COTTONWOOD HILL
Week after boring week, Gopher passed the time by squirreling away every cent he earned. His father had yet to offer a paying job in the restaurant, so Gopher took on small chores other folks simply didn’t want to do. No task was beneath him, not if he wanted to go to Colorado and see the Fairlie.
As he toiled at mundane chores like cleaning the livery stable and barns, he dreamed of being a railroad man. He imagined himself at the controls of a mighty steam engine, blowing the shrill whistle at crossings and waving to onlookers.
Some of Gopher’s friends teased him and laughed at him because all he wanted to do lately was work. Gopher Piddington suddenly wasn’t the exciting, go-for-broke friend he once had been.
Of course, keeping his nose to the grindstone had its perks. He stayed out of trouble.
But trouble has a way of finding boys, even hard-working ones but especially boys burdened with boredom and too much time on their hands.
There was always the river, where such delightful activities as fishing, rock-skipping and skinny-dipping were common. But on this particular day, someone dared someone to a foot race. Not across a meadow or over a flat road. No, this was a race down Cottonwood Hill.
To say the hill was steep would be a misnomer. Wagons had trouble pulling the hill, even with tandem teams. So most folks went around and picked up the road north on the other side.
With no traffic on the hill and no one on the approach road, the boys decided to team up for the races down the face of Cottonwood Hill. First matchup paired none other than Inky Roberts against Gopher Piddington.
One boy brought a bullwhip. He claimed he couldn’t get his hands on a pistol, so he took his pa’s whip. He wasn’t very good at cracking that big whip and it took three tries before he could make a decent starting pop.
Running down such a steep hill successfully wasn’t about speed. That came easily and quickly. The trick was to control that headlong speed, otherwise bad things could happen—and happen in a hurry.
Gopher had yet to grow comfortable with his big feet. His mother often compared him to a puppy. “You are like the puppy of a large breed. You will be a big man one day but for now you tend to stumble all over those big feet, just like a pup.”
Gopher didn’t like being teased about the size of his feet but he was pleased about the prospect of getting really big one day—maybe as big as his father.
Inky raced ahead and took the lead. Gopher had no desire to make a mistake. He had fallen before, when the boys tried racing last year. The liniment his mother put on his scrapes stung like crazy; a concoction most folks applied to horses and cattle that got snagged on barbed wire.
There was no catching up to Inky on this race, so Gopher continued down the steep, rocky slope at a pace he was comfortable with.
Inky reveled in his forthcoming victory and dared sneak a quick peek over his left shoulder at the how far back his competitor was.
The second he took his eyes off the dirt, Inky stumbled over a rock and went airborne. His arms and legs flailed about like a wounded goose.
When he finally came down to Earth, he did so face first—right into another rock.
Inky collapses into a heap—a rather dirty heap. When Gopher reached the unconscious boy, he noticed Inky’s right eye was hanging clear out of his head by some icky, stringy things; the eyeball and the empty eye socket were full of dirt and sand.
Inky was breathing but he wasn’t awake. A few seconds later, the other boys arrived, kicking more dust and dirt onto the stricken boy.
“Is he dead?”
“Jeez, look at his eye,” another said.
Gopher claimed he could fix it. He jumped up and ran all the way down the rest of the hill and over to the river, where he removed his hat and filled it with water.
Some of the precious water sloshed out as he ran back up the hill to where Inky lay, but he figured he had enough to wash off the eyeball and rinse out the eye socket.
Whether or not that one hat full of water was enough to do a proper job became a topic of hot debate. Some thought Gopher should go down for another load; others said Inky was coming around and someone better stick his eye back in the hole before he woke up.
Gopher sided with the latter and with some reservations, grabbed the slippery eyeball and tried to shove it back into the gaping eyehole. It didn’t slide in easily and he had to push it hard to make it pop into place. He was afraid of breaking it but he managed to re-insert the bloodshot eyeball with his thumb without doing any visible damage.
A few minutes later, Inky felt good enough to sit up but he couldn’t yet regain his feet. “What happened?”
One of the more excitable boys blurted out, “You tripped and hit your head on a rock and your eyeball popped out and Gopher went and got water and washed it off and stuck it back in and we thought you were dead.”
Inky asked them all to just shut-up. “I’ve got a headache. I want to go home.”
The ensemble of boys took turns helping Inky Roberts back down the hill and the long road to his house. They laid him down on his bunk and told him they would see him later.
Inky responded in kind saying, “See you later.”
But Inky never did see well again. Oh, the eye worked but it didn’t track like the good one. Inky might be looking straight ahead when his right eye moved around all on its own. For the rest of the boys in town, it was both funny and spooky. They never knew if Inky’s right eye was looking at them or not.
In time, Inky developed a way of compensating for the errant eye. He would simply wink his right eyelid closed and use his good left eye to see. It worked most of the time but he used the procedure so much that the other boys started calling him “Winky” instead of Inky.
Winky didn’t care. All he wanted was to fit in with the other boys and try to keep from damaging his other eye. “Hell,” he’d often say, “Life wouldn’t be worth livin’ if the other eye started strayin’.”
