Lost Without the River Read online

  We spread the blanket beneath the tree, and then two of us grabbed a low branch and shook it, sometimes dangling in midair just for fun. The plums came bouncing down in a shower of delight.

  After we filled the tub and carried it home, the work began. These plums were only a little bigger than a shooter marble. In early summer, they had been pink with just a hint of orange. Days of sun had reversed the colors. Ripe plums were orange with a blush of pink. They had to be washed, each one pitted. Our eyes were always alert for worms. The fruit was then cooked with sugar and canned in jars that had been painstakingly sterilized.

  We often had home-canned fruit for dessert, but this batch was not ready to be eaten, not yet. If you did, the sauce was so sour, even with that added sugar, it would make your cheeks pucker and your eyes tear up.

  When winter settled in and the condensation from cooking made mountain peaks of frost on the inside of our kitchen windows, my mother made her wild plum cobbler. She opened a jar of sauce and dumped it into a pan. Then she added sugar and let it simmer on the back of the range. After an hour or so, she tested the sauce to determine if it was ready or if it needed more sugar. Then, in a large bowl, she put down a layer of one-or two-day-old bread, followed it with a layer of the plum sauce, and so on, until the bowl was filled. After that, she placed a heavy plate on top and set her creation on the back porch to mellow in the cold. She made wild plum cobbler only in the winter.

  When my mother served the dessert, she topped it with rich cream. The bread, now moist, was sweet but suffused with a slight tanginess, and lines of delicate pink swirled through its layers.

  II. BRIDGE, BARN, AND SILO

  THE BIGGEST SNAPPER EVER

  When Bob was seven and I was five, at an hour when my older brothers and father were already back in the fields after the midday meal and our mother was resting, gathering energy before she resumed her chores, without telling anyone, we slipped away. We went to the barn and found a gunny sack that, after having been used for some mundane chore, had been tossed into a corner. We carried the bag and set out through the gate by the horse barn. As it swung back into place, the pingy sound of metal hitting metal followed us for a while, before gradually fading away.

  We headed to the Big Rock. As we set off on our adventure, the midday heat seemed to have called for a recess. Birds rested silently in the cool shelter of the trees. We tried to be just as quiet as we walked along the dirt path. After a few minutes, we could see the top of the rock. As we crept along, we ignored the burning stings on our bare feet as they touched the hot granite.

  Bob and I scanned the surface where the rock dropped down to the water. We were in luck! There, taking a siesta, was our prey: a snapping turtle. I followed Bob’s silent directions, and in short, slow, synchronized steps, the two of us made our way toward it. Now, each with a hand on a side of the opening of the gunny sack, we advanced until we were right behind it. I pushed my fear down; I was aware that the turtle’s strong jaws could snap off a small hand. Then, when Bob motioned, we pounced forward and slung the bag over it. Together we quickly raised the bag, now heavy with its resisting contents. Bob took over. I took a deep breath in and watched as he twisted and tied the top.

  “This is the biggest snapper ever!” Bob proclaimed.

  With big grins, we each took a side of the bag again. The weight kept shifting unexpectedly from his side to mine as together we lugged our captive.

  That day wasn’t the first time that Bob and I caught a turtle and carried it to town, but it was the last. Each time when we reached the city limits, we turned onto a driveway that was no more than two ruts with weeds growing in the middle and walked to the second house, where the man who loved turtle soup lived. He never smiled when he came to the door, only turned back and disappeared into the interior. When his huge shape reappeared, he’d open the screen door just enough to drop coins into Bob’s waiting hand.

  The next summer, our garden produced an abundance of radishes, many more than our family wanted to eat. Together Bob and I pulled the plants, then dissolved the dirt still clinging to the red globes by sloshing them up and down in a pail of water. We made small bundles of radishes, securing them with pieces of string. Again there was the walk to town, farther this time, into the center. We walked to the only grocery store, located on Main Street. We hadn’t made any arrangement with the owner, so we just stood by the counter, which was a few inches above my head, until he noticed us. When he did, Bob did the talking. The grocer bought all of the radishes at five cents a bunch. Whether he did this out of the kindness of his heart or because he thought it a profitable deal, I’ll never know.

