Lost Without the River Read online

  As the satisfied crew, their stomachs now full, walked back through the kitchen, each offered a sincere thank-you. Mother and I filled our plates. We didn’t bother to clear the table but sat and ate. Of course the dirty dishes were waiting to be washed and dried, and the second lunch had to be prepared so it could be on its way to the fields by 3:00 p.m.

  As they moved from farm to farm, the men worked hard in the fields. They became hot and sweaty. Their reward was eating and enjoying the best of each wife’s cooking.

  In an unspoken competition, the women always served their specialties. My mother’s were her homemade bread and her pies, with their incomparable crust. Heinie’s wife, Hattie’s, specialty was raised doughnuts, still warm from the kitchen, which she packed in a large aluminum tub and had carried to the field. All these years later, my brothers still talk about those doughnuts.

  These were the golden days of threshing: farmers toiling together with enthusiasm and gusto. These families, and other farm families in a ten-or-so-mile radius, were a close-knit group. They didn’t always agree, and they didn’t share a nationality or a religion. Their bond was the land and the work it demanded.

  Later, in 1952, a more distant neighbor purchased a revolutionary machine, a combine. Shocks of grain no longer had to be gathered and lifted up into a wagon. As a tractor pulled the combine through the field, it cut swaths, gathered the plants, and, separating the kernels from the straw, deposited the grain into a bin. A conveyor belt dropped the kernels directly into a truck that trailed behind. The combine saved the men labor and time. The women’s workload continued unchanged.

  It was in those earlier days when the threshing machine was still being used that the usual routine was interrupted. After we’d returned from church one Sunday (we’d attended the earliest Mass), my father and brothers changed into work clothes, hurriedly ate breakfast, and headed out to the fields.

  The ring of our phone on our party line—long, short, long—interrupted the quiet of our house. I was with Mother in the kitchen as she was preparing the big meal of the day. She hurried to the phone at its place on the dining room wall. I heard her say hello, then, after a short while, “I’ll be right there.”

  “Barbara, go change back into your church dress. We’re going to the Wachters’.”

  This made no sense to me, nor did what my mother did next. She removed the special-for-Sunday caramelized sweet rolls from their Pyrex dish and placed the whole circle of them in a brown bag.

  Seeing the look on my face she said, “I’ll explain as we walk.”

  We hurried up the driveway. I had to do an extra hop every few steps to keep up with her.

  “Something very sad has happened. Mr. Wachter died this morning.”

  I had never thought a mother or father could die.

  We took the shortcut by leaving the dirt road and crossing an untilled hill. The white house sat in the open. The yard, which was smaller than ours, had only a few flowers near the door. I knew this place. It was all familiar to me. Delores, who was a year older, and I sometimes played together.

  Mrs. Wachter came to the door. She had on the apron I liked, the one with the yellow sunflowers, but nothing else was familiar. Her face was swollen, her hair uncombed. She didn’t give me a hug. She didn’t even look at me.

  “What am I going to do?” she wailed. She fell into my mother’s arms.

  As she held Mrs. Wachter, Mother looked down at me, “Go up and talk to Delores.”

  I climbed the narrow stairs. The second floor was small, the ceiling indented in two places by the shape of the roof. Delores and I had spent long afternoons here, hanging up sheets and blankets, turning the space into a multiroom mansion. In one of those rooms on a rainy afternoon, Delores and I counted her comic books. This had been special. I knew if my family did have extra money to spend, we would never use it to buy comic books.

  I stopped as I reached the top step. Dolls and toys were tossed about. The comic books were torn and spread all over the floor. I started to ask, “Who?” But then, with a terrible feeling in my stomach, I realized it was Delores who had wrecked her own treasures. Delores didn’t look at me. She stayed seated on the floor. I didn’t know what to do. The two of us sat there without saying a word until my mother called, telling me it was time to go home.

