The Adventures of Gopher Piddington

by David Michaelson

  “There’s no time like the present, is there?”

  “Except for one tiny detail. I already have a paying cook’s position in Denver. May I inform her that I will be leaving?”

  “How long will it take you to give notice?”

  “I can take the very next train back to Denver, give my notice, assemble my belongings and return the very next day.”

  “Fine, I expect to see you on Monday. Your train will be leaving shortly. I hope you can manage to be on it. You may sign your papers when you return. That is all, Mister Piddington.”

  No one had ever called him ‘Mister’ before. He rather liked it. Hearing it said offered a certain level of adult respect. Yes, he decided, he liked it a lot.

  THE SAD GOOD BYE

  “Well, how did your game go? Did you win?”

  Gopher had to tell Ellen that they lost but not as badly as the previous year. He looked down at the rug on the floor, not at her.

  “What’s the trouble, Gopher? Something wrong?”

  “I’m not exactly sure how to tell you this, but I’ve been offered a position on the Leadville Blues team for next year.”

  “Why that’s great. Congratulations. But won’t that make for a complicated commute? Wait just a moment. Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  With some difficulty he tried to tell her how important the promotion was. For one thing, he would be learning how to pitch for the best team in the league. For another, he would be much closer to where the Fairlie engine was assumedly located.

  “I’ve seen you play ball. I’d say, without knowing much about the game, that you’re pretty good at it; that I understand. But I surely don’t understand your fascination with a single locomotive that may or may not exist.”

  “That’s not all. I’ve been offered a terrific job at the new fish hatchery. It’s a government position and I will have weekends off during base ball season.”

  Ellen sat down and contemplated the ramifications of what she had just heard. Several things went through her mind, including the fact that her cook was leaving. That was certainly not in her favor. With a full house, she would need another cook, as she could not do it all by herself. But perhaps the most difficult thing to deal with was the loss of a young man in her life that she had grown fond of.

  Ever since that first day, Ellen had found Gopher a delight to be around. He was honest and polite and diligent; many of those qualities she enjoyed with her late husband and she missed his company. Gopher filled only part of her needs, as he was simply too young and inexperienced for anything other than conversation and chores.

  She knew she couldn’t keep him as an indentured servant forever but she hoped he would remain with her for at least another year. His announcement dashed all her hopes and desires.

  She had purposefully made it known that she was attracted to him by her somewhat intimate gestures, but they had all been ignored, except for his request to be left alone while bathing.

  “Why, Gopher, I’m happy for you. I don’t know what I’ll do when you’re gone, but I expect I’ll get by.

  “How much time do I have before I start looking for a replacement?”

  “I’ll be leaving on the early train Monday morning.”

  “That sure doesn’t give me much time for interviewing and hiring, does it?”

  “I’m truly sorry, but I cannot pass up this opportunity—either of them.”

  “Well then, let’s agree to part on pleasant terms. What if I go out and buy something really special for dinner? Would you like that?”

  Gopher thought about it for a moment. He saw her disappointment and understood it. “ Only if you will help me in the kitchen.”

  “Agreed.”

  It wasn’t what Ellen wanted but she knew when a male makes up his mind to do something, even the charms of a female are often insufficient to change his mind.

  “What shall I bring back for supper? I hear the butcher has a brace of fine, fat pork chops just waiting for the next customer. How would that be?”

  Gopher said it would be fine, and added, “Maybe a pound or two of corn meal, while you’re at it. I think a nice, warm cornbread would go nicely with the chops.”

  Ellen left for the market but this time she did not skip with joy on her way out.

  When she returned with the chops and the cornmeal, Gopher already had the eggs, flour and baking powder ready to go. The stoves were stoked and the kitchen began to heat up.

  His plan was to dredge the chops in seasoned flour, then brown them in a heavy pan. Once they were all loaded into a deep roasting pan he poured a cream-based white sauce over them and tightly covered the pan.

  At a moderate oven heat, the chops steamed and bubbled in the sauce for three hours. When they were removed, the tender neat would nearly fall off the bone.

  The second oven was put to baking the sweetened cornbread. He had taken a page from his Father’s cooking experiences and added a little ground chili powder to the batter. For sweetness, he stirred a generous dollop of honey into it.

  The smells of the chops and the baking cornbread permeated every room in the house. Long before supper was ready, the large community table was filled with eager diners.

  Gopher had no potatoes to smash, so he sliced thick chunks of fresh bread and ladled a generous portion of the hot, creamy gravy over the bread and each chop.

  It was a most memorable meal, topped off by a selection of store-bought penny candies.

  Ellen tapped her water glass. “Gentlemen, this is a sad day indeed, for our esteemed cook, Mister Gopher Piddington has elected to leave my employ and assume gainful employment in Leadville, where he has also been offered a starting position on their winning ball club. She raised her glass for a toast.

  “Here, here,” was offered around the table.

  So it was done. Gilbert Gopher Piddington was finished with the widow Nielsen and ready to move on to bigger and better things.

  In the morning, long before anyone else was stirring, Ellen came to Gopher and thanked him for his loyal service. “You know, I always felt badly when that mean old Stroud took your money. So, I want to offer you a small token of my appreciation. I hope you will look kindly upon me when your memories return you to my humble home.

