Crunching Gravel (9 page)

The downstairs living room doubled as a bedroom. Here the parents slept in a single bed with the three smallest children. Upstairs, the four boys shared another bed, as did the girls, Margaret, Helen, and Lucille. No rooms had rugs or linoleum. Bill and George would lie on the floor directly over the dining table, collect bed fluff wood slivers, and mouse turds, and drop them through a crack into a pan of baked beans below. Daily, Mrs. Jolly baked bread and cinnamon rolls. She gave me thick slabs of hot bread smeared with bacon grease and peanut butter or wild-cherry (“pincherry”) jam. There was never enough silverware. The family ate at a rectangular oak table in two shifts, the older girls feeding the younger children. In the center of the clothless table, near a platter of fried pike and perch, stood the blue roaster full of beans. Bread, homemade jelly, butter, lard, fresh milk, coffee. To help yourself to food you simply reached into the roaster and then wiped your fingers on some bread. No plates matched, and most were cracked. Only the parents used spoons and forks. Cinnamon rolls. Fresh gooseberry pie.

At school Bill and George often took my part against Osmo Makinnen. Bill, blond, short, and muscular, was quieter than George, who had black hair like mine and was always mischievous. Both were good students. The three of us would start high school together. Bill later died at Monte Cassino in the early years of the war.

From the Jollys I learned how to fish, and they taught me the little I knew about sex. They seemed wiser than I, perhaps because they had older brothers, perhaps because they were raised far more permissively; their mother hardly had time to linger over their nurturing.

For our night swims in Perch Lake, Bill would bring matches, and after we swam, we'd rustle up wood for a fire. Bill had already reached manhood, but George and I lingered in late adolescence. One evening, George and I, naked, were horsing around, grabbing one another. Bill squatted near the fire watching. When George wrestled me to the sand, pinning my shoulders, Bill came over. His penis was hard. He started to play with it. George also began masturbating. I sat hunkered with my head on my knees, amazed, excited, yet vaguely embarrassed. Out in the lake, hundreds of toads swam toward our fire. As they hopped frantically ashore, we beat them with sticks and threw them into the flames. Then we doused the fire and left the beach.

My aunt Kate's eldest son, Albert, was illegitimate. His father, according to talk, was a handsome roustabout who had slept with Kate and then abandoned her before Albert was born. Dad always feared Kate. He blamed her for his brother Pete's death at age fifty-three, ostensibly from eating stale bologna sandwiches. Kate, Dad surmised, had tired of Pete, as she had of her other men. Dad feared he would be her next victim.

At twenty-one, Albert was a shy, lanky, sandy-haired youth with an engaging smile. He loved cars and had bought his own Model A from wages he earned at the local lumber mill. My uncle forced him to contribute most of his salary as room and board. To his mother and stepdad, he was a quasi-slave. He seemed to accept his persecutions; his mother never took his side, favoring the legitimate sons.

He often took me riding in his car, and I helped him with his chores. One evening, as we were playing five hundred rummy, a storm came up. My aunt said I should stay over. Albert offered to share his bed. During the night, he embraced me.

On the last Sunday of June, we went fishing for muskellunge. Albert's girlfriend, Rose Howe, came with us. We rowed through connecting streams to a pair of lakes on the famous Chain of Lakes, lakes ideal for muskie. Landing muskellunge was difficult. Rich sportsmen carried revolvers for the purpose, shooting the exhausted fish while it was in the water.

I trolled my line, and Albert trolled his. We used chub minnows for bait. At noon we ate lunch, had a swim, and then turned the boat against the current, toward town. I helped with the rowing. As we neared the channel, Albert got a strike, a big one! To play the fish until it was exhausted, we turned the boat around, facing the open lake. Fifteen minutes later, Albert managed to play the muskie close to the boat.

The fish was almost four feet long, a prizewinner. Though subdued, he might suddenly flash forth, ripping the hook from his mouth or even damaging the boat. Albert threw a mesh bag over him and drew it tight against the boat. While Rosa and I held the bag, Albert rammed a gaff at the skull, piercing it. The stunned fish thrashed for several minutes and then died.

