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.
My mama gave up her job at an art gallery in Charleston, located on Calhoun Street, not far from the statue of John C. Calhoun, who, she said, was famous for a number of things, the oddest being that he was supposed to be the true father of Abraham Lincoln, and caught a train which in several days would deliver her to Butte, Montana.
As the train was traveling across South Dakota, where Mama said the prairie was like green ocean in every direction and the tall buffalo grass swayed down as the train passed just like a wind sweeping over water, the track gave way and the engine plowed off through the tall, green buffalo grass, more-or-less parallel to the direction it had been running in, until it bogged down with its wheels buried in the prairie. The derailment had been so gentle that most of the passengers didn’t realize what had happened, Mama said. The crew were very polite and they suggested that the passengers might like to have a picnic out on the sunny prairie while they waited for a repair crew to arrive, and as the passengers sat in little groups on the grass the white-coated waiters from the dining car passed among them handing out sandwiches and cool drinks.
Daddy, who after the First World War had traveled about considerably, playing baseball in Florida and California, though I could never establish who he played for, or who with, or for how long, had been living in a town almost in the shadow of Mount Rushmore, playing baseball on weekends and working for the railroad during the week. Daddy was on the crew sent to put the train back on the track.
Daddy readily admitted that he didn’t know a whole lot about putting a train back on the track, his paramount skills being to charge in from third base and field bunts barehanded, and hammer a double down the right field line about every third time he came to bat, but his eyes sure did recognize a beautiful girl when he saw one, and his ears sure did recognize a Charleston, S.C., drawl when he heard one, and by the time the train was back on the track, Daddy had decided to spend the last of his ready cash to buy a one-way ticket from wherever on the plains of South Dakota they were, to Butte, Montana, which he did, and Daddy and Mama were married four months later, and Daddy decided to settle down forever and apprenticed himself to a man who built fine houses for the mine owners, doctors and lawyers of Butte, Montana.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, Daddy had in his veins what he described as wandering blood, and, three years later, when a barnstorming baseball team passed through Butte, Montana, a team called Brother Pettigrew’s Divine Light Baseball Mission, combining, Brother Pettigrew said, the two Gods of rural North America, the mysterious and sometimes troubling one in the sky and baseball, a team whose third baseman was arrested for Disturbing the Peace in Butte, Montana, by kicking out the window of his hotel room at three A.M. and singing ‘Amazing Grace’ in an off-key, but very loud voice, a charge that would have gotten him nothing but a two-dollar fine and a lecture about disturbing the peace, except an eagle-eyed deputy leafed through a stack of Wanted Posters and discovered that the third baseman was wanted in Orlando, Florida, for Bank Robbery and Assault with a Deadly Weapon, which, my daddy said, could well have been his loud, off-key singing voice.
My daddy was called in to repair the splintered window sash, and next afternoon found himself on his way to Bozeman, Montana, where Brother Pettigrew’s Divine Light Baseball Mission was scheduled to play a game against the team from Bozeman Bible College.
Daddy toured with Brother Pettigrew’s Divine Light Baseball Mission for about three months; the team traveled in a circle through Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, then moved up into Canada. They played in Medicine Hat, Alberta; they played in Lethbridge; they played in Calgary; they played in Red Deer; they played in Edmonton; well, not