WHEN THE BOOM LOWERED
Gopher didn’t get a whipping for what happened to Inky Roberts but he did get a stern talking-to about stupid behavior and how the same fate could have befallen him. His father took him aside and had a long talk with him about his never-ending habit of getting into trouble. “For the life of me I don’t understand why you always seem to find ways of getting into trouble. One would think, with all your odd jobs, that you would be too busy or too tired for mayhem. But then, I recall some of my youth and a few of the things I got into trouble doing. So, in a way, I can see where it comes from.
“Your Grandfather threatened me with the very same punishment I’m going to give you one day if you don’t mend your ways. Whenever my Father threatened to lower the boom on me for misbehaving I always wondered exactly what was going to happen.”
“What did happen?”
“My boy, if you don’t straighten up—and soon, you are going to find out exactly what lowering the boom means.”
Able Piddington was finished talking with his headstrong son. Now it was up to a rambunctious ten year old to find out what “the boom” might really mean. Whatever it was, Gopher felt it would surely be something truly bad. But for the life of him he couldn’t imagine what it might be.
Santa Fe proudly proclaimed it was the first city in the territory to have gas lamps on the downtown streets. They were beautiful glass-enclosed fixtures mounted on cast iron posts or hung from walls on heavy iron brackets. It was a matter of civic pride and everyone took every opportunity to stroll up and down Main Street during the warm evenings to enjoy the extended light offered by the lamps.
But just enjoying the flickering light sources was not enough for some boys. The glowing lamps became targets for rock chucking.
Well, not exactly targets they intended to hit; they were targets to see how close one could come without actually hitting one. “Wow, that was really close; you get five points for that one.”
Some lamps were mounted high on the sides of prominent build
ings near windows while others were set about the height the average man could reach.
Each evening, when the sun set behind the hills, a city worker came around and turned little gas valves one by one. He then applied a small flame to each orifice. Immediately, a warm glow emanated from those bulbous housings.
Gopher was one of the boys daring to throw rocks to see how close he could come without actually hitting a lamp. Because the street was dirt there was no shortage of suitable stones. He wasn’t really trying to hit a lamp but whenever a stone came really close or bounced off the support pole the rest cheered.
The contest began to lose its luster when the ordinary street-level targets were no longer a challenge. To make the game more difficult, someone starting throwing rocks at the big lamps mounted high on each side of the city hall building.
It wasn’t easy. Besides possibly doing damage to the building itself, there were the upstairs windows to contend with. Breaking one of those would bring the wrath of Marshal Petronoff down on the offending kid in a heartbeat. A system was soon worked out where the kids split into two teams, one on each side of the city hall. The idea was to throw stones as close as possible from one side and then from the other side. It was a brilliant idea because the rocks thrown by one side could be easily picked up and thrown back. No one had to go out into the street for more ammunition.
All this was done after the last adults had finished their after-dinner stroll up and back Main Street showing off their latest clothing acquisitions. Some folks walked merely for the fresh air while others proudly displayed a new baby carriage, new hat or their new dog.
When all was quiet, the barrage began in earnest. Perhaps a hundred stones had narrowly missed either of the two glowing lamps. Points were compiled to the ones getting the nearest misses.
Suddenly there was a popping noise followed by a gas flare-up and the unmistakable sound of broken, falling glass. Someone had managed to bust one of the housings wide open.
No one spoke up but Gopher knew he wasn’t the one guilty of breaking that lamp. With his accurate arm he had come close and had amassed an impressive point count but had not hit anything.
What no one knew was, the City Hall was not vacant. Someone was still inside and the shattering of the lamp alerted the worker to the problem.
An upstairs window slid open and a face appeared. It was Mayor Piddington. Gopher had no idea his father was working late on a new budget proposal. For all he knew, his father was still tending to cleanup duties at the restaurant.
In an instant, the tall man exited the main doors and confronted the boys. He immediately singled out his own son as the culprit. Gopher was frozen in place, just like the others. None of them dared run away. They had all been identified.
“I’ve told you many times that throwing rocks within city limits is forbidden. Why did you do it?”
“But Father, I didn’t break that lamp.”
Able grabbed his son and turned him over his knee to give him a swat. All the while, Gopher was pleading for mercy claiming he hadn’t done it.
None of the other boys spoke up. They just stood there and watched while the Mayor’s son got a whipping. It wasn’t the kind of whipping that caused damage or bruises but it was the kind that angry parents often administered out of sheer frustration.
Every time Gopher denied hitting the lamp, he got swatted harder and harder. Still, the perpetrator failed to own up to the deed and let poor Gopher suffer at the hands of his irate father.
All the way home, Able Piddington took out his anger on his wayward son. By this time Gopher had figured out that no matter what he said, he was in trouble.
Even though he was not the boy that hit the lamp and shattered it, he was guilty of throwing just as many rocks as anyone else. All of his protests fell upon deaf ears. Gopher’s father wasn’t listening; he was busy lowering the boom.
