Crunching Gravel (5 page)

My assignment was to memorize vast chunks of “Christmas in Other Lands” from an encyclopedia. I started memorizing in November. I copied out the text by hand and carried sheaves of paper, memorizing at odd moments. I recited while pumping water. We made cuts in my piece.

We strung hay wire across the end of the schoolroom and hung white bed sheets. Presents for Miss Crocker, mostly handkerchiefs and cheap perfume, lay beneath the tree. Tiny paper bags, mysterious in their contents, were also there. We were promised a Santa. (The real St. Nick couldn't visit all the schools in the world.) We agreed to spend no more than a quarter on gifts and prayed that the Jollys wouldn't draw our names. They were the poorest family, and whatever they gave would be soiled. I bought jacks for Osmo Makinnen.

The performance started at 7:30. Miss Crocker arrived early. Families walked to school. There was a startling display of the aurora borealis. The air hovered near zero. We dressed warmly, and the walk, which took half an hour, was festive. Excited kids ran back and forth behind their parents, using far more energy than the walk required.

Despite some problems with the bed sheets, the program went well. I appeared halfway through, reciting facts about Christmas in other lands. That I was a bore never entered my head, despite the restlessness of the audience. Most of the men hung to the rear, behind the women. I concluded with Norway. The applause was brief Holding lighted candles, the school sang “The Night Before Christmas” and “Silent Night.”

Jingling bells heralded the entrance of the old soul who was bewhiskered with cotton batting and wore a dime-store suit. He made his way to the front where a couple of kids were sniveling. He inquired of our behavior, gave his ho hos, and presented us with candy canes. My suspicions were confirmed—this was not Santa but my cousin Albert. I recognized his throat, and I recognized his boots—black leather with buckles resembling silver harps.

 

It was 6:30
A.M
. A drear, metallic sun soaked the heavy frost on the window glass. The fire downstairs was out. Dad wouldn't be up early on a holiday.

Unable to contain ourselves, we threw our clothes over our union suits and rushed downstairs. Nothing seemed changed—if Santa had come, there was no special magic, no special scent in the air. My sisters reached the living room first.

Our stockings were full, and kitchen chairs had been pulled close to the tree and piled with gifts. From Santa, Margie got a doll, a coloring book and crayolas, underwear, socks, and a gingham dress with Bo Peeps on the skirt. Nell's gifts were similar. Everett received a wooden train, skis, and clothes. My presents were a coloring book and crayolas; a picture book of Robert Louis Stevenson's poems; a set of iron-on transfers of Maggie and jiggs, Popeye and Olive Oyl, Tillie the Toiler, and Mutt and Jeff; wool socks; cotton underwear; school shirts; Old Maid cards; and a small pinball game, pocket-sized, my favorite gift, one I would play throughout the year, inventing elaborate scoring games.

Our stockings were stuffed with an orange, an apple, walnuts, hard ribbon candy, and a Big Little Book. Mine was
Tarzan of the Apes
. I loved these books. They cost a nickel. The drawings were as fascinating as the text. Margie's was
Little Women
. The raisin-filled cookies we left for Santa were untouched. And we saw Sears labels in our clothes. Nell's dress still had a price tag—$1.95.

Dad soon had the fire going. We settled down on the braided rug and began to color. The pristine pages were inviting, and placing the first tints was fun. We rushed to finish a picture. Mine was of a chubby straw-hatted boy with a fishing pole. Margie chose a girl in a pinafore pouring tea for dolls. At first, I stayed within the lines; then I got bored—the spaces for coloring are vast and empty. There were no hints that you could mix colors or try for shading and nuance. If this Christmas ran true, by afternoon the books would be tossed into our toy boxes, seldom to be fingered again. Then Dad surprised me with an air rifle, a gift I didn't want, and showed me how to insert a bullet and squeeze the trigger. “We'll shoot a hen for supper,” he said.

 

Old Crip danced on spurless legs, making deep-maw proprietary sounds. Once the hens were eating corn and chortling, he fed himself keeping a wary eye on us.

We selected a large Rhode Island Red, one no longer laying. “Now,” Dad said. “Point the barrel at her eye; then pull the trigger slow.”

An olio of feelings: I did not want to shoot. I did not want to displease Dad. Oblivious, the hen pecked at her corn.

The trigger felt like ice. My index finger seemed jointless.

“Now, do it right,” Dad warned.

