just off the railroad grade in a little grove of trees, there was a small log church that didn’t have a name, and folks couldn’t seem to recall who had built it in the first place. Before the Depression, a circuit rider used to come through every third week of summer, and as the weather would allow in the winter, and he was a generously liberal fellow, my daddy said, a man who preached a nondenominational service where Catholics, and Protestants, and Holy Rollers, who liked the smell of varnish and sitting on hard benches in a room that had bird nests in three of its corners, and evidence of mice everywhere underfoot, could rejoice at whatever those type of people rejoiced at, sing a hymn or two, and be properly slathered with guilt.
The Holy Rollers were more inclined to sing the hymns loudly, creating what they called a joyful noise, the Catholics took the generous supply of guilt to their hearts, while the Protestants preferred a large helping of fire and brimstone, which fit right in with the guilt and hymn singing, so all three groups left happy.
Truckbox Al’s grandfather, Banker Olaf Gordonjensen, eventually died, something most everyone gets around to sooner or later, and he was hardly cold in the ground before it became apparent that Gunhilda Gordonjensen McClintock must have had a smattering of grease and McClintock inclinations in her blood even before she proposed to Curly McClintock.
Gunhilda’s mother had been a Badke girl from over near Cherhill, and her branch of the family, the Wolfgang Badkes, as opposed to the Adolph Badkes who were relatively prosperous, prosperity being relative, lived over near Bjornsen’s Corner. The Wolfgang Badkes were dirt poor and, if you checked back far enough, were shirt-tail cousins of Black Darren and Edina McClintock, Curly’s parents.
Banker Gordonjensen, about the time he started his bank, which wasn’t a bank at all, because private banks weren’t allowed in Canada, but since there wasn’t a bank within forty miles in any direction, it wasn’t likely anyone was going to complain, decided that an enterprising young banker, even if he wasn’t really a banker, but just a businessman who loaned money, and stored money, if somebody had enough that they needed to store some, should be married. With marriage foremost in his mind, Banker Olaf Gordonjensen attended a box social at Magnolia one summer night, where he met Gerta Badke, of the Wolfgang Badkes, who was squat and bulldog-faced. Immediately after a short courtship, and an almost formal wedding at the Christ on the Cross Scandinavian Lutheran Church, a wedding which was the social event of the year in the Six Towns area, Gerta Badke Gordonjensen produced, at nine-month intervals, three daughters in her bulldog-faced image, before she succumbed to something mysterious, known vaguely as woman troubles.
As soon as Banker Gordonjensen was safely buried, launched from the Christ on the Cross Scandinavian Lutheran Church, officiated over by the Rev. Ibsen, suitably eulogized by Torval Imsdahl, Earl J. Rasmussen, and several other people who owed him money, Curly and Gunhilda McClintock began to let the eight-room house with a cistern and indoor plumbing go to rack and ruin. The banker, in his economically imposed exile from banking, had been a great one for shutter painting, step repairing, and flower planting.
Curly and Gunhilda proved to be determined, and what with the Gordonjensen house being bigger than most, the average house in the Six Towns area was two rooms with outdoor plumbing, there was more to go to rack and ruin, and even after the house and grounds had got to rack and ruin, they were still more prosperous than most. But, my daddy said, the car parts, and machinery parts, and motorcycle parts, just crept into that big old house, like mice into a home without cats.
And Banker Olaf Gordonjensen hadn’t been dead even ninety days, when the telephone service was cut off for non-payment, never to be reinstated, leaving only two telephones in the Six Towns area, so when the big day came, when the phone call from John ‘The Raja of Renfrew’ Ducey, came long distance all the way from Edmonton, to let Truckbox Al McClintock know he’d been chosen to play for the Alberta All-Stars against a team of genuine Major Leaguers, including Bob Feller, Hal Newhouser, and Joe DiMaggio himself, that long-distance call had to come, not to the Old Gordonjensen home at New Oslo, but because the old Gordonjensen home had been allowed to go to rack and ruin, and have its telephone service cut off, never to be reinstated, that call had to come to the McClintock home place, where the widow of Black Darren McClintock still lived in the old station house, just east of Fark, with what was left of the McClintock clan, knee deep in grease and auto parts, in established rack and ruin, as opposed to newly acquired rack and ruin, which was what Curly and Gunhilda were enjoying in the old Gordonjensen house at New Oslo.
