On October 14, 1937, Vince Upton did his Story Hour with Grandpa Sam in B, when C was closed for repairs after somebody punched out part of the wall. He plopped down in the “old porch chair” and read off the names of the Happy Birthday club and picked the lucky winner of an all-day trip to Excelsior Amusement Park and said, “Well, you young whippersnappers, how about you gather round for a good old-fashioned yarn?” and picked up his script and began to read. It didn’t take him ten seconds to realize that he was in trouble. He had glanced at the script minutes before, and it looked okay, but now, instead of riding away to the Pecos to locate Sally and Skipper, Cowboy Chuck poured himself a stiff drink of—Vince made it root beer—and spat on the barroom floor and muttered, “I come from St. Paul, Minnesota, a city full of angry maudlin Irishmen and flabby chinless men with limp moustaches waving their shrivelled dicks at the cruel blue sky—and as soon as I was lucky enough to get in trouble there, I left town and started to see what life was all about,” though of course Vince left off the part about penises. “Well, Cowboy Chuck is sure upset, isn’t he,” Vince ad-libbed, waving to the empty control room. He pointed toward the turntable up beyond the big control room window, made circular motions, gave the cut sign, but nothing happened. Where was Gene?
He swallowed hard and plowed forward. From St. Paul, Cowboy Chuck had earned vast wealth in the whiskey trade in Chicago and moved in with a dark Paraguayan beauty named Pabletta, whose breasts were pale and small and shivered at the thrill of his touch. Slowly, his voice shaking with the effort, Vince picked his way through the story, glancing ahead as he read and skirting most of the worst parts, but some things he didn’t catch until he already had said them—“I slipped my pistol into her hot throbbing love nest”—and suddenly there were naked bodies slipping around in the sheets moaning and pounding the mattress and he had to edit on the run, condense, mumble, beat his way out of the underbrush, and toss in an occasional “Of course, I knew I should not have done this,” or “Something told me that someday I would be punished for that.” Vince was a script man: the thought of speaking impromptu made him feel faint. Nonetheless, when Cowboy Chuck and Pabletta went swimming and Chuck stripped off the paper-thin white cotton shirt in which her taut nipples protruded like accusing fingers, Vince had to put down the script and improvise his way to shore. Cowboy Chuck ran out of the lake and put on his pants and rode to town and found a church. His mother was there, on her knees, scrubbing the floor. He knelt down and begged her forgiveness. He denounced the evil influence of modern novels. Word came, via a boy who rode up on his bicycle, that Pabletta had died beneath the wheels of a truck. Chuck called on all listeners, especially the kiddos, to obey their parents and attend church regularly, and then the big hand approached twelve, and the announcer said, “That’s all for today. Be sure to join Grandpa Sam tomorrow at the same time for another exciting story.” And it was over. Vince turned and glared at Donna LaDonna. “You’re supposed to be lucky,” he said, “and you’re no different from all the others.”
CHAPTER 2
Ray
Ray Soderbjerg, President of WLT, offered $50 for information leading to the author of Cowboy Chuck, and though he had no solid leads, he first suspected his younger brother, Roy, because Roy was mad at him. But Roy had been in Moorhead, on his farm, cutting alfalfa that week. Besides, the Cowboy Chuck script used sophisticated terms like quim and rooty and pearl dive and the man in the boat and flushing the quail and table grade and plush run and bazoongies and zazzle, words that Ray didn’t think Roy had ever heard. Roy was an engineer, a deep thinker, not a quail flusher; his greatest pleasure in life, he himself had said, was the invention of an icebox so efficient it ran on one block per month. He was long and gangly, with big red wrists and thin sandy hair and wingflap ears and a large google in his throat, and he walked with a noticeable boing-boing gait and his breath was enough to stun a monkey. He was no pearl diver.
