I am dictating this to the Beloved, forty some years after the fact. This means that sometimes the events of long ago are crystal clear in my mind, and sometimes they are murkier than a coal slurry. Right now, after a good meal of beans and wienies with buttered bread and a bowl of yogurt, plus a sound nap during an episode of Perry Mason on Video Prime, my memory is as sharp as a porcupine quill. The first time I saw the old funeral home was . . .
Oh drat! I don’t actually remember that first view of the place. I only know it happened in the early summer.
There is something about early summer in North Dakota that calls for a Broadway tune or a guttural tribal chant. The air is full of impudent sage as meadowlarks tap dance on the fence post like Fred Astaire. Last year's stubble in the fields turns green and vibrates with an innocent yearning. To be a pessimist in the early summer in North Dakota would require the heart of a troll in the body of a banker. A Republican banker.
I grew up in Minneapolis, and the early summers were almost magical there. But not quite. There were parents, and lawns to mow, to dampen the joyful childhood energy fields. But in North Dakota these wild waves of bucolic bumptiousness were completely untrammeled. I felt like a new man in a new land, with no baggage to drag behind me.
And then came the tornado. A small black cloud appeared on the horizon one Sunday afternoon while I was at church. It grew in size until it blocked the sunlight, and chilled the land with it’s evil foreboding. Then suddenly in a sickly green light, the roaring funnel dropped to the ground in front of the church. Shingles came off the roof. Windows burst. Members of the congregation screamed and cowered. And one beautiful young woman and the pew she was sitting in were carried aloft by the whirlwind. Luckily, by then, I had learned how to use a lasso. So I roped her down to safety in my arms. And that is how I met my Beloved. Who lived with her family in the old funeral home up in Tioga.
No. That’s not true. That’s a daydream I had years later when she and I had divorced.
I am trying to remember now if I saw the old funeral home before I saw my Beloved. I don’t think I did. And when I am dictating to my beloved, as I am doing right now, I never ask her for specific details. A writer's hubris. However, as I wrote earlier, when she feels inclined she will set the record straight.
I don’t want you to think that I didn’t have an active love life before I met the girl from the old funeral home. Of course I did.
I had one date with old Dr. Maisey’s niece from Idaho. But she fell asleep during the movie. So I finished all the popcorn, and she didn’t take kindly to that. I also briefly made goo-goo eyes at Arvella Newnan. The secretary at KGCX Radio. She only had eyes for Dewey Moede, the sports director. Then there was Becky Thingvold, A reporter at the Williston Daily Herald. (Becky Thingvold’s family is from Tioga) She did a story on me when I first got to town. That’s because I told everyone that I was going to open a clown school in town. I used to make those kinds of bombastic statements all the time in my callow youth. But I’ve since learned to write such idiotic statements on a piece of scrap paper and then mail them to Santa at the North Pole. I have now idea what he does with them.
Anyway, I thought Becky was a pretty hot item. So I asked her out. She gave me a hard no. Now had I been Robert Taylor or Fred Astaire in an old screwball comedy movie I would have pursued her relentlessly until she gave in with a coy giggle. But unfortunately I favored Boris Karloff over Fred Astaire in both looks and disposition. And I didn’t want to be arrested for stalking. So you can see that I had a very active love life. You might say I had to beat the girls off with a stick. You might say that. If you were drunk.
But now we must come back to the problem of when I first beheld the old funeral home. In Tioga. In North Dakota, In the United States. On planet Earth. Or do we? Heck, I’m in charge of this narrative and I can lie through my teeth as much as I want. How are you, the reader, going to know any difference? You’re not going to take the time to check up on any of this. Since I haven’t indicated if this is a work of fiction or nonfiction.
So let’s just say that I first saw the old funeral home on December 7th 1941. The same day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Historic facts are always riveting. (it wasn’t that far back because Dad was 10 1/2 years old on that date. It was the year of the killer blizzard, 1941. Dad had been feeding cows on the neighbor’s farm. He saw the bank of clouds on the west horizon. He instantly knew what it meant especially when the cattle were nervous around him. He turned the wagon around, pointed the horses home, crawled under the hay meant for the cows and listened as the storm howled around him. Nearly an hour of riding and hoping went by. When the horses stopped he got out but could not see anything in the whiteout swirling. He felt his way to the front of the horses and found they had gotten to the barn. He took care of them and by a miracle found his way to the house. Mrs. Mattson was in tears. She exclaimed, “Freddy, we thought you was dead!” Dad didn’t tell his mom about this for some time after. He didn’t want his widowed mom to worry any more than she had to. Dad’s wages, in his mind, were more valuable to give her than worry about his life.)
Perhaps it would be best if I explained why my Beloved was living in an old funeral home to begin with. (Dad did not have anything to do with any workings in a funeral home. We simply lived in it for a purpose not connected with funerals.) But those beans and weenies are beginning to speak volumes. If you know what I mean. So let's continue this narrative after the Rubicon is crossed.
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