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By Root 23966 0

on them and beer, and Jim's wife Hedwig was his only daughter. His wife was dead but he had a middleaged German woman everybody ad-dressed as Aunt Hartmann to keep house for him. She fol owed the men around al the time with a mop and between her and Hedwig, whose blue eyes had a peevish look because she was going to have a baby in the fal , the house was so spotless that you could have eaten a fried egg off the linoleum anywhere. They never let the win-dows be opened for fear of the dust coming in. The house was right on the street and the livery stable was in the yard behind, entered through an al ey beyond which was the old saddler's shop that had just been done over as a garage. When Jim and Charley drove up the signpainters were on a stepladder out front putting up the new shiny red and white sign that read " VOGEL'S GARAGE.""The old bastard," muttered Jim. "He said held cal it Vogel and Anderson's, but what the hel !" Everything smelt of stables and a colored man was leading a skinny horse around with a blanket over him.

Al that summer Charley washed cars and drained

transmissions and relined brakes. He was always dirty and greasy in greasy overal s, in the garage by seven every morning and not through til late in the evening when he was too tired to do anything but drop into the cot that had been fixed for him in the attic over the garage. Jim gave him a dol ar a week for pocket money and ex.

-373-plained that he was mighty generous to do it as it was to Charley's advantage to learn the business. Saturday nights he was the last one to get a bath and there usual y wasn't anything but lukewarm water left so that he'd have a hard time getting cleaned up. Old man Vogel was a

socialist and no churchgoer and spent al day Sunday drink-ing beer with his cronies. At Sunday dinner everybody talked German, and Jim and Charley sat at the table glumly without saying anything, but old Vogel plied them with beer and made jokes at which Hedwig and Aunt

Hartmann always laughed uproariously, and after dinner Charley's head would be swimming from the beer that tasted awful bitter to him, but he felt he had to drink it, and old man Vogel would tease him to smoke a cigar and then tel him to go out and see the town. He'd walk out feeling overfed and a little dizzy and take the streetcar to St. Paul to see the new state capitol or to Lake Har-riet or go out to Big Island Park and ride on the rol er-coaster or walk around the Parkway until his feet felt like they'd drop off. He didn't know any kids his own age at first, so he took to reading for company. He'd buy every number of Popular Mechanics and The Scientific Ameri- can and Adventure and The Wide World Magazine. He had it al planned to start building a yawlboat from the plans in The Scientific American and to take a trip down to the Mississippi River to the Gulf. He'd live by shooting ducks and fishing for catfish. He started sav-ing up his dol ars to buy himself a shotgun. He liked it al right at old man Vogel's, though, on account of not having to read the Bible or go to church, and he liked tinkering with motors and learned to drive the Ford truck. After a while he got to know Buck and Slim Jones, two brothers about his age who lived down the block. He was a pretty big guy to them on account of working in a garage. Buck sold newspapers and had a system of getting into movingpicture shows by the exit

-374-doors and knew al the best fences to see bal games from. Once Charley got to know the Jones boys he'd run round to their place as soon as he was through dinner Sundays and they'd have a whale of a time getting hitches al over the place on graintrucks, riding on the back bumpers of streetcars and getting chased by cops and going out on the lumber booms and going swimming and climbing

round above the fal s and he'd get back al sweaty and with his good suit dirty and be bawled out by Hedwig for being late for supper. Whenever old Vogel found the Jones boys hanging round the garage he'd chase them out, but when he and Jim were away, Gus the colored stable-man would come over smel