Ray was the diver. He was a looker, handsome in a beefy way, smelling of eau de lavande and a heliotrope pomade, with a nice head of hair and dark, Charles Boyer eyes, a natty dresser who was made for the blue pinstripe suit and the red bow tie, and though built like a fireplug he had the nimble feet of a man who could find his way around a dance floor. Ray knew a number of friendly girls around town and in St. Paul and Duluth and a beauty named Mavis Feezer in Brainerd for when he went fishing and Sophie Sosnowski in Bemidji for deer-hunting season, also a Chippewa lady outside Bemidji named Bear Thighs. He didn’t brag about his amours, being married to a fine woman, Vesta, but thanks to the mirrors in the Hotel Ogden coffee shop, which bounced entire conversations word for word to select spots, people at WLT were wise to him. Ray always came in at twelve-thirty for lunch and sat in the far corner, and the far corner could be heard perfectly by anyone sitting on one of the first six stools at the counter. That was where WLT people liked to sit and eat their sandwiches and hear him tell his nephew, Roy Jr., about women. Roy Jr. was the General Manager. He looked like his dad. He sat chewing, throat bobbing, not a word of moral admonition, just paying attention. “Holy cow, that Alma, she peeled me like a banana and threw me in the tub and we did it underwater and then in bed with her jumping around on me, dripping wet, barking like a golden retriever—holy cow, she was going to town like it was gym class. I still have marks on my chest,” Ray said in a low voice, and along the counter, Reed Seymour and Leo and Gene and Art Finn sat chewing quietly, listening. Alma. Alma Melting of The Excelsior Bakery Show. She certainly didn’t look like that kind of woman, the kind who would bark.
“I have wasted half my life in the company of boring and stupid and ofttimes treacherous men but I have yet to regret a single moment I spent alone with a beautiful woman,” said Ray. “And I’ve yet to meet one who isn’t beautiful.”
He couldn’t help himself, Ray said. If there was a stylish woman nearby, he had to stand by her. And then he smelled something, and that wasn’t his fault, was it? A lovely woman gave off a glow. He felt young and lively next to her, found himself telling stories and jokes, and if she didn’t tell him absolutely no, to get away, he stayed stuck to her, and eventually, sometimes, he got lucky. “If I was your age, I wouldn’t have time to come to work at all,” said Ray. “I’d be bed dancing day and night.”
Roy was disgusted with Ray’s romantic ways, and told him so, but it was only envy, Ray could see that. Roy was a frustrated man, and his bad breath was a sure sign of sex deficiency. “Roy breathe on you yet today?” Ray would whisper to Laurel, the receptionist. “Ripe, huh? I tell you, he smells like the cemetery after the earthquake hit. No wonder he can’t get his ashes hauled, huh?” Laurel Larpenteur had a creampuff mouth and big brown eyes and was one of Ray’s favorites. Such a cutie. He loved to stand behind her and put his hands on her little shoulders and let his fingers tiptoe down the slope to her collarbone. He was saving her for a lucky day.
He told Laurel, “My brother Roy is one of the great original minds, but unfortunately he never wrote it down. But then, most of it was wrong, of course. Which is typical of brilliant men. Eighty percent of the time when they dip down into the font of wisdom they come up with a handful of horse hockey. You wouldn’t believe the crap he’s dreamt up. His very first major invention was the rear-drive horse-pushed wagon, which was a thrill to steer, I assure you. Last week, he proposed a radio show based on eavesdropping—you’d hang a mike in a hole in the wall, and broadcast it. Once he designed a radio theater —it seats fifteen people and it has sixty-four separate speakers all around you so the sound moves around you. Brilliant. Unfortunately, you’d have to own sixty-four radio stations to run the thing. But if a genius like Roy happens to have a good manager like me, he can do okay, but unfortunately he can’t bear to be contradicted. So he stays in Moorhead, on the farm, and spends days alone in his workshop. Little cot in the corner and a potbelly stove and his workbench and drawing table. Neat as a pin. His wife sends hot lunches to him in a bucket that winches out on a wire and he winches back hi
s dirty laundry. Why would a man live like this? Alone on the godforsaken prairie surrounded by whispering cornfields and phlegmatic Swedes if instead you could go to picture shows and snazzy restaurants and dance with a beautiful woman with her head on your shoulder and her perfume driving you wild? I tell you, I have wasted half my life in the company of men and I have yet to regret a moment spent with a beautiful woman. Alone, that is. In groups, they’re worse than Shriners.”
