breath through my mouth and got in. The red and white handkerchief dangled from my nose. What the hell’s wrong with you, Neil!

He just looked down at the floorboards. Ronnie seemed relieved that the blood had only ruined Neil’s shirt and mine. He started the motor, let out the clutch, and we headed north. When we reached River Lane Drive, Neil spoke. Ronnie had the radio off or we wouldn’t have heard the words. My Dad was a sonuvabitchin’ bastard and I hate him.

Ronnie hit the brakes and we skidded to a stop on the gravel. He stared at Neil. You’re nuts. Your Dad was great to you and to all of us.

Yeah, I said. Look how he supported the teams and the school and the hospital.

And look at the funeral—maybe the biggest one ever.

And everything Rev. Livingood said about your Dad.

He loved you . . . and your mother.

At that Neil started to laugh. I felt like slugging him. Ronnie threw the car into gear, and we went west on River Lane Drive, half-tamed dogs coming out of the ditches to bark at us. When we came to Fifth West, I told Ronnie to head for the Great Northern reservoir. I wanted to get Neil to explain—or pound hell out of him.

The res had been built on the Jacques River to provide water for the railroad’s steam engines, but with the coming of the diesels the GN had deeded it to the city. It was a fine place to fish and raft and swim, the high embankment acting as a windbreak.

Ronnie drove onto the embankment, and we stopped on the west side—the furthest from town. I got out and ordered Neil to do the same. Ronnie could tell I was mad, and he came running around the car to get in between Neil and me. He didn’t have to do that: I was going to let Neil talk before I pounded him.

I took the handkerchief out and felt my nose. There was no fresh blood. I wadded up the damp cloth and threw it down the embankment. I got myself into a stance like I’d seen the heavyweight champ, Rocky Marciano, do in the movie newsreels when I was younger and told Neil to explain himself.

And he did. He told us his Dad had been great until his mother had gotten sick, then he started getting mean—to the boys and even to her. He apparently couldn’t have sex with her anymore and he blamed her for that. He started hitting her, and Neil, too, when he tried to defend her. He started to drink, secretly at first, then openly in the house, but never in public. Finally, about a year and a half before, he had taken up with the next door neighbor, a divorcee, who had been coming around to see if she could be of any help to the family.

For awhile the hitting stopped, but when Neil’s mother confronted Gaunt about the affair, things got worse. Neil thought his Dad felt so guilty that he took it out on her and the kids. Betty was so weak by then that he didn’t hit her, but he yelled and swore at her and rarely said anything nice. He’d spank the twins a lot and he started whipping Neil with a riding crop. When he did that, Neil stopped showering in Phy. Ed. because of the welts. His mother begged him never to tell anyone what was going on. It seemed to Neil that she was protecting Gaunt’s reputation more than she was trying to keep the abuse a secret, but he promised.

She took to turning all the downstairs lights on when Gaunt was next door. Neil thought she was trying to shame her husband, but all it did was cause Gaunt and Phyllis to go out of town whenever they could. After a few months Neil’s mother gave up caring, but for some reason she kept the lights on. Maybe she’d heard the stories about sainthood.

My Dad was a devil. . . . Do you know what I did the night after he was buried? I rode my bike on the back road out to the cemetery and pissed on his grave. He was a goddam monster and I hate him. So do the twins. So does Mom. She hasn’t cried a single tear since he died. Not even at the funeral. I heard Livingood say she’s in too much shock to cry. Bull! Hate dried her up. My Dad dried her up. I hope he burns in hell forever.

By that time Ronnie was sitting on the hood and I was leaning against the fender. When he finished talking, Neil was facing away from us, looking to the west. I could see the red light of a freight that had gone through town fading away off to the northwest.

I walked up the embankment and looked at the lights of town. Lord, I felt empty. I noticed that I was cold. My jacket was in the back seat so I walked back to get it. When I got to the car, Ronnie and Neil were hugging and crying. When you knew the story, hugging didn’t seem so fruity. I walked up to them, and then we were all hugging and I was tasting salt, but not letting the tears go like the other two.

