Remembering the the Argus of my youth

Editor's note: Following is the one chapter in Farewell Bend the Novel that I think best captures The Argus Observer, my family,and the town where I grew up. This is fiction but inspired by actual events. To learn something of the end of the story, check out the blog entry that's next down. -- Larry Lynch

Farewell Bend Chapter 5

December turned out to be a strange month. It began with my ill-fated hunting trip. It continued with a sad but riveting story involving a new couple in town. Not more than six months after the couple opened the new Westphal’s Funeral Home, the husband went out for a noon walk and never came back. Dad told us what he knew the next day at dinner, after the wife filed a missing person report.

Frank Westphal, short and dapper, always wore a dark business suit, white shirt and tie. He was last seen dressed that way, walking down the left side of Idaho Avenue where it turned into Highway 30 on the way to the Snake River Bridge. Dad said the story going around downtown was he had jumped off the bridge into the murky waters of the Snake to escape his wife. It was likely, my father added, that if that were the case his body would float to the surface somewhere downstream where a farmer would spot it. But if it floated past Weiser and on into Hell’s Canyon, the buzzards would pick over it before any human would come upon it. That might have been what happened, because he was never heard from again.

Despite Westphal’s disappearance, what had become a kind of funeral home war continued, a fight that my father described with a smile and dancing eyebrows. Irene Westphal, short like her husband but a striking middle-aged brunette who always wore a three-strand pearl necklace, had from the beginning run things her way at the mortuary. She came up with unusual schemes for wresting business away from Wainright’s Funeral Home, the only mortuary in town for twenty years. One involved rewarding local housewives with invitations to elaborate Friday afternoon cocktail parties if they had been faithful about attending funerals at her place the week before. Her cocktail parties quickly became such an event that some local businessmen wrangled their way onto her list partially, my father suggested, to have a chance to drink with some of the town’s bored housewives. As for himself, he said he attended to pick up gossip about what was going on in town.

Frank Westphal either stayed away from those parties or drank too much when he showed up, angering his wife and creating problems at home. Neighbors of the Westphals told friends they frequently heard her chewing him out for embarrassing the couple’s twin daughters, who were high school sophomores. On their own, those daughters had developed a reputation for driving their teachers and the high school principal crazy by skipping school. When they did come to class, they liked to impersonate each other so that their teachers couldn’t tell who was who.

When Westphal disappeared, his wife cancelled the cocktail party scheduled for the next Friday afternoon. But that was the only one she abandoned. By the time the second Friday came around, she figured out that her usual guests were inclined to be solicitous. That meant she could lean on them even more heavily to attend services for the average departed Farewell Bend citizen. Big funerals always made the deceased’s family and friends feel good, which was not bad for bringing in future grieving families. Most of the old-time families in town remained faithful to Wainright’s, but the older mortuary felt the pinch.

The Westphal saga turned out to be good for business at The Argus-Observer, because Wainright’s increased its ad lineage to boast of its long service to the community. Mrs. Westphal then countered with a regular ad announcing the scheduled services at her place for the next few days.

The newspaper published only one story of Westphal’s disappearance. Anything more was “inappropriate,” my father said, because of the likelihood he had committed suicide. The Argus-Observer ordinarily did not publish stories about suicides.
Thursday night, a week after Westphal disappeared, I woke up to hear my mother roaring at my father.

“Why call here at this time of night?” she screamed. Then she would repeat the question in slightly different words but no less loud. I couldn’t make out my father’s answer.

The back door slammed. I heard the family car backing out of the garage and crunching up the alley. I lay awake for more than an hour hearing my mother’s sobs off and on, until the car returned. There was more arguing, this time too muffled for me to make out any of the words, before I finally fell back asleep.
In the morning, my mother woke me about 8 a.m. just in time to rush to get ready for school. My father was already out of the house. Kevin said he’d heard the argument, but he and I didn’t talk about it, and neither of us asked where our father was. The thrust of Mother’s jaw was so determined it was frightening. Her jaw was stuck out all the way that morning.

She placed a bowl of oatmeal in front of each of us and then asked if I would drop Kevin by the junior high on my way to school.

“It’s too late for him to walk,” she said. “Your dad had to leave early to shoot some pictures of a plane crash up by Baker.”

“Who crashed? Someone from here?” Kevin asked her.

I kept quiet, certain this had to do with the fight in the middle of the night.
“Tom Brady, a man with a construction business in Nyssa,” she responded. “He flies to jobs all over the West. They say his plane went down in bad weather somewhere over the Blue Mountains late yesterday.”

“They found the plane?”

“Your father said they are going to try to get to his body today. He hopes to go along to take pictures.”

“Is that safe?” Kevin asked.

“Probably not. Now you boys get on to school. And, Jack, you come home right after school this afternoon. I may need to use your car,” our mother instructed.
I was supposed to drive Pete to school, but I knew he’d drive if I asked him.

“You want me to ride with Pete so you can take the car all day?” I asked.

“That’s good. I don’t want Kevin riding with you two.”