  Monday morning, the neighbors conferred. Early the next day, shortly after sunrise, a procession, with the John Deere tractor in the lead, traveled to the top of the hill, where they harvested the fields of the grieving widow.

  AN EYE ON THE RIVER

  “Barbara. Pour some more coffee for Heinie.”

  Other neighbors were Mr. This and Mrs. That, but Heinie was always just Heinie. And his wife was always just Hattie.

  My mother told me they were my godparents. I felt really good about that, until my brothers informed me that this was because by the time I came along—that’s the way they said it, “by the time you came along,” as though I were found wandering down our driveway one summer afternoon—my parents had run out of Catholic relatives and friends to serve as godparents.

  “And please take him an ashtray. Not that it will do any good.” Mother dropped her voice to a whisper when she said the last.

  Heinie had a habit of smoking without knocking the ash off his cigarette, without even taking it out of his mouth between puffs. When he smoked, Heinie removed the cigarette only once, right after lighting it, when he took a breath in. Ever after, it stayed at the left corner of his mouth, secured by a little curl of his lip.

  I’d watch, trying not to stare, as Heinie continued to talk and the ash continued to grow. It grew longer, wound up a little, thinned out, began to crack, and then, at last, dropped on Heinie’s pants leg. Without pausing, he’d try to pick up the ash, succeeding only partially, aim what he’d managed to pick up at an ashtray, if one were nearby, or, more often, place the ashes in the cuff of his work pants, never pausing as he continued his story.

  “Damn!” That was as profane as Heinie or my father ever got in my mother’s presence.

  “All those years our land was blowing away without rain, all those years of trying to keep families and livestock alive without water. Now we have that beautiful snow cover ready to soak in, and it turns so warm, so fast, the earth’s still frozen and that water’s running right down into that river of yours, adding to all that melting ice.”

  He took the cigarette butt, and, even though I’d put the ashtray right in front of him, out of habit he put it into his pants cuff, some part of him unable to let all those years of drought go, years when the end of a cigarette tossed carelessly would ignite tinder-dry grasses and weeds and bring disaster.

  “Thanks for the coffee, Myrtle. And those sweet rolls. Good as ever,” he said, as he passed through the kitchen.

  He paused at the door with his hand on the knob.

  “And, Roy, if it stays this warm, I’d keep an eye on that river of yours.”

  THE RIVER

  The river was a part of our family, with its own personality and moods. Sustaining, playful, violent. Ever-changing.

  In summer, in a few places where the river narrowed, I could walk across it on large stones without getting my feet wet. Just a game. I was always barefoot in summer. There was one pool off the Big Rock that stayed deep, dark, and cool. Perfect for swimming. If I husked the sweet corn just picked from our field quickly enough, there might be time for me to join my brothers for a short dip while my mother finished the noon meal. Swimming spiked our appetites. Even so, when our mother called, “Dinner’s ready,” we took a few more shallow dives and lazy paddles around the pool before we grabbed towels from the rock and raced to the house.

  In early winter, the river froze in a few places. Our parents cautioned us about the thin ice, and I looked at the river but never tried to cross to the other side. Instead I walked along the river’s edge, watching where the water bubbled up through holes in milky-colored ice as it moved quickly over the shallows. As I walked through
a pristine new layer of snow on the bank, I kept my eyes open for the trails of rabbits, squirrels, and other small wild animals. Their tracks were as precise as cookies, stamped into dough with cutters and lined up on a baking sheet waiting to be placed in the oven.

  After several days of subzero weather, the river was ready for skating. Bob and I kept to the main pool, where the ice was thick, but occasionally our older brothers guided us safely around dangerous patches of thin ice as we skated farther from the house.

  The familiar banks of summer were gone. Brown stalks stood where there had been impenetrable green weeds and bushes. Animal burrows that had been hidden could now be seen. Colors were muted, and the cold air sent our voices far away into the distance.

