King of The Road Read online

  With all that, plus all the wild kids, the hard work, and the poor surroundings—it wasn’t the sort of setup that would be irresistibly attractive to a whole lot of single women. Most women lived in towns and had electricity, television, phones, and running water. The only things we had were coal-oil lamps, storytelling, and smoke signals. But you never know what fate and good luck are going to send your way. One Sunday Herm Wald, a young fellow who was probably about twenty-five, shows up in our yard in this fancy white 1961 Pontiac two-door hardtop. He gets out of the car and shakes my dad’s hand. “Stanley, I’d like to buy a bottle of whiskey.”

  “I’ve got no whiskey,” my dad says.

  “Oh, I know you’ve got one around here somewhere.”

  “No, I don’t,” my dad says. Meanwhile he’s walking around the car. “Herm, did you go to church today?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You should be going to church. You drink too much. You party too much. You should be getting yourself a job with Alberta Government Telephones. Make eight hundred bucks a month, get yourself a good pension.”

  Dad’s walking around the car, preaching to Herm. “You’re a good-looking boy. You should do something with your life.”

  Herm worked on the rigs and was addicted to a good time.

  Dad’s kicking the tires. “Who’s that woman sleeping in the backseat?”

  “That’s my girlfriend,” says Herm. “We’re going to get married.”

  “I’ll trade you a bottle of whiskey for her.”

  “Oh, no, I love her. We’re going to get married.”

  “Well, no bottle of whiskey then.”

  Herm thinks about it for a while. “I’ll tell you what, you take her, and I’ll come and get her in the morning.”

  Dad says, “Herm, I don’t think you understand. I don’t want her for the night. I’ve got these kids here, and I need a woman to look after them, to help with the cooking and cleaning.”

  “Well, no, we’re getting married. You can’t have her for good.”

  Dad walks around the car a few more times and Herm finally says, “Okay, you can have her. But I want a full bottle of whiskey.”

  “You can’t come back and get her. If she wants to go somewhere in the morning, that’s fine, I will take her. But don’t you come back looking for her.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Boys, come here!”

  My brother Richie and I came out of the house and Dad told us to each grab an arm. She was out cold, so my dad took a leg and Herm took a leg and we skidded her out of the car and hauled her into the house and put her on the bed. It was probably one of the more ungainly entrances a lady ever made at our house.

  Herm left with his bottle of whiskey, and I don’t think the cows got fed the next morning because Dad got up early, to head off Herm at the driveway. He knew Herm would come back and of course he did. That big white Pontiac came down the road and turned into the driveway, but it didn’t get far because my dad stood there in front of it. He had his fists on his hips and his feet apart. My dad was like a bantam rooster and when he took a position you couldn’t budge him. Herm said, “I’ve come to get my woman.”

  “You can’t have her.”

  “But I love her. We’re going to get married.”

  “The marriage is off. You sold her to me for a bottle of whiskey.”

  “I’ll trade you something for her.”

  “A deal is a deal. She’s ours now.”

  Herm finally realized he was going to have to fight my dad to get her back, and my dad was not the sort of man you wanted to pick a fight with. So he left, and that woman stayed with us for more than a month. She treated us well. I remember this one time, I went into town with her, and we picked up the ’61 Pontiac, which was in fact her car. When she drove it back the motor was screaming as she went down the street. She told me there was something wrong with the car, but it turned out she had it in first gear. The car had a two-speed Powerglide transmission. We shared a good laugh about that. Then she left, but that was to be expected. The only way Dad could find a wife who could take the hardship was to bring one over from the old country.

  It Takes a Village to Raise a Little Polack

  When you’re growing up, it’s not just your parents and relatives who educate you. Sometimes the adults and old-timers you meet in your neighborhood have as much influence on you as your own family.

  We had a neighbor who lived in the woods called Fat Newton. My brother Richie and my sister, Simone, decided that it was disrespectful to call him “Fat,” so we asked him what his first name was. It was Francis and we were the only ones allowed to call him that. One day another neighbor came into the house and called him Francis and boy, he didn’t like that. “Don’t ever call me Francis,” he shouted. “My name is ‘Fat’ or ‘Fats’ to you!”

