Milt Daggett had not been accurate in his implication that he had not
noticed Claire at a garage in Schoenstrom. For one thing, he owned the
garage.
Milt was the most prosperous young man in the village of Schoenstrom.
Neither the village itself nor the nearby Strom is really schoen.
The entire business district of Schoenstrom consists of Heinie
Rauskukle's general store, which is brick; the Leipzig House, which is
frame; the Old Home Poolroom and Restaurant, which is of old logs
concealed by a frame sheathing; the farm-machinery agency, which is
galvanized iron, its roof like an enlarged washboard; the church; the
three saloons; and the Red Trail Garage, which is also, according to
various signs, the Agency for Teal Car Best at the Test, Stonewall Tire
Service Station, Sewing Machines and Binders Repaired, Dr. Hostrum the
Veterinarian every Thursday, Gas Today 27c.
The Red Trail Garage is of cement and tapestry brick. In the office is a
clean hardwood floor, a typewriter, and a picture of Elsie Ferguson. The
establishment has an automatic rim-stretcher, a wheel jack, and a
reputation for honesty.
The father of Milt Daggett was the Old Doctor, born in Maine, coming to
this frontier in the day when Chippewas camped in your dooryard, and
came in to help themselves to coffee, which you made of roasted corn.
The Old Doctor bucked northwest blizzards, read Dickens and Byron,
pulled people through typhoid, and left to Milt his shabby old medicine
case and thousands of dollars--in uncollectible accounts. Mrs. Daggett
had long since folded her crinkly hands in quiet death.
Milt had covered the first two years of high school by studying with the
priest, and been sent to the city of St. Cloud for the last two years.
His father had meant to send him to the state university. But Milt had
been born to a talent for machinery. At twelve he had made a telephone
that worked. At eighteen he was engineer in the tiny flour mill in
Schoenstrom. At twenty-five, when Claire Boltwood chose to come tearing
through his life in a Gomez-Dep, Milt was the owner, manager,
bookkeeper, wrecking crew, ignition expert, thoroughly competent
bill-collector, and all but one of the working force of the Red Trail
Garage.
There were two factions in Schoenstrom: the retired farmers who said
that German was a good enough language for anybody, and that taxes for
schools and sidewalks were yes something crazy; and the group who
stated that a pig-pen is a fine place, but only for pigs. To this
second, revolutionary wing belonged a few of the first generation, most
of the second, and all of the third; and its leader was Milt Daggett. He
did not talk much, normally, but when he thought things ought to be
done, he was as annoying as a machine-gun test in the lot next to a
Quaker meeting.