Bringing Chesty Home: 1948

By T.R. St. George

This the fourth in a series of nine satiric, comedic novels (The Eddie Devlin Compendium) that follow a gaggle of characters, Edward Temperance Devlin foremost among them, from the Stock Market Crash of 1929 through the Great Depression, World War II, the post-war years, the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, etc. to the Millennium and beyond. With illustrations by the author.

Books:

Flacks (1973)
Bringing Chesty Home (1948)
Clyde Strikes Back (1963-64)
Deadlines (1984-85)
Old Tim's Estate (1929-35)
Replevy for a Flute (1956)
The Bloody Wet (1943-44)
The Survivors (1999-2000)
Wildcat Strike (1939)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 28, 2002
• ISBN: 9781465334343

T.R. St. George

T.R. St. George spent 39 months in the Southwest Pacific in World War II, by turn a private and private first class in an Infantry reconnaissance platoon, a corporal and half the staff of a division newspaper and, eventually a sergeant, a reporter for YANK, the weekly Army magazine published around the world.

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Bringing Chesty Home

T.R. St. George

Copyright © 2001 by T.R. St. George.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing

from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to

any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-7-XLIBRIS

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

Contents

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12.    

FOR ANDREA AND IN MEMORY

OF CAPT. DAVID T. JONES, U.S.C.G.

I ust to tink it was freedom and democracy here in America. Dat’s I allas hear anyway, I was a kid growin’ up in the Old Country. And when I come here, this country, America. When I learn about George Washington and them dat was patriots and all. When I was learnin’ become a citizen. Everbody gets to vote. Women even. Gov’ment don’t push nobody around. Like in the Old Country. I believe dat too. Up’ll now. But you bastards learn me different. You and dat prick Kladske works the Healt Department. Democracy, my ass!

—Nikolai (Nick) Shepka, immigrant, addressing the

Winatchee Falls Cty Council.

Image263.JPG

Winatchee Falls, 1948. (1) The Bugle Call. (2) Legion Post (one floor up). (3) City Hall. (4) Bullwhip Bar. (5) Shepka’s Liquors. (6) The Chiro. (7) Dobermann Hotel. (8) No-name apartments. (9) Golf Course. (10) Haber’s First Subdivision. (11) Canning factory. (12) Malone Funeral Home. (13) Bluff Park. (14) Future shopping mall. (15) Cheesy Adams Autos. (16) T.J. Hanrahan Autos.

This is the fourth in a series of novels that follow a gaggle of characters, Edward T. Devlin foremost among them, from the Stock Market Crash of 1929 to the Millennium and beyond. The previous titles, also published by Xlibris, are Old Tim’s Estate (1929-35), Wildcat Strike (1939) and The Bloody Wet (1943-44).

1.    

J’hear, Dingy Young, the manager and day bartender at the Walter Brown-Jacob Diefendorfer American Legion Post in Winatchee Falls, says. They bringing Chesty home. Chesty Bennett. His re-mains, I mean. You want a brew?

Yeah, Blue Ribbon, Edward T. (Eddie) Devlin says. No kidding? Jeez, old Chesty! I thought he was MIA, The War was over. Never be seen again.

He was MIA, The War was over, Dingy, fishing a Pabst from the cooler, says. But I guess they found him. His re-mains, I mean. They sending them home anyway and his Ma is gonna bury him. Them, I mean. His re-mains. Ignatz Malone was in. His old man’s got the arrangements. The funeral and all.

When’s it’s gonna be, the funeral?

Now that I don’t know, Dingy says. Pretty soon, I guess. Ignatz dint know. All Ignatz knows is Chesty’s Ma called his old man. Said the Army or I guess it prolly the Air Force notify her they shippin’ Chesty’s re-mains home. I guess she request that. That program the government got, y’know? Ship guys’ re-mains home.

I knew Chesty was shot down, Eddie says. My mother sent me a clipping was in the paper, I was in New Guinea. Clipping said Chesty was a POW though. Then, I got home, I went and saw his Ma and she said he was MIA. She said he was a POW for a while but when The War was over the Air Corps list him MIA. But that was like August, Forty-Five. I wonder how they find his remains?

That I don’t know either, Dingy says. You think his Ma prolly want you and me be some the pallbearers, his funeral?