  Fat Newton had been a private during World War I and he had been a boxer too, but he was just a stout guy. He had little hands and little feet and he was about five-four and weighed about four hundred pounds. He lived in a little two-room shack way back in the woods—single-pane windows, dirty floors, and a big old woodstove in the corner.

  Most people talk with their throats, but old Fat Newton talked from the pit of his stomach. When he talked, the floor shook and the windows rattled. When you were telling him something his voice would get louder and he would get more excited and pretty soon it was like a volcano going off in that little two-room shack.

  My brother Richie used to enjoy getting Fat all stirred up, so he would make up stories about stuff that he had done that day. He’d say, “You know what, Francis, I got three deer this morning.”

  “No!”

  “Yep, with one bullet.”

  “NO-O-O!!!”

  Anyway, Richie was really money-hungry in those days. He was always trying to make a nickel. He wasn’t money-hungry as he got older but he was about twelve years old at the time and he would do anything for money. He’d go to my dad and say, “I’ll eat that fly for a nickel.”

  My dad would say, “Okay.”

  Richie would pop the fly in his mouth and take the nickel. One time he made a dime eating a stickleback—that’s one of those little minnows with barbs on its back. And one time someone offered him five dollars to eat a mouse, but I think Richie drew the line right there.

  Francis used to chew snuff and spit it onto the stove. The tobacco would sizzle and go shooting around on the top of the stove.

  I’d say, “Francis, don’t you think that’s a little dirty, spitting on the stove like that?”

  And he’d roar, “Don’t you know nuthin’, boy? That’s the cleanest thing you can do! The top of that stove must be five hundred degrees!”

  Anyway, Francis saved the empty snuff cans and used them for storing pennies. He must have had eight or nine of them full of pennies. Whenever Richie was visiting he was always staring at those snuff cans, trying to figure out how he could persuade Francis to give him some of that money. He would say, “Francis, do you think I can have those cans of pennies?”

  “I’ll tell you what, boy, you can have them when you can carry those cans on the tip of your pecker!”

  So Richie never did get those pennies.

  Francis’s cabin just had a rough wood floor. One day Richie said, “Francis, your floor is real dirty. When did you sweep it last?”

  “Oh, maybe two years ago.”

  “Don’t you think it’s time?”

  “Good idea, boy, get me the broom.”

  Richie found the broom and it still had a price tag on it. He’d never used it and it was about six years old. There was all kinds of stuff on the floor, nuts and bolts and different kinds of ammunition—.22s and .30–30s and .303s—and we sat there watching as Francis worked away with the broom, sweeping all that crap into a dustpan, two heaping loads. It was pretty dark in the cabin because Francis just had an old kerosene lamp. When he was finished he just opened the door of that woodstove and tossed it all inside.
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br />   Richie backed his chair against the wall and just grimaced. Francis pulled out his can of snuff and took a big pinch, and just as he was getting ready to spit on the stove that first round went off and Francis rose about three inches off that chair.

  Bang!! went the ammunition.

  “No!” roared Francis.

  Bang, bang!

  “NO-O-O!!!” bellowed Francis.

  You never heard anybody roar so loud in your life.

  That poor old stove took a beating. It must have been five minutes before the bullets stopped flying around inside.

  There was another guy, an old character named Charlie Eddie. And it was Charlie who gave me my first vehicle. It was a ’56 International stepside pickup with a 240-cubic-inch, sixcylinder motor and no brakes. Charlie was an old bachelor and he talked really, really slow-w-w. He used to make moonshine whiskey and he told stories about the police chasing him through the woods—good stories, but we had a hard time imagining Charlie doing anything quickly, let alone running.

  Fat Newton once told Richie and me, “Charlie is so slow that a bear chased him up a tree once, and guess what? The bear beat him to the top.”

  Charlie went out hunting one time, riding on his horse, and he came across some moose tracks. “I tied my horse to a tree and took off on those tracks. I tracked that moose for two days and two nights, and finally there he was. I fired two rounds and he fell dead. It was kind of funny, though. As I was skinning and quartering that moose I couldn’t help noticing it had a saddle on it.”

  Anyway, Charlie gave me this old pickup truck, and I used it to haul some firewood for Fat Newton. When I was finished he said, “You must be hungry, boy!”

