Outfielders who could hit five home runs in a game were in short supply, not to mention outfielders who could hit five consecutive baseballs into and across the Pembina River, so because of his prodigious feat that afternoon Truckbox Al was seduced into playing the remainder of the summer for the Sangudo Mustangs. What the Sangudo Mustangs used to seduce Truckbox Al was the fact that Bear Lundquist, the self-appointed coach and general manager of the Sangudo Mustangs, knew a man in Calgary, Alberta, a brother-in-law by marriage, once divorced, a man who hailed from Oklahoma and had played semi-pro baseball in his younger days; and that selfsame brother-in-law by marriage, once divorced, had an uncle in Pasadena, California, who, when he had last visited Calgary, Alberta, in the summer of 1937, said he was a speaking acquaintance of a scout for the genuine St. Louis Cardinals of the National Baseball League.
What Bear Lundquist promised was that if Truckbox Al would play the rest of the summer for the Sangudo Mustangs, Bear Lundquist, who was at the sportsday and witnessed Truckbox Al hit five home runs, four into the Pembina River and one clean across it, off a skinny Indian pitcher named Eddie Grassfires, whose only saving grace was a passable pickoff move to first base, was that he would write to Calgary, Alberta, to his brother-in-law by marriage, once divorced, who would pass the information about Truckbox Al’s baseball prowess along to his uncle in Pasadena, California; who, if he wasn’t a liar, and the general consensus was that he was, would pass on the information of Truckbox Al’s baseball prowess to the scout for the genuine St. Louis Cardinals of the National Baseball League with whom he was a speaking acquaintance.
Bear Lundquist’s Sangudo Mustangs were not in the tournament that sportsday because no matter how hard they tried they could only raise seven players, which included Bear Lundquist who was sixty-two years old and arthritic, playing catcher, and his wife, Mrs. Bear Lundquist, who wasn’t arthritic but moved like she was, playing first base. Bear Lundquist explained to Truckbox Al that mighty oaks from little acorns grow, and that once the scout for the genuine St. Louis Cardinals of the National Baseball League heard about his hitting prowess, playing major league baseball for the genuine St. Louis Cardinals was only a matter of time.
Truckbox Al’s mother was a Gordonjensen, the bulldog-faced daughter of Banker Olaf Gordonjensen of New Oslo, about nine miles as the crow flies from Fark, a little further than that from Sangudo, and exactly eleven miles from Doreen Beach, which wasn’t a resort or even on a lake, as many surprised visitors found out each summer. When there had been a railroad, Doreen Beach had been named by an employee of the railroad, R. Ebeneezer Beach, for his daughter Doreen.
The family name, Gordonjensen, came about because of a misunderstanding with immigration, or at least an incompetent government official, who may or may not have been with immigration. When Gordon Jensen, newly arrived from Norway, was asked his name, he remained silent until someone behind him who understood more English than he did said in Norwegian, ‘Name?’
‘Oh, Gordon Jensen,’ was his reply.
The government official wrote, O. Gordonjensen.
‘What does the O stand for?’ asked the official.
The newly christened Gordonjensen and his more comprehending friend behind him discussed the matter. They knew from their experience in Norway that all government officials were fools.
‘O often stands for Olaf,’ they told the bureaucrat.
* * *
Olaf Gordonjensen established the Bank of New Oslo in 1900 and raised three bulldog-faced daughters, the youngest and most bulldog-like of whom, Gunhilda, he was marrying off on a spectacular fall day in 1929, when the groom, already dressed in the striped wedding trousers his future father-in-law had purchased for him, walked eleven miles cross-country through stubble fields, cow pastures, and blueberry muskegs, afraid to be seen on the main roads such as they were, to the Edmonton-Jasper Highway, where he used the last of his ready cash to buy a one-way ticket to Edmonton on the Western Trailways bus that stopped once a day at Bjornsen’s Corner.
