The plate glass windows of our old store
are a kind of time machine for me.
It hasn’t been a Fairway Foods for over fifty years
but I can put my face against the glass
shield my eyes with both my hands
and watch the Alice Fairway calendar
the one we gave away at Christmas time
change its month and day and year
to whenever fancy takes me.

It’s nineteen fifty two behind that glass right now,
and I can see my five year self leaning on the candy case
bibs of faded corduroy
with a neck to navel zipper in the front.
I got a Pluto picture on my t-shirt
and leather high top farmer shoes.
my hands are held behind my back listening to the talk.
My Momma’s words that children should be seen
and never ever heard
echo through my mind.

Beneath the milk white globe of the single light,
that hangs there over top the furnace grate
a group of local guys
sit on the slatted benches there
talking politics and baseball
and other grown up stuff.

Old Ezra’s there leaning on the counter
he’s the one that calls me ‘Zip’
On account of that zipper in my bibs.
Ezra chews a lot of snoose
that dribbles down the corners of his chin
and when he talks he sounds like Gabby Hayes.
Ezra’s farm was on the way to Grandpa’s place.
Only just an open field there now
where the house and barn
and twenty acre grove used to be.

Big Russ is holding court today
he stretches out his heavy frame
rests his ankles on a crate that’s meant for eggs.
His twelve ounce Pepsi bottle loosely gripped
propped up against his big old belly
every inch of which is bought and paid for
so he says.
Russell is an expert
on anything you ever heard of
and a whole lot probably that you haven’t.
That’s the way it sounds at any rate
to hear him talk.
If there’s a thing that he’s not sure of
it’s for sure he’d not admit it.
Then again if Russell drops the verbal ball
Frankie’s there to pick it up and run with it.
When either one is at a loss
They sort of act as seconds for each other
in the never ending game of words.

Frankie used to run the Farmer’s Grain
he never was formally accused I guess
for those years the books had failed to balance.
Now he mows the grass in our town
has a riding mower we kids think is great
‘cause most of us still mow by hand.
When Frankie’s out there mowing
He wears a hat that’s really cool
My Daddy told me it’s a ‘Pith’
and I thought that he was using nasty words
till I saw the movie ‘Gunga Din’

Frankie was a lot like Russ
Though he might not have a clue about it
He’d talk on any subject that came up.
My Daddy said
‘If you gave old Frankie half an inch’
He’d try to drive an NP locomotive through it.
Frankie’s favorite thing to talk about?
Without a doubt was baseball.
And until the team for Alice finally folded
He’d been an Alice Angel almost forty years.
After twenty four losing seasons
consecutive
the Angels finally called it quits
when only two men showed for practice
in the spring of nineteen fifty two
Frankie who’d been the pitcher over thirty years
and a younger fella named Duane
who probably hadn’t heard about the losing streak.
The other players said they had to quit
twenty four losing seasons was bad enough
but to take the chance of it becoming twenty five
to take the chance on a ‘Quarter Century’ losing streak
was too horrible to comprehend.

So anyway when Frankie starts on baseball
My Daddy says ‘He’d lay me odds’
it’s gonna finally come around
to the last time that
the Angels had a winning season
nineteen twenty seven.
That’s the year that Frankie pitched
that almost nearly shut out
in the playoff game
against the mighty Indie’s
of Enderlin North Dakotah.

A game at night it was
the only lighted park
for a hundred miles around was Hendrickson
the park the Indie’s call their home.
The score was tied nothing all
in the bottom of the tenth
when the Indie’s center fielder Carl Lindeman
stepped up to the plate.
They called old Carl ‘Cottonwood’
And it wasn’t hard to figure
why they named him for a tree
him being six foot six and all.
I don’t know for sure how heavy Cottonwood was
but they said they had to weigh him
at the Cargill Feed And Seed
on a scale that they use for grain.

It was the fifth at bat for Cottonwood
Frankie’d struck him out each time before
when Carl had swung so hard
at Frankie’s change up pitch
people said it looked like Cottonwood
would screw himself right into the ground.
There was a big typhoon
in the Dutch East Indies
a week or so following the game.
The swags at ‘Friendly Sticks’
the pool hall down in Enderlin
allowed as how the wind from Carl’s bat
might have been a factor in that storm
from the Butterfly effect and all.

So there it was
the bottom of the tenth.
Maybe Frankie got complacent
having struck old Carl out
in four at bats that night
or maybe Frankie just got tired.
Frankie says old Cottonwood got plain dumb lucky.
When he hit that change up pitch so hard
he whacked the cover off
broke the light out from the tower
above the fence in centre field.
The longest homer ever
in the history of that field.
A teacher at the school was heard to say
if it hadn’t hit the light
it would have gone
five hundred feet and more.
Some of the ‘Boys’ in the stands
sharing a brew... or two.... or three...or nine.
Home brew it was a’course, it being prohibition and all.
Some of those ‘Boys’ allowed as how they doubted
that that ball would’a ever landed at all
on account of it was still going up
when it hit the light.
And until the day he passed
old Frankie talked to anyone who’d listen
about how lucky Cottonwood was
on a summer Saturday evening
in nineteen twenty seven.

And as I peer through all the dimness
through fifty years of blurring window glass
At the five year old leaning on the candy case that’s me.
I see and hear and smell,
Those sights and sounds and odors,
That he takes for granted in his world.
The nutty brown aroma of percolating coffee
from the stainless steel urn
on the counter by his shoulder.

the cloying sour sharpness of acid burned butter fat
in the room where Daddy tests the farmers cream
And there’s the oiled leather work boots in a glassed in case up front
that smell like walking in a room
with a hundred brand new baseball mitts.
Jet black overshoes so high they need five buckles.
And vinegar that drips beneath the barrel bung out back
so that I can almost taste my Gramma’s German Dills.
There’s a great huge burlap bag
filled with peanuts salted in the shell.
When you stick your hand in there
cast around for a nut
it makes a sound like walking through dry leaves in the fall.

I’m no philosopher nor even very smart
given all the errors I’ve made throughout my life.
But I think we all of us have a window
where anything that’s happened
to me or you or anyone
is there behind the glass.
Those happenings are the threads
wove in the fabric of our lives.
Each one looked at separately doesn’t count for very much,
But woven all together
to become the sum and total of who and what we are
those threads don’t make a simple fabric
They make the precious tapestries
that decorate the corridors of the keeps
that are our lives.

Return to the store in “Into the Dust”