  She handed him a sealed envelope. “Open it when you have a little privacy.”

  Then she kissed him on his forehead, handed him his hat and satchel and bade him farewell.

  WINTER IN LEADVILLE

  When winter came to Leadville, it came with a vengeance. At an altitude of just over 10,000 feet, everything froze that wasn’t covered, stirred or heated.

  Daily chores at the hatchery became difficult, sometimes downright treacherous, as the rearing ponds still had to be attended to even though the pathways might be ice covered and dangerously slick.

  Gopher mastered the many different chores and soon earned the respect of his fellow employees. But the one chore he was most admired for was his abilities in the kitchen. Once the rest of the crew found out he knew his way around the human food end of the business, he was asked quite often to prepare meals for the lot of them. After a few successful group meals, the staff decided it would be fair if they all donated a little extra money; just to take the edge off the drudgery of cooking for more than one’s self. The few extra coins each day was welcomed and Gopher found himself actually looking forward to working on the next meal.

  When spring came around, he would be too busy with base ball to spend much time in the community kitchen.

  Because winters could be so harsh and unforgiving, the town leaders had constructed several large buildings suitable for modest indoor games and sports. There was a hurler’s box and a home plate with a fisherman’s net backstop. It was the perfect place to practice the many different grips a good hurler uses during a game.

  Gopher already possessed an accurate fastball. What he needed, according to the major league hurler from the season before, was movement: some special spin to m
ake the ball behave differently. Without those special grips and that special spin, no hurler would last long.

  Because his hands were large, he had a distinct advantage over smaller, shorter men. He could contain the ball entirely within his closed hand. But more importantly, he found he could grip the ball with the knuckles and the inside of his thumb. With such a grip, the ball could be thrown as hard or as gently as he wished without putting any spin on the ball. The properties of that lack of spin made the ball do amazing things. Without any spin at all, the air currents caused the ball to leap back and forth side to side and up and down.

  Sometimes, the ball moved so much that one batter, during batting practice, could not get out of the way. He said, after being hit with two consecutive pitches, “The darned thing actually followed me as I tried to get out of the way—and that was inside a closed building. Imagine what would happen outdoors with a stiff breeze.”

  Spring eventually arrived and the snow melted, well at least the snow on the south facing slopes. There was still plenty of the white stuff in the sheltered and shadowed areas.

  When the base ball field dried out enough for practice, Gopher was there throwing curve balls and his unique version of the junk ball. He was excited about the possibility of becoming a backup hurler for the mighty Blues, mostly because of the opportunity for more pay.

  It was early in the season and the first scheduled league game was between the Blues and the Pueblo Pastimes. The win-loss record for the past few years favored the Blues. As far as Leadville was concerned, the 1892 season would be no different.

  For the hapless Pueblo team, their defeat was due in part because of the vast difference in altitude, which translated into thinner air for the Pueblo players used to playing in much lower elevations.

  For Gopher, there were a few high points during that first league game of the year. With the score being heavily lopsided in the Blues’ favor, he was removed from left field only to swap positions with the starting hurler.

  Although there were already two outs and the batter might well be the last man with a chance of changing the score, Gopher was eager to do his best. Here was the big chance he was hoping for; to show off the different pitches he had worked on all winter long. But now that he was in a real game the batter seemed much too close for comfort. It wasn’t at all like batting practice. These fellows were out to hit whatever was tossed at them with a vengeance.

  The batter, a mean-looking dark-skinned Indian fellow with close-cropped hair, just stood there while Gopher fired in his fastball. The loud “smack” of the speeding ball hitting the catcher’s glove could be heard clear across the field.

  For his next pitch, Gopher reared back and threw a ball with a violent top spin. He purposefully aimed high and the batter assumed it would remain high. As the ball crossed the plate, it curved downward as if tied to a string.

  Now the batter had two strikes against him and hadn’t moved his bat. He was clearly gritting his teeth for the next pitch.

  Gopher jammed the ball between his knuckles and thumb. He was going to throw his favorite pitch, the junk ball.

  The poor batter swung at a ball that literally jumped away from him, causing him to spin out of control and fall into the dirt, cursing. If looks alone could kill, Gopher Piddington would have been struck dead right there in the hurler’s box.

  The game was over.

  Leadville was ecstatic. The Pueblo team was sulking in the humility of such a resounding defeat.

  The Blues manager approached the Pueblo manager and invited he and his team to stay over for the night and take the Sunday morning train back to Pueblo. “Hey, we’re still friends, ain’t we? No reason for your boys to sit on a cold train all night. Come into town with us and have a few drinks. It’ll perk your fellas up and take the edge off the beating they took. You’re gonna have to hole up somewhere anyway.”

  So the two teams joined up and went into downtown Leadville to either celebrate a victory or to lick wounds. There was much drinking and the whiskey flowed like a creek in spring thaw, strong and swift.

  No one asked anyone’s age. It was common knowledge out west; anyone old enough to belly up to the bar and order a drink was old enough to drink it.

