Culvert Mozart Lane – chapter 1 by Limnophile

Notes from the Author –

At least 98 percent of this is as true as I can make it, which I consider much closer to “True” than just “Based on a true story.”

“Based on a true story” might make Bubba Jones the chubby middle-aged bus driver into Bubba Jones the chick magnet and super spy.

The few things I changed or filled in leave the characters, situations, and background intact; and only smooth out the reading experience. Does it really matter today which of two friends owned a small boat in 1948? Or what they ate for lunch on a frozen lake that winter? Or the exact words one used when he asked his friend to impregnate his wife?

I did need to add 3 to the ages of “Nora” and “Janelle”, due to current legal restrictions and the rules on certain websites.

The people in this story are typical everyday country folks, but some did quite extraordinary things, good and bad. The perpetrators of all the crimes described here expired years ago. All significant events are written just as “Bruce” told them, according to his memories. He said there were no “fancy metric degrees” at the time, which is incorrect, but I typed it the way he said it.

“Brenden” is a friend of mine with little time and even less inclination to write. He only gave me the recordings I transcribed this from after I swore to change all the names. I also agreed to say this happened a few dozen miles from Lake Superior, instead of naming the town. The dirt and gravel lane in the story’s title was replaced by a highway with a number recently, so I’m finally comfortable making this public.

Thanks again, “Brenden”!

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Culvert Mozart Lane – chapter 1

I’m a 91-year-old man in a nursing home, sitting on what will most likely be my deathbed. My great-grandson Brenden is doing well in college, training to be an Information Systems Architect, whatever that is. He gave me a flip cell phone and separate voice recorder, and showed me how to use them on his last visit. The month before he had offered me a fancy lap computer instead, but those things are much more complicated than I need. I’m recording this so he and his descendants can know the real history of our family.

To most people these days I’m just a retired farmer, but there’s a lot more to it. Five events stick in my memory most firmly; the murders of my best friend Jake, my first wife Elaine, and my second wife Nora; my granddaughter Janelle’s 18th birthday, and the day Janelle gave birth to our son. I’ll describe and explain everything when I get to it, but let me start at the beginning…

When I was a boy, my family lived at the edge of a small farming town. Automobiles weren’t a rarity with a third of the families in the area owning one but the rest still depended on real horsepower, from real horses. Besides my schoolwork, I helped in my father’s workshop on Saturdays and a couple hours after school during the week. I learned to shape orange-hot iron and steel with a hammer and anvil, and weld using either a forge or blowtorch by the time I was thirteen. I didn’t have a title, but by my last year of high school, I guess I was a journeyman blacksmith, farrier, and mechanic. Most months we worked on a few cars and trucks, several tractors, and many plows and other pieces of farm machinery. We also shoed several horses a week. During the summertime I made a little extra money working at the farm next to us.

It was spring 1942 and my friends and I were looking forward to joining the Marines or Army, so we might get to travel and have a chance at glory and excitement. We talked endlessly about how great it would be to come home war heroes with lots of medals, so all the girls would like us. We were fools still in school, with our heads in the clouds and no idea what war really was.

We were all 18, or almost. My pal Joshua wasn’t the hearty sort and told us his well-off family was making him go to college instead. They weren’t really rich but did own the small town’s only grocery store and the only gas station. Most of my friends volunteered and went off to fight in North Africa or the Pacific. All told, 26 young men from our town served in the Second World War. To this day I remember all their names and faces. 19 of them returned as heroes. One even earned the Distinguished Service Cross, a very high honor. Three others returned as heroes missing an arm or a leg. My cousin Andrew and three others are still buried where they fell, eight thousand miles from home on an island called Tarawa.

The Sunday after my 18th birthday, our family arrived early for church. My mother and sisters went inside and my father had a serious talk with me. “Bruce, I know you fancy joining the fight. Think long and hard about it. Some boys might come back with medals but others won’t come back at all. I…” He choked up a moment, then rested a hand on my shoulder and looked at me intently. I didn’t see any tears but he rubbed the corner of his eye. “I would hate to see your mother cry for you.” It was the most emotional I’d ever seen him, and the closest he’d ever come to saying he cared about me. He was ‘Bloody Well British’ and a ‘Man’s Man’, a 250-pound blacksmith, at that.

“If you want to go to war, I understand. Adventure and glory can be appealing, but there are other things to consider.” He nodded toward Elaine, a busty brunette around 30. “Her husband kicked the bucket three weeks ago and she needs a man to help run her farm. A lad who could win her heart would have a home, a family, a sixty-acre farm, and a hundred acres of forest. Most farm owners get deferments from serving and the soldiers can’t win a war with empty bellies. Uncle Sam is paying top dollar for anything they can put in cans and send overseas. Please think about it, for your mother’s sake.” The church bell rang and we got up and went inside.

