Box Socials. W. Kinsella P.
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fact he had to eat alone, although he had paid thirty-five cents for the privilege of eating lunch with the second-youngest Venusberg Tomchuck girl.
What he didn’t like was that Billy Steve Tomchuck was standing right behind the second-youngest Venusberg Tomchuck girl, with his own shirt only half tucked in, and a lot of the second-youngest Venusberg Tomchuck girl’s lipstick on his sunburned face.
What he said to Billy Steve Tomchuck, which Truckbox Al believed thoroughly put him in his place, was, ‘How many home runs have you hit recently?’ A query that Billy Steve Tomchuck didn’t attempt to answer; he simply put one of his large, farm-boy hands on the nearest hip of the second-youngest Venusberg Tomchuck girl, and winked at Truckbox Al, a gesture which only further intensified Truckbox Al’s conviction that the second-youngest Venusberg Tomchuck girl was hot-blooded.
Truckbox Al McClintock being invited to Edmonton to play against a team of genuine Major Leaguers, which included Bob Feller, Hal Newhouser, and Joe DiMaggio himself, had what my daddy called a trickle-down effect, in that it provided good fortune, temporary employment, and exposure, if not notoriety, for several residents of the Six Towns area. Good fortune was what it provided for Earl J. Rasmussen.
It was because of Earl J. Rasmussen that everybody in the Six Towns area, and everybody who came to one of the box socials, whist drives, or community dances in one of the Six Towns, knew ‘Casey at the Bat.’ Earl J. Rasmussen, a bachelor who lived in the hills south of New Oslo with about six hundred sheep, loved to recite ‘Casey at the Bat,’ at the top of his lungs, at every box social, community dance, whist drive, and, if given the opportunity, at ethnic weddings. Earl J. Rasmussen, who had emigrated from Minnesota, had been raised near Norseland, Minnesota, but had played baseball as a boy somewhere up in the Iron Range, my daddy thought it was Buhl, or Hibbing, or maybe even Chisholm, but never remembered to ask for certain, though he knew it was a place where it gets fifty below in the wintertime.
In Minnesota, just like in Alberta, there was about nine months of wintertime, followed by three months of poor sledding, and people in both places took to memorizing poems in the cold months, which, if you combined wintertime with the cold months and poor sledding, pretty well took up the whole year in both Alberta and Minnesota.
There was a custom at box socials, community dances, and whist drives, whist being a card game my daddy said was bridge for people who couldn’t regularly recall how many suits there were in a deck of cards, that while the band, the Bjornsen Bros. Swinging Cowboy Musicmakers, were taking their break, anyone and everyone was not only allowed, but encouraged, to come forward and contribute an entertainment. There was always some question as to how much entertainment was involved when Earl J. Rasmussen, who was about forty-five years old and lived alone in the hills south of New Oslo with about six hundred sheep, recited ‘Casey at the Bat’ at the top of his lungs, but speculation of that nature never stopped Earl J. Rasmussen from reciting.
Earl J. Rasmussen had been unsuccessfully courting the widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson, who also recited poetry, and claimed her deceased husband to be a second cousin, once removed, of the famous Icelandic poet, Stephan G. Stephanson, her husband’s family name having been altered by an incompetent immigration official so the spelling was no longer the same as that of the famous poet. But entertainment or not, Earl J. Rasmussen was always the second person to come to the front of the community hall, when the Bjornsen Bros. Swinging Cowboy Musicmakers were taking their break, the first always being the widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson.
The widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson, was a Sangudo Stevenson, as opposed to the Venusberg Stevensons, a group that often lived in tents along the road allowances just like Indians, and couldn’t have recited their ABCs without cursing fit to curdle the moon of a clear night. The Sangudo Stevensons, on the other hand, owned their own land, occasionally wore store-bought clothes, and somewhere in her life Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson had come in contact with some poems by a woman poet name of Emily Dickinson.
To solidify her position as the artistic person in the Six Towns area, a position temporarily challenged by Mrs. Edytha Rasmussen Bozniak the time she instigated, bulldozed through, and more or less organized, a Little Box Social for the children of the Six Towns area, a story I’ll get to a little later, the widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson, not only claimed to be a second cousin by marriage, once removed, of the famous Icelandic poet, Stephan G. Stephanson, but she claimed, and with some truth, to have been before her marriage a Birkland, from Camrose, a town south and east of Edmonton, big enough to actually be called a town; a town where there was an actual college, called Camrose Lutheran College, where Miss Beatrice Ann Birkland had actually attended through tenth grade, and where she may well have been exposed to the poetry of this woman poet, Emily Dickinson.
As soon as the intermission break was announced at a box social, whist drive, or community dance (Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson considered it inappropriate to perform at ethnic weddings), the master of ceremonies or the members of the Bjornsen Bros. Swinging Cowboy Musicmakers would barely be off the stage before the widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson, would be at center stage performing an entertainment, which consisted of reciting three Emily Dickinson poems complete with gestures.
It was my daddy, who had no small ear for music, especially after a slug or two of Earl J. Rasmussen’s raisin wine, or a nip or two of chokecherry wine, dandelion wine, or Heathen’s Rapture, logging-boot-to-the-side-of-the-head homebrew, the 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