The groom was never heard from again. Besides the striped trousers and frock coat, he carried away with him, carefully pinned in an inside coat pocket for safekeeping, the diamond-encrusted wedding ring, and a pearl necklace, his present to the bride, both items provided by his future father-in-law. The groom rode out the Depression in a room above a Chinese café on 101st Street in Edmonton, and when times began to pick up, he sold the ring and necklace and went to attend chiropractic college in Davenport, Iowa, where at the age of thirty-nine, he was just about to graduate at the head of his class, when his jilted sweetheart’s firstborn was about to face Bob Feller, of Cleveland Indian fame, in Renfrew Park, down on the river flats, in Edmonton, Alberta, summer of 1945 or ’46, no one can quite remember which.
It was a classic mixture of Norwegian and Irish stock that made Truckbox Al McClintock the baseball player he was.
‘Sort of like mixing straw and manure,’ my daddy said. ‘They seem an unlikely combination, but chink up the cracks in your house or barn with the mixture and it’ll withstand sixty below or a hundred above.’
The wedding took place in New Oslo, at the Christ on the Cross Scandinavian Lutheran Church, also founded by Banker Olaf Gordonjensen who figured his customers would save more money and pay their loan installments more promptly if they were soundly chastised every Sunday by a God-fearing, guilt-spewing pastor of his own choosing.
Banker Olaf Gordonjensen, who wasn’t really a banker, because the government wouldn’t allow just anyone to own a bank in Alberta, though he did anyway, because the closest bank was forty miles away in Stony Plain, and things in general were a lot less sophisticated in those days, personally paid the Reverend Ibsen’s first yearly stipend at the Christ on the Cross Scandinavian Lutheran Church. In return all he asked was that every one of Reverend Ibsen’s sermons deal in some way with the virtue of saving money, and that Reverend Ibsen point out with equal frequency and fervor that those who did not repay their debts promptly were doomed to eternal damnation.
Curly McClintock, Truckbox Al’s father, came from a long line of black Irish mechanics, self-taught mechanics, who would have looked down on and failed to heed the advice of anyone who had formal mechanical training. It was possible, my daddy speculated, that Curly McClintock wasn’t even black Irish, though no one could tell, for the McClintocks, male and female, had an inordinate affinity for grease and oil.
Young Curly, who was slow-moving and slow-thinking, grew up lying on his back under a dripping differential. He wore a green Allis-Chalmers Farm Equipment cap, backwards, because on weekends at baseball tournaments, sportsdays, and picnics he was catcher for the Fark Red Sox, Fark being the town in the Six Towns area that the McClintocks lived closest to. Curly McClintock just couldn’t see the wisdom of turning the cap around between sportsdays. That green Allis-Chalmers Farm Equipment cap, and Curly’s striped railroad overalls, if they’d still been around in 1974, could have solved the world oil shortage all by themselves.
Curly’s daddy, and Truckbox Al’s granddaddy, Black Darren McClintock (as opposed to his first cousin Red Darren McClintock who had gone off to fight in the First World War and been reported missing in action), was a sometime dealer in used automobiles, buggies, farm equipment and horses, an occupation that just naturally followed his inordinate affinity for grease and oil, an affinity that he had inherited, and passed to his son, and would pass to his grandson. Black Darren McClintock had sold the Reverend Ibsen a Model T Ford, at a clergyman’s discount, even though the Model T Ford was paid for by Banker Olaf Gordonjensen, and Black Darren McClintock had never heard of a clergyman’s discount until Banker Olaf Gordonjensen brought the subject up.
That Model T Ford which the Reverend Ibsen used to visit his parishioners in and around New Oslo, so as to enjoy an afternoon snack of Norwegian fruitcake and perhaps a piece or two of cold fried chicken, and, if it was offered, a glass of dandelion wine, while he impressed on them the biblical virtues of saving money and paying loan installments on time, was a car that simply refused to keep its oil pan on.
Because that Model T Ford refused to keep its oil pan on, young Curly McClintock was dispatched by his