I mentioned in “A Special Letter to My Beloved John Wilson, After His Appearance with the Sinfonia of London at The Glasshouse, Gateshead UK, 11 November 2023” a railroad tycoon who changed my father’s fortune after they met in St Louis (where my father moved to in order to marry his white fiancee and where he stayed after they broke up). Here’s his name: Winfield Stevens, Sr. He owned a short line (87 miles) called the Minneapolis, Northfield & Southern Railway, which terminated in southern Minnesota in Northfield, a town notable for having waged a short bloody gun battle repelling the James-Younger gang, when those famous outlaws attempted to hold up the First National Bank back in 1876. This is annually celebrated in Northfield’s Defeat of Jesse James Days, complete with souvenir mugs and recreations on Main Street; there’s also on YouTube a swell western starring Robert Duvall as Jesse and dumb old Cliff Robertson as Cole Younger.

How Mr Stevens and my father initially met I’m not quite sure, although I think at this time my dad had gotten into domestic service, maybe even through his white wife (and possibly career housekeeper) Margaret… Because from the first Mr Stevens, liking the cut of his jib so to speak, employed my dad as an all-around house servant—major domo, valet, cook, chauffeur. In those days it was a prestige thing for a successful American (i.e. white) businessman to have an Oriental houseboy, like Sammee Tong in Bachelor Father. This is real F Scott Fitzgerald country.

Then when the old man died his son and heir, Winfield Stevens Jr, took over the railroad business and added to that his own Buick dealership. Mr Stevens Jr, being more of a family man, didn’t need a valet, so he got a job for dad with the MN&S in the yard so dad could join the railroad union and start racking up benefits. He also paid dad off the books to cook for his family on Sundays (which is when I would see my father dress for work in his crisp, clean white short-sleeved shirt and black bow tie); and during the hunting season he would cook for Mr Stevens and his railroad cronies wherever they were shooting. These two, three times a year dad would come home with a side of venison or a brace of pheasants which, I don’t know how he did it, he managed to cook pretty tastily. Probably it was the soy sauce, garlic and vinegar.

I went on one of these trips with my dad a couple times in ’63 when I was eight. It was fun, sleeping in the top bunk of a compartment all alone (dad slept with the men on the other side) in a railroad-car-turned-hunting-cabin, being so deep in the woods. And you can’t beat the Minnesota woodland, old and mysterious and full of Chippewa lore.

EXTRA! The Kingston Trio sing a rousing “The Ballad of Jesse James”.

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON

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