I met Elaine after church and liked her very much. She was twelve years my senior, but had a nice face and was what the fellows and I called a ‘bouncer’. I happily watched her chest bounce as she led her sons up or down the church’s front steps. I chatted with her at a picnic the next weekend, then took her to a dance the following Friday. Her oldest boy Lawrence was 13 and capable of looking after the other three. It boggles my mind now, that I had a stepson only five years younger than I was, and a wife only seven years younger than my mother. My father had been 29 when they married on Mom’s 18th birthday, so I didn’t think it odd until much later.

For the morals of the time, Elaine was practically a slut on our dates. She was desperate for a husband to help with her farm and boys. She gave me a few long glances down the top of her blouse and a goodnight kiss at the end of our first date. It was even a wet kiss, French style! I got several more kisses, an exciting long hug, and a brief bum squeeze on our second date.

A week later I was quite a bad lad. I told my parents I was borrowing their ’33 Ford Coupe so I could take her to another dance, but drove to a lake where we shared a six-pack and smooched by moonlight. On only our third date, Elaine let me get a hand in her big brassier and happily wanked me off, but told me she wouldn’t go any farther without a ring.

After a few more nice times by the lake, I nearly emptied my bank account writing a check at the closest jewelry store, which was a two-hour drive. Just getting there and back used half my gasoline ration for the month. Elaine and I returned to the lake and moved our fun to the rumble seat after I proposed. We made love for the first time under the stars, in the back of my father’s car. I nearly wept with joy remembering, when I saw a car the same year and model in a ‘ZZ Top’ music video 50 years later. I didn’t care for the song, though.

Elaine had a firm grasp on my heart, or maybe something a little lower down. Instead of signing up for the Marines or Army, I signed a marriage certificate at the end of our wedding ceremony. When I wrote and told my buddies, they wrote back about the war and said they understood my decision. Two even told me they would have done the same, since she was a ‘bouncer’.

We didn’t have a honeymoon, and after the wedding I moved my clothes and few other things to her farm. Other than the small and steep stairs leading to the house’s cellar and attic, it had been planned out very thoughtfully by her ancestors. There was a pond on one side of a small hill, and they built the barn on the other side. It was only a twenty yard walk to carry pails of water from the pond to the cows, and the hill stopped any barn filth from reaching the water. At the back of the barn the ground sloped downward, making it a good place to put the manure when we cleaned the barn.

There was a dairy shed down near the creek, where we made butter and cheese. They call the types we made ‘Colby cheese’ and ‘Farmer’s cheese’ now, but to us it was just ‘white’ or ‘yellow’. We sealed some of it in wax and it kept for many months, or even a year in the coolest corner of the cellar. By Christmas, the yellow cheese we made in the spring had the flavor of sharp cheddar. We poked lots of holes in some of the white cheese and left it in the open air for two days before sealing it, and half a year later it was a soft and tasty blue cheese. It was excellent in salads or on burgers or crackers.

The first spring we were together, I caught a bunch of baby perch and sunfish with a net and put them in the pond. The boys enjoyed fishing close to home the next year. The fish kept reproducing themselves, until we got a terribly cold winter in the early 60’s. The house was at the top of another hill. It was a chore to walk the hundred yards from the house to the barn and back, climbing or descending about forty feet each time, but the distance and elevation change kept away most of the farm smell and flies. A large machinery shed was near the house to the northwest, abating most of the prevailing wind. There was also a small family graveyard on the other side of the shed. The oldest of the headstones was ‘Clarence McDolan 1801-1832 Kilt by Injuns, Blackhawk War’.

On the happier side of life, I had wonderful experiences the two nights a week or so my wife wanted to ‘make whoopie’. Thankfully when she wasn’t fully in the mood, she was willing to ‘pop my top’ by hand once or twice a week. I understood when she told me she didn’t want it near her face. For the first two years she lived up to her promise I’d never go without more than two nights in a row, but like most young men I wanted it every night. I yearned for more but respected her wishes. She scolded me any time I ‘handled my needs’ myself.

Eventually she was down to once weekly ‘top popping’ and even less ‘whoopie’, so I went small game hunting frequently as an excuse and fixed my problem alone in the woods. I was a skillful hunter and brought back squirrels or rabbits a few times a week, plus turkey and deer each autumn. I had a good fishing spot on a river and brought home perch, walleye, catfish, or pike when the family was bored of wild game. I absolutely love the flaky texture and delicious taste of walleye. It’s a pity they’re so scarce now.