  Gopher had never enjoyed hard liquor very much. When he was a child, he got into the liquor storage at his father’s restaurant and quickly discovered there was a lot of truth in the Indian name for whiskey: fire water.

  But his dislike for strong drink did not dissuade others from taking up the slack.

  A group of dark-skinned Pueblo players gathered at a large table and began ordering drinks. Gopher noticed some were considerably darker than others and Gopher inquired as to their background.

  “Them’s Indians, mostly,” one teammate claimed. “Durned good runners, they is; from different tribes maybe. Word is, some reservations have all-Indian teams. How good they are remains to be seen, as we ain’t played ‘em yet. But those Pueblo players are as good as any, I suppose.”

  Gopher was interested in the dark-skinned players and their stories. He had heard of one “darkie” named Bud Fowler, who was supposed to be one of the very best ballplayers around. He moved closer to the group of Indian players to hear the tales they were telling in the hopes of meeting the famous mister Fowler

  The drink-infused chatter continued, but with no mention of Bud Fowler.

  When Gopher piped up and asked if any of them had ever seen Fowler play ball, the man Gopher had struck out asked how a white boy like him would even have heard of such a great player?

  “Why, I read about him in a newspaper once.”

  “Oh, look, the skinny white hurler can read. Ain’t that impressive. I ain’t got no use for no skinny white boys, so why don’t you go back where you came from and leave us alone?”

  “Look, mister, I meant nothing. I just wanted to know if you ever saw him play ball? I mean; he played in Pueblo, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, I think he was around in ’85 but moved on. So what?”

  Gopher wasn’t getting anywhere, so he got up and returned to his original seat but he was still close enough to hear what the Indian players were saying. Most of their chatter meant nothing to him until the loudmouth of the group mentioned something about a little snip of a white boy he had the displeasure of meeting ten years back.

  Gopher’s ears pricked up.

  “Hell, I snatched that little brat right from under his white mama’s nose—right in front of all of ‘em, I tell you. Even the elders didn’t know.”

  The loudmouth’s friends bought more whiskey and goaded him into telling more of the story.

  “Well, you see; it was late in the afternoon and most of the old folk were half asleep in their rockin’ chairs. This white couple with the brat claimed they once helped the Apache through a tough time.

  “Well, whites ain’t never done nothin’ for me ‘cept kill my friends and family, so I took their snot-nose little brat and run off into the hills with ‘im.”

  The other Indians cheered and laughed. To them, they were still at war with the whites, at least to some degree.

  But the most interesting thing to Gopher was, he was that snot-nosed little boy and he remembered being dragged off into the mountains by a mean Apache named. . .what was his name? The Indian’s name had eluded him. Whatever it was, Gopher was sure there would soon be trouble because he wasn’t about to let that sleeping dog lie. Gopher stood and approached the group again. “Sorry about before, fellas. Mind if I buy you boys a round?”

  “Hell, yes. We’re ‘bout to run dry here.”

  Gopher made the order and paid for the drinks. Then he left the saloon and returned to his cabin at the hatchery. There, he retrieved his gun and gun belt. With a loaded sidearm under his coat, he quickly returned to the saloon and convinced the loudmouth to tell more about the kidnapping.

  “Hey, you’re back. Hadda take a leak, huh? Say whitey, how about another round. We’re pretty much parched after that lickin’ your te
am gave us. And I’m still sore from divin’ after that there junk ball yours.”

  “Gopher signaled to the barkeep for another round at the Indian’s table. While he waited, he pulled up a chair and asked the loudmouth to continue with his kidnapping story. “I must have missed some of the juicy parts when I was outside. How about filling me in on what you did next with that little boy?”

  The tray full of drinks came and everyone at the table except Gopher cheered and raised their glasses at their newfound good fortune. No one noticed Gopher took no pleasure in the revelry and nobody at the table noticed he wasn’t drinking.

  “Like I said, I snatched the little brat right out from under his folks’ noses. The squirt kicked like a mule and I hadda hobble ‘im, lest he kick my teeth out.

  “Anyway, while the oldsters were tellin’ tall tales about the old days I sneaked off with the kid and headed for the mountains.

  “My band was waitin’ for me and we led them whites on a chase for a couple of weeks until our weak-minded leader decided to leave the brat and go deeper into the mountains. He was afraid the soldiers would come so they voted and banished me; said I wasn’t fit to be a part of their band. Cut my hair and left me to die.

  “So, we gladly parted ways. After that, I didn’t see that little brat again. Made my way north to Pueblo and got a job in a stable.

  “Then I heard there was a need for good runners in Pueblo to play base ball. I figured I’d run pretty good avoiding them whites, so why not play for a base ball team.”

  Gopher asked what happened to that little kid.

  “Don’t know and don’t care. But he wouldn’t eat our food; spoiled brat that he was. Hell, I’ll bet his mama’s teats dried up while he was gone.”

  They all laughed at the thought of the little boy’s milk supply drying up.

  Gopher stood up and asked what the loudmouth’s name was.

  Proudly, he slurred his real name, “Lartano, what’s it to ya?”

  The name rung a bell. He remembered it clearly.