The Wabasha Street Painter (Part Two of Two, She Dies)

third

two weeks later

Well, Ella and Tony got married, they’re not leaving St. Paul, and Earnest, he’s still part of the team. They just got back from their honeymoon, they went to Chicago, about four hundred miles from where they live; took a train and enjoyed the sites of the city, the museum and Navy Pier. Mr. Nelson has provided them with a larger apartment above the bar, at the same price Tony was paying for the bedroom. (He likes Tony, and I think this puts a thorn in Cory’s side, and Mr. Nelson likes that.) He even has a bathroom in his room, not like his previous dorm, a public one where the other two apartments were. he had to share.

Cory is mad, he was hoping that Tony and Ella would at least stand up to him, and he was so mad that he went and found that old man’s daughter, Lilly Olson, who was pretty, not as pretty as Ella, but pretty, and he married her . whim. Now both Ella and Lilly are pregnant, and Earnest Colman has found a girl named Anna, whom he is to marry.

Tony changed his name to Douglas, his other name was too hard for everyone to pronounce, so he told his wife, and he’s much happier with it. And so it is for his wife, Ella Douglas, and now his new child, who is a boy, Frank Douglas. Cory’s wife has a little girl and they named her Rita Gunderson.

It’s 1918, and Tony has been drafted into the US Army (World War I is underway) and is leaving for Europe, his wife Ella with their second child. He is in a non-combatant area, a cook; Cory also enters the army, he is a first lieutenant and Tony, a private. Cory is in the trenches in France, Tony is still in England, and General Pershing has been talking to the Germans about an armistice. Therefore, they will only have served perhaps 18 months each in the Service, by the time they are released.

They both arrive home in 1919 and are discharged from the army;
Tony has discovered that he has a daughter named Betty; and Cory also has another daughter, named after his wife Lilly (mother is Lilly Olson Gunderson).

A dispute remains between these two people, it develops in silence, but it is there nonetheless.

IV

Time: 1923

She dies, double pneumonia, her tombstone in Oakland Cemetery reads:

‘Ella Colman Douglas

Born 1889-1923

Wife of Tony S. Douglas

“She was the best part of my life”

It is 1924. It is Saturday morning. Tony has done well, he lives on Arch Street, in his own house with his two children. He continues to work as a painter and runs a restaurant, Ella’s brother Earnest takes care of him when he is working at his other job. The restaurant is on Wabasha Street, near Mr. Nelson’s bar, in fact, he helped Tony broker the deal to buy the place. He is now thirty years old (born in 1893; his late wife was older than him).

v

Time: 1945

Frank, he entered the army, the Second World War, in 1942 he entered and in 1945 he was killed in Italy. Tony just received a Purple Heat from the government for his son’s bravery and valor in the line of duty. He is now fifty-two years old, past middle age, and about the same age as Cory. Lilly is also about her age.

Tony’s only daughter, Betty, has taken a liking to Cory’s son, Robert Gunderson (I know I haven’t told you until now, Cory had a son, but he does); Betty is older than Robert by several years. But they have been seeing each other at the restaurant when Tony was away. Earnest hasn’t said a word to anyone about it. And now Betty has confronted her father, and he is very alarmed. And Robert has stood up to his father, and it’s also kind of historic on the matter.

Cory Gunderson says no to the marriage, and so does Tony, until Earnest comes out and says, “I think you forgot how you met Ella, you two eloped, and now you’re blocking two people who love each other. What would happen?” She says?”

Tony thinks about what Earnest says (and of course he could say something more heartbreaking, if he wants to). And Tony says, “Okay, I’ll give you my blessing.”

But Cory doesn’t, and won’t. And Lilly won’t marry unless her father agrees. Out of spike she stands firm.

Meanwhile, Lilly marries a Jewish boy, Peter Coddon, but her husband is unable to have children, and of course this is not known at the time, until revealed by the veteran’s doctor (after several years of trying). , who has a theory that it’s not her but him, an old will from World War II; a piece of metal pierced her groin area, when she was loading ammunition from one trench to another, and went flying several feet into the air, becoming a medical casualty, where she later returned to the United States. She had thought that everything was fine, of course, unless she lied. And now Cory is an old man of maybe 65, he’s fuming after hearing the news. He has no grandchildren, nor will he.

7th

Time: 1959

Tony is now 67, as is Cory, he also has no grandchildren, and Tony has now fired Earnest, after learning he was bringing home his wife and three children, lots of produce and pounds of meat (weekly), God knows how long. he had been doing this. But it doesn’t seem to faze him, he’s fine either way. He has three children as I have already said, and they gave him three grandchildren each, and

one of her grandchildren is seventeen and pregnant, soon to be a great-grandfather. Cory and Tony have remained enemies for the most part, ever since they met some 50 years ago. Betty, now getting older, cleans the house for Tony and does a lot of the housework. She’s been dating a man on the block, but she never marries him: he’s married to a woman in another town who won’t give him a divorce because of a shared grocery store they both own together, and this is now his single income.

Cory’s son Robert takes over his business that Cory inherited from his father.

Note: written in the form of a short version [skeleton] for screen 03/04/2006; you can put more dialogue, of course.