Crunching Gravel (6 page)

 

The ritual Saturday night baths were always easiest in warm weather. We heated water on the woodstove—filling the copper boiler was my chore—then dumped it into a galvanized tub. Mom arranged a spot near the kitchen range, draping blankets over chairs for privacy.

My brother Everett, my sister Margie, and I drew straws for the first bath. The longest straw went first; the shortest bathed in the water used by the other two. There was always fussing as we scooped off the gray soapy scum (we called it “dirt”). Not until puberty did I enjoy my own bathwater. We used Ivory soap most of the time and, for a special treat, Lifebuoy. We believed the ads: Lifebuoy prolonged our lives. Certainly, the odor was astringent. Ivory, on the other hand, because of its reputed purity (wasn't it 99 and 44/100 percent pure?) appealed to my mother. Once we kids were bathed, Mom bathed in fresh water. She lingered in her bath while Dad waited to take his.

Always the crude one, Dad bathed only when Mom insisted. “Dirty Old Pup” was her epithet for him, delivered not entirely without love. My mother washed his back. Then he toweled himself singing.

 

We hung bedding on clotheslines. We placed mattresses on old newspapers and checked for ticks and bedbugs. If there were infestations, eggs dormant during the winter would soon hatch. We were usually free of vermin. Where did bedbugs come from? From Welfare? From a visitor? One spring my brother and I were viciously bitten. Dad mixed kerosene and creosote and sprayed our mattress with a Fly-Tox sprayer, soaking the areas infested with eggs. Fortunately, the creatures did not spread to the other beds that year.

Once the teacher found lice on our scalps and sent us home with a note. Mom washed our heads with creosote cut with a small amount of kerosene, careful not to get it in our eyes. None of us liked the noisome odor, but knew there was no other way to rid ourselves. After a good shampooing, Mom combed dead lice and eggs from our hair. Two such treatments were required. To have lice was a terrible stigma; you were “dirty.” Spring, alas, brought onslaughts of other vermin, including mice and rats.

Spring was also the time for new linoleum. For greater insulation, the new coverings went right over the old. The aroma of varnish and petroleum filled the house. We soaked our hooked rugs in soap and water. My job was to wring them out. The frayed ones we took apart, saving the cloth strips for hooking more rugs. One of the last chores was washing the windows with a mixture of hot water and vinegar.

 

The redhorse, a scavenger fish related to the carp, spawned in late March. Only then, in those ice-cold flowages, was redhorse edible. Fortunately, the fish inhabitated very few lakes. They were bottom-feeders; their large hinged mouths scooped up mud, sifting out whatever debris—carrion, leaves—was edible. In shallower lakes the water grew so muddy that game fish died, or migrated elsewhere on the Chain of Lakes free of scavengers.

For taking redhorse, Dad fashioned a spear of three spiked nails driven through a birch pole that had been smoothed to bare wood. He angled the nails to give the effect of Triton's spear and then filed the nails to sharp points, fashioning a small barb above each point to secure the struck fish.

Only two more hours of daylight: Redhorse ran best late in the day. We parked in a grassy area above the fast-moving water. Against the sandy bottom, meandering fish were visible. Some waited in place, depositing roe. My uncle had already arrived. I heard my cousins' voices upstream. The horizon was utterly blue, with a hint of a salmon tint from the setting sun. In the distance rose a pair of pine-covered hills. Honking Canada geese flew north to nesting areas.

The stream was about two feet deep, with the occasional deeper pockets preferred by largemouth bass. Dad told me to bring the gunny sacks.

He speared from shore. When he flung a fish on the grass, its weight tore it from the spear barbs. Although the water was icy, Dad decided he'd wade in for better luck. When he began to lose feeling in his toes, he came out and massaged his feet. Then he returned to the water. The fish, frenzied to spawn, kept coming. In less than an hour I had filled three gunny sacks. We strung more fish on clothesline rope.

Dad dried his feet and put on his shoes, and, after dumping the fish into the car, we set off to find my uncle. They had filled a dozen gunny sacks. The redhorse had never been so prolific.

That night we scaled, gutted, and filleted the fish, which we smoked in my uncle's smokehouse. In exchange, we kept the fires going. The best-tasting fish required a week's smoking.

