selfsame combination of ingredients that caused Earl J. Rasmussen to recite ‘Casey at the Bat,’ at the top of his lungs, who caused the widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson, to switch from three Emily Dickinson poems complete with gestures, to Lord Byron’s ‘The Destruction of Sennacherib’s Host at Jerusalem,’ with considerably fewer gestures, though on the line ‘And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,’ she did raise her right hand as if she was about to launch a spear into the wild blue yonder.
It was Daddy, who, humming along with, and tapping his foot to, the widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson’s, recitations, discovered quite by accident, that everything she recited by the woman poet, Emily Dickinson, could be sung to the tune of ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas,’ which, he pointed out on the way home that night, took away a bit of what he called the artistic integrity of both the poetry, and Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson’s performance.
At the next box social, when the Bjornsen Bros. Swinging Cowboy Musicmakers took their break, and the widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson, took to the stage, for what Daddy said was, approximately, the two-hundred-and-fiftieth time, Daddy just sauntered along behind her, and sat himself down to the open-topped piano that had only one key missing, the piano having been vacated by Arne Bjornsen. Arne was not a Bjornsen brother but a Bjornsen cousin, though a Bjornsen all the same, and not a very good piano player, often tending to lose his place, especially in the middle of ‘Wildwood Flower,’ but he was kept around, first, because he was family, and second, because he was a good square-dance caller in both English and Norwegian.
That particular night, as the widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson, was reciting and gesturing, her eyes dewy with emotion, Daddy began to two-finger ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’ on the cousin Bjornsen’s piano.
Now it was plain from the first note that a little two-finger piano playing immeasurably improved the quality of the widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson’s, recitations. Usually, people tried to get out of the community hall during Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson’s recitations, and Earl J. Rasmussen’s shouted rendition of ‘Casey at the Bat,’ and, if there was time, the performance of Little Grendel Badke, of the prosperous Adolph Badkes, who would sit at the piano that had only one key missing, and play ‘Alice Blue Gown,’ while she sang the words in a whisper no one could hear.
But this particular night, it was about fifty below, and whenever the back or front door of the Fark Community Hall was opened, a blast of steam and deathly cold air filled the little hall. So by mutual agreement, instead of going outside for a drink, the men went behind the ragged blue curtain at the back of the stage to sample the dandelion wine, raisin wine, chokecherry wine, homemade beer, and Heathen’s Rapture, or bring-on-blindness, logging-boot-to-the-side-of-the-head homebrew. The young people who were dying to get their hands on each other’s bodies did their body touching in the coat closet, which was just like a cloakroom at Fark schoolhouse, mainly because the school and the community hall had been built by the same carpenter, the infamous Flop Skalrud by name.
At first, as Daddy played the piano that had only one key missing, people just tapped their feet, while the more musical ones snapped their fingers, but in the middle of the second poem a few people began to hum, and by the time the dewy-eyed widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson, began the third poem everybody was ready to sing along, and did.
‘Oh, I love to see it lap the miles and eat the valleys up …’ sang about seventy people and a couple of dogs, including my old soup-hound, Benito Mussolini.
As my daddy said on the way home, the widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson, didn’t know whether to pee or go blind. But when she was finished, instead of two or three of her friends from the Fark Sewing Circle and Temperance Society applauding, the whole seventy people burst into applause, cheers, and whistles, while Benito Mussolini and his friend howled along.
The audience, for the first time in history, demanded an encore, and when the widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson, repeated her performance, they sang along lustily, to all three Emily Dickinson poems, which, though they hadn’t realized it, they knew by heart from hearing them so many times. Then everyone called for an encore of the encore, and all seventy people sang louder and stomped their feet harder, and even the young people who had been engaged in serious body touching in the cloakroom, stuck their heads around the corner to see what was going on, while Daddy played the piano more emphatically but with no more ability, and the widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson, eventually stopped reciting altogether, and just stared at the audience in a truly bewildered manner.
When the Bjornsen Bros. Swinging Cowboy Musicmakers emerged from behind the ragged blue curtain at the back of the stage, fully fortified with raisin wine, dandelion wine, homemade beer, and Heathen’s Rapture, they had their work cut out for them to recapture the stage from Daddy, and the widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson; Earl J. Rasmussen and Little Grendel Badke having completely missed their turn to provide an entertainment.
Sixty miles away in Edmonton, though my daddy said it might as well have been six thousand, there lived a mythical man named John Ducey. John was pronounced Jawn, and rhymed with yawn, and he was an American, and a promoter of baseball, known to one and all as ‘The Raja of Renfrew,’ because Renfrew Park, down on the river flats, was the place in Edmonton where professional baseball was played. John ‘The Raja of Renfrew’ Ducey, while not a wealthy man, had more money than most, because he had married into money.
John Ducey, before he was known as ‘The Raja of Renfrew,’ had married into a family who owned a successful inn, known as the New Edmonton Hotel, located on 97 Street in Edmonton, a section of the city my daddy said could not be compared with Fifth Avenue in New York City, or with any street in North America where rich society types might meet.
‘During a depression, cash is king,’ my daddy often said, and, immediately after he said it, lamenting his own lack of cash, often for a considerable length of time. The New Edmonton Hotel, which was not large, three stories of red brick, and had never been elegant, was successful because it had a very large bar, which was patronized almost exclusively by Indians, who, even at five cents a glass, consumed enough beer to keep John Ducey, and John Ducey’s in-laws, in money through the Depression. And there was even a fair amount of money left over, with which John Ducey promoted baseball in Edmonton, and thus became known as ‘The Raja of Renfrew,’ Renfrew being the name of the baseball park down on the river flats.
On a Sunday afternoon in 1945 or ’46, no one can remember which, John Ducey took his wife, the wealthy hotel owner’s daughter, on a drive into the country, where they stopped for a few minutes at a sportsday at a town on the banks of the Pembina River, where they watched a few innings of the final game of the day between the New Oslo Blue Devils and an all-Indian team from the reserve near Lac Ste. Anne, where they saw Truckbox Al McClintock hit three of his five home runs, two into, and one clean across, the Pembina River.
Most of the years while I was growing up, there was a war on, and all of us knew it, though it was about as far away as it could be, Europe and the South Pacific and all. Europe and the South Pacific and all, being several thousand miles away, one in one direction and one in another, were pretty hard for folks in the Six Towns area to visualize, for about two-thirds of the folks in the Six Towns area had never been as far away as Edmonton, which was approximately sixty miles, but might as well have been six thousand.
Several, four I believe was the exact count, boys from the Six Towns area had joined the Canadian Army, and one, a Rose from near Sangudo, was rumored to be fighting in Italy, which most all of us knew was shaped like a boot and was where the pope and the real Benito Mussolini lived, but not much else. And, we all knew, the orphaned genius electrical engineer, Arthur Bozniak, who was married to a local girl, Edytha Rasmussen, had been one of the first Canadians killed in World War II, a story I’ll get around to later.
The reason I mention the war at all, is that it turned out to be the underlying reason for the baseball