My uncle, I was later told, dismissed the catch as paltry and berated Albert for taking the day off without his permission: He should have cultivated corn. His mother refused to cook the fish, even after Albert cleaned it. He gave most of the meat, wrapped neatly in newspaper, to my dad, keeping a steak for himself He shellacked the head, mounted it on a pine board, and hung it near his bed.

The next morning he found the mounted head crushed flat on its board. His brother Jim had smashed it with a hammer. An altercation ensued. From the start, Albert had the better of Jim—until their mother appeared and started to beat Albert with a stick. Jim swung an axe at Albert, who grabbed it and sent it flying into the grass. Jim retreated to his room, locking himself in. Kate screamed, berating Albert, claiming he had cut her. She seemed to want to drive him to more violence, to the suicide he had threatened on more than one occasion.

Albert entered the house, grabbed a .22 rifle, and declared he would kill himself Near the road, a few feet from his car, he died, a single clean hole visible behind his ear.

Hysterical, Kate sent my cousin Frenchy for my dad—Uncle Pete was in town. Albert appeared to be sleeping on his side with his knees drawn up. The gun was still in his hand, his finger on the trigger. The bullet hole seemed no larger than a hornet's bite. My mother stayed with Kate, who was screaming that it was all Albert's fault. Dad drove to town for the sheriff and the undertaker.

The funeral, two days later, was at Gaffney's. A fundamentalist preacher said a few words, but nothing personal, since he had seen Albert only twice in his life and my aunt and uncle were not members of his flock.

Some deaths jolt survivors into something like enlightenment over the cryptic and tragic nature of life. Albert's death served that function. I stand now in memory at the site, the luxuriant grass crushed where his body lay. I visit his grave. There are no answers.

The survival equation was clear: The harder we worked during the brief growing season, about ninety days, the better supplied with food we'd be for winter. Once the potatoes blossomed and the corn grew silk, the soil required mounding. When hilled, potatoes reproduced more prolifically, and corn plants better withstood wind and rain. Cheap canvas gloves protected our hands. Against sunburn, we wore straw hats.

We hoed for entire mornings or afternoons, stopping only long enough for swigs of ice-cold water from mason jars. We took pride in our neat rows, knowing Dad would be pleased.

By early July, potato bugs appeared. For picking these one by one, Dad paid us a nickel a quart. The bugs spit orange juice and stank. We filled quart jars, which we dumped into a pail of kerosene to kill the bugs. We also examined the undersides of leaves for deposits of orange eggs. We either picked the infested leaves and crushed them or rubbed the sides of the leaf together into an orange mush.

The vegetable garden required more weeding and hoeing than the fields. Radishes matured first, followed by string beans and peas. We picked the ripe vegetables and helped my mother can them. Beets—not one of our favorites—and carrots matured late. These we buried in sand under the living room floor. When the sweet corn was ready, we ate it at numerous meals and spent hours shucking and slicing kernels for canning. Dad made a special rack for the jars so we could process a whole wash boiler at a time. By September, the cellar shelves were crammed with jars. The cobs we fed to the pigs.

Of all the crops, strawberries and rhubarb were the most resistant to insects and diseases. We always had luck with strawberries, and we devoured gigantic shortcakes topped with mounds of whipped cream.

We took no daily newspaper and no magazines, and we rarely listened to radio news. The Sunday paper, which we bought, was long on features and short on current events. The editors loved sex murders, Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson, and Indian children raised by wolves.

In 1936 Hitler occupied the Rhineland. Italy annexed Ethiopia. King George V died and was succeeded by Edward VIII, who soon abdicated for Mrs. Simpson. The Spanish Civil War started, as did the war between China and Japan. Dachau was in operation.
Life
magazine first appeared in November 1936; we received a notice in the mail and subscribed. European turmoils rarely figured in its pages. Hitler was seldom mentioned. Parties, rich foods, new kitchen gadgets, and arcane moments in popular culture were featured. Nothing was designed to produce a single tremor of dismay in American readers, nor to inform them of the impending war.

Dad's friend, George Botteron, on a visit with his family insisted we tune the radio to Father Coughlin, the Jew-baiting, Hitler-loving Roman Catholic priest. Coughlin opened broadcasts with Hitler addressing the masses. When Dad expressed disgust, the Botterons stopped their visits.