  Well, I was about fourteen years old and I got hungry just breathing, let alone working, so I said, “Sure, I could eat.”

  “Well, sit down, I’ll fry up some horse cock.”

  I’d never heard of a foodstuff called horse cock, but I was willing to try it out.

  It turned out to be a roll of baloney, about three inches wide and two feet long. I sat on this old army cot against the wall. He cut off this slice of baloney about three inches thick and threw it in a cast-iron skillet. It was all coated with grease and chunks of old food and gobs of charcoal and it was just disgusting. So I said, “Francis, don’t you ever wash your skillet?”

  “Don’t you know nuthin’, boy?! You never, ever wash a castiron frying pan, or you wash the taste right out of it!”

  So he threw that slice of baloney in the frying pan, burned both sides of it, and tossed it on a plate and gave it to me. Well, I was hungry as the dickens and the first bite tasted pretty good. The second bite wasn’t too bad, but by the time I got to the third bite it was starting to taste pretty rank.

  I didn’t want him to roar at me for being a sissy, so I nodded my head as if I was enjoying his green baloney, then, when he wasn’t looking, I threw it under the bed.

  Little did I know that his two cats were sleeping under the bed. They started yowling and fighting with each other over the baloney. Francis yelled, “Lift your legs, boy!!”

  He grabbed this old .30–30 off the wall and swung it under the bed and whacked the cats with the gun, and they stopped yowling. Goodness knows what he did to the cats. Good thing the gun didn’t go off, too, because he kept it loaded.

  “I see you’ve finished your horse cock!” he announced. “Did you like it?”

  “Oh, yes, Francis, it was great.”

  “Then let me get you some more. I’ve got lots here and you need to eat it up!”

  He cut off another piece and I pretended to eat it. As soon as he wasn’t looking I tossed it under the bed, too, but this time I tossed it to the far end of the bed so the cats each had a piece and they didn’t have to fight. He turned around and my plate was clean, just like that.

  Francis was real pleased and cut me another piece, and I kept throwing it under the bed, and I guess those cats had about two weeks’ worth of baloney between them by the time Francis was finished serving my lunch.

  Dad Does Some Dog Whispering

  Our neighbor Lloyd Newton had a male cow dog that was very smart and well known in the country for his humanlike abilities with cattle. At that time, our cow dog was a female. Lloyd’s dog would walk a mile to breed her every time she would go into heat. There was no demand for dozens of pups, so my dad would drown them. He hated doing this.

  The next time she was in heat, my dad tied her to the porch. Lloyd’s cow dog marched right in there. Dad closed the door and took out his straight razor and bottle of creolin. In less than a minute, Lloyd’s dog had lost his testicles and had the cuts disinfected. The dog ran off home with blood running down his back legs. It was not a pretty sight. Well, after that, this thing was totally useless as a farm dog. It would just eat and sleep beside the food bowl and get fat.

  Years later I ran into Lloyd, and boy, did he get mad when I asked him about his castrated dog. I thought it was pretty comical, but he didn’t think so. He wanted to take it up with my dad, but my dad had been dead for ten years.

  Farm dogs are not pets, strictly speaking. They are supposed to be working animals, and they earn their room and board by chasing off predators like foxes and coyotes, rounding up livestock, and keeping an eye out for strangers. They need to be aggressive and fearless. So my dad usually chose farm dogs that had some attitude—he liked German shepherds and shepherd-Doberman crosses, and our dog was tough. You’d sic him on a cow, and he’d sink his teeth into the cow’s nose and stick to her like a leech. One time this cow of ours got mad at the dog, wouldn’t go where the dog wanted her to go. You could see the cow thinking, Why do I always obey this little bully? I’m bigger than him. She lowered her horns and told the dog to buzz off. That dog grabbed the cow by the nose and she kicked him. Well, our old dog didn’t like that one little bit. You could just see him growl at the cow. It was just clear as anything that he was saying, “Oh, so you want to play rough?”

  The dog ran around and bit the cow on the tendon, sank his teeth into the leg that she kicked him with. The cow started bawling and tried to hook the dog with her horns. Well, the dog just growled again. “You’d rather get bitten on the face? Fine, take your choice.”