The bird's yellowish ear was a minuscule sun. Stunned, she chortled, rattled, and fell, clawed the air, stiffened, and then stilled. Dad whipped out a pocketknife and slit her throat. “Wasn't too bad, was it?” He lifted the hen by its legs. “Nice fat one. Be good with dumplin's.”

I plunged the bird into boiling water. The feathers loosened immediately and smelled like rancid rags. Then came the singeing and butchering. Mom planned an early supper, complete with blueberry pie, from berries picked the previous summer.

The afternoon was lazy. Margie and I skied for an hour, returning to a kitchen fragrant with delicious steam. The yellow dumpling dough, rich with hen fat, was nearly ready. Dad was napping. We settled near the tree, ate candy, and read the Hearst funnies: “The Katzenjammer Kids,” “Blondie,” “Gasoline Alley,” and “Maggie and Jiggs.” Dad decided to milk Lady early, before supper, so that we could enjoy a long evening.

Supper was superb! The dumplings were sweet. The hen, despite her age, was tender. We quarreled as usual over the wishbone. Margie won, but refused to break the bone, saying she'd wrap it in tinfoil and keep it near her bed for good luck—the Christmas wishbone. Mashed potatoes, chicken, and gravy. Canned, cut green beans. And canned blueberry pie! We ate a whole quarter of a pie apiece. Dad smoked a rare cigar. Margie, Mom, and I played Old Maid. I stayed up after everyone was in bed, sat near the tree, and stared at the candles. I blew them out and went to bed, where I read chapters from Luke. I snuggled down against the encroaching cold. The downstairs fire settled into cinders.

 

Dad, Charlie Mattek, and I packed sandwiches and drove down Sundsteen Road as far as it went, disappearing into a spruce and tamarack forest. I wore extra woolen socks—comfort for a full day on the ice.

For an hour we tramped through highland, finally reaching a large cranberry marsh. Despite the intense cold, some of the marsh was unfrozen. Dad led the way. I brought up the rear, carrying a gunny Sack with lines and food. A dour metallic tone concealed the sky and a ridge of firs across Columbus Lake seemed remote and desolate. A brace of partridge, interrupted picking dead seeds from bushes, scurried clumsily through the snow and into flight. Rabbit and deer trails crossed and intersected, marked by shiny black droppings. An occasional jay screamed.

Despite a heavy orthopedic boot and a knee brace, Charlie was a good walker. As a boy he had had polio. He was in his mid-twenties, of moderate height, with a handsome hewn face and white teeth. His hair and eyes were brown. He loved fishing. He and Dad played music weekends at local dances. Charlie had a good but untrained voice and played guitar.

We chopped half a dozen spruce and dragged them onto the ice, as a windbreak and for firewood. The lake surface was rough, as though it had melted recently and then quickly frozen. Ice hummocks provided traction. Rarely were any of the thousand regional lakes ice-slick, free of snow, and suitable for skating. We set up camp about a hundred yards from shore. No other fishermen were in sight.

Dad and Charlie chopped through the foot-thick ice. Yellowish water, pickerel-colored, welled up. By careful chipping, the holes were widened, and, with a scoop—a piece of window screen nailed to a birch stick—we removed ice chips. Next, we embedded birch saplings, one per hole, some three feet back from the hole. Each sapling, angled, supported a line. Dad had carved small fish forms from apple-box wood and inserted the line first through a hole in the tail of the form and then through a second hole in the head so that the wooden fish rode free, more or less parallel to the ice. When a fish hit the salted minnow bait, the wooden fish tail flipped straight up in the air.

We set lines in threes. Mine were nearest the shelter; Dad's were further off as were Charlie's. My job was to move around with the screen scoop keeping the holes free of new ice. We made a fire. The spruce sap flamed beautifully. I dried a soaked glove while Dad and Charlie made excursions for more wood. The supply would last until early evening, allowing us just enough light to make our way back to the car.

We melted snow in a large pail, added ground coffee, and hung it over the fire in the Y of an embedded branch. A delicious aroma of boiling coffee blended with spruce gum.

The fish bit well. We hoped for walleyes; they were the least bony and most delicious. We fished deep, but if the salted minnow rode too low, the pike wouldn't snag it. The trick was to drop the line until it curled. By drawing it up six inches and securing it, you positioned the bait. I set my lines at intervals, primarily for bass and pickerel.

