A Long Way From Chicago (9 page)

“Now, Mrs. Dowdel, don’t be like that.” Mrs. Weidenbach reached down the front of her dress and plucked up a lace handkerchief. She dabbed all around her mouth. “Mr. Weidenbach has asked me not to enter my bread-and-butter pickles into competition at the fair this year.”

“Keep your head down till the depression blows over?”

“Something like that,” Mrs. Weidenbach murmured. “So I naturally thought of you. After all, we’ve been neighbors these many years.”

The Weidenbachs lived at the far end of town in the only brick house.

“I said to my husband, Mr. Weidenbach, somebody must carry home a blue ribbon to keep our town’s name in front of the public. Otherwise, those county seat women will sweep the field. As you know, Mrs. Cowgill’s decorative butter pats never do better than Honorable Mention.”

If Grandma knew who won what at the county fair, she showed no sign.

“But there is nobody to touch you for baking with gooseberries. Even those of us who’ve never had a taste have heard. Word gets around.”

“Try as a person will to keep it quiet,” Grandma said.

“Gooseberries are tricky things,” Mrs. Weidenbach went on. “Now, you take Mrs. Vottsmeier over at Bement. She wouldn’t take on a gooseberry, but she’ll pull down a blue ribbon in the Fruit Pies and Cobblers division with her individual cherry tarts if somebody doesn’t put a stop to her.”

Quiet followed as we listened to Grandma’s wooden spoon scraping the sides of the stew pan. At length, she said, “I cook to eat, not to show off.”

Mrs. Weidenbach sighed. “Mrs. Dowdel, these are desperate times. Don’t hide your light under a bushel. It is up to you to hold high the banner for our town.”

Grandma putting herself out for the fame of the town? I thought Mrs. Weidenbach was on the wrong track. On the other hand, Grandma liked to win.

Growing frantic, Mrs. Weidenbach let her gaze skim over Mary Alice and me. “And a day at the fair would be a nice outing for your grandkiddies.”

“Wouldn’t cut any ice with them,” Grandma said. “They’re from Chicago, so they’ve seen everything.”

Instantly, an expression of great boredom fell over Mary Alice’s face. I thought she might yawn. She was playing along with Grandma. I’d been thinking a day at the fair would be a welcome change, but I just shrugged and went on stemming gooseberries.

Grandma turned slightly from the stove. “Wouldn’t have any way to get there if I wanted to go.”

Mrs. Weidenbach brightened. “I will personally conduct you to the fair on prize day in my Hupmobile.” She waved a hand in benediction over us. “And there’ll be plenty of room for your grandkiddies.”

“Oh well,” Grandma said, “if I have an extra pie and it’s not raining that day . . .”

“Mrs. Dowdel, I knew you would stand and deliver!” Mrs. Weidenbach clasped her hands. “And remember, even the red ribbon for second prize will be better than nothing.”

Grandma gazed past her, seeming to count the corpses on the flypaper strip. Mrs. Weidenbach was dismissed and soon left. We all listened to the powerful roar as she ground her Hupmobile into gear.

Grandma’s sleeves were already turned back, or she’d be turning them back now. She pointed at me. “Scoot uptown and bring me a twenty-five-pound sack of sugar. Tell them to stick it on my bill. After that I want every gooseberry off them bushes out back.” She turned on Mary Alice. “And you’re going to learn a thing or two about pie crust.”

There followed three of the busiest days of my young life. Wrestling twenty-five pounds of sugar back from Moore’s Store was nothing to picking all the gooseberry bushes clean. As Mrs. Weidenbach said, gooseberries are tricky things—sour to the taste and spikey with stickers. Not unlike Grandma. My throbbing hands were covered with sticker wounds from getting all the gooseberries into the pail. With towels around their middles and their hair tucked up, Grandma and Mary Alice rolled out endless pastry on big breadboards.

We baked a gooseberry pie every four hours for the next three days. I had about all I could do to feed corncobs into the stove to keep the oven heat even. Gooseberries are so tart that more sugar than fruit goes into the pie. Some pies were still too sour, others gritty with too much sugar.

We tried and tried again. Grandma grew careful about balancing her ingredients, holding the measuring cup up to the light. She was like a scientist seeking the cure for something. I had to go back uptown for more sugar and another big can of Crisco. And we had to sample them all in search for the perfect pie. Mary Alice says she’s never since been able to look a gooseberry in the face.

The day of judgment came. Mary Alice and I were in the parlor early, waiting. Grandma had told us to cover our heads against the fairground sun. I had on the Cubs cap I traveled in, and Mary Alice wore her straw from Easter. The house reeked of baking.