  My siblings and I created our own jobs, singly and as a group. John and Bill planted sweet corn. When it was ripe, all of us were in the fields at 4:30 a.m. We worked as a team. John and Bill picked the ears of corn, after expertly determining which ears were ripe by the thickness at the top of the ear. Bob and I counted as they carefully tossed the ears into the bags that we dragged along. My height was a disadvantage—the sharp edges of the leaves left razor-thin cuts on my face—but I was happy to be included and didn’t complain. I just kept trudging down the narrow paths between the tall corn plants, which at that hour were still wet with dew.

  I would watch my brothers and sisters load the full bags of corn into the truck to be taken to the grocery stores in Big Stone City and Ortonville, another town just across the state line in Minnesota. They were always there when the stores opened, beating out any competition. At the end of the season, John and Bill divvied up the profits, adjusting for the value of each of our labors in some unscientific but fair algorithm. I still remember my share one season: eighteen dollars!

  We were alert to new ways to earn money. In late winter I went door-to-door, convincing people, some who I didn’t know, that it was time to order Burpee Seeds. The thought of making my own money overrode my shyness. A few weeks later, I’d deliver small boxes containing the varieties my customers had selected. When the ground had thawed, my brothers drove the tractor to town and plowed gardens; some of those gardens would be planted with the seeds I’d sold.

  In spring and summer, my brothers seined the river for minnows, which they kept in a large aluminum tank set into the ground at the edge of our lawn. Shade from tall oak trees kept the water cool and the minnows healthy. Fishermen of all ages and both sexes drove down from town to buy bait. And, of course, as spring moved into summer there were berries, watermelon, and cantaloupe to be picked from our fields and sold.

  In winter my brothers set lines along the banks of the river, trapping mink, beaver, raccoons, red foxes, and muskrats in the sloughs. At that time, there was a fur trader in every town who would buy the animals, skin them, and transport the pelts to the Twin Cities to sell to a wholesale merchant.

  When customers asked for a dozen ears of corn, we always added a thirteenth. When ladling out minnows by the scoop, we added another quarter scoop. And when plowing a garden or snowplowing a driveway, my brothers set the price by the customer’s perceived ability to pay.

  But when we were accused of not being fair or when we viewed the buyer as unfair, beware! No thirteenth ear ever again to Mr. Kleinschmidt, owner of the grocery store in Ortonville, after he accused Helen of counting a sucker (an undeveloped ear) as one of a dozen. And no generosity shown to Mr. Mounce after our family learned how he treated his wife. To punish her for forgetting to turn off a light, he made her do the laundry by hand for years. So when Mr. Mounce drove down to our farm to purchase minnows, John always ladled out a disproportionate number of bull fish, which weren’t appealing even to the hungriest fish.

  After Bob and I carried the Biggest Snapper Ever to the man who loved turtle soup and asked him for an additional twenty cents because the turtle was so much bigger than any other he’d bought for sixty cents, and he refused, we turned, left, and carried the turtle back to the top of our hill. We dumped the giant turtle out there, knowing he’d find his way back to the river.
/>   My mother also contributed. She’d stop in the middle of some chore to answer a knock at the door. Cream that had been separated from the twice-a-day milkings of my father’s Holsteins was sought out for its richness, perfect for turning into whipped cream or homemade ice cream. She’d fill the glass jar that the purchaser handed her and, with a smile, thank him when he paid her sixty cents.

  When Bob was nine and his legs had grown long enough to reach the clutch and brake on the tractor, he deserted me to join the men and older boys in the fields. I continued alone. I accepted a job picking raspberries for my neighbor. These berry bushes thrived because they were in a hollow where high temperatures quickly ripened the fruit. Good for the berries, bad for me. There was no breeze to cool me or blow away the pesky gnats or mosquitoes. Worse than that, the job was boring and lonely. The next summer, I convinced MaryLee, my first friend, to join me. That made the long hours in the sun easier. MaryLee still hasn’t forgiven me.