When Truckbox Al’s grandmother, Edina McClintock, accepted the long-distance call from John ‘The Raja of Renfrew’ Ducey, and learned that her grandson had been chosen to play baseball against a team of genuine Major Leaguers, including Bob Feller, Hal Newhouser, and Joe DiMaggio himself, she promised to deliver the message as soon as humanly possible, which meant that early the next morning when Curly McClintock came rumbling down the railroad grade, which was the closest thing to a real road in the Six Towns area, gunning his dump truck so it spit white gravel out behind him, and pulled into the yard of his old home place, Edina McClintock was on the platform of the old station house, among many years’ accumulation of auto parts, machinery parts, and general unsaleable second-hand merchandise, waving a blue polkadotted handkerchief, just in case Curly wouldn’t see her in among the debris.
When Curly heard the news, he decided to postpone his trip to Edmonton long enough to gun the truck back down the railroad grade, which was fairly straight and smooth except for a couple of spots where there used to be small bridges, bridges that the railroad people tore out when they removed the tracks and ties in preparation for abandonment. In those places Curly had to gun the dump truck through ankle-deep water, except for one spot between Magnolia and New Oslo where there had been an honest-to-god trestle that the railroad people hadn’t bothered to salvage, but which eventually fell down of its own accord, and lay like a dinosaur skeleton, its timbers bleached gray as owl feathers, in the swamp it once crossed over and above.
To get by that swamp Curly had to gun the truck over a two-and-a-half-mile detour of corduroy road that invariably shook a few parts off the truck every time he drove it. Luckily, Curly was mechanically inclined and had a plethora of spare truck parts at the old home place just east of Fark, and now, since Banker Gordonjensen was dead, in and at the old Gordonjensen place at New Oslo.
Truckbox Al McClintock was enjoying his new-found fame as a home-run hitter. Since the afternoon at the sportsday on the banks of the Pembina River, where in five times at bat he hit five home runs off a skinny Indian pitcher whose only saving grace was a passable pickoff move to first base, four home runs going into the Pembina River and the fifth clean across it, Truckbox Al was attempting to take every advantage of the situation that he possibly could. Until the afternoon when he hit the five home runs, Truckbox Al McClintock, being squat and bulldog-looking like his mother, and covered in grease and motor oil like his father, and as my daddy said, being dumber than a salt lick, and both his folks put together, had never been a favorite with the young ladies.
The week before he hit the home runs, at a box social at Doreen Beach, Truckbox Al spent his total savings of thirty-five cents to buy the box lunch he was certain belonged to the second-youngest Tomchuck girl, of the Venusberg Tomchucks, having to top a bid of thirty cents from her first cousin, Billy Steve Tomchuck, of the prosperous Nikita Tomchucks, who lived near Bjornsen’s Corner, because he had heard the rumor that the second-youngest Venusberg Tomchuck girl was hot-blooded.
Unfortunately, by the time he paid the thirty-five cents, picked up the box lunch, which was a Paulin’s Soda Cracker box covered in white tissue paper with pink tissue paper rosettes on each corner, the second-youngest Venusberg Tomchuck girl had disappeared in the company of her first cousin Billy Steve Tomchuck, something they’d been known to do at other box socials, whist drives, sportsdays and ethnic weddings, in spite of severe criticism that their interest in each other was unnatural, not to mention peculiar, irregular, and downright bizarre, not to reappear until the Bjornsen Bros. Swinging Cowboy Musicmakers had announced that ‘The Red Raven Polka’ would be the first number after intermission.
When they reappeared, the second-youngest Venusberg Tomchuck girl’s lipstick, blouse, and skirt were all a little ruffled looking, which only intensified Truckbox Al’s conviction that she was hot-blooded, besides, he had thoroughly enjoyed the double