Then Grandma sailed like a galleon into the front room, striking us dumb. For her, dressing up usually meant taking off her apron. But this morning she wore a ready-made dress covered with flowers. The collar was fine net, fixed with a big cameo brooch that rode high. On her feet were large, unfamiliar shoes—white with the hint of a heel, and laces tied in big, perky bows. On her head was a hat with a big brim. The hatband on it happened to be a blue ribbon.

She glared, daring us to pay her a compliment. But the cat had our tongues. Mary Alice stared up at her, transfixed. Was she seeing herself fifty years hence?

The Hupmobile growled up outside, and the next thing you knew, we were in it. It wasn’t as long as Al Capone’s big Lincoln limousine, but it was the biggest car in this town. Mary Alice and I had the backseat to ourselves. The pie was in a box between my feet.

Grandma took charge of a small hamper full of our lunch, since they charge you two prices for everything at a fair. She rode up front beside Mrs. Weidenbach, with one big elbow propped outside the open window. The town had emptied out because this was prize day at the fair. But when we went by The Coffee Pot Cafe, there were faces at the window, and a loafer or two paused on the sidewalk to see us pass. Grandma inclined her head slightly. Most people wouldn’t take their bows till after they’d won a blue ribbon, but Grandma wasn’t most people.

The fairground was a pasture along a dusty road this side of the county seat. It was a collection of sheds and tents and a grandstand for the harness racing. But this was the big day for judging cattle, quilts, and cookery, so the grounds were packed, though it was a nickel to get in.

Mrs. Weidenbach twinkled along in her high heels next to Grandma. She didn’t dare show her pickles, but she wanted some reflected glory in case the gooseberry pie won. “Let’s run that pie over to the Domestic Sciences tent and get it registered,” she said.

“I don’t want it setting around,” Grandma said. “The livestock draws flies.” The pie was no burden to Grandma because I was carrying it. “Let’s see something of the fair first,” she said, managing to sound uninterested.

Along the midway the Anti-Horse-Thief Society had a stand selling burgoo and roasting ears. The 4-H club was
offering chances on a heifer. Allis-Chalmers had a big tent showing their huskers and combines. Prohibition was about to be repealed, but the Temperance people had another big tent, offering ice water inside and a stage out front with a quartet performing. We stopped to hear them:

At the other end of the midway was a rickety Ferris wheel, a merry-go-round, and a caterpillar. Beyond it was a sight that drew me. In an open stubblefield a biplane stood. Beside it was the pilot in a leather helmet with goggles, and puttees wrapped around his legs.

And a sign:

B
ARNSTORMING
B
ARNIE
B
UCHANAN

AIR ACE

TRICK FLYING AND PASSENGER RIDES

My heart skipped a beat, and sank. Another sign read:

RIDES 75¢

I didn’t have that kind of money on me. I didn’t have any money on me. Still, my heart began to taxi. I’d never been in a plane, and my hero was Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, who’d flown the Atlantic alone.

The American Legion was sponsoring Barnie Buchanan. A red-faced man in a Legionnaire’s cap bawled through a megaphone, “Tell you what I’m going to do, folks. Any minute now Mr. Buchanan is going to show us his stuff by putting his machine through the same maneuvers he used in the Great War against the wily Hun. Then if you think six bits is still too steep, Mr. Buchanan has agreed to a special prize-day offer. To every blue ribbon winner, Mr. Buchanan will give a ride in his plane gratis. That’s free of charge, ladies and gentlemen.”

My heart left the ground, skimmed a hedgerow, and sailed into the wild blue yonder. The pie in my hands would win first prize since nobody but Grandma would take a chance with gooseberries. But she’d let me have her plane ride because she was too old and too big.

“You reckon that thing will get off the ground?” she said doubtfully, building my hopes higher.

“It looks like a box kite,” Mary Alice said. “A person would have to be nuts to go up in it.”

The biplane’s wings were canvas-covered and much patched. It was more rickety than the Ferris wheel. Still, it was a plane, and this looked like my one chance in life to go up in one. Now Mrs. Weidenbach was plucking at Grandma’s arm, and it was time to enter the pie into competition.

When we four went into the Domestic Sciences tent, Grandma remarked, “I said there’d be flies.” Surrounded
by crowds, the long tables were all laid out: jams and preserves, vegetables in novelty shapes, cakes and breads. A half-sized cow carved out of butter reclined on a block of melting ice. It was as hot as Grandma’s kitchen in the tent, so people fanned paper fans, compliments of Broshear’s Funeral Home, each with the Broshear motto printed on it: