Problems in the Ponderosas Ch. 04

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"Let's look at Terry Gardner. Here is his family tree. He came here with good references from the White House and Oklahoma City. It was supposed that he was trying to gain experience in various functions of government, perhaps to position himself for a city manager job as his next career move. He looks, at first glance, to be pure as the driven snow, and we have no evidence of any shady dealings on his part. But his pedigree is interesting. If you follow this branch of his family back far enough, it turns out that he is related to our old friend Felix Zanger. And if you look at Mrs. Zanger, you'll find that she's a second cousin of our present mayor. Now isn't that cozy?

"Please be patient with me as I digress to another interesting situation. Our mayor won his job by defeating his predecessor in an election. They are in different parties, and the present mayor ran a vigorous, spirited campaign that won him a reputation for reforming city politics. There were observers who said that the old mayor's campaign lacked luster and excitement, and some said that he was just getting too old to run an effective campaign any more. Would it surprise you to know that both candidates were partners in a deal a few years back, involving some land that was sold to the state for a highway interchange? Funny that nobody pointed that out publicly. But back to this recent election, it was really a win-win contest. No matter who was elected, they kept control of the city in the same small group. And it shows what a joke the party designations can be.

"Now before we move on to Herr Mueller, let's take a break. I have some small tea sandwiches in the next room, and fresh coffee should be brewed by now. Help yourselves to the rest rooms, grab some coffee and a bite to nibble on, stroll around and see what a modern public library looks like, and then we'll take a walk down the hall to our newspaper archive facility, where we'll reconvene in ten minutes or so."

We were glad to have a chance to look around, and the place was truly amazing. There were two adjoining rooms with computer terminals at small tables, one room for using the internet and one for writers and students to use word processors and spreadsheets to do homework, write novels, even organize their favorite recipes, without going online. Books were neatly placed on shelves that were convenient heights for most people, and there were even shelves that could be moved up or down to accommodate people who couldn't reach up high or stoop down low. In the fiction section, some popular authors had their own little groups of shelves, that could rotate to display all of their recent works in a small amount of floor space.

A hallway leading to the newspaper archive had walls lined with blowups of front page stories about the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, which launched the United States into the second World War, and also the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, which started the first World War. Other displays featured the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill, the sinking of the Titanic, and the Johnstown flood. As Val and I strolled down the hallway, Paul and Bobby were in a soft-spoken conversation while looking at a headline about the Korean War. Whatever he was selling, she seemed to be buying, with girlish giggles thrown in now and then.

Inside the archive room there were small desks around the walls with computer terminals to display any page of the paper from any date in any year, going back to the period after the Civil War. Once you found the story you wanted, you could print it, and the printed copies ordered by your terminal would be accumulated in a shelf marked with your terminal number, where you could pick them up before leaving.

For us, however, Paul was controlling the displays from his desk in another corner, and giving us a running narrative at the same time. He began with the birth of a baby, Fritz Mueller, and progressed through the years as Fritz graduated from elementary school, played soccer in middle school, and was part of a high school football team that had an undefeated season.

"Then he was prominently featured in story from a nearby town, about a whorehouse that Fritz and his friends from the football team were running in the home of a family who were away in Europe for two years. The whores were local girls, two of whom went to the police when the organizers swindled them out of their agreed share of the fees for their services. The stories percolated along for months, as the younger participants were dealt with in juvenile court, while Fritz and two others, inconveniently over eighteen, were tried as adults and sentenced to prison terms. Then they were miraculously paroled without ever leaving the county jail. There was also a passing mention of records the boys had kept of their clientele, but the notebooks in which the names and dates were recorded were somehow misplaced and could not be found at the end of the trial.

"Just a few years out of high school, Fritz was seen at the opening of a restaurant under a sign that proclaimed The Bavarian Bar, with the notation below in smaller letters, Bratwurst and Beer. The following year there was a legal notice of the bankruptcy of the Bavarian Bar, and later that same year Fritz was in criminal court again, accused of concealing assets from a bankruptcy court. That case was thrown out later due to lack of evidence."

Paul apologized at that point, saying this was as far as he'd gone in the time he had available that week. He invited us to come back in a week, when he would have completed his searches and organized his research into notebooks for us to keep. Bobby asked for two extra copies, which I supposed might be gifts for her friends.

Val and I went out and waited in the pickup, while Bobby had some final words with Paul in the doorway. She was making some point while jabbing with her finger in her pocket notebook, where she had been jotting notes during Paul's lecture. Paul was nodding, and then they both laughed, after which she gave him a kiss on the cheek and came out toward the truck, smiling and giggling to herself like a thirteen year old.

I looked beyond Bobby to Paul, who was standing in the doorway watching her from the rear, while he held his hand against his face, with his fingers over the spot where she'd kissed him.

As I put the truck into gear and started down the street, Bobby leaned forward from the back seat and said to Val, "Your uncle is a wonderful man. Thank you so much for taking me to meet him." I laid my right hand down on the seat and Val gave it one of her special squeezes.

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AnonymousAnonymousover 4 years ago
These are great.

Reminds me of the Iron Crowbar series by another author, except without some of the silliness.

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