  On a few enchanted nights, my brothers and I skated downriver by moonlight. In the cold air, our breath rose around us in ever-changing clouds. The sky was an overturned bowl above our heads. The stars crowded each other, the Milky Way a magnificent, sparkling sweep across the curve of the universe. The moon hung large and lemon pale. We were alone in the world. The only sounds were the rhythmic scraping of our blades, our shouts, and our laughter.

  Even at its most vulnerable, the river provided for our lives. When it dried up during the Great Drought, only a few stagnant pools remained. That water was reserved for the cows. Because there was no hay, Russian thistle, commonly called tumbleweed, substituted for their feed. The cows’ milk was, of course, separated into cream and skim milk. The cream was sold for pennies. The skim milk was mixed with bran and the tumbleweed and fed not only to the cows but to the other farm animals as well.

  Turtles, without any place to hide, were easy to catch, and so turtle soup supplemented our diet.

  Heinie supported his family on the damaged goods of our dried-up river. During that desperate time, he shoveled mounds of clams and other shellfish from the dry riverbed. After shucking and drying them, he poured them into gunny sacks. Wagons full of these shells were then transported by train to Minnesota and Iowa, where they were made into buttons. He also caught live turtles and placed them into hogshead barrels, which were then shipped by way of Chicago to New York City, where turtle meat was considered a delicacy. Our turtles were served in the finest restaurants in Manhattan, at times perhaps enjoyed by women wearing dresses adorned with buttons made from shells salvaged from our river.

  I was too young to be aware of this activity, but a few years later, when I heard neighbors talking about the turtles and the shells, I yearned to go to those faraway places, see the women in their fine clothes.

  The river’s channel where it abutted our property was changed in the late 19th century in order to supply water to a grinding mill. In 1939 the Highway Department determined that increased traffic on Highway 12 required a longer, more stable bridge at that location. They tore down the old bridge and dug a new channel at a different, and, in their reasoning, more efficient, angle, and placed the new bridge on a portion of our land. This project rerouted the force of the river so that its water bore directly toward our farmstead. The banks of the Whetstone are a huge natural funnel. To protect people and property, a small earthen dam had been constructed years before at Lake Farley, twelve miles upriver.

  For our family, spring often brought worry and fear. In years when the temperature rose quickly as winter lessened its grip, the icy earth was a barrier that prevented the runoff from soaking in. The riverbanks couldn’t hold the runoff. Then all of us watched the river, not with a view to its beauty, but with apprehension. As the ice on the river melted, huge blocks of it—some larger than our dining room—broke free, drifted as far as a curve, got caught in the trees along the side, and dammed the river. The water rose and came closer and closer to the house. At night I’d fall asleep listening to the whacks of those ice cakes hitting each other, and the moaning and grinding of trees as the ice rubbed against their trunks and low-hanging branches.

  There were two major floods during my childhood. From a safe distance of decades, they’ve acquired affectionate names: the Year the Chicken Coop Floated Down the River and the Year the Bridge Went Out.

  The force of those two floods changed the terrain of our farm. They ripped away gentle curves and toppled large trees, leaving new channels and sandbars in their wake. When the waters receded, they left behind a mess of broken limbs, downed trees, and soil filled with stones and debris.

  The one constant was our Big Rock, the solitary, irregularly shaped outcropping of granite just north of the horse barn. Over centuries, rushing water had polished it smooth. The large stone seemed somewhat ominous because of a vertical hole that ran straight down through it, the result of a test boring done years earlier. The sample of granite had been determined to be of low grade, and so the stone, with its signature hole, remained, forever marked as inferior. All of us, children and adults, used the rock as a point of reference. “Twenty yards north of the Big Rock,” we’d say, or, “Downstream from the Big Rock about a quarter of a mile.”

  In spring we sat and fished from it. In summer Bob and I scanned it for turtles, and we all used it as a diving board. In winter we sat on its jutting point to adjust the laces of our skates.