When we drew apart, no one spoke; we just got in the Plymouth, and Ronnie drove back to town. It was so quiet going up Villard that I flipped on KING, and Dinah Washington was singing What a Diff’rence A Day Makes.

In front of Neil’s house, I got out. Neil stood on the berm and said, I’m sorry about your nose . . . and shirt.

Forget it . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t . . .

He cut in. Forget it. I’m glad I could finally get it out. He said good night to Ronnie, then he held out his hand and said, Good night, Chris. I shook it; it was icy cold.

When he was on his front step, I said, Good night, Neil. He turned, but I couldn’t tell if he smiled or not.

I hopped in the car and Ronnie drove over to my house. Chris, I feel lousy.

Me, too.

Sayin’ all that crap about his Dad to Neil.

Yeah, but who knew?

Just before I got out, I began to laugh.

What’s gotten into you?

Nothin’. I was just thinkin’ about Neil peein’.

Ronnie started laughing, too. Yeah, that was great. Should we do it, too?

Naw. That’s Neil’s alone. Good night. See you tomorrow.

Yeah, g’night.

Betty Gaunt died just before Christmas. Ronnie and I and just about everyone else in town went to the funeral, and Rev. Livingood played up the loving family routine again. Only this time it didn’t go over as well because some stories were making the rounds about Bill and Phyllis and about some of the same things Neil had told us.

Following the funeral, Neil and the twins moved to Oregon to live with Betty’s sister and her husband. Ronnie and I went to the GN station with them, but there wasn’t much to say.

Neil wrote a couple of letters to me, but then stopped. He never came back to Menninger.

CHAPTER IV

A CAR RACE AND THE BIG PARADE

In the Fifties most of the older MHS students didn’t own their own cars, so when you saw vehicles parked around the school, almost all of them belonged to the staff. But there were a few car owners and their numbers were increasing. When I was a sophomore, a half dozen junior boys owned cars, and probably eight seniors did. The country boys drove in, rather than ride the bus, but only George Barron from up north near the east-west Continental Divide owned his own wheels—a ’53 GMC pickup. He was in our class, as were three other car owners: Eric Erickson, whose Dad ran the Standard Oil station; Art Rolfsrud, who lived on the Salem hill; and one girl, Dotty Zeltinger.

Dotty’s Dad was Gimpy Zeltinger, who owned Gimpy’s Holiday Spot, a bar my great grandfather helped him buy. Gimpy bought Dotty a ’57 Pontiac the day after she got her driver’s license. The day after that she and Jack French, a senior with a souped-up ’54 Ford, got into an argument in Study Hall about which car was faster. They decided to settle it out on the East Highway at 10:30 that night.

From its junction with the Gold Star Highway a half mile north of Menninger, the East Highway went straight thirteen miles before its first curve or dip, so it was a favorite patch of asphalt for anyone who wanted to test his, or in Dotty’s case, her wheels.

At ten Ronnie picked me up and we drove out about a mile on the East. Cars and kids were already lining the shoulders of the highway. No State Patrol ever drove the East, which started at nothing and went nowhere. In fact, the first nineteen miles had only been paved the year before, and the construction company’s machines had made it into an even better drag strip when they removed the curve two miles east of the Gold Star. The town cop was Dotty’s brother, BeeZee, so no one worried about him.

Dotty drove up about 10:20. Her best friend, Ruthie Marie Anderson, was with her. Dotty was my friend, as well as a classmate, so I got out of Ronnie’s car and went over to the driver’s side of the Pontiac.

Hi.

Hi, Chris.

Hi, Chris.

Hi, Ruthie Marie.

You all right?

Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?

Well, you’ve never raced before. Jack’s beaten a lot of guys—Eric, Art, Roger, the other Roger, Stevie Rainwater, that kid with the duck’s ass from Caseyville, Keith Holten from Divide, and all of them had fast wheels.

Yeah, so?

I mean if you backed out now, no one would think anything bad about it. Race him in the spring when you’ve driven awhile.

Listen to him, Dotty, Ruthie Marie chimed in. I’ve been trying to talk some sense into her all night.