Maybe. We’ll hear, I guess, she does. Jeez, old Chesty! I prolly should call his Ma. Go see her maybe. Put something in the paper.

It’s 2 p.m. Monday, October 25, 1948, a bright sunny day, warm for this time of year, the temperature 55 F. in Winatchee Falls, a Minnesota prairie city with just under 25,000 residents in 1940, though the Chamber of Commerce thinks wistfully it will top 30,000 in the 1950 Census. The Brown-Diefendorfer Legion Post is on the second (top) floor over Groton’s Hardware & Paints on North Broadway: a long narrow space at the top of a wide stairway with a bar at the street end and johns, the Executive Committee room and a narrow stairway down to the alley at the other end. Brown, Walter, a U.S. Marine private, was the first Winatchee County resident killed in action in World War I. Fatally gassed, actually. Diefendorfer, Jacob, also known as Curly, a seaman 2c who went down with the battleship Arizona at Pearl Harbor, was the first in World War II.

Eddie Devlin, skinny, not quite twenty-eight, a Land Grant U graduate, Class of ’48, with a Journalism degree he earned with the GI Bill, is a reporter with scant experience at the Bugle Call, Winatchee Falls’ daily-except-Sunday afternoon newspaper, claimed circulation 18,000.

Speakin’ the paper, Dingy, twenty-nine, a lanky fellow going bald with a little pot belly, says. Who wrote that story was in the paper Satiddy? The one said the Post is gonna build it’s own building out across the river from the Golf Course.

Stewie Popple, I think, Eddie says. Why?

It was all screwed up. All the Executive Committee done Friday night was vote and take a option, three months, on some lots out there Art Haber owns. But they ain’t zoned Commercial. They zoned Residential. Haber got to get them zoned Commercial if the Post gonna build there. But the Executive Committee ain’t made up their minds yet, build there. Or anywhere. Well, somewhere prolly. Membership is up around six-hundred now. All us WW Two guys. We need more room.

Yeah, well, that’s Stewie, Eddie says.

Stewart (Stewie) Popple, thirty, is the veteran reporter at the Bugle Call. There are only three, five if you count Art Kealey, the Sports Editor, and Pearl Mulch, the Society Editor. Stewie launched his career at the Bugle Call right out of high school, Winatchee Falls High, where he wrote the sports for the yearbook. He missed The War, a 4F, he has flat feet and also, now, a little drinking problem. Or more accurately a big drinking problem. But Stewie’s Legion Post story, if in fact it was screwed up, is not the first story the Bugle Call ever screwed up, nor will it be the last, and it’s no skin off Eddie’s nose either way.

You all ready, Dingy says. For The Election?

Ready as I’m gonna be.

I guess your boss laughin’ in his beer though, whatever he drinks, way things look.

You’re fuckin A. Like we used to say in the Army. Snorkel is about ready and go off in his pants, way the goddamn polls look. Or would be except that shopping mall business got him tied up in knots. Fact, he told us today, he’s going to keep the paper open Election Night. All night, I guess. So a bunch a goddamn Republicans can phone in and get the Election Results they been waiting for since. Well, since Roosevelt was elected. The first time.

Cadence Snorkel II is the Editor & Publisher and sole owner of the Bugle Call. He’s fifty-something; a small man, a spiffy dresser who wears black and white shoes in the summer and, like 99 percent of the nation’s publishers, a staunch Republican who inherited the property. In 1932. The Bugle was founded by his granddad, otherwise president of the First National Bank of Winatchee Falls, in 1888. Its main purpose then (and now to a considerable extent) was to laud and tout the Republican Party and Republican candidates for public office and lambast Democrats. The competing Call, founded in 1885, sometimes endorsed Democrats. Cadence’s late father, Junior Snorkel, bought the Call in 1919 after just about putting it out of business with a hard-fought ad rate war, thus silencing its faint Democratic voice.

The sixteen years since he inherited the Bugle Call, what with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman, a former haberdasher, in the White House, have been hard on Snorkel II and Republicans everywhere. But all the polls now, there are two or three, polling an infant industry, have Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican presidential candidate, far ahead of Truman among voters likely to vote in the November 2 election. In fact, the Crossley Poll declared Dewey a sure winner a week ago. Snorkel II consequently is as close to beaming these days, occasionally smiling despite the rising cost of newsprint, as he’s ever been: or been since Herbert Hoover was defeated for re-election in ‘32 anyway. Likewise his oldest son, Cadence III, the Bugle Call ad manager. Eddie on the other hand like all the numerous Devlins is a Democrat or more accurately a DFLer, the Democrat-Farmer Labor Party the haven of choice for Minnesota liberals. And he’ll vote on Election Day, plans to anyway, though it looks like a lost cause.

