The town of Farinough runs longways north and south along the new Milpower Highway. Local residents pronounce the name as “fair enough” and you can always tell a newcomer because they call it “far enough” which in their case might be true. The Fleece Boll, which soon became known as the Drive-N-Knit, was situated at the far north of town and next to its only hill The hill overlooked the cemetery and was the center of attraction for winter sports, which, practically speaking, included only sledding, as the hill was not a high one. (Little Johnny Hornbeak was once found, cold but alive, in the bottom of old man Wendy’s freshly-dug grave. Apparently the path of his sled has coincided exactly with the coordinates of the place into which Mr. Wendy was to be lowered the next morning. This was truly terrifying for Johnny, who had tormented Mr. Wendy for years by sticking gum around the blades of his walking mower. Johnny felt that Mr. Wendy was exacting his revenge by pulling him into the grave with him.)
Since the Fleece Boll Drive-N-Knit was so close to the cemetery, mothers often found it convenient, after dropping their well-bundled children off for sledding, to pull their cars in and knit while the youngsters played. Eleanor and I would dutifully trot out to the cars to see if the occupants needed any needles or yarn or such. We would change sweaters after every trip out to the cars, thereby modeling the entire contents of the latest trunk show and often selling a lot of yarn because of it.
But to the teenagers and adulterers in the town, there were more practical uses for the conveniences of a drive-in knitting store. Ever since the drive-in theatre had closed, this segment of the population had been loathe to find a good spot for spooning. There were plenty of times I’d come to work early in the A.M. to find couples still going at it in their car, pulled right up to the speaker (and I thanked God every time that those speakers were just one way). But since we opened the shop at 5:30 in the morning and closed it at 10:00 at night, it was easy for folks to think that these desperate lovers were there for the yarn and knitting classes (which of course were conducted via the speakers. In fact, one of the more popular teenage boys in the town, Eugene McEwan-- Eu-ewe for short-- would come to realize years later that he knew methods for five different cast-ons, three types of increases and two types of decreases, not to mention basic knitting and purling. He could never explain it, but if he was to ask me, I could have told him that his favorite spooning time was always during Beginning and Intermediate Knitting class).
Little did I know that on the nights that she had off, Eleanor herself was often participating in unsanctioned activities at the Drive-N-Knit. Her partner was none other than Sammy Knowlens, the handsome, well-mannered and wealthy proprietor of the local Gilbert Milpower Taylor Inn whose only drawback was that he apparently could not remember that he was married and ought not to be carrying on about town. I could never quite figure out what his attraction to Eleanor was. Niki Knowlens (his wife) was the only daughter of Farinough’s Mayor Mondragon, and had been the former Miss Midwest. Despite having borne 3 large baby boys, she had maintained her figure and skin to perfection. Eleanor, by contrast, seemed driven to consume only by-products of pork; specifically, anything fried in lard. She was a large, overbearing and controlling woman with long, long red hair down almost to her knees. Because of her purported love for Wagner and her great penchant for dramatizing the mundane, she was often (behind her back) referred to as the Valkyrie.
In the winters of the great American Midwest, snow is an interesting thing. When it first falls it brings gasps of pleasure and admiration, cries of “it’s snowing, it’s snowing!” and the magical laughter of children. But after it has lain on the ground a while it becomes dirty and depressing, exaggerating all the faults of mankind and inventing new shades of winter gray. For this reason, the children of Farinough always wanted to sled early in the morning after a night snowfall, before the pristine beauty and happiness of the snow had been spoiled. The day of the Fleece Boll castastrophe was such a day.
Niki Knowlens got up early in the morning with her three boys, Nylan, Nils and Nate, stuffed them into their marshmallow suits and drove them over to the cemetery for some fun in the fresh snow. Niki was an avid knitter, and brought along mittens and socks to keep her occupied at the Drive-N-Knit while she kept one eye on the boys (after checking to be sure there were no open graves on the glide path).
As fate would have it, Eleanor and Sammy had chosen that very night to attend the drive-in and indulge their strangely inexplicable urge for wanton activity.
Now recall that Tommy Hendersons’ second cousin had married the Vice President of GM the previous June, and half the town at that time owned a paneled Mercury station wagon because of what Tommy always called the “Vital Volume Discount”. Tommy was a persuasive car salesman. So it was that Niki Knowlens sat knitting in her car at one end of the drive in while her husband Sammy was making out with Eleanor in an identical car at the other end. To be sure, the windows in Niki’s car were occluded not by passion, but by the hot coffee she poured from her Thermos, but the fact remains that the windows of both cars were obscured by steam, rendering them nearly identical in their slots at opposite ends of the Drive-N-Knit.
In the early morning moonlight, Nate, Nils and Nylan sledded gleefully in the cemetery, successfully avoiding grave markers and trees; dragging their sleds back up the hill time and time again. When the demands of their sport and the icicles hanging from their fur-rimmed cuffs and hoods suggested they might need a cup of hot chocolate, they headed back to the car. “Last one there’s a rotten egg!” sounded the challenge as all three balls of icy energy ran in a direct line to the first paneled station wagon they saw, threw open the doors and jumped in.
There must be a special descriptor for a situation where cold icicles on small boys meet hot bare skin inside a closed car, but I can’t find it anywhere. It might be superseded by that which depicts the cries of a beautiful mayor’s daughter, scorned in favor of a Valkyrie within sight of her offspring, I can’t be sure. But I do know for a fact that the two 3.25 mm scars on the back of Eleanor’s neck were begun that morning, and I can verify that they were made by the finest ebony knitting needles ever salvaged from an abandoned clarinet.