B B Cantwell [Portland Bookmo Corpse of Discovery (epub)

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.“Well, if we can’t keep this old bus moving so the fan belt runs faster, you’re not the only one who’s going to have a breakdown,” she warned.It didn’t help that the Literary Society’s leader had arranged to have two giant dugout canoes – “just like the ones Lewis and Clark paddled” – strapped atop the bookmobile to add “historic flavor.”“And about 500 more pounds to haul up Broadway,” Pim had been grumbling all morning.Hester remembered with alarm her first car – a stubby little blue Toyota from the 1960s with a high ceiling and truck-sized steering wheel that she had fondly called her “Mr.Magoo car.” It had been a good little car except for its penchant for overheating at stoplights on warm days.Just out of library school, she’d spent a year as an elementary-school librarian in the sun-baked Yakima Valley of Washington, where she’d carefully plotted routes to work that allowed her to turn right and circle around a block until a light changed in order to keep air flowing through the radiator.“Oh, dear.Pim, would it help if we turned on the heater? That’s supposed to help drain heat from the engine, isn’t it?”“I’ve already got it going full blast, and since the only cooling we’re getting is from these window-defroster fans, it’s getting to be a question of whether this bus melts down first or we do!” Pim replied, reaching down to unbutton the top of her Aloha shirt, part of a collection well-known among her colleagues.Today’s was hot pink with hula-dancing tropical fish and scenes of Diamond Head.Scanning the gauges on the “new” bus – recently retired from Ketchikan, Alaska, one of the few places in the United States where A.C.wouldn’t be considered necessary – Pim gave a low whistle.“We’re just edging into the red on the temp gauge.Hester, if this parade doesn’t get moving, I’m going to have to take desperate measures.”* * *Leading the parade marched the man responsible for Pim’s worries.Pieter van Dyke, president of the Portland Pioneer Literary Society, was also chairman of the Rose Festival.And chairman of the Oregon Zoo.And vice chairman of the Portland Art Museum.And a socially-climbing member of boards of half a dozen other influential Portland-area community groups, colleges and nonprofits.In his late 50s, thick-bodied with pouchy eyes and thinning flaxen hair on a head shaped a bit like a tulip bulb, van Dyke today was celebrating his Dutch heritage – and his position as self-appointed grand marshal of the Grand Floral Parade – by marching at its head in wooden shoes.The impractical footwear was shared by van Dyke’s taller, grayer, pinch-faced law partner and fellow Dutchman, DeWitt Vanderpol, limping at his side.Trailing just behind, their baldheaded, bespectacled and plumply unfit junior partner, Gerhard Gerbils, sported lederhosen to reflect his German ancestry.This particular garment fit better in the lawyer’s younger days, a few thousand sausages ago.His partners joked that Gerbils’ dimpled thighs looked “the wurst for wear.”Gerbils’ father had changed the spelling of the family name from “Goebbels” – yes, they were related to the infamous Nazi propaganda wizard – when fleeing Germany just before Hitler invaded Poland.Much to his descendants’ consternation, old Goebbels simply Anglicized the spelling but kept the pronunciation, with the hard “G,” though the new spelling meant his descendants were often mocked as school boys for having the same name as a pet rodent.Van Dyke and Vanderpol didn’t often let their partner forget his distant Nazi relative, smirking together over their private joke the day they appointed Gerbils to handle the firm’s public relations.Gerbils thought their sense of humor mean-spirited.Today, van Dyke was in his element, waving happily at the crowd lining the curb and beaming with a smile that spoke of dental-chair whitening treatments.The parade was rounding the block to Fifth Avenue to pass in the shadow of “Portlandia,” the 34-foot Statue-of-Liberty-like copper sculpture kneeling over the entry to the neo-art-deco Portland Building.Van Dyke, always hamming it up in public, a habit dating to a high-school role in “Guys and Dolls,” threw his hand to his chest and mimicked getting skewered by the giant trident the statue brandished.Onlookers guffawed.“Wait till they see the bookmobile,” he shouted into Vanderpol’s ear so as to be heard over the sound of the marching bands.“Getting that reconditioned model left us enough money to hire the airbrush muralist out of Atlanta who does all the fancy graphics on the trucks that carry NASCAR teams [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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