Ray kept on the trail of Cowboy Chuck through the winter and spring of 1938. He hired a detective named Connors who traced the Cowboy Chuck script to an Underwood typewriter in the sales office, so Ray called in Art Finn, the sales manager.
“If it wasn’t my brother, which it wasn’t, then it was you, Art, and don’t think I don’t have a sense of humor, I do, but don’t crap in the nest, doggone it.”
Art just laughed. “If I were going to pull a fast one, would I use a typewriter in my own office? What kinda squarehead do you think I am?” Art said he thought it might be Reed Seymour. “Seymour’s had a snaky look about him for weeks. Ask him. I dare you. Sneak up behind him and yell ‘You’re the asshole behind Cowboy Chuck!’ and see if he doesn’t flinch.”
So Ray called in Reed Seymour. The young man arrived, moist and quivering, eyes dilated, and Ray hadn’t the heart to accuse him. “How’s everything going then?” he asked. “People treating you okay? You getting a chance to write any scripts for Grandpa Sam these days?”
“Things are swell, Mr. Soderbjerg,” he said in a voice so much thinner and higher than the big deep one he used in introducing Friendly Neighbor. “Do you want me to start writing scripts?”
“Mr. Seymour, I just want you to keep on doing good work. You’re one of the premier announcers in radio in Minneapolis. You just keep on setting a high standard for the others.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Seymour was too young to know words like quim. It was Art all right. Okay, thought Ray, there’s one for Art. Let him laugh. One is all he gets. Next one is my laugh.
Cowboy Chuck stuck in Ray’s craw for months. “Anyone who wants to could walk in and put us on the rocks in a minute,” he told Roy. “Walk up to that microphone and say Shit piss pecker and we can kiss it all goodbye.” He leaned forward to whisper this, and leaned back. His brother’s breath reeked of Lucky cigarettes and oranges.
So Roy paid Leo LaValley $10 to tell a raw one on the Noontime Jubilee, to get a rise out of Ray. Roy sat by Ray’s big oak desk with the souvenir coconuts and the Queen Mary and the portrait of Vesta that lifted to reveal a naked French girl lounging in a wing chair, and Roy cranked up the volume as Leo said, “So Knute told Inga he loved her so much he wanted to buy her a fancy new bed—he said, I want one with that big cloth thing up over it? She said, a canopy! He said, no, that’s under the bed and we’re going to keep it down there.”
Just as Roy had hoped, Ray hit the roof. He jumped to his feet and yelled, “That’s it!” He fired Leo and drew up a WLT code covering all aspects of broadcasting (“The Principles of Radiation”), including a list of subjects to be avoided—sexual matters, bodily excretions, things that could be considered sacrilegious—and a dress code—jackets and ties at all times, trousers clean and pressed—and tips on music—No “hot” playing. No Jungle Rhythms. No showboating. Play the notes. No Crooning or Moaning. The Principles concluded: “Just follow these instructions. Don’t ask why or by God I’ll show you why, and this applies to everyone. Put a little starch into the performance, don’t whisper. Most importantly, don’t get big ideas about yourself. Just because you’re ‘On The Air’ doesn’t make you somebody. You’re not. By the grace of God, it is given to us to cast our bread on distant waters. ‘See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise.’ Eph. 5:15. No exceptions to this policy. Management. ”
Leo was hired back the next day, of course, but Ray told the engineers to keep an eye out for people in the Barn Dance audience who seemed agitated and to be ready to throw the switch—there were plots, Ray believed, at a certain fraternity at the U and also in the city room of the Minneapolis Tribune to smuggle a person onto a WLT show to make a smutty remark. He hired two ushers named Stan and Gus Ekroos, big sturdy fellows, who could remove a person from anywhere in the ballroom in less than twelve seconds, using hand signals and a two-man fireman’s carry. Ray made a new hiring policy: no fraternity boys, no college grads, nobody with a newspaper background. He could imagine a person like that running into a studio and yelling, “Suck off!” He could imagine a new announcer reading the livestock report: “Nos. 1, 2, and 3 220—330-pound barrows and gilts sold at 21.50 to 22.75, and No. 1 pig shit, 15-25 cents.” He could imagine the duo-pianists Elmer and Walt playing merrily away as Alma Melting sang,Slip your hand up my dress
Yes, yes, yes!