The Bradys had no children, and no one mentioned the plane crash at school. I knew Mr. Brady was a big deal, so it was not so strange that my father wanted a picture of the crash scene. But the Boise Statesman would have a chance to publish stories and photos on Saturday or at the latest Sunday. By the time readers got The Argus-Observer’s Monday edition, the crash would be old news. Dad’s pictures would need to be different.

That night, after I spent an hour helping Pete change the oil in his car, our mother, Kevin and I gathered in our kitchen. Mother blew up about the excuse for our father’s trip.

“I told your father it was crazy to drive all the way to Baker to take pictures himself. He knows the publisher in Baker. He would let The Argus-Observer use some of his pictures if your father asked.”

“Was that what the fight was about last night? Him going?” I asked.
“Mrs. Brady called. She wanted him to leave right then for Baker. He drove to her house to talk to her.”

“So that’s where he went?”

“He was honest about that anyway,” Mother said.

“What are you going to do?” Kevin wanted to know.

She didn’t answer for a minute. Kevin announced he was going downstairs to study until dinner, and my mother and I moved to the living room where we sat staring at a blank TV screen.

“Today I was in the office selling ads by phone,” she said finally. “Tomorrow I’m going to use your car and run around collecting the copy. I sold a lot of ads for Monday.”

“And how am I going to make my classified rounds?”

“You can have your car back early in the afternoon long enough to drive to Mr. Ray’s lot out on Highway 30.”

“And Dad?”

“He’s promised to be back in the afternoon,” Mother said, got up, and stalked through a short hallway into her bedroom.

“I’m going to lie down and try to get rid of this headache,” she said behind a half-closed door. “You and Kevin can go to the Toot N’ Tell for dinner. I’ll give you some money.”

Kevin had no interest in my take on what was going on. He was not interested in much that I had to say. I had abandoned him for high school, and he was busy practicing for the seventh grade basketball team. He played guard, and both he and the team were expected to do well. We talked about his team as we ate.

The next day, I got an earful of gossip when I picked up No-Down Danny’s classified ad changes.

Danny Ray was a pinch-faced former mechanic who had turned into a successful used car dealer by catering to the low-price crowd, but he carried a grudge against my father. He made a stink when my father took an aging Plymouth sedan from a dealer who was going out of business instead of buying a car for me from a regular advertiser: him for example.

I explained to him that my father took the car as payment on a bad debt, but that didn’t do any good. Dad drove out to visit with Danny personally, but that hadn’t helped much. He kept his ad running. More than most dealers, it worked for him and his cheap cars. But after the dispute he would make me wait for fifteen or twenty minutes when I showed up at the lot, and then bark at me when he finally decided I’d waited long enough.

That Saturday, No Down Danny’s Used Cars at the edge of town looked to be absent any customers. Windblown gusts of ice-like rain accented the overcast afternoon as I pulled up in the Plymouth. Danny stood waiting on the top step of the stairs in front of the shack he used as an office, pulling his five foot eight inches into an imposing figure in a reddish flannel shirt and green workmen’s pants.

“I hear your Dad is spending a lot of time in Baker,” he shouted as I crunched through the gravel toward his shack.

I studied him, trying to figure out his smile. He reached down and grabbed the proof sheet that I brought for him to mark up.

“Come on in and sit down while I fix this up,” he said disappearing into the cramped 10-by-12 foot shack that was the only building on his lot. He sat down behind his chipped and cluttered wood desk and motioned me onto the broken down couch he used to seat customers.

“Some people are wondering just how much of an accident that airplane crash was,” he said, still smiling and watching me.

“Most people don’t fly into the side of a mountain on purpose,” I said.

I’d read the story of the crash in the Boise Statesman that morning.

The picture at the top of Page 1 showed a team of rescuers on skis heading away from the crash site, towing a sled containing a body down a snow-covered slope. Not much recognizable was left of Brady’s Cessna except one wing and the tail assembly. It looked like the plane had struck the mountainside nose first. Also on the front page was a picture of Nancy Brady, a tall woman with an attractive profile, talking with a man in uniform in front of a search plane sitting on the Baker airstrip.

On an inside page, with the continuation of the story, there was a head and shoulders mug shot of Brady. Showing a wide smile on the rugged face of a construction guy, he wore an open collared shirt. The story said that he’d been flying himself around the Northwest to various construction sites for a decade. As usual, he was alone in the aircraft. He had filed no flight plan, but he had landed in Baker on his way to Lewiston, Idaho, where his company was trying to complete a highway bridge for the state and the job was overdue for completion. Brady told other pilots at the Baker airport that he was waiting for the weather to clear before continuing. He then took off in mid-afternoon when storm clouds over the mountains began to blow away and the prediction was for improving weather through that evening. Nothing changed in the weather forecast, but the storm clouds hung on. They were cold enough that his wings could have iced up. The other pilots said they knew Brady as a gregarious guy interested in whatever was went on around him, but that day he acted pre-occupied. They thought the delay bothered him.

“The way I heard it your Dad spent Friday holding Mrs. Brady’s hand, standing at her side all day, driving her wherever she needed to go even though she had her own car,” Danny Ray said, leaning toward me over his desk as if he was closing a deal.

