Leaguers, featuring Bob Feller, Hal Newhouser, and Joe DiMaggio himself, at Renfrew Park down on the river flats, in Edmonton, Alberta, summer of 1945 or ’46, no one can remember which. The Americans were building something called the Alaska Highway, which I guess ran from Edmonton to Alaska, though I wasn’t much good at geography then, and have never bothered to improve myself on the subject. To this day, I don’t understand why they were building it, or what it had to do with the war in either Europe, or the South Pacific.
But build it they did, and there were many thousands of American soldiers stationed in Edmonton during the war, which was exceptionally good for the economy, because American soldiers had money and were willing and eager to spend it on almost anything, no matter the price. The city of Edmonton took on itself a nickname: ‘The Gateway to the North,’ it called itself, a nickname that stayed around until oil was discovered south of Edmonton at a place called Leduc, which translated from the French, means The Duke, and Edmonton decided to call itself ‘The Oil Capital of Canada,’ a nickname it still uses.
Apparently the Americans thought it was important to build the Alaska Highway, so it didn’t matter what anyone else thought about it, and to build that highway they sent thousands and thousands of troops to Alaska, and all of them, at one time or another, passed through Edmonton.
There was something else that the Americans thought was just as important as building the Alaska Highway, or winning the wars in Europe and the South Pacific, and that was entertaining the troops. Apparently American troops didn’t build good highways, or fight successful wars, unless they got frequent and good quality entertainment.
Many names, that those of us who had radios, would readily recognize: Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Phil Harris, Dennis Day, the McGuire Sisters, The Ink Spots and The Mills Brothers, to name a few, were flown into Edmonton, some on more than one occasion, to entertain the troops.
There was usually some spillover. Those stars, after they had entertained the troops sufficiently, so the troops could go back to building good solid highways, and fighting successful wars, would often put on a show in the city of Edmonton itself, having performed the original entertainment in a hangar at Namao Airport, north of Edmonton.
There was a place, which my daddy had seen, called the Edmonton Arena, sometimes called the Edmonton Gardens, which the radio said could hold five thousand people. I liked the name Edmonton Gardens better, because I could picture marigolds, petunias, red geraniums, and tall hollyhocks surrounding this white frame building, where five thousand people could go to hear Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Phil Harris, Dennis Day, or the McGuire Sisters.
My daddy said that the year after I was born, he traded a calf and two suckling pigs to an itinerant peddler for a radio, and, once word got around, our house was overflowing for several weeks, as everyone who didn’t have a radio, which was most of the people in the Six Towns area, came by to stare at the large, cathedral-shaped box and the yard-long battery that powered it. There were many dire predictions concerning the radio, not the least of which was that God would strike radio owners dead on some preordained day; some of the old-timers, especially those from Europe, believed it a tool of the Devil, and that the voices that came out of it were actually demons. The widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson, said she thought the radio contributed to the general moral decline of the twentieth century, and that the radio almost certainly had something to do with a horrendous increase in teenage pregnancies, and may even have affected the weather in some mysterious way—just look at how late spring was, and hadn’t a robin turned up frozen to death on her lawn in February, poor demented thing—and that she certainly wouldn’t be caught dead with such a contraption in her house. She then settled in to enjoy four hours of Sunday night radio, beginning with ‘The Jack Benny Show,’ and promised to return the next night to hear ‘Lux Presents Hollywood,’ which was featuring ‘Captain Blood,’ with Errol Flynn recreating his original movie role.
The radio was around from my earliest days, so I wasn’t awed by it, though I do remember considering it somewhat magical, as it brought in an occasional Major League baseball game from St. Louis, and minor league baseball from Kansas City, on clear nights in the spring and fall. The radio would also broadcast events that, when I look back, seem inconceivable.
There was a show originating from ‘the beautiful Trocadero Ballroom in the heart of downtown Edmonton,’ a show which consisted of the announcer simply introducing the orchestra, Mart Kenney and his Western Gentlemen, naming each song they were about to play, then describing the dancers: the beautiful women in their silks and furs, and the handsome men in their tuxedos, which, I guess, was a large enough dose of vicarious living to keep the show on the air for several years.
And, once a year, something called The Fun Parade came to the Edmonton Gardens, where a crowd of five thousand people would fill the place to watch a radio show. The master of ceremonies was named Roy Ward Dixon, and he would do real fun things like send two men, tied together like Siamese twins, out to ride the bus with just one bus ticket, and if they could convince some poor bus driver that the two of them, tied together like Siamese twins, should ride for the price of one, they got to bring the bus driver back to the stage at the Edmonton Gardens, where Roy Ward Dixon awarded everybody chintzy prizes.
It was because the American troops stationed in Edmonton needed, in order for them to build good solid highways, and fight successful wars, to be entertained with great frequency and regularity, that John ‘The Raja of Renfrew’ Ducey was able to arrange for a group of Major League baseball players to come to Edmonton on a summer Sunday afternoon in 1945 or ’46, no one can remember which.
This group of Major League baseball players were doing a stint in the service, neither building good solid highways nor fighting successful wars, but in their own way entertaining the troops just as if they were Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Phil Harris, Dennis Day, or the McGuire Sisters; their stint in the service involved them mostly going from military installation to military installation, playing exhibition baseball games against pick-up service teams.
Since Edmonton, ‘The Gateway to the North,’ was a place most of the troops just passed through, on their way to build the Alaska Highway, and didn’t spend all that much time in, it was decided that the troops would be flown in to Edmonton in flying boxcars for that special Sunday afternoon of baseball. But since it was going to be difficult, if not well nigh impossible, to get together a team to challenge these Major League All-Stars, which included Bob Feller, Hal Newhouser, and Joe DiMaggio himself, John ‘The Raja of Renfrew’ Ducey decided to stimulate local interest by having the Major League All-Stars play a local team to be named, with a genuine lack of originality, the Alberta All-Stars.
It was because of baseball and a train wreck that my daddy met my mama, and because of baseball and a train wreck that two people from South Carolina, my daddy and my mama, met in South Dakota, ended up getting married and eventually found themselves farming unsuccessfully in Alberta during the Depression.
Mama was born in Charleston, S.C., just a few days after her parents arrived there from the country of Colombia, where my grandfather had been working as a mining engineer in an emerald mine. My grandfather went back to the emerald mine, and to diamond and coal and copper and zinc mines at various places around the world for the next twenty years, while Mama and my grandmother remained in Charleston.
Daddy, himself, admitted to being born in South Carolina, about a hundred miles, geographically, and two hundred and ten, socially, from my mama. They never did come even close to meeting while they were growing up in South Carolina.
When Mama was twenty years old, my grandfather decided to settle down and bought himself a permanent position as a part owner of a copper mine in Butte, Montana, and decided that if he was going to live there forever he should have his family with him. Forever to my grandfather only lasted ten years and when last heard from he was supervising the installation of diamond-mining equipment near Cape Town, South Ainca.
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