RESTAURANT WORK
Gopher survived his father’s wrath following the gas lamp incident but the punishment did not end with just a whipping.
Able announced to his son that from now on, he would be employed at the restaurant for two reasons. First, the place was enjoying a brisk increase in business and needed more help. Secondly, it would insure Gopher would be visible more often and hopefully keep the lad out of trouble.
At first, Gopher was fearful of working with no pay, just as he had when he was a little boy. But this time, he stepped forward and boldly asked to be put on the payroll. His father agreed, as long as the boy showed up for work every afternoon after school and got right to the chores. There would be no more gallivanting around Santa Fe with a bunch of no-account hooligans. “Besides,” his father pointed out, “You’ve got a gas lamp to pay for. The city didn’t break it and the city isn’t going to foot the bill for something you did.”
Gopher tried protesting his innocence again and again, but his father wouldn’t hear of any more lame excuses. It wasn’t the first time his son had been in trouble for chucking rocks. Gladys Nightingale once caught him throwing stones at the school bell hung outside the porch during recess. And there were complaints from fishermen that Gopher Piddington had no respect for the fish or the anglers when he threw rocks near where they were fishing.
No, Gopher may not have been guilty of that one rock-throwing incident but he had been involved in a number of others.
Working in his father’s restaurant was miserable work but it had its perks, as well. Scraping dirty plates and cleaning floors didn’t appeal to Gopher at all, but he did as he was told—not so much in fear of getting yelled at but because he wanted to save as much money as possible so he could run away to Colorado as soon as possible. The fascinating double-bogie Fairlie engine beckoned him.
Through no particular set of plans, Gopher actually began to lead a respectable existence. He stayed out of trouble, mostly because he didn’t have any time for anything else and he was eager to pocket any monies he could earn.
But he was not interested in learning how to cook and had no desire to take over the business when he got older. No, Gopher Piddington was going to become a railroad man.
It was clear to his parents that their son had no interest in the restaurant—other than enjoying the food. One day, much to Gopher’s surprise, both his parents called him to a table to discuss the business. “It is clear to us that you have no desire to continue in this business. Why is that? Cooking offers security even in the harshest of times. Surely you want to provide for your family when you have one.”
“Of course I want to, but not doing this.”
“What then, do you think you would like to do for a living?”
With a wide smile, Gopher announced, “I would like to be a railroad man.”
“A dream like that is merely a dream. The chance of you accomplishing much more than what you are doing now is remote. That’s the way life is. We can’t all live out our dreams.”
“But you and Mother lived out your dreams by coming across America and coming here.”
Able had to admit; the boy had a point. “But things are different now. We think the best thing for you is to start learning in the kitchen so you can support yourself and your family.”
“But I don’t want to be a cook.”
“Other than this ridiculous railroad fantasy, what else interests you?”
“Anything but cooking and cleaning.”
“That’s an awful big field of dreams. Can you narrow it down a bit?”
Gopher looked skyward and thought for a moment. “Well, there’s old man Olson down at the mill. He’s getting too old to drive the freight wagon. I think I would like to be a driver for him—you know, delivering lumber to homesteads far and wide. I think I would like that.”
To his surprise, Gopher’s father said he would talk to Mister Olson on the morrow and inquire as to his need of a delivery driver. “Your Mother and I have talked often of your lack of interest in the restaurant business and we have come to the conclusion that no matter how lucrative
or rewarding cooking can be, you simply aren’t interested. And, we want you to be a productive and happy in whatever field of endeavor you choose.
“But in your best interest, we think it is imperative for you to learn, at least, the basics of food preparation. Doing so will insure your future even if you fail to take up the profession. Knowing how to cook may well save your life someday—it has helped me overcome many an obstacle and it will do the same for you.
“So, let’s make a deal. In exchange for getting you a job at Olson’s Mill will you allow me to teach you the basics of food preparation?”
Gopher readily agreed. The specter of running a restaurant someday was now lifted and he was free to pursue other avenues of employment.
A DAY BETWEEN TOWNS
Working for Hans Olson wasn’t quite what Gopher expected. First off, old man Olson refused to call Gilbert anything but Gilbert. “Gopher ain’t no fittin’ name for no-one. You’ll go by your given name or I’ll hire some other snot-nosed kid.”
The other disappointing thing about his new job was it wasn’t much different than working at his father’s eatery considering the amount of cleaning to be done. No matter where Gopher looked there were piles of wood chips and sawdust to be removed and hauled off to the hopper that fed the firebox that heated the boiler that powered the mill.
“When do I get to drive the freight wagon, Mister Olson?”
“When I get a load together.”
“When will that be?”
“A lot sooner if’n you’d leave me alone.”
Gopher wondered if all old folks were just naturally grumpy or did they have to attend special classes to learn how to grouse about things.
In some ways, Gopher truly missed cleaning in the restaurant. There were no high winds whipping sawdust all over the place and there were no sticky pitch pockets to gum up his hands, hair and clothing.
The Adventures of Gopher Piddington Page 5
