(This little piece of fiction was written for use by the Deke Rivers Trio, an excellent band that you need to hear. The Trio hails from Busti, IA.)
Folks around Busti (at least those old enough to remember) still talk about the great baseball game in 1955 between our old Busti Beer Busters and the Albion Tigers from our former sister city in Wisconsin.
Yes, at one time Busti had a sister city. Our relationship with Albion came about when Emil Sigglekow’s twin boys - you remember Emil, the checkers champ – married a set of twin girls from Albion that they met at a church group retreat over by Prairie du Chien.
Emil Jr. hooked up with Betsy Anderson, and Ewald with Betsy’s sister Betty. They had a whirlwind romance, all four of them, and couldn’t wait to get hitched. Turned out Betsy and Betty’s pa was literally a Father, the pastor at the Albion Norwegian Lutheran Church, and he was more than happy to join them together in Holy matrimony.
Problem was, they couldn’t figure out where to live. The girls both wanted to live in Albion, where Pastor Anderson offered the boys work tending his tobacco fields. But the boys wanted to come home and help Emil with his feed store, since his arthritis was starting to get the best of him.
They compromised. Emil Jr. and Betsy went back to Busti, and Ewald and Betty went to Albion. Well, you can guess what happened next. Ewald missed his twin and got homesick; same for Betsy. So what to do?
Well, Albion is smaller than Busti, and they were already hopping mad about losing one of their own to a city slicker. They would be damned - pardon my language, ladies – if they would lose another.
And back in Busti, well, folks was worried about the future of the feed store. Emil could barely carry a sack of feed out to your pickup anymore, and if Emil Jr. left, they were worried that the store would go too.
So the townsfolk took matters into their own hands. Albion was real proud of their baseball team, the Tigers. They had won the Home Talent League title three years in a row and they figured their big strappin’ hay-tossin’ dairy farm boys could whup our grain belt boys any day of the week. So they challenged Busti to a winner-take-all game. The winners got to take the twin couples back with them.
Well, our Busti Beer Busters were nothing to sneeze at, neither, so we accepted their challenge. The problem was, where to play the game, since neither team wanted to give up their home field advantage. Well, since Prairie du Chien had sentimental value for the couples, and it was about equal distance from both Busti and Albion, the game was set there.
So on that fateful Saturday in August, both teams – and a whole lot of townsfolk – jumped into buses, autos and trucks and made the three-hour drive to Prairie du Chien.
Problem is, nobody from either town bothered to check and see if the baseball diamond was open. When we all arrived at the Prairie du Chien town park, it was being used by one of those traveling carnivals. The big top tent with all the elephants and whatnot was right on top of the ball diamond. So immediately everyone from both sides began to blame the other for not making sure we had a place to play.
Finally, Emil’s cousin Fred found a schoolyard with a diamond a couple of blocks away so we all piled back in our vehicles and headed down there for the game. It wasn’t ideal, being that there weren’t any bleachers and that the diamond was grammar school size, but we made it work.
Since we were at a neutral park, we did the tossing of the bat to determine who would be the home team, and Albion won. So the Busters went to the plate first, which turned out to be a good thing. Our first batter, Andy Fell, smacked a line drive straight back up the middle, and the Albion pitcher – throwing from the close-in schoolyard mound – was a sitting duck. The ball smacked him a few inches below his belly button, if you know what I mean. I swear, he sounded like a cat howling. Needless to say, he had to leave the game and from that point on, the pitcher threw from second base.
After that incident, Albion was a little spooked and our Busters scored three times, thanks to a long blast by Randy Bugger. Our pitcher, Hank Kercheff, was throwing smoke the first few innings, but after Albion settled down, they tied the score at three in the fifth.
It was tough for the Sigglekow boys and their brides because they were trying not to cheer for anybody, but it was obvious that they favored the Busters and their brides were partial to their hometown Tigers. At least once during the game, each boy could be seen scolding his wife for being too vocal whenever Albion made a good play.
The Busters came through again with a couple of runs in the seventh, thanks to a long home run by Everett Jackson. It preceded a badly-needed seventh-inning stretch, since it was mighty uncomfortable sitting on the ground that long, but the cases of Busti Beer we brought eased the pain some.
Unfortunately, Albion tied the game 5-5 in the bottom of the ninth, so the game went to extra innings. By this time, the boys on both sides were getting mighty tired so the game dragged on with no more scoring through the 12th, 13th and 14th innings. The beer ran out about the 11th inning, so Nick Kercheff ran over to the liquor store to get some more, only to find out they couldn’t get Busti in Prairie du Chien. So instead he came back with a few cases of Chief Oshkosh, and those disappeared pretty fast.
By the time the 15th inning rolled around, the sun was going down, the players were tired, and the fans were blasted. The players wanted to call it a draw, but the question of where the Sigglekow twins would live wasn’t settled yet. By this time the twins and their brides had had a few, too, and I think it was Betsy who shocked everyone by speaking up. “This ain’t none of your affair, anyhow,” she shouted to the rest of them. “It should be up to me and Emil Jr. here where we live.”
“I’m Ewald,” her husband corrected her.
“No, you’re not, you’re Emil Jr., and I’m Betsy.”
The one who claimed to be Ewald got a funny look on his face. “Oops,” was all he said. Betsy looked over at the other boy, who was avoiding eye contact.
“Who are you?” Betty yelled at the other boy. Still not looking up, he said, “I’m Emil Jr.”
“Then why are you sitting next to me, acting like my husband?” Betty demanded.
Emil Jr. wouldn’t answer. So Ewald did. “Remember when we was visiting a couple of weeks ago? Well, I was homesick so I traded places with Emil Jr. and went back to Busti with you, Betsy. We didn’t think you’d notice.”
The crowd around reacted with a huge collective gasp, that I swear could have been heard all the way back in Busti. Everyone started chattering and acting outraged – especially Pastor Anderson who was chattering about adultery and Hell – but the twin girls didn’t say a word; they looked at each other all sheepish-like.
Finally, one of the girls spoke up. “It’s all right, everyone. I was homesick, too, so me and Betty did the same thing.”
Again, the crowd roared, but Pastor Anderson looked downright relieved. “Praise the Lord! By his Divine intervention, no commandment was broken!”
I couldn’t quite tell by the look in their eyes, but it seemed like both sets of twins were more disappointed than ashamed.
At that point, no one cared about the ball game anymore, so we finished up the Chief Oshkosh – which tasted like pig wee, if you ask me – and we all drove home. Except for the two sets of twins, who decided to stay behind at the 40 Winks Motel in Prairie du Chien.
The next day Ewald and Betty (I think) came back to Busti and said that the twins had figured out what to do. Each couple would spend six months a year in Busti and six months a year in Albion. They would trade houses at Christmastime, and then again in summer. And it worked out real fine until Emil Sr. passed on, and Ewald convinced Betty to come stay in Busti permanently so he could help his brother run the store. And it was at that point that Albion rescinded the agreement to be our “sister” city.
We always wanted to finish that baseball game with Albion, but no one ever got the stomach to schedule a day to get it done. Maybe it was the bad memory of that Chief Oshkosh beer.
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