Pickerel are notorious for giving test tugs on the line, eating off salted minnow, almost as if they know, avoiding the risk of the barbed hook. We crept to the hole, grabbed the line, and jiggled it to give the illusion that a minnow was escaping. Usually, when a pickerel strikes, if you yank fast on the line, you'll snag him. Once caught, it may still rip free. Whenever it slackens, you draw the line taut, and when you glimpse the snaky form, you jerk with all your might and bring it forth flopping and squirming. Its protective slime soon freezes. To spare the creature suffering, you strike its head with a knife, stunning it. Within minutes it freezes board-stiff

The day's haul: six pickerel, four three-pound walleyes, fifteen large bluegills, and six perch. At 4:00 we threw the remaining wood on the fire, leaving one tree intact for other fishermen to use, packed our fish into gunny sacks, retrieved our gear, and started for home. I was tired but exhilarated. My feet were cold. In twenty minutes we were enjoying a supper of fresh beef mashed potatoes, and fresh bread. After supper, Dad and I cleaned the fish, stowing them outside on the roof to freeze.

 

In January, we tramped often through thigh-deep snow to Minnow Lake. A narrow but swift creek that flowed into the lake rarely froze. Traversing it was difficult. We threw down fallen tree trunks, crossed and came to the lake, which was frozen except for the area around the creek. I saw my uncle, cousins Jim and Frenchy, and their team of horses, Bill and Bess, out on the ice. We arrived in time for the first excavations of ice blocks, rectangular shapes formed by augers and saws. By inserting a special saw, resembling a crosscut with large teeth, one man worked along the cut, eventually freeing a block, which was then loaded onto an iceboat—a sledge converted to a sleigh by means of strategically placed tire irons. The blocks, all roughly three by six feet, would be halved and quartered later for storing in sawdust. Uncle Pete and Dad did the sawing. Frenchy and Jim, with some help from me, pushed the heavy blocks onto the iceboat. The whiteness of the blocks surprised me; the water itself once the blocks were removed, was the color of iodine, stained by the leaf mulch. The lake was rumored to be bottomless—if you swam there and dove, all you would ever touch was mud, over six feet of it. We piled the ice blocks five high, a considerable load for the horses to draw up the steep incline to my uncle's farm. We stacked the ice neatly on the leeward side of the barn and then returned for other loads. We made three trips, and just before dusk we mulched the ice pile with straw and covered it with sawdust. So preserved, the ice would last through the summer. Our share of the ice—half a dozen huge blocks—we took home, Dad driving Uncle Pete's team. In hot weather the water would be pure for lemonade. As a special treat, we'd chip it, pack it with salt into a freezer, and make ice cream.

 

The first tentative thaw began in early March. By noon the sun warmed the accumulated snow and ice, forming small streams along the shoveled paths and on the gravel road where the plows had kept the snow layer minimal. Pebbles absorbed the wan sun, warming the adjacent snow. Snow loosened from fir trees and crashed to the ground. Ptarmigan and prairie hens were in evidence, losing their skittery temerity of humans and crowding close to the fowl yard. To find a resplendent pheasant cock feeding with the hens was common. For the first time since November the chickens had the run of the outdoor pen.

Rabbits and hares scampered over the snow. Maple sap dripped. Black bear emerged from hibernation, hungry and dangerous. For several nights, a she-bear lingered in our field, eating garbage. We kept near the house, alert for noise in the underbrush.

Ice on the lakes remained thick enough for fishing. The surfaces, however, were covered with slush, so we sealed our boots with tallow. We fished in Columbus Lake, where the game fish were, and not in Minnow with its swarms of fingerling perch—“rough” fish, tiny, filled with bones.

At school we were restless, anxious for the snow to fade, eager for the reappearance of flowers and birds. Though a few minuscule buds appeared on the willows, winter still held sway; in fact, we expected a blizzard as late as early April. These were my last weeks of school before starting high school in the fall.

The delay of spring exacerbated our restlessness. Reading was difficult. I paced my chores, took twice as long as usual to clean the barn, to milk, to fill woodboxes. I wouldn't shed long underwear until Memorial Day, that magical day when there was a whiff of summer and you could swim, although the lakes remained bone-chillingly cold. The stench of soiled wool, stale long Johns, and unwashed bodies permeated school and home, the latter chinked and weather-stripped against the cold for so many months.