LittleFork Chronicles

D.E. Gilmore

Description

Somewhere between the tiny northern Minnesota towns of Littlefork and Ray, flows the raging Rat Root River. If one was to follow the river north toward International Falls one would come upon an animal kingdom called Timbertown. This is not really a town in the sense that we would know it, but more a collection of dens and burrows and beaver houses, where animals who have lived in harmony for some time, have learned to congregate and communicate.
There are probably many such animal communities in northern Minnesota, however Timbertown is different because it has a story to tell. There is a legend that came out of Timbertown about a bear, a beaver, and a boar. I don't know when this legend started, for I, of course, wasn't there, but I think it was some time ago, many generations ago, perhaps.

Sujets

• Fiction Jeunesse
• Chronicles
• Juvenilee Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 20 juillet 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798369402948
• Langue: English

Extrait

LittleFork CHRONICLES
D.E. GILMORE

 
 
 
Copyright © 2023 by D.E. Gilmore. 842136
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
 
 
ISBN:
Softcover
979-8-3694-0295-5
 
EBook
979-8-3694-0294-8
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 07/18/2023
CONTENTS
Chapter 1The Bank in the Basement of the Building by the Bridge Over Beaver Brook
Chapter 2 Becky Bonner and the Beast of Badwoods
Chapter 3 The Clothes in Mr. Clump’s Closet
Chapter 4The Monster Of Medievel Manor
Chapter 5The Bear From Where
Chapter 6 The Sphinx Stinks
Chapter 7Tiny and The Terror of Timbertown
Chapter 8Lord Lostalot and the Lance of Larceny
Chapter 9A Dearth in the Girth of the Earth
Chapter 10Orville Yorville’s Zoo
CHAPTER 1
The Bank in the Basement of the Building by the Bridge Over Beaver Brook
 