  The dog ran around and latched on to the cow. The cow started backing up, blood pouring from her nose. But wherever she went that dog went with her. She had to drag him around with that dog’s teeth sunk into her snout. You could see that look of misery in her eyes: Okay, okay! You’ve made your point! The dog won that little contest of wills, and from then on whenever the dog ran up to that cow she perked right up and did whatever she was told.

  German shepherd crosses have that police dog attitude. They don’t take any guff and sometimes our dog went overboard on the rough stuff. One time I sent him after a pig, and he ran up to the pig and grabbed it by the rear end and tore a whole chunk of ham right off the ass of this pig. My dad wasn’t too happy about that. Another time Dad went to an auction sale and bought this old sheep for five bucks. It was an oddball, an old dry ewe that was good for nothing. He meant it as a pet for the kids, and we had fun taking care of her for a while, but one day our dog attacked this sheep.

  I went into the garage and the sheep was standing there with a kind of stunned look on its face as this dog was tearing big chunks of skin off its rear end. The sheep had its head turned, looking at its own rump with not enough sense to know it had a problem. You see that all the time with wolves and caribou. The guys on the nature shows will always say, “The wolf will choose the oldest and weakest animals. That’s how nature ensures that the herd will remain strong.”

  Yeah, sure. The way they talk you’d think wolves are a caribou’s best friend. Well, it’s not that way in real life. Not if you’re a caribou, anyway. The wolf doesn’t care if you’re old or young or whatever. He doesn’t check your birth certificate. That wolf will eat any caribou it can catch, and once the caribou is immobilized, the wolf doesn’t even bother killing it before he st
arts to eat. The caribou will just lie there on the ground watching the wolf tear out its entrails and rip big chunks of meat off its ass. If all those wildlife shows on television showed nature the way it really is, mothers would be dragging their kids away from the television set and writing hysterical letters to the broadcaster.

  So that’s nature’s way. And I was seeing it right before my eyes. Like all dogs, that German shepherd farm dog had some wolf blood flowing in its veins, and something in that sheep made the wolf come out. That sheep was just standing there not moving, looking at its ass, and the dog was grabbing its fur with the underlying skin and pulling it off. The whole rump of the sheep on one side was skinned. It was just bare flesh. I’m sure as soon as the dog finished skinning the sheep he planned to begin eating it. This wasn’t the same dog that bit the cow and the pig. All our dogs were pretty wild. My dad liked German shepherds because they were aggressive, but they didn’t live long because they’d either end up with a bullet in their head or they’d get run over by the trucks speeding down our gravel road.

  So I was stunned, and I ran to the house to get help. “Dad, the dog is skinning our sheep!”

  “It killed the sheep?”

  “No, the sheep’s just standing there and the dog is skinning it!”

  Normally my dad would give a dog a chance to make a mistake or two. But in this case this dog had proven that it couldn’t follow the rules. So he goes out there and sure enough there’s the dog skinning the sheep. Well, he’ll fix that. So the next thing, he goes into the barn and comes out with a .22 under his arm, the dog on a leash, and a one-gallon jug of used oil mixed with gasoline. And he headed off to the back forty.

  We had twelve hundred acres of land, most of which was forest. My brother Richie and I were always removing trees and roots to create more usable land to farm. Dad walked the dog out to this big pile of roots we had gathered, put a bullet in that dog’s head, and threw it on a brush pile. Soaked the whole works with gasoline and oil and lit a match. That was the end of that particular dog. Then he came back and decided to kill the sheep. You have to know where to shoot it, especially with a cow or a sheep, which has a tiny brain. You imagine a line that runs from the left ear over to the right eye, then another line that runs from the right ear to the left eye. The lines intersect on the animal’s forehead, in a crisscross. That’s where the center of the brain is. He put the muzzle of the gun on that spot and whap, down it went. Then he butchered the sheep and cut it up and served it to us for supper. This was our pet sheep. First the dog ripped off its ass and now we were supposed to eat it. That’s life on the farm. We ate our pet sheep every night for the next two months. He made us eat it. I haven’t really enjoyed eating lamb or mutton ever since.