What’s the deal anyway with that shopping mall? Dingy says. I hear guys talkin’ about is all. What’s your boss got to do with it?

Nothing. Except it’s got him on the horns one of those dilemmas, the saying goes. The deal is there’s this developer from up Minneapolis. J. Fulbright Devaney. Devaney Developments Inc. He managed and buy some vacant land on North Broadway. About three blocks it. Across from Cheesy Adams’ and Hanrahan’s car lots. It’s in the city, zoned Commercial, and he is going to build a shopping mall on it. Fifteen, twenty stores including a major department store. Lots of free parking. That’s what it says in the news releases he sends us anyway. He’s going to call it the Mile of Bargains Shopping Mall.

It’s gonna be a mile long!

No. Three blocks. A mile is like his poetic license. Devaney just waiting, he gets his permits, then start building it. Project that size, though, sewer and waterman it needs and all, the City Council has to okay it. Council is sort of sitting on it.

So what’s the problem then, your leader?

Well, he likes the idea there be fifteen, twenty more stores buying ads, the paper. But most our Big Advertisers now, they’re downtown merchants. They want a shopping mall in town like they want a case the hives. They’d like and see J. Fulbright Devaney, big muckety-muck from Minneapolis snuck into town, he’s got his own airplane, the victim a fatal air crash. Be okay it was instant, he didn’t suffer, but they’d like him good and dead.

My old man often tell me, Dingy says. Never trust a man with one those hanging first initials.

Snorkel don’t trust him either, he’s from out of town. Snorkel can’t make up his mind, what to do about the shopping mall. There only been a couple little stories about it in the paper. So far. So’s not to upset the Big Advertisers we got. But fifteen, twenty new advertisers? Snorkel doesn’t want and upset them and Devaney either.

Well, it ain’t your problem, Dingy says.

True. Eddie drains his Blue Ribbon. Dingy’s moved down the bar to serve old Jerry Macken and old Hans Hummel, two ancient Spanish-American War veterans, former Milwaukee St. Paul & Pacific Railroad brakemen, retired, who spend half their waking life in the Legion Post bar consuming beer at a pace somewhat slower than osmosis.

Today’s Bugle Call, nothing in it about the Mile of Bargains Shopping Mall, was put to bed as they say in the newspaper business at 1:30 p.m. It will be on the street within the hour, barring another breakdown in its ancient press, two dozen small boys loading bundles into their bicycle baskets in the alley behind the pressroom for Home Delivery, other bundles on their way to Winatchee Falls’ two newsstands, five hotels, three drugstores and a few ma-and-pa groceries, more on their way to the post office for Mail Delivery to rural subscribers tomorrow (or sometimes the day after tomorrow).

But Eddie still has work to do. The Winatchee Falls City Council meets regularly at 3 p.m. on the second and fourth Monday of each month and Eddie is the Bugle Call’s government reporter. He covers the Council and the Mayor’s Office, other City Hall operations, the cops, Municipal Court, the Winatchee County Courthouse, District Court, the Sheriff’s Department, the County Commissioners, who meet but once a month, and politics.

The politics however rarely amount to much newswise. The reigning First District congressman, Gunnar (Gunny) Gunderson (R-Minn), thirty-six years in the House, thought by many to be senile, sometimes shows up for Winatchee Falls parades and the city’s annual Pioneer Days celebration, parroting the party line, but wastes little time on reporters. He’s inarticulate in any case and he’s got a safe seat. The First District’s been electing Republicans by wide margins since the Civil War and the milling interests, the dairy interests and the meat-packing interests provide him with generous war chests. The world-renowned Pretzell Chiropratic Clinic, Winatchee Falls’ chief claim to fame, has been chipping in too since Truman and the Democrats hatched a wild scheme to assist indigents with their medical bills. With tax money! The Republicans call this major threat to The American Way of Life socialized medicine.