I n the far north of this great country lies a place called Minnesota. In the farthest northern reaches of Minnesota is a tiny little town called Littlefork. It is so far north that it is but a few miles from the beautiful Rainy River, which separates Minnesota from Canada. The tiny town of Littlefork rests gently in a crook of the Littlefork River, a rocky, slow moving ribbon of water that ambles through northern Minnesota until it joins its bigger brother at the border of Minnesota and Canada.
At the time that this story takes place, over sixty years ago, there were four roads that led into the tiny town of Littlefork, one from each direction of the compass. On three of these roads, one must cross a bridge to enter the tiny town of Littlefork. Two of these bridges crossed the Littlefork River, but not the third. This bridge crossed Beaver Brook, and it is at Beaver Brook that our story begins.
At the south end of the bridge over Beaver Brook was a farm owned by the Popcornys. The Popcornys consisted of David Mada Popcorny and his wife Sheba Eve Popcorny. The Popcornys raised Brahma bulls for sale as well as pigs and chickens. I don’t know if this was profitable or not, for this is not what made them known by the people of the tiny town of Littlefork.
The Popcornys lived in a house right next to the bridge over Beaver Brook, and in the basement of this house was a room that was used as a bank for children. The room in the basement of the house by the bridge over Beaver Brook that was used as a bank for children was not big. In fact, it was very tiny; more like a root cellar than a room; but it had a very thick wooden door closing it off from the rest of the basement. The door had a combination lock on it and when it opened, the room behind it looked like a bank vault except that it was made of clay and had dangly roots poking through it. The back of the room was always dark and somewhat foreboding. But that was just the opposite of the Popcornys, who were always cheerful and full of joyous noises. They were an older couple who had never had children, but nonetheless loved children.
The bank in the basement of the house by the bridge over Beaver Brook did not advertise, but somehow word got around to the children in the tiny town of Littlefork that it was there and open for business. It was not your typical bank.
It didn’t deal in money; only in good wishes. For every good wish a child deposited in the bank, an adventure was given. This sounds kind of silly, but it wasn’t. Not to a child anyway.
My older brother learned of the bank first and brought me to it. He had been there several times already for he was far more adventurous than I and always seemed to discover things more quickly. I was timid; he was not. I liked to read about things, he liked to do them. He was quite often in trouble with our parents who were very strict and religious and very strictly religious. They wanted us to be good boys and not embarrass them in front of the other grown-ups in the tiny town of Littlefork.
They took themselves very seriously and wanted everyone to take them very seriously as well. This is not to say that they were bad parents or mean or anything like that. They just wanted people to think that they were on the side of God and not on the side of pranksters or ner-do-wells or people who gossiped outside their houses.
Of course, my brother defied all convention and visited the bank as often as he could get away with doing so. At first it wasn’t difficult because my parents, as most parents in the tiny town of Littlefork, didn’t know anything about the bank in the basement of the building by the bridge over Beaver Brook. You see the swimming hole for all the children in the tiny town of Littlefork was right there by the bridge over Beaver Brook and the children had to walk right by the house by the bridge over Beaver Brook to get to the swimming hole.
It was a ready-made excuse to go to the bank; all a child had to do was tell his or her mother or father that he or she was going to the swimming hole and no one would doubt that! All children loved to swim! There was certainly no harm in that! The older children always watched the younger children and made certain that no one drowned.
But soon the children were all going to the bank instead of the swimming hole. Mr. and Mrs. Popcorny were always there and would greet the children, even the very shy ones, especially the very shy ones, and would ask their business and would usher them down to the basement and to the bank.
In the basement, at the bank (that is to say in front of the large wooden door with the combination lock on it), were little kiosks with official looking pieces of paper on which one would write one’s good wish.
The good wishes had to be sincere or they would be rejected by either Mr. or Mrs. Popcorny with a disappointed frown on their brow and a pronounced shake of their head. One couldn’t wish for a dog or a cat or a new bicycle, for these were selfish wishes and they would not get one an adventure or even the wonderful cookie and glass of milk that accompanied each good wish.
The cookie by the way was a rhubarb and rat root cookie that tasted both sweet and tart and smelled of the out-of-doors and simply reeked of the promise of adventure. The milk was from the Popcorny’s very own cow and had always been produced that very day. It was not cold, but was also not hot, and when one drank it, one was overwhelmed by the taste of the field, if one could actually taste a field.
If one’s good wish was accepted, for example if one wished that Mrs. Anderson’s old dog Betsy would get well so that Mrs. Anderson could stop crying in public and not embarrass her grown children anymore, one was given a rhubarb and rat root cookie and a glass of milk and was ushered into the vault (the room behind the large wooden door that was made of clay and had roots dangling from its ceiling). In the vault, one deposited one’s wish in the bucket at the back of the room, where it was very dark, and placed one’s glass, which was now empty of milk, on the small table there.
Either Mr. or Mrs. Popcorny then placed a rubber inner tube from an old tire over one’s head and around one’s waist and instructed you to walk forward, into the dark back of the vault, until you felt water start to swirl around your feet.
I know this sounds fantastical, but when I tell you the rest of the story you will realize that this is the most normal sounding thing in the entire story.
I am telling you this from my experience, lest you think this is a lie or simply made up to keep children occupied and out of the way. In fact, it is for this very reason that it is an important story to tell, for the Popcornys you see never treated children like they were in the way. They seemed to think that children were very important, but not in a coddling way or in a way to spoil children. They seemed to think that children inhabited the dreams of the future, and not just their parents’ future, but the future of the whole world.
The Popcornys acted like the children who came to their bank were the measure of life. In their view, which they expressed in so many small ways, from their simple frowns, to their smiles and acknowledgements of small acts of kindness, they believed that children kept the balance that nature needed to rotate the earth or keep the sun rising in the morning or setting in the evening.
Children held the power to keep magic moving and alive. In their presence, it seemed like birds could not help but sing and dogs could not help but bark. The wind could not blow and the rivers could not flow without this magic. Children embodied the soul of nature.
So, when it was my turn, I nervously walked into the dark with the inner tube around my waist until I could feel the rushing of water around my bare feet (we had to leave our shoes by the large wooden door with the combination on it). As I tenuously stepped further into the swirly water, my feet were suddenly pulled out from under me by the force of the water and I was hurled into the invisible stream (for it was so dark there that I could not see anything but total blackness). It seemed that I was hurtled for minutes along