“And he stayed there to take her to dinner. Looks like your Dad knows Mrs. Brady pretty well. What do you think?”

“How do you know all this?”

“It’s all over town, Jack. I heard it at Andy’s Pool Hall last night. I also got it on good authority from the Baker police. I know some guys up there.”

“You mean you’re the one spreading the story?” I said, getting angry.

I knew my father would not want me to confront Mr. Ray. He would want to keep the guy as an advertiser, but I didn’t know how long I could keep from telling him to shut up. I got up to leave.

“Others had heard the same thing. I guess they are pretty good friends, your Dad and Nancy Brady,” Danny repeated, loud enough for me to hear as I headed down the steps.
“Don’t you want my ad changes?” he called after me.

“I can come back for them in an hour,” I said, hesitating only slightly in my fast march to my car.

“I’ll do them right now. Wait a minute.”

He quickly penciled in three changes to the list of cars and prices and walked down the shack’s steps to where I was waiting, turned sideways so as not to watch him.

“Don’t let it bother you, kid,” Danny said. “You can’t do anything about your old man.”

Then he disappeared back into his shack.

I ran to the Plymouth, glanced for the thousandth time at its torn seat covers and forced myself to drive to the Ford dealership on the other side of the tracks to pick up changes there that had not been ready earlier in the day. When I arrived, the used car manager had gone home, but he left a proof sheet with penciled in changes. Two salesmen who were still hanging around the new car showroom smiled knowingly in my direction and waved from behind a big blue Lincoln sedan as I walked through to the manager’s office. They did not usually pay any attention to my comings and goings. I knew for sure then the story was all over town.

My father had returned from Baker and was alone in the newspaper office when I stopped by to spike the copy changes. He asked me to tell my mother that he needed to work late to catch up and would not be home for dinner. She could call him if she wanted, he said.

I did not want to deliver my father’s message, but my mother just nodded when I did. She had made liver and onions, a dish I knew was not one of my father’s favorites. As Kevin and I ate, she excused herself to take a bath and get into bed.
I didn’t feel much like going out that night. Pete would be off somewhere with Faye, I knew. So I asked Kevin if he wanted to watch TV. We lay on the living room floor with couch pillows and our old black spaniel, Suzy, until our father came in about 9:30. He made himself some soup as we finished watching our show and went on to bed. Nobody felt like talking.

For days, that was the way it went around the house. Everyone silent and on tiptoes. Our dad skipped Sunday dinner but showed up for the evening meal beginning Monday night and tried to make conversation. It didn’t work. On Tuesday, our mother made a chocolate pie, but the crust was tough, and I didn’t eat much of my piece. I told her about the problem with the crust and went down to my room to do some schoolwork. Dad soon followed me to complain that I didn’t show enough appreciation for what my mother did for me. He said that it saddened her and she deserved better.
Still, I didn’t ask about his trip to Baker.

The next Thursday night another argument started between our parents. It began about ten, and Kevin and I couldn’t make out what was said, but our mom stormed out. She was not back for breakfast. Dad said not to worry, he knew where she was.
By Sunday afternoon, Mother still was not back. Dad made bacon and eggs for dinner. I called Pete to see if he could use some help with his car. He said he could. When I got home about eight, our mother had returned, bathed, and gone to bed. Dad was reading in the living room, and I went down to my room. I hoped things would soon get back to normal.

Monday afternoon before dinner, I came home right after school to work on a book report. Dad was still at the office getting out that day’s paper. I asked my mother to tell me what was happening. She was wearing one of her nicer housedresses and had put on make-up for a meeting earlier that afternoon, so she looked good standing at the kitchen counter, making a meat loaf for dinner.

“I’m not exactly sure. You’ll have to ask your dad,” she said.

I decided to push a little further. “Why did you leave?” I asked, thinking she would feel she had to give me an answer to that.

“For the same answers you want. He won’t tell me what’s going on.”

“I know that he was helping Mrs. Brady after the crash. That’s all.”

“More than he needed to, Mrs. Westphal is telling people.”
“She’s a gossip. Dad says she makes things up.”

“She hears what’s going on at those cocktail parties. You can’t keep secrets in this town for long anyway.”

“Mrs. Brady lives in Nyssa,” I said, trying to calm her now.

“And your Dad spends a lot of Saturdays there, supposedly trying to sell ads, without much luck. Funny thing, those days in Nyssa always happened when Tom Brady was out of town.”

“How do you know that?”

“Your dad and I have other friends in Nyssa.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“It’s really up to your father. He needs to be around more, be more honest with us. I don’t know whether he’ll do that.”

“You want me to ask him?”

“You could.”

For a week, I looked for a chance to get my father to talk about it. He avoided me at the office. When he knew I might be there alone, he was gone. When I tried to catch him alone, he left. At least he and our mother began talking at dinner about what was going on at school at the paper. Soon I quit worrying about it. This Christmas would be like any other. We’d open some gifts at home. We’d drive to Caldwell for dinner with Dad’s folks. We’d stop by to see our mom’s mom and O.J., whose asthma was killing him.