  The rock was not visible from the house or our yard, and, even into adulthood, when I needed solitude I’d head to it. But during all the years I lived there I was unaware of its most important function: the Big Rock protected us during floods by diverting the raging water and the large blocks of ice away from our house.

  By the time the small buildings closest to the swollen river were about to be swept away that day in 1943, my father realized that there was no time to drive to town and buy or borrow additional rope. The water raged only feet from our house, and the mill pond on the other side of our hill had overflowed. Water was now beginning to encroach on the road to town.

  My father had one long piece of rope and a major decision to be made quickly: save the outhouse or save the chicken coop. Reality prevailed. He secured our outhouse to the large basswood tree near the south porch. The excitable hens were taken to the barn, while the baby chicks were brought into the house. Patt laid newspapers in the hallway at the top of the stairs, and Bob and I fenced in the little chicks by stacking old copies of the Saturday Evening Post.

  My age shielded me during that day of fear and turmoil. My memory is one of playing with fluffy little bodies of yellow.

  Bob still remembers the stern tone of my father’s voice: “Take Barbara and go to Grandpa and Grandma’s. Go straight there! Remember to call as soon as you get inside.” My father began to stride away, but he turned back and said, “And don’t go near the water!”

  And so Bob, age five, took the hand of his three-year-old sister, and, leaving the rising water and the rising panic, the two of us headed up the hill and walked the twisting dirt road, a mile and a half to the peace and quiet of our grandparents’ home.

  A short time later, the chicken coop was seen bobbing down the river.

  When Bob and I returned to the farm after a few days, the water once again flowed gently. Everyone was working, and we were expected to work also.

  “Take these pails,” one of our siblings told us. “There are fish trapped below the house. Go catch some of them.”

  Dutifully, we set out. The field was littered not only with debris and pools of water but also with giant, dirty chunks of ice. We really did try to catch the fish, but they always slithered away. And adventure, in the guise of the ice cakes, beckoned. Bob somehow managed to scale one that was perhaps six feet high. He then leaned way over and pulled me up. When we stood on that ice, I got a powerful new perspective. I was on the top of the world! Of course, we didn’t ponder this for long. This was a great chunk of slippery ice! Bob took a short run and then slid, stopping just before the edge. I began to copy him and started to take a run, when there was a shout.

  “Get down from there!” It was Patt.

  “Why?” we asked in unison.

  “You could slip and break your neck! That’s why!�
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  Obediently we slid down, picked up our buckets, and again set off to try to catch the trapped fish.

  A large old cottonwood tree stood as a sentinel at the end of our driveway. It was a reminder to slow down before you turned left and began to drive up the hill on the narrow road. But if instead you turned right, about seventy-five yards down a steep decline there was a beautiful white bridge.

  If you paused at the base of that tree and swiveled your head just a bit, you would see our traditional white barn with its companion, a white silo. All three—the barn, the silo, the bridge—were stately representatives of utility, necessary for the survival of our farm.

  The white bridge of my childhood was the second that had been built on our property. The first had been situated very close to our house, down a steep cliff at the end of our yard. It collapsed before my siblings and I were born, but concrete fragments of its abutments remained on both sides of a pool that had been scoured out over centuries by fast-running water forced through a narrow channel.

  The white bridge was eighty-four feet across, constructed some twelve feet above the water, and composed of four sections. On the sides, plank braces crisscrossed the pilings, creating elongated x’s, ideal spots for me to rest my shoulders and head comfortably while I peered over the edge. I watched and waited. Minnows swarmed, a large fish occasionally broke the surface, and bugs did the impossible and walked, Christlike, on top of the water. At the edge, frogs broke the quiet by making splashes much larger than their little bodies. At times I’d spot a giant snapping turtle swimming slowly near the bottom or a group of mud turtles sunning at the water’s edge.

  Eighty inches of snow on the ground. The earth still frozen solid. It became unseasonably warm in just a few days. The river was on all of our minds in March 1952. We began to keep watch on the rising water.