Take off my pants and make me dance
Ride me like a pony.
Or Avis Burnette, Small Town Librarian, going to work weekends in a tavern, and Dad Benson of Friendly Neighbor unbuttoning her bodice and drinking sloe gin. “Your breasts are as firm as a tabletop,” he would exclaim as thousands of families across Minnesota and Wisconsin leaned forward. “Oh boy! and look at those pert nipples!” Ray imagined LaWella Wells stopping in the middle of Adventures in Homemaking to tell how he had had his way with her for a year. She was so sweet and her breasts like little apples but you didn’t need to say so on the radio. “He took my clothes off me and lay on top of me,” she would say. “He put his thing in me. He pressed against me. He made me. It was him, not me. A cheap, vulgar, rancid old man. I hated it. Fortunately, it was over before I knew it.”
CHAPTER 3
1926
WLT (With Lettuce and Tomato) was founded by the Soderbjergs in 1926 to promote their new restaurant in the old Pillsbury mansion on Nicollet Avenue near the ballpark. Two years before, they had sold the family ice business on Medicine Lake, seeing refrigeration on the horizon, and bought the house, hoping to become the sandwich kings of south Minneapolis. The mansion had been the seat of the famous old flour family, later becoming the Portland Mortuary where two generations of well-heeled Lutherans had been carried out of this world in gloomy opulence, shined on by a French chandelier. Slender, semidressed maidens cavorted over the fireplace.
Dropping the Soderbjerg j, Ray and Roy opened Soderberg’s Court with six sandwiches on the menu: egg salad, onion and cucumber, toasted cheese, chicken salad, ham and Swiss, and the Hamburg. Best Quick Lunch in Town at Any Price, said the sign. The egg salad was tops, four inches thick at the middle and served on wheat bread with a good hard crust, but their first year was grim, long days spent looking at empty tables. They lost a bundle—so they brought in their aunts, Ingrid and Grete, to run the kitchen. The ladies expanded into hot dishes such as Liver Loaf and Salmon Puffs and Tuna Mousse and Baked Baloney, and salads (Confetti Coleslaw, Kraut Rounders) and desserts, which many considered their best feature. The Chocolate Gotcha Cake was fabulous, the Tomato Soup Cake too, the Apple Pie in a Bag, the Cherry Stackups. But Soderberg’s still was going nowhere.
The aunts thought the missing j might be why. “If you’re ashamed of your own name and turn your back on your own heritage, then you’re in trouble from the start,” they said, but Ray pointed out that, in Norway, the family name was Molde, taken from the ancestral village near Trondhjem. When his dad, Mads Molde, came over in 1881, he went into ice, that being what he knew best, and started the Molde Ice Company. After he learned English well enough to understand that the name Molde is like a lampshade on your head, he changed it to Beneficial Ice and invented for himself the name Soderbjerg—bjerg, meaning “mountain,” and soder from Minnesoder—and he immediately felt a surge of prosperity, which he celebrated by changing his first name to Eugene. No, dropping the j was small beer compared to Dad. Dad had thrown out as much of his heritage as he could get his hands on. And Americans, Ray said, cannot pronounce “-bjerg” and rather than make a fluff would eat elsewhere. Which, it appeared, they were
doing anyway.
Roy thought the problem was poor location: a former mortuary. “Too many customers have been here once before, to bury a loved one. You sit down and spot the ferns or you hear the clink of ice cubes and you think about somebody pumping formaldehyde through a tube in your ankle. It puts a crimp in your appetite. We should’ve built a new place, out on the River Road.” Their sister Lottie refused to set foot in the restaurant—or set wheel, since she was in a wheelchair, crippled since childhood from polio. She thought that opening a restaurant in a mortuary was morbid beyond words, the next thing to cannibalism itself. Ray was glad she felt that way: getting her up steps was a major undertaking, heavy as she was. It was like hauling a coffin, except you didn’t have the nice long handles and the five other guys to help.
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