Dave Wood

Funny, you’re a stranger come here/come from another town. Funny I’m a stranger myself here/Small world, isn’t it?

That’s for sure, Johnny Mathis. I just received a long-distance phone call from Bloomington-Normal, Ill., where I taught 50 years ago. Who on earth might be calling from that flatland of corn and soybeans and State Farm Insurance policies?

It turned out to be an author named Chris Young who offered me news that refortified my steadfast belief that small-town newspapers and little-known book publishers help make the world go ‘round despite the unsavory efforts of the new era of A.T. (Age of Tesla).

I’ve been scribbling for half a century for little weeklies and small book publishers who print me, hoping readers around the country would read me and find an occasional tiny morsel of thought. One such reader was Chris Young, who explained why he was calling me:

“Are you the Dave Wood who has written for years about the traveling Negro baseball team, known as Gilkerson’s Union Giants?”

I pled guilty and confessed that I had written about my father’s story of the black man who showed up in our little snow-white town’s creamery carrying an empty rusty tin can which Dad filled with skim milk that remained after the last churning  and tossed in half of his own lunch, only to find out that the beggar was Cap Evans, the former ball player who had come to Whitehall each year to show off the Gilkerson’s Union Giants’ athletic and comic skills to the rustic rubes.

Dad’s haunting tale led me to do a bit of research about small-time barnstorming teams. In a wink, Gilkerson Union Giants popped onto my screen!

I was saddened that my father didn’t live long enough to learn that Cap Evans recovered from the Depression era that sent him begging to creameries in the Land O’ Lakes and went on to star with the big-league black teams like the Kansas City Monarchs and the Homestead Grays.

 And so what was 21^st century author Chris Young’s interest in that long-ago Gilkerson team?

“Because,” replied Chris Young, “I am finishing a book about the Gilkerson team, and you are—or rather your father is—the closest person I’ve ever gotten in touch with who actually SAW team member Evans do his stunts as a Union Giant. For years I’ve been running into your columns in Grit, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, and the Whitehall Times.  I was born in Spring Valley, Wis., and came across your telephone number in Pierce County Journal, and I thought I should give you a call about Cap—later called Hap—and tell you interesting things I’ve discovered about his later life….”

Digging through electronic files, Young discovered some stuff that Dad had missed. Like the $100 offered to any game attendee fan who could throw a baseball further than Evans. (No one ever managed). The outrageously down-to–earth Madison sportswriter “Roundy” Coughlin was one of Cap’s biggest fans; Cap’s real name was neither Cap, nor Hap, but William Damont Evans.ap, butHap, but William Demont Evans HH h

And finally, according to historian Chris Young, William Damont was the great-great-great-uncle of Megan Markle, the bride of Britain’s Prince Harry, one Windsor who exhibited some brains when selecting a mate. Small world isn’t it?!