A couple kids started honking their horns, and Jack pulled his Ford up alongside the Pontiac. He was alone, which is the way he seemed to like it.

Hey, Dotty, ready to get your ass kicked?

I was blocking her view of Jack so it was easy for Dotty to ignore him. She looked up at me and said, See me after the race, Chris. She put her hand on mine; it was warm, but the night air was chilly. She turned, pulling her hand away, and told Ruthie Marie she’d have to get out.

Jack shouted, Naw, let Rooty-Toot-Toot stay. Your speed won’t even muss her hair.

Everyone ignored him. I reached in and took her hand in both of mine. She looked at me, but didn’t speak. We were friends, but I couldn’t think of what to say or do. I let her hand go and winked at her. It was too dark for her to see it, so I whispered, Good luck.

Thanks. See you at the finish.

I moved back to Ronnie’s car while Jack and Dotty talked through their windows. Finally, Butch Schweitzer, wearing his ever-present black leather motorcycle jacket, had them move up to the chalked starting line. He called out, Three-two-one-Go! and the rubber started burning.

As soon as they took off, Ronnie and about a dozen other cars were right behind. Ruthie Marie was going Oh-Oh-Oh from the back seat, and I had my face right up to the windshield to see what was happening. As they passed the Sharpe Brothers’ farm on the left, their taillights made it look like Dotty was a little ahead, but Ronnie was falling further and further behind, and it was hard to say. They appeared pretty even when they passed the big willow showing black on the river bank off to the right. Ronnie was up to eighty and still falling behind. I’m not going any faster, he said. This is my Dad’s car.

An old gravel pit on the right was the three-quarter mark for the race. As they reached it, Ruthie Marie let loose a scream, and I saw the lights from Dotty’s car run off the highway, jump the far side of the ditch, and end up pointing at the sky on the heaps of gravel around the pit.

I was out of the Plymouth before Ronnie could stop it on the shoulder of the East, and I went running down the ditch and up the other side, into the pasture, and reached the Pontiac with my chest burning.

Dotty was gushing blood from her nose and mouth. She was saying something that sounded like Thun of a bith, it hurth! Thun of a bith, it hurth! over and over.

I sent Ronnie to the Sharpe farm to phone for the hospital ambulance, and Ruthie Marie and I tried to get Dotty to lie down in the front seat. She couldn’t stay on her back because the blood would choke her; she couldn’t lie on her front because of the pain in her chest. I turned the headlights off and we watched her turn white in the light from the dome.

She’s going into shock, Ruthie Marie whispered. Her Mom was a nurse so I guessed she knew what she was talking about.

Whatta we do?

Keep her warm and pray the ambulance gets here quick.

I took off my jacket and draped it over her. There was a noise and Jack was running towards us. He looked in. OhGodohGodohGodohGod! Ruthie Marie and I were turning Dotty’s head so the blood would drain.

Jack put his jacket over her legs and tried to help us, but he was so scared he wasn’t much use. I looked for Ronnie and saw some car lights leaving the Sharpe Brothers. Everybody else had taken off for town.

The big red and white Cadillac ambulance was about five minutes behind Ronnie. Dotty looked red and white, too, but she was still breathing. When they loaded her in the back, they wouldn’t let me ride with her, and she was already in the Emergency Room by the time we got to the hospital. Jack didn’t come in with us.

Gimpy came hip-hopping into the waiting room and asked what had happened. We told him and he disappeared down the corridor.

When he came back, he looked relieved. Dotty’ll be O.K. No broken bones, just her nose, a few bad bruises, and she lost both front teeth. She’ll have to be in here a few days, but she’ll be fine.

I don’t know why, but I ended up hugging Ruthie Marie. She had been great, considering that when we had to prick our fingers for a blood test in Biology class, she fainted when she saw her blood, hit her head on the floor, and had to leave school for the day. But she still said she wanted to be a nurse. Gimpy came over and hugged both of us and dragged Ronnie into the hugging circle, too.

