Gus Goes West

Chapter 1

Singing His Song

The year was 1872 and the word on the street was, Go West, young man. This had first been uttered by a newspaperman back East, while in his cozy office. Minnesotans wondered about his remark. Though they knew that beyond where they lived was more land and space, they thought they were quite West already. At the edge of the frontier. And when they turned their faces into the wind and looked in that direction, what did they see? Not the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains of the West, but North Dakota. Or, if they looked a little lower, South Dakota.

They had heard the stories. One step over the border and those big spaces swallowed you up. The wind carried you away. Indians made off with your hair and left you lying staked out in the sun, slowly becoming a meal for the vultures circling overhead or whatever wild animal came along. You’d consider yourself lucky if, anywhere in the midst of this nowhere, you came across another human being. And it would be a miracle if that human being were from Minnesota.

Minnesotans had gotten themselves as far west as Minnesota, and they thought it was a good place – plenty of room, more trees than you could shake a stick at, ten thousand lakes, a big river and weather. It wasn’t the best weather. They noticed that the summers were hot and, in the evenings, the mosquitoes took over. They also noticed that the winters were a little long, but they had come as far as they were going and they weren’t going any farther. It was West to them.

Gus Johnson didn’t think about the West or North and South Dakota or anywhere else. He was a busy guy and he had a job. What he thought about mostly, were girls, beer, music, and some of the more tender emotions. His job included all of these, and in this, he considered himself lucky. He was a musician and singer in a polka band called Oscar and the Blue Gills. They were a popular band and, though Minnesotans were a hard-working bunch and should have been in bed, it seemed that the band was playing somewhere most nights of the week.

The Blue Gills oompahed their way up and down Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis, and in and out of doors on 7th Street in St. Paul. They played train depots in little towns on the prairie, where families danced and raised dust, and they played saloons deep in the woods, where they were surrounded by tall men with beards, carrying axes. They played grand houses out at the lake, where the boys were on their best behavior and hardly anyone fell down.

Life for Gus was one party after another and that made what was to come all the more upsetting. He thrived on this life. He sang. He shouted. He put beer away with the best of them. He winked at the girls, who blushed and turned away and then shyly looked back, and he winked at their mothers, who did the same. When he sang the words:

Oh my beautiful one

How can you leave me?

he meant them and sometimes he got so worked up that the song would end with Gus looking at the floor, just sighing the words, with tears on his cheeks. Oscar Olson, who was older and played the banjo, would lean over and put his arm around Gus and nod at the applauding crowd, as if they were all family.

Gus had a good, clear voice. He could belt out a drinking song, of which there were many, in a voice that could, and had, tapped kegs. He could sweetly warble a love song in such a way that each woman listening suddenly found herself alone, in soft focus, thinking of her sweetheart. And if she didn’t have one, thinking of Gus.

Between the drinking and the girls and the music, Gus felt that no one could be as fortunate as he. He liked the life he led and tried to put his feelings into words and music. He was nineteen years old and he had written his first song.

It was called, My Sweet Flower. The lyrics went like this:

Growing in your garden

Where you once were sown

Feeding on the sunshine

Soft and all alone

By breezes drifting softly

I catch a whiff of you

My heart pounds like the tuba

Oom pah oom pah doo

Soon we will be married

I wonder what we’ll do

My heart sounds like a tuba

Oom pah oom pah doo

It was his first song. Don’t judge it too harshly. There would be others.

Besides singing, he could play a mean accordion. His fingers flew over the buttons and keys and, when he pumped the box, he put his whole body into it. His eyes were closed in rapture on the ballads, and on other songs, they rolled wildly as he sang, arms pumping:

I don’t want her

You can have her

She’s too fat for me

He also played guitar and harmonica, though not as well or as naturally, so he practiced all the time. This both delighted and annoyed his neighbors. In the beginning, it had delighted them and then, when they realized that he might never stop, it began to annoy them.

The future that spread out before him was always soft in the darkness of the evening and shaded by clouds of foam. It never occurred to him that things could change. He pictured himself growing old, playing in the band like Oscar, and winking his way through life and romance. He was confident that his world would spin in three-quarter time and any sad times would quickly be replaced by an upbeat, happy song and a cold glass of beer.

Gus looked in the mirror and saw a tall, handsome young man, whose eyes were green, whose dark hair parted on the right, and whose ears were unobtrusive.

His long arms hung at his side and he tilted his head and wiggled his eyebrows at himself in a way he thought might be debonair.

As he examined himself, he thought, I’m young, I’m good looking and I can dance. This was as deep as his philosophy went. He smiled widely at his reflection. He glanced out the window and saw the great Mississippi rolling by and thought, ‘What exciting thing is going to happen next?’ He thought, ‘I’m a Minnesotan and I like it here.’ He thought, ‘What was her name?’ and began to scratch his head.

