Chapter One
The children paused in their revelry to consider us as we slowly motored past them in our rattletrap Buick—the men, too, pulling their eyes away from the flames of their bonfires with equal measures of hospitality and suspicion. These were stoic, Midwestern men who gave us a good going over before easing the grips on their rakes enough to lift an index finger, the time-honored greeting of Nebraskans. Offered to both friends and strangers, it was an acknowledgment that distinguished them as prudent rather than rude while conserving energy best reserved for work. I lifted a finger in response. This was the eighth new town for me, the ninth for my older sister, Beryl, the sixth for my little brother, Reggie. The last and oldest of us, Miles, was with the U.S. army in Korea. It was 1951. I was thirteen years old.
Surrounded by corn and alfalfa fields already tilled for winter, we’d driven into town from the north on an asphalt highway that gently ascended from the river valley. A sign marked the city limit:
St. Clair
Population: 2301
Past it, the highway gave way to a brick-paved road with broad grassy verges separating it from the sidewalks. Tall, elegant elms lined the street, their sweeping and leafless branches forming an archway of bony fingers over the road. Ancient by their own standard, the broad-trunked trees were beautiful by a contemporary one with none bearing the scarred bark that came with Dutch Elm disease—the incurable malady that would kill them all within a decade. Autumn was fully upon the small town south of the river, the grass yellowing and great piles of leaves everywhere we looked. Children and dogs frolicked in them, turning the mountains into hills and plains, while solemn men in weekend clothes stood watch over their smoky driveway fires, leaning on their long-handled rakes as they luxuriated in the last tolerable days before Winter stormed in, bringing brittle ice, drifting snow, and shrieking arctic winds.
“What did I tell you? Beautiful…just beautiful! Prettiest little town in Nebraska if you ask me,” Dad enthused as he lift-fingered everyone in sight, his eager adoption of the salute like an American in Paris who knows one word in French and uses it as much as possible. None of us answered him because all the towns had started out as the prettiest in either Nebraska or Iowa, the only one failing muster our most recent. The misnamed community of Amiable, Iowa had been neither pretty nor amiable. Even Dad had admitted as much as we were driving out of town in the dead of night, leaving behind yet another dream job along with three months unpaid rent and tabs at various businesses.
“Just beautiful,” Dad repeated. “We’re going to love it here. Best town ever, best job ever for the best family ever!”
I was in the back seat of the car with Beryl and Reggie. Beryl and I had heard it too many times, but Reggie was only six years-old and still believed our father.
“Yahoo, Dad!” he shouted. “Yahoo!”
“Jesus Christ, you’re loud,” I growled at him.
“Language, Reeves,” Mom softly scolded me from the front seat.
I should explain our names. Dad loved England but never visited and knew nothing of it other than what could be gleaned from the cast lists of British movies. Born Francis Whitlock, he’d adopted a faint English accent in college, then exchanged “Frank” for “Leslie” in honor of Brit leading man Leslie Howard. When my older brother was born, he convinced Mom to name him after Miles Mander. Beryl was then named for Beryl Mercer and Reggie for Reginald Owen. I’m quite certain my father loved me but confess that I’ve harbored doubts over the years. He saddled me with “Kynaston,” in honor of Kynaston Reeves, an actor who mostly occupied authority figures in his roles: judges, clergyman and the like. It’s a stodgy bunch to be lumped in with and I resented Dad for a long time, grateful that Mom defaulted to “Reeves” when I was still an infant. It’s been more than eighty years since I was christened and I’ve long signed documents as “K. Reeves Whitlock,” but that’s as close as “Kynaston” as I wish to be.
As we drove toward the tidy downtown of St. Clair, Nebraska, I was impressed with both the generous size of yards fronting the homes along the street and the dearth of kids old enough to make money tending them. I’d had a robust business during our single year in Amiable, mowing lawns in the summer and raking them in the fall. The misanthropic community had been filled with senior citizens either too self-impressed or arthritic to maintain their own lawns, and I’d been a bit disappointed when we left, Mom waking us for yet another middle-of-the-night flight from debt collection. The extra cash in my pocket after contributing to family expenses had been invigorating, even though there hadn’t been much to spend it on in Amiable—no movie theater, no bowling alley, no skating rink, no soda shop, no public swimming pool, no appealing thing whatsoever that a teenager might consider worthy of hard-earned dollars. Amiable had a library, where I’d spent much of my time, and a librarian whom I’d spent much of my time staring at. She was extraordinarily beautiful, even though quite elderly, and for at time I’d envisioned marrying her and then building a lawn mowing/leaf raking empire in Amiable, Iowa, a plan she subverted by getting pregnant in concert with the high school principal. They absconded to Des Moines, and after doing the math, I wished her well, given the likelihood that she would probably be dead or infirm by the time I reached her then-current and advanced age of thirty-five.