Gimpy didn’t have much luck with his family and cars. His wife Dorothy had owned a rag top Cadillac, got drunk in Caseyville, and drove it into a column supporting the porch roof of the last president of the state WCTU. Dorothy staggered out, and when the old lady came out to investigate the noise, asked if she could use her phone. Instead, she spent the night in jail. The accident, complete with a picture, was featured in the Fargo Forum, the largest newspaper in the state, as well as in the Menninger and Caseyville papers.

Gimpy’s son, BeeZee, the cop, had developed a drinking problem in high school. Gimpy bought him a ’55 T-Bird his senior year. On New Year’s Eve BeeZee got lubed up and decided to drive to the annual dance in Caseyville, even though it was snowing pretty good. However, he forgot to follow the curve of the overpass on the Gold Star south of town and got stuck in the ditch. Some other kids heading for the dance saw his car and got out to help. BeeZee was so far gone, he didn’t even know he wasn’t on the highway; he had his foot on the accelerator and had his back tires smoking. When Marty and Mark Anderson and their cousin Matt got to the ’Bird, the snow was so high they couldn’t open the driver’s door, so they rapped on the window. BeeZee opened it and stared at them. They asked him if he was O.K. He said he was and that he was going dancing in Caseyville. They said they were, too. BeeZee pushed his face closer to the speedometer, turned to them, and said, You guys are sure good runners; you’re goin’ at least sixty.

After he graduated, he joined the Army and by the time his enlistment was up, BeeZee had straightened out enough to land the copping job because he had been an MP and the City Commission had just fired Nate Coulson after he had hit a prisoner with his handcuffs and because some of the older boys had taped his police car doors shut while he was a little under the influence and asleep on duty.

BeeZee and Gimpy cooked up a story about some Indian from Ft. Sully stealing the Pontiac. It was good enough for both the insurance company and the State Patrol, and even before she had her new teeth, Dotty had another car, a ’58 white-over-purple Olds, covered in chrome. When Ronnie and I read in history class that South Africa exported a lot of chromium, we teased Dotty that she supported the entire South African economy.

When she got out of the hospital, she looked the same as ever, but she had changed. She lost some of the wildness that scared Ruthie Marie and me. She quit driving fast and she never raced the Olds.

Jack gave up racing, too. Instead, he got into a contest with some other seniors.

We had a new shop teacher, Robert Ranum, straight out of the Agricultural College in Fargo. He had a slight speech problem, so when he said his name it came out Wobet Wanum, something like Elmer Fudd, but not as exaggerated. He was only about five-foot six and had curly dark hair, which he greased with Wild Root and combed into a curl over his forehead, so he looked like Honeycomb Jimmie Rodgers. The high school girls took to walking by his office between classes just to catch a glimpse of him until Olger the Ogre threatened to shorten the time between periods, and if they were late to class they’d have detention. Some of them even tried to sign up for Shop, but girls weren’t allowed to do that; they had to take Home Ec.

Mr. Ranum taught Mechanical Drawing to freshmen and sophomores and Drafting and Blueprinting to juniors and seniors the first semester. The second semester, the ninth and tenth graders took Wood Shop, the juniors had Electrical, and the seniors got to do Automotive and Auto Body.

The problem was that there wasn’t enough room in the shop to get all the seniors’ cars in at one time, so Mr. Ranum got the Administration to let the boys work on their cars at various locations around Menninger, including their parents’ garages. He’d demonstrate things on a couple of cars he had brought into the shop; the seniors would then leave school and work on their cars. Mr. Ranum would drive around to the six locations supervising and helping.

After a couple of weeks, Jack refused to let anyone but Mr. Ranum see his car, which frosted-off the other senior boys. Jack even put black paint on the windows in the old building where he had his car and started padlocking the door.

A couple of the other Shop boys made some comments about how crappy his car must look. One comment led to another, and pretty soon it was a contest to turn out the best-looking car.

They worked the rest of the winter, and some of them took part-time jobs to pay for what they were doing, which raised Cain with our track and baseball programs.