There was a lot to think about. Things were good and the thought, which never entered his mind, was the one which said, ‘Go West, young man.’ As far as he knew, he was here to stay.

Chapter 2

Aachoo!

One day, Gus woke up early. Well, what was early for him. Actually, it was late in the morning, but that’s normal for a musician. His early was most people’s late and his late could barely be imagined by the average citizen. He and everyone else met somewhere in the middle, went a few rounds, and then parted ways. While most sensible people were in bed dreaming, Gus was stomping on the bandstand or jamming with other hot accordion players in a smoky back room.

This morning he woke up with a sneeze. It wasn’t pleasant. He looked out the window and saw by the faint light that it was way too early for him. He rolled in the tangled sheets and arranged his hands beneath the pillow. He breathed deeply. He might have fallen back into unconsciousness but, just at that moment, he sneezed again and the force of it scattered all possibility of sleep. He sneezed once more, as if to confirm the situation.

He sat up in bed and put his hand to his head, checking for fever. Having established his apparent health, he became distracted by his stomach. He realized that breakfast, somewhere, was waiting and he swung his feet to the floor. In his life, food was a necessity.

That night, on the bandstand, he found that his eyes were watering and not from his being carried away by the lyrics and music. They itched, too. He was sniffling and, yet, he didn’t have a cold. He had always been healthy. Too young to be sick, his mother always told him.

He blinked all of it away as the band plowed through the list of songs for the night; although it seemed that, as the evening went on, his voice was changing, getting a little lower, a bit huskier. During She’s the Girl Who Does the Laundry, Oscar gave him an inquiring look, but Gus just shrugged, not really understanding what was wrong either.

The next night was the same, only worse. Gus had to clear his throat repeatedly and he had a handkerchief in his back pocket for his sniffles. Oscar talked with him before the show and Gus told him he wasn’t sick, just afflicted, and Oscar said that he hoped he wasn’t allergic to beer. They both laughed at the thought.

As the night progressed, his symptoms grew worse. His eyes watered, his voice cracked, and he was forced to resort to his handkerchief often. Gus was disturbed and embarrassed, but the crowd thought he was being transported by emotion and clapped all the louder. The worse he felt, the more inspired the crowd thought he was.

He was singing Your Mama Knows I Love You which had a tricky accordion part and it was all he could do, during the solo, to keep his hands on the keys and not let the song fall apart by rubbing his eyes. As it was, he was so distracted that he sang the refrain four times in a row.

No matter how hard I try

You won’t believe me

But you know who does

It’s your Mama

It threw the band off, but no one else noticed.

The last straw came in the third set. Gus had had two beers during the break, with medicinal intent, and had another with him on the stand. Before starting, he concentrated all his effort on banishing these symptoms, which had now moved beyond annoyance and had begun to seriously affect his performance. He breathed deeply. He closed his eyes. He took another drink. To his surprise, this seemed to work for the first two or three songs.

There were no sniffles, no itching watery eyes. His voice had rejoined its accustomed pitch and his playing was unconscious. Oscar looked relieved and the whole band moved into each succeeding song with hope and abandon. Gus sent a prayer of thanks somewhere and launched into "Our Love is Like an Apple." He was at the end of the second verse when it happened.

She wondered when I asked

If I could be believed

And so I tried to show her

She said she’d beenq….

It was at the end of that last line, where the melody lifts itself up to a new height before gliding into the chorus, that the sneezing started. The entire audience jumped at the explosion and the band did, too. After a few startled and ragged notes, the band played on bravely, but Gus was still sneezing.

The people on the dance floor stopped in mid-step and all turned toward the stage to witness an attack of sneezing, such as few had ever seen. The song fell apart as Gus was almost lifted off the stage by the force of each outburst. His accordion hung heavily from his shoulders and was set swinging, with a little honking noise, at each new sneeze.

Finally, Oscar took control of the situation and led Gus off stage. There was a moment of silence, if you could call it that, with Gus sneezing continually, and then the band, what was left of it, began to play The Too Tight Polka. Their hearts just weren’t in it and the crowd began to thin out pretty quickly.

Gus eventually was able to take a break from his attack. Seated at a table, he apologized to Oscar and the other Blue Gills. They waved his apologies away with real concern for their friend and colleague. Diagnoses were made: too many burgers, too many late hours, too much beer. A musician’s life is one of excess and everyone in the band was well aware of this. The tuba player suggested too much kissing and heads turned toward him in derision. The sneezing resumed. The speculation continued.

When he was finally able, Gus brought all this to a halt by declaring that he had decided to see a doctor. They gasped. Medicine, at that time, was considered, at best, an inexact science and was treated as a last and desperate resort.

To his astonished friends, Gus said, "I’m young, I’m good-looking, and I can