The business district of our new town was thrust upon visitors the same way Venice, Italy, which I’ve visited many times, is abruptly there—the pointed arches, pinnacles, tracery stonework, and stained glass dating to the Byzantine Empire sitting across the Grand Canal like a magical movie set immediately upon exiting the train station. St. Clair houses with their big yards and huge trees lined both sides of the street for eight blocks. Then one bounced across a set of railroad tracks and was accosted by an absence of grass and abundance of concrete, the nine square blocks comprising metropolitan St. Clair, like Venice save its majesty, suddenly there.
The first two concerns were Delaney Ford-Mercury on the right and Meisner’s Cafe—Home of World Famous Broasted Chicken—on the left. Don Delaney’s son, Don Jr. would become Beryl’s boyfriend for a time and Meisner’s—a hangout after games and on weekends—became one for Beryl and me too. Spike Meisner, the owner of the restaurant as well as the town sheriff, fried and then roasted his chicken, hence the “broasted” designation. It was and still is the most delicious thing I have ever eaten and the booths in his establishment—covered in slick vinyl with multiple duct-taped cuts and tears—were the site of many poorly kept secrets shared with my friends and one dizzying first kiss I planted on Nina Mondalez.
A few storefronts past Delaney’s dealership and Meisner’s restaurant we were greeted by a town square with shops and bars lining the streets that surrounded it. An ancient courthouse was at the center with painted wooden benches scattered about the grassy surrounding grounds and water fountains at three and nine o’clock if one faced either the rising or setting sun.
“Well, take a look at that. There’s a classic architectural model if I ever saw one,” Dad said when he saw the courthouse for the first time. A brick structure constructed shortly after the town won the legendary 1870 war with nearby Bruno to become the county seat, it more resembled a cathedral than a government building. Gables on each corner were topped by spires and the center tower boasted a huge, west-facing clock that was reliably one minute late if the hourly chimes of nearby St. John’s Catholic Church were as impeccably calibrated as its priest, Father Alphonse, always claimed.
We drove on past more storefronts, including a shuttered movie theater with a marquee that displayed an unkept promise.
Ope_ing Janu_ry 1950
Dad drove one lap around the square, the streets lined with small businesses. All in all, there were enough grocery stores, pharmacies, and various clothing, furniture, hardware, and specialty shops to serve ten times the population of St. Clair alone, the rest of their trade coming from the dozens of farms and small, unincorporated farming communities that dotted Bancroft County. Unlike Amiable, which had observed Blue Sundays and an eight p.m. alcohol curfew Monday through Saturday, St. Clair was apparently filled with hard-drinkers, five bars occupying the four streets surrounding the square, a fifth passed on our way into town from the north and a sixth we would later discover just inside the southern city limit.
After completing one circuit around the courthouse, Dad continued south on Fourth Street, the main drag. On the block past the town square, a series of farm implement and tractor dealerships—John Deere, Allis Chalmers, International Harvester, Massey-Harris—stared one another down from opposite sides of the street. Then private residences again took over.
“This is our turn…C Street,” Mom said, looking at the map on her lap.
Dad nodded, then slowed the Buick and eased it around the corner onto a block with only two residences on one side and the last of the business district concerns on the other. One of the residences took up two-thirds of the facing street and was suspiciously surrounded by a six-foot-high stone wall, the only such barricade in a town of fenceless homes. A hand-painted sign on plywood hung next to the side gate, identifying the establishment as a home and business:
Katherine Monfross: Chiropractic Medicine and Psychic Readings
We drove past Dr. Monfross’s home, crossed Fifth Street, and Dad steered the Buick toward the curb in front of a three-story structure that occupied three full lots across the street from a Pontiac dealership. Built in the Dutch colonial style, it had two gambrel-roofed sections at a right angle to each other with a through-and-through driveway that allowed access from both east-west C Street and north-south Fifth. An expansive second story deck occupied the entire front and one side of the home, extending over the wraparound driveway. A two-story bump-out with a nearly flat roof formed a west wing, while opposite it, an east tower unexpectedly rose above the gambrel roofs like a castle keep. The front door was made of glass, the lawn perfectly mown and edged, and an American flag fluttered atop a pole in the front yard next to what appeared at first glance to be a massive tombstone with a rounded top. Dad let the Buick glide to a stop next to the low curb, and from there, we could see that the monument was a yard sign. Chest high and as wide as I was long, it was made of bricks save a glass-enclosed board with changeable letters.
The Bank House
Current Loan rate 3.875%
“This is it,” Dad chirped happily.” He climbed out of the car, paused to stretch the roadtrip from his back, and then trotted over to the sign, striking a jazzy pose as he leaned against it with an elbow on the top row of bricks. “Get in here with me, kids. We’ll get a picture. Then I’ll get one of all you and Mom. It’ll mark the occasion…the first day in our new home.”