  “We were little girls,” she said during our last visit. Her voice rose in indignation. “The heat, the prickly spines, the mosquitoes! For a nickel a basket! That wasn’t child labor, it was slave labor!”

  LIGHTENING THE LOAD

  Throughout the drought and the depression, neighbors met once a month, always in the evening, after the families had finished milking the cows and caring for the livestock. This gathering was called the Farmers’ Club. The location of those meetings rotated. The large graniteware coffee boiler and a slatted wooden crate containing sturdy mugs rotated, too. At those meetings the men and women discussed practical matters, of course, but the primary reason they dressed up and drove to the host farm was to socialize with others who were enduring the same travails.

  I remember—it may be my first memory—when, on one of those evenings, I crawled under the chair that my mother was sitting on and rested my head on a rag rug as the evening continued. No one could see me. I watched and listened. Songbooks were passed around and page numbers, in no particular order, called out. These were neighbors who didn’t look special to me in any way, but when they sang they made music more beautiful than any I’d ever heard. I felt they were singing from their hearts. “Oh, come to the church in the wildwood, oh, come to the church in the dell. No place is so dear to my childhood as the little brown church in the dell.…” They’d pause, another song would be named, a scuffle of pages, and they’d begin again.

  By this point in the evening, they’d already conducted a business meeting and enjoyed a program. I’m in possession of two notebooks, one with dues of fifty cents for each couple carefully recorded, the other with the scripts for original plays. Sample:

  “Margaret,” moaned Harold, “you promised me you wouldn’t

  buy another dress this season. What made you do it?”

  “Dear,” said Margaret, “the devil tempted me.”

  “Why didn’t you say, ‘Get behind me, Satan’?”

  “I did, and then he whispered over my shoulder, ‘My dear,

  it fits you just beautifully in the back.’”

  The characters named in the plays were always real; Harold and Margaret were neighbors of ours whom I remember well.

  After the program was finished, the women would excuse themselves and go to the kitchen to fetch more coffee for everyone. The hostess had made the brew by stirring a cracked egg—shell and all—into the boiling mixture to counteract the acidity of the bitter coffee. Each wife had brought a dessert—cookies or a cake, brownies or a jelly roll. The men sampled everything, explaining they didn’t want to offend any woman. Of course, all this time, the kids were competing wildly for the sweets.

  The songs continued. It would grow late. Then one practical member, remembering the early hour he had to be up the following morning, would begin softly, “I’ll take you home again, Kathleen.” When that song was completed, another voice would lead with “Good night, Irene, good night, Irene, I’ll see you in my dreams.”

  The men would look at their wives. There’d be a smile and a responding nod. As songbooks were gathered, someone would hum a bit, before starting, “Good night, ladies, we’re going to leave you now.” All would join in. The empty cups would be carried to the kitchen, the children rounded up, and the thank-yous and goodbyes would begin.

  WORKING TOGETHER

  Checking the fields was the best part of the day during the growing season. It was part of my father’s routine. In June, as the grains began to ripen, the trips became more frequent. After supper my father would open the kitchen door and, without bothering to step in, call out, “Mother, let’s go check on the crops.”

  In response, my mother usually took off her apron, ran a comb through her hair, and met him at the car. Occasionally, she demurred. “These strawberries will spoil if I don’t cook them up tonight.”

  “Those can wait. The day’s light won’t. Come,” my father told her.

  It was clear to me even when I was four that my father wanted her by his side. Without asking for permission, I’d slip into the backseat of the car. My brothers were perhaps fishing, enjoying the last of twilight. I always wanted to see more of what lay beyond our farmstead, and I never let pass an opportunity to escape the confines of my little world.