I loved this plenitude: There were more fish than we could eat. And smoked fish kept indefinitely. “Redhorse eat drowned people,” my mother said. We devoured the fish cold, boiled, fried—in casseroles and sandwiches and with sourdough pancakes.

That we might starve was a common fear. Counting on relatives was difficult. Though my uncle had a larger and richer farm than ours, his selfish wife, Kate, rarely shared their largesse. The burden on Dad of keeping us supplied with food was immense. If there was no money for meat, if the Welfare supplies ran out, there was only one alternative—hunt and fish. He worried particularly in early spring when our potatoes and carrots had gone soft, sprouting in the root cellar. But soon Lady would have fresh grass for pasture, her milk would turn sweet, and she would drop a new calf And our vegetable garden would grow.

 

With ice pick and hammer we chipped ice from deposits near the pump. When a gunny sack was full, we smashed the bag broadside with the hammer to crush the ice for our single-quart hand freezer. Mom prepared a mixture of canned blueberries—our favorite—or of fresh or canned strawberries, cream, sugar, vanilla, and beaten egg, dumped it into the can, inserted the dasher, and placed the whole into the wooden freezer, securing the crank top. We packed the ice loosely, alternating layers with salt. After nearly an hour of churning, the ice cream was set. The person who cranked the mixture got to lick the dasher for an extra serving.

 

The pink and white flowers of the rare trailing arbutus, indigenous to a few of the northernmost regions of the United States, exuded a special fragrance. Peeping forth from patches of snow, they seemed pure. The rarest blooms were tinged with lavender.

My sister and I made morning excursions for the flowers, shaped them into small bouquets, packed them with wet starflower moss, wrapped the moss in waxed paper, and filled two oblong cake pans with them. At 6
P.M
. Dad drove us to the railway station. The train from Milwaukee, bringing fishermen and tourists, arrived at 6:30.

Margie and I positioned ourselves on the platform where most of the passengers detrained. We were shy, and I felt more than a tinge of self-pity for our poverty. Since I found it difficult to ask for a sale, I positioned myself in front of a potential customer and held up some arbutus, mumbling, “ten cents.” For large bouquets we asked a quarter. The selling took less than an hour; by that time the train had moved on toward Land O'Lakes. We sold about half of our flowers, making slightly over a dollar apiece. The remaining bouquets we hawked in various stores along Main Street. My dad, easily affronted, took it as a personal insult when a storekeeper refused to buy. We enjoyed a good season if we cleared $20. Except for an occasional fifty cents for a movie at the Vilas Theater, we saved the money in a tomato juice can for fall school clothes.

 

Our Sears, Roebuck Silvertone operated on storage batteries. We were so far from the transmitters in Chicago and Milwaukee that reception, except for early mornings and after dark, was filled with static. The radio, covered with a crocheted doily in a pineapple pattern, sat on a shelf above our dining table.

“Stella Dallas” was my mother's favorite program. Every morning, Dad tuned to WLS, “The Prairie Farmer Station,” for the country music stars. Evenings we heard “I Love a Mystery” and “Amos and Andy.” My favorite comedian was Fred Allen. I despised George and Gracie and found Jack Benny only marginally funny. I rarely found “The Lone Ranger” or “Jack Armstrong” absorbing. Our Saturday ritual: Dad bought peanuts in the shell and the Sunday Milwaukee
Sentinel
. We were on our honor not to read the comics until dark. Then out came the peanuts and paper, and on went the radio. My program was “The Hit Parade.” For an entire year I kept meticulous records of all the top songs, awarding elaborate percentages, so that on December 31st I would know the year's winners. My statistics were pointless, however, for on the final Saturday of the year the program featured its own rundown of the top songs.

 

Two persons influenced my religious beliefs: Mrs. Ohlson and Adeline Mattek. Mrs. Ohlson arrived early that spring with two teenagers, Fern and Russell, and convinced Dad to let her refurbish a dilapidated shack we had on our property. She had separated from her husband, Harry, a fellow WPA worker on my dad's road-building crew. Harry, in fact, first broached the subject with Dad, saying that he would stay in town in a room but that he couldn't afford to rent both a house for his family and a room for himself Dad agreed to help this mild-natured man, and on one weekend Dad, Harry, and Russell erected a shack of poplar poles just a stone's throw from our house.