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When my best pal Jacob got his discharge and came home from West Germany in ’46, he had nasty-looking scars on his left hand and was missing a fingertip. I asked about it and he said, “They gave me a purple heart and a bronze star, but all I did was pull two guys from a burning airplane. Anybody woulda’ done the same.” I disagreed about “anybody”. I wasn’t sure if I had that kind of courage, and knew a few guys that certainly didn’t.

As quite a happy coincidence, he bought the farm next to ours. It was set up for hogs and chickens instead of dairy cows, which was quite convenient for us. We traded pork, chicken, and eggs for beef, cheese, milk, and butter. Banks were quite accommodating to soldiers returning from the war, so he bought forty acres of forest next to our land too.

Only a few weeks later we made a deal that improved things on both farms a lot. We each sold our pairs of horses and pooled our money to buy a tractor. He bought the parts and I did most of the work to convert a plow, hay baler, and seed planter to work with the tractor instead of horses. I also modified two wagons a little, so we could pull them with the tractor or his Army surplus Jeep.

Elaine and I didn’t have any children together, but a reasonably happy life our first six years. I did my best to teach her four sons to be hardworking, good men. A cousin of theirs had been badly injured by a bear, so they didn’t like going in the forest much. Otherwise, they were mostly good lads.

I discovered I had a special talent after our driveway washed out in a major storm. I looked at the hills nearby, felt the soil, and somehow knew we needed a two-foot diameter culvert under the driveway to handle the water flow. I bought the corrugated steel pipe, spent most of two days digging a trench for it, and put it in. We never had water problems after that. I did the same for Jake’s driveway and knew he only needed a fifteen-incher, which cost a lot less.

I did a few others to earn some money. Before long, I started a small part-time culvert business. I bought a deuce-and-a-half Army truck and welded up a small crane for it, to lift the heavy culverts on and off. I hired four high school boys part-time to do most of the digging and scheduled the installs for Saturdays and weekdays after school. I didn’t make enough money at it to fully support the family, but it sure did help. Nobody had any trouble with my work and many recommended me to others. After several years, I got the nickname ‘The Culvert Mozart’. Hardly newsworthy or life changing, but it made me smile. It didn’t really rhyme, but I liked the sound of it.

I also bought some traps and sold beaver, otter, muskrat, and fox pelts for extra money when I was lucky. I enjoyed the peace and quiet of walking through the woods checking my traps and seeing the natural beauty all around. I’d skin my catches in a corner of the machine shed, tan the pelts, and take them to a fur trader each spring. You’ll never find it in a restaurant, but beaver is actually quite tasty. No, this isn’t some kind of sex joke. I mean the real animals that chew trees and build dams in the water. People have such sick minds these days!

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I was surprised when Jacob asked me to be his best man. He told me he was marrying a beautiful young redhead he just met named Nora. He had proposed after knowing her only a few hours! I was far beyond surprised when I met her. She was only 18 and heavily pregnant! He had only been home from the Army three months and obviously wasn’t the father. Jacob got a pretty and compliant little wife, and Nora got a home and a father for her child.

Their son Roger was a little past two, when my wife Elaine baked a cake and we invited their little family over for Nora’s birthday. After cake and homemade ice cream, Nora had her first-ever beer. She grimaced and obviously didn’t care for it, so Jake finished it for her. My wife didn’t like drinking either, since in her words it was, “Sinful, smelly, and a waste of money”. She did start a tradition by having our visitors sign the tablecloth, then she embroidered their names and signatures on it. There must have been a hundred or more names on it by the time she died, all the neighbors, most of the church congregation, and many of our distant relation.

The ice went out a month or so after the birthday party and I took Jake fishing in my new boat. He told me Nora was a wonderful wife. She was a good cook, kept the house clean, and helped on the farm a little when their toddler allowed. I smiled and told him I was equally happy with Elaine. She maintained the house well and helped me and her boys with the farm. She and a neighbor lady gathered wild berries and made them into jam. Elaine also kept a few beehives for honey and beeswax, and grew a large vegetable garden every summer. She had a knack for sewing and did a lot of needlepoint during the winter months when we were inside most of the time.

My only complaint was that I wished she’d be willing to do more things in bed, or at least do it more often. She only seemed to like what people called ‘missionary style’, and not even close to the four or more times a week I wanted. As we opened our third or fourth beers of the afternoon, he gleefully told me about Nora’s amorous habits. She made him happy nearly every night! She liked it ‘missionary’, ‘dog style’, or even with her laying on her side. If it was just the two of them at home, sometimes she walked around the house NAKED! She was willing to jerk him ANY TIME HE ASKED, and even took him in her MOUTH sometimes! I’d never done that and had been aching to try it. He thought the idea was filthy and disgusting, but she had even offered to… to… let him in HER BOTTOM!

I felt serious jealousy for the first time in my life, but told my best friend I was happy for him.

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