  The route changed according to the time of the season and the year. My father began renting acreage northwest of town once he was a bit more financially secure. Mother and I would stay in the car while he got out and walked into the fields. We were on higher ground here, so, as we waited, we were able to watch the sun slide down toward the horizon. Hills prevented us from doing that on our farm. A breeze would blow through the car windows; my father would climb back in, start the engine, and drive another half mile or so. I was quiet. Crickets chirped from the weeds and grasses near the car, frogs croaked from a nearby slough, and the melodic trill of a meadowlark floated in the air. I’d grow sleepy.

  When we arrived back at our house, my father would say, “Okay, out of the car, Barbara. Go get ready for bed.”

  One evening, his voice didn’t rouse me. Instead, when he turned the engine off, I wasn’t aware when he pulled the front seat forward, leaned in, and scooped me up. I awoke as he carried me into the house. I kept my eyes closed, relishing this special time in his arms.

  My father and the other farmers did their best to predict when the crops were at their peak, but nature never let them forget that she was in charge. In a matter of minutes, high winds could spring up and topple wide swaths of the slender stalks, a condition called lodging, which disrupted the leaf canopy of the stalks, resulting in a lower yield. Or rain might delay the work until the plants and soil dried out.

  When, after the Great Drought, the fields had once more begun yielding quantities of oats, rye, flax, and barley, seven neighboring farmers worked communally to harvest the crops. As they moved from farm to farm, men and boys, some as young as ten, worked from early morning until dusk.

  Days earlier, a binder had been driven through the fields to cut the stalks of grain and bind them into bundles with twine. Those had been gathered up and placed in small, tepee-like shocks, which allowed for air drying and offered some protection from rain.

  The shocks stood scattered throughout the fields haphazardly, like dice cast onto a table. The threshing machine was pulled in. Then the hard work began: the shocks were manually tossed into horse-drawn wagons and transported to the threshing machine, which separated grain stalks into kernels and straw, blowing the straw into huge piles. The men were always on a tight schedule. Dad came in one night at ten thirty. They had to move on to another man’s fields in the morning. At this point, the farmers paid the owner of the threshing machine a per-bushel rate.

  Some years later, new machinery became available. This equipment could make the field work much easier and could lessen the impact of diminished hands as my brothers, one by one, left for college and subsequent summer obligations. Coinciding with that upheaval in our family was my father’s purchase of a newly available threshing machine. His
good friend Heinie supplied his John Deere tractor, and the other farmers furnished wagons.

  Of course, those crews of men and boys had to eat. The farmers’ wives began planning the meals each would serve as soon as the schedule was set. Only then did they know the exact day when feeding the crew of twelve, sometimes as many as sixteen, would be up to them.

  To prepare for the Big Day, the previous afternoon my mother would have made a double batch of bread, saving some of the dough to make rolls. The baking—all of her cooking—was done using the wood-burning stove.

  The next morning, after serving breakfast to my father and brothers, Mother would make two pies and two spice cakes. While they were baking, she peeled potatoes. I went out to the garden, where I looked for perfectly ripe tomatoes, which I added to the cucumbers and beets I’d already gathered.

  Then it was time to make the lunch, which the men would eat in the field at 10:00 a.m. Two kinds of sandwiches made with the freshly baked bread; the cakes, cut into squares; jugs of water; egg coffee, which had been made and carried in the traveling Farmers’ Club kettle; and two small jars containing sugar and cream. The kettle’s companions, the sturdy Farmers’ Club mugs, were carried in their crate.

  As soon as the lunch left the kitchen, final preparations for the big meal began. A typical menu: roast beef, potatoes and gravy, boiled beets, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, cabbage salad, dinner rolls, and—to give the men a choice—both peach and apple pie.

  Earlier, my mother had filled a large pan with warm water. The pan, soap, and a flour-sack towel were placed outside the door. The sound of the crew preceded them. Stomping and talking and laughing, they entered and jockeyed for places at the table like teenagers. Mother and I carried in the serving dishes heaped with food. After the men had helped themselves and passed the dishes, for a short time the room was silent as they dug into the meal.