Dad did, however, share the local distaste for Jews from Milwaukee and Chicago who made up our summer tourist population. To the impoverished locals, they were ostentatious with money, cars, and clothes. The women's makeup and scanty shorts were considered offensive. Their “pushiness” was also legend: they would shove you off the sidewalk, we believed. Caddies joked about serving Jewish women. They let the shorts-wearing players tee their own balls, so the caddies could catch glimpses of intimate flesh. The anti-Semitic myth of Jews as nontippers persisted. When Jewish golfers needed caddies, we often tried to hide behind the caddie shack.

Jews were shamelessly excluded from all resorts except one. Not until 1948, after World War II, were signs announcing “Restricted Clientele” prohibitied by law. The single resort catering to Jews was Eagle Waters. Any locals working there as handymen or maids were regarded as inferior by those employed at gentile resorts. Fishermen kept their boats well back from the river fronting Eagle Waters, certain that Jewish sewage contaminated the game fish.

Many girls were more than willing victims, Falling for promises of a glamorous, rich life away from Eagle River. Most such promises were summer-short. When the Lotharios returned to the city, the girls remained behind disillusioned, tainted, and often with child, accusing the summer residents of having shamelessly exploited them. No hard-working local male would marry such used goods, The conflict between the local ethos of poverty, constancy, and illiteracy and the glamorous allure of city life destroyed many of these girls and intensified the anti-Semitism. Some girls lingered in the town. Once their beauty faded, they turned to alcohol, welfare, and prostitution. Others disappeared into the cities to the south.

One Jew, Harry Holperin, lived permanently in Eagle River. He reputedly had sold apples on the streets of Chicago during the Depression, eventually earning enough money to buy a grocery in Eagle River. Here he married a gentile and became a town booster. His grocery carried foods for the tourist trade. He was accepted as a “white Jew,” which meant he was inconspicuous and not pushy. When he grew rich, he still lived in modest rooms above his store. He traveled often to Milwaukee, where it was rumored he had complex business dealings. His wife, Orpha, helped by his two sons, looked after the grocery. Since the store was seasonal, after Labor Day it opened only on weekends. Holperin, a gracious man of much charm, contributed generously to the high school band fund, and he gave numerous local boys their first jobs, training them in his store. I was one of these boys, and remain most grateful to him and to his family.

Anti-Semitism was thoroughgoing, worsening during the summer when tourists tripled the population. Since they constituted no economic threat, Indians were less the butt of prejudice. Dislike for Indians festered month after month, but anti-Semitism was far more virulent. No blacks were visible in town, either as inhabitants or tourists. After World War II, as locals migrated to work in the auto plants of Racine, Milwaukee, and Beloit and competed with blacks for menial jobs, more bigotries arose. Most locals cheered Hitler's efforts to control the Jews; however, most, I think, would have been horrified by the gas chambers.

The Fourth of July was a replay of Memorial Day, without the funereal solemnities. Dr. McMurray's services were not required—no commemorative wreaths were dropped from his biplane to honor dead servicemen. The July parade was more elaborate and stressed humor. Clowns sought to keep an old Model T running. Floats carried bathing beauties tossing candy, Indians in regalia, local politicians, mounted cowboys dressed like Gene Autry. Other floats urged more fishing, hunting, and golf The parade disbanded at the county fairgrounds where in the evening there would be fireworks.

At home we feasted on chicken and dumplings, fresh lettuce drenched with milk and sugar, tomatoes, pies, and watermelon. The day was sultry, continuing the pattern for the week. Despite our high elevation, over a thousand feet, our usually dry air was uncomfortably humid. Huge mosquitoes swarmed. Unless you had immunity, venturing into the woods and swamps was a nightmare of mosquito attacks. We sprayed the cattle twice a day. Not only were they plagued by mosquitoes, but huge flies burrowed through their hides, depositing eggs in clusters beneath the skin. The spray, bought from a Watkins dealer, did not kill insects but was sufficiently noisome to keep them from alighting. If we failed to protect Lady, her milk dried up.

We managed to keep the house fairly free of mosquitoes. Screens fit well, and my mother nagged us to keep the doors closed. Evenings, we took a pail with holes punctured in the sides, arranged dry wood shavings in the bottom, lighted them, added more wood, and then covered the fire with green grass. We burned this smudge throughout the house. The thick smoke either drove the insects out or numbed them so we could smash them.