Friday, April 29, was set as the day for unveiling the finished products. After dismissal they held the buses, so the student body could assemble in front of the school on either side of Lamborn to see the Big Parade. Our new mayor, Karl Stedman, who had a nervous problem since he’d been blown up in a tank during the Battle of the Bulge, was on hand to judge the contest. The winner would be the car that received the loudest ovation from the students, as determined by Mayor Stedman.

The entries were covered with sheets, canvas, or whatever the owners could find, and the IH and John Deere dealers went around with flatbed trucks, picked them up, and delivered them to the parking lot by the Dairy Swirl on the Gold Star.

When I told him I’d like to see the Big Parade, Hank said I wouldn’t have to come to work until five, so I was on my front porch when the first car turned the corner onto Lamborn and headed down the hill. It was a 1914 Model T, restored and driven by Rodney Ames, former catcher on the baseball team. He looked proud sitting high up in the seat of the shiny black Ford, and he did get a lot of applause, but not much vocal support. He turned left at Salem to park his car in back of the school.

A minute or two later Richard Allen Ball came into view. He had cut a 1932 Ford Vicky which he bought from Pete Helgo, owner of Helgo’s Liquor Store on St. Paul, into a street rod. There was no hood so you could see the engine. It had steel running boards and a candy apple red chassis. Taped across the back end was a sign: Helgo’s, For The Very Best. I saw the mayor and Olger the Ogre talking on the reviewing stand across the street, and they didn’t appear too happy. They motioned to Mr. Ranum, and he hopped up on the stand, but I turned my attention to Roger Fletcher.

He was coming down the hill in a ’49 Merc, which he’d lowered in the front and raised in the rear. He had undersized tires on the front and larger ones in back. His girlfriend was in the shotgun seat, and she was sliding from side to side because he was zig-zagging down Lamborn. The kids were loving it, and their noise must have pushed him into #1 past Richard, but with all the little kids on the curb, Roger’s driving was dangerous, and I saw the Ogre yelling at Ranum, who then vaulted off the stand and ran into the street waving his arms and forcing Roger to drive straight. The crowd booed.

Buzz Donnelly had lowered the rear end of his ’57 Ford ragtop and fitted a Continental kit on the back. With fender skirts it appeared the car was just inches from the pavement. Three chrome pipes extended from the motor directly through the body and swept back almost to the doors. When Buzz slipped the transmission into neutral and revved the motor, the pipes rapped off so loudly you couldn’t hear the screams of the crowd. The mayor and Olger were yelling to Mr. Ranum, but he was already apparently telling Buzz not to rap off anymore because he drove quietly around the corner.

Roger Roberts (the other Roger) had gotten hold of an old Cadillac hearse. He’d replaced the hood ornament with a skull which looked real, but wasn’t, had an old laboratory skeleton glued to the roof, and had paintings of witches, devils, ghosts, goblins, and monsters all over the doors and body. Standing on the back bumper and strapped to the rear door was the Grim Reaper, with a real scythe. I thought the hearse was the best vehicle so far and gave it a big cheer, but most of the other kids didn’t, and some of the little kids were crying.

The last vehicle was Jack French’s. He had a ’51 Hudson Hornet, which he bought from an old man up in Divide. When my folks and I would go up to the Divide Park to picnic, the ’51 Hornet reminded me of a huge green potato bug, but Jack had painted it black. Just like Buzz he’d lowered the rear and skirted the back wheels. He had two air scoops sticking out of the hood, but the most noticeable change was the shark’s mouth and teeth he’d painted from the grill to the doors. He had reworked the grill to resemble teeth, and the whole effect was like the nose of one of the planes flown by the Flying Tigers in China during World War II. The cheering for Jack was probably good enough for second, behind Buzz, but halfway into the block he suddenly accelerated and as he passed me, I saw that he had a dual exhaust system which he’d extended with chrome pipes, and he had a spark plug wired to the engine acting as an afterburner in the end of each pipe. Two blue flames were shooting six feet behind the Hornet as it went past a frantically waving Mr. Ranum. Olger was in the street, trying to get Jack to slow down, but it was too late; in dodging the Ogre, Jack tried to turn onto Salem, but hit the curb. The Hornet’s front wheels sheered off, but the