Republicans other than Rep. Gunderson, whether candidates or incumbents at the state or national level, seldom bother with Winatchee Falls or Winatchee County. They don’t have to. Neither do Democrats, (DFLers), whether candidates or incumbents. The DFL considers the First District a political Stone Age: a lost cause. There are of course races for the State Legislature, various state offices and the governorship. The latter sometimes arouses some interest. Winatchee County elects to the Legislature one-third of one state senator and one state House member, both within living memory Republicans. But those races produce apathy akin to death. Most of the politics Eddie covers are self-serving statements he garners by phone or in person from incumbents and candidates holding and/or seeking local public offices. These candidates run without party designation but their mouthings are published at length in the Bugle Call if they are or Cadence Snorkel II believes them to be Republicans at heart, somewhat more briefly if they are or Cadence suspects them to be closet Democrats.

* * *

The City Council, there are five members, meets in the Council Chamber on the second (top) floor of the new City Hall, a limestone building with a leaky roof at 400 East College Street overlooking the Milwaukee St. Paul & Pacific Railroad tracks that slice through Winatchee Falls. It was built over a period of three years in the mid-Thirties on vacant land acquired by the city when the previous owner, a penniless widow up in her eighties, failed to pay the property taxes in the middle of The Great Depression. The three years at the time was considered record time because the new City Hall was built in part by the WPA (Works Progress Administration), a program devised by Roosevelt and his New Deal to provide jobs for the otherwise unemployed during The Great Depression. The joke at the time was they still were unemployed but getting paid to lean on a shovel.

The Chamber is a big room with a high ceiling, tall windows overlooking the tracks and at one end a large raised construction of gnarled oak. Municipal Court also convenes in the Chamber, Monday through Saturday at 9 a.m., and at those times this construction is the Municipal Court bench. There’s a large oak table and seven green leather swivel chairs with high backs around it below and in front of the bench. The Council members, other than the Council chairman, who presides from the bench, sit there during Council meetings. Lawyers sit there when the court is in session. There also are forty pine benches like church pews divided by a wide aisle in the Chamber, seating for spectators and persons with business before the Council.

The Council meeting is just underway when Eddie Devlin slides into the Chamber. Sunshine cut into ribbons by the dusty venetian blinds is streaming through the tall west windows. The Council chairman, Amos Fruggal, elected annually by the other Council members for the past ten years, is up on the bench, presiding. He’s a skinny old man in his late sixties with a long bony face, Fruggal’s Accounting in real life, thought to know the value of a dollar. He also represents the First Ward. Fred Fink, the City Clerk, another old man, scrunched up on a chair at Fruggal’s right elbow, is ready to record his version of the proceedings, the Council minutes. The other Council members, Sheldon Ravitz, the part-time City Attorney, and Sidney (Bull) Massey, the acting police chief, are in the leather chairs at the big table. One chair is empty. It’s reserved for the Mayor, whoever he may be, currently The Honorable Jerome (Cheesy) Adams, Adam’s Chrysler-Dodge-Plymouth dealership in real life, a beefy old man with a fat red face, once a Land Grant U tackle and (almost) a second-team All-American. But The Honorable Cheesy is engaged in a bitter guerrilla war with the Council and no longer attends Council meetings.

Winatchee Falls has a strong council government. The Mayor, whoever he is, mainly rides in parades, cuts ribbons and breaks ground with a shiny new shovel at major construction projects. He also, however, gets to appoint, subject to Council confirmation, the police chief, that authority bestowed in the 1868 home rule City Charter. The Honorable Cheesy, following longtime Chief Elmer Bailey’s retirement in June, appointed his third-cousin-by-marriage, Detective Terrence Conner, eighteen years on the force (counting the three he was a Stateside MP). But the Council, browbeaten by Fruggal, refused and refuses still to confirm Detective Conner. This traces to some trouble years ago between Fruggal and Conner when they were next door neighbors and Conner, then a patrolman, had a fat Black Lab that barked all night and deposited huge dog turds, two or three daily, in Fruggal’s front yard. Fruggal, who still remembers slights he suffered in kindergarten he aims to get even for, was sure then and is sure now Conner stuffed the goddamn dog with dog food for that express purpose. The Council would, Fruggal’s proposed this several times, confirm longtime Assistant Chief Harley Haywood. But The Honorable Cheesy is on record as saying he would not appoint that goddamn Haywood chief if that goddamn Haywood was the last cop on earth. Cheesy