Through that summer Mrs. Ohlson sunbathed in bra and panties, displaying herself on an old army cot. Her teenagers found work in town, so the entire day was hers. She was in her late forties and had sagging bosoms and a floppy stomach. Her hair was done up in tightly rolled curlers. She was often tipsy.

Margie and I would sneak up on her, hiding, making animal sounds and throwing pebbles on her roof Mrs. Ohlson would scream that she knew who we were and then lie back quietly on her cot.

On one occasion she caught us red-handed; and when she challenged us, clad in her usual scanty fashion, Margie ran off while I stayed to face her.

She motioned for me to sit. “I don't hurt you,” she began. “Why do you hurt me?” I had no answer. She brought cookies from the house and then began to talk about God, extolling a “personal relationship” with Jesus as her lodestone. She asked me if I had been baptized. I said I had never been to church.

She picked up the Milwaukee
Sentinel
. “Here.” She pointed to an article on the “Imminent End of the World.” A sect in Mattoon, Illinois, her home town, had given away all their earthly goods and was planning to sit on their church roof at midnight on May 15th, Armageddon Day, to be assumed directly into heaven. “If they're right,” Mrs. Ohlson said, “since I've been baptized, I'll go to heaven. But you and your family will never get there. You're heathens.” She depicted hell in frighteningly vivid terms.

During the next weeks, Mrs. Ohlson seemed obsessed with Armageddon; her newspaper carried even more features on the heralding sect. My parents declared Mrs. Ohlson “bonkers.” That's why Harry had left her. Whether you go to heaven, my dad insisted, depends not on your being sprinkled with preacher water but rather on your conscience. God doesn't care, about churches; He cares about your soul. You don't need mumbo jumbo. My mother's views were conditioned by her views of social inequity. If we did attend church, she felt, our clothes would betray us. The townsfolk would be condescending. Such attitudes, she insisted, had nothing to do with God. All are equal in His sight. If you wore a grass skirt, painted your rear end with varnish to keep it warm, or dressed in the latest fashion, it was all the same to God.

May 15 was flawlessly clear, hot enough for a straw hat. By late afternoon, black clouds had formed; they lingered in the north, producing a brilliant sunset. Going to bed that night was a special ritual for me. Good-nights, embraces, kisses. I kept my apprehensions to myself and read the Bible—chapters dealing with Christ's arrest, crucifixion, and ascension. Shortly after midnight, winds and rain of cyclonic force shook the house with incredible lightning, thunder, and hailstones. I covered my head and prayed, sure that the house would be swept off, that we would all be killed. If only I were baptized!

The night passed. Several large trees near the road were uprooted. Heavy rain filled the swampy depressions below the house. The sky was sunny and windblown, the air fraught with a fresh chill. Mrs. Ohlson's predictions had not come true. I was not disappointed when the woman took herself and her children back to Matoon at the end of the summer.

 

Adeline Mattek seldom glanced at our house. No matter the weather, this remarkable girl, scarred with a harelip, never missed Saturday mass. On this particular morning there had been a deep snowfall. The county plow was not yet working. Adeline appeared wearing an ankle-length green wool coat, a knit scarf and a large navy blue cap. She walked fast with her head down, which gave the illusion that she was about to fall on her fece. Perhaps that was how she hid her harelip.

I had seen the inside of her home only once, when I stopped for a drink on my way to find Lady, who had strayed. An impression remains of two rooms, one filled with sagging beds and couches where Adeline, her four brothers and sister, and her parents slept. (One brother, Charlie, was the musician who fished with my dad and eventually married my North Dakota cousin Evelyn.) Gunny sacks had been sewn together and filled with straw for mattresses. Although Adeline, about seventeen, was the elder of the two daughters, she lingered in the background while her sister gave me milk to drink.

She had dropped out of school and now stayed home looking after her family. Her joy was her religion. Adeline puzzled me, and as my fear of hell grew, I grew obsessed, loving her with a platonic intensity.

As Easter neared, I read the Bible with increasing fervor. Whether I understood or not, each word was truth. Even the interminable “begat” verses were mines of spiritual ore. I meditated over the saccharine color prints of Jesus with lambs, of Jesus being scourged, of Jesus dying, and I began to talk to Jesus, shaping the air with my hands, imagining Him as my very own.