Over the years, the road leading to the gate has become increasingly woebegone. Always, still, a person drives over the wooden railroad bridge that my siblings and I crossed on our way to school and takes a left. The road used to be entirely dirt, with wildflowers and weeds fringing its edges, but for the past several years the first quarter mile has been paved to accommodate huge white trucks parked by a foul-smelling cheese plant. Farther along, the original dirt trail is still intact, but on the left, what was once a small, nondescript field is now an informal town dump. And if you look up high into the nonstop blue of a prairie sky, the tower of a huge coal-burning plant diminishes the breadth of the land, and you.
A gate is a portal, a threshold. Lifting the latch and stepping inside are deliberate actions that take you from one place to another. When the gate was in place, that action had left the cheese plant, the dump, even the ugly tower, outside.
How many years have my sister Helen and I opened that gate?
Each summer, certainly for more than twenty years, we’ve made a pilgrimage to the sacred space. We always go directly to our parents’ graves. They’re placed side by side, with Dorothy’s at their feet. Each year, that walk has become just a little less painful. After our individual silent prayers, with a jumble of memories swirling in and around us, we move on to pay our respects to others.
With no plan, we walk haphazardly from marker to marker. And we always come upon the newest gravesite, its tamped-down earth offering a stark contrast with its neighbors’ green grass, and only a metal marker placed upright in the dirt. Grief hits us anew as we see the name of someone we knew and loved when we were children.
We know the family that quarried the granite and the man who polished the stone. And we knew the woman who sketched the scenes on many of the engravings. She, too, now rests below. The people who are buried here knew the people who would craft their lasting memorials. It is all so personal, so intimate.
We never hurry past new gravestones but take time to subtract the first number from the second. Sometimes the total we arrive at is much too low, and we realize, though we’ve never met these young people, their families are ones we’ve known, well, forever.
Over time, tradition has evolved. No longer do the gravestones just state the name and dates of birth and death; rather, they’ve become mini-tableaux of lives lived. Carved into the granite: a guitar for a songwriter; a whirl of flowers for an avid gardener; an elaborate dual farm scene—horses pulling a wagon on one side, a combine moving through a wheat field on the other—for a farmer whose life spanned two centuries.
Helen and I wander, holding our windblown hair back from our faces with one hand. We read. And remember. Sometimes we laugh. More often we dab at our eyes until hazy names become clear again.
At some point, saturated with memories and conflicting emotions, the two of us, without saying a word, walk slowly toward the gate. But the gate is gone. And so this time it’s different. There’s no way to keep all of that from getting into the car and riding back into town with us.
WILD PLUM COBBLER
In the past when a touchstone was raked across the surface of a rock, the color of the scratch determined the presence—or absence—of gold alloys. Wild plum cobbler is our familial touchstone. My siblings and I are passionate about this esoteric dessert. Others less so. When friends and those who married into our family are presented with a dish of it, they slowly raise the filled spoon to their mouths, and then, with the determination of small children who’ve been taught to say nice things, pronounce, “Yes, it’s good.”
Mother’s wild plum cobbler brings back to us memories of following one another through fields dotted with wildflowers to the beautiful plum tree. The dessert tugs at our heartstrings in some inexplicable fashion. We loved it when she made an angel food cake from scratch, whipping the thirteen egg whites into a frothy cloud of white, carefully folding in the dry ingredients, and then baking the mixture to a golden brown. And all of us still fondly recall her sweet rolls. Each one was a treat to eye and taste buds: generous swirls of dark cinnamon within the rolls’ compact curls, each topped with a dab of not-too-sweet white frosting.
If we’d been thinking of economics—but, of course, we hadn’t been—wild plum cobbler would have been at the top of a least-expensive-to-make list, for Mother used slices of bread that she’d baked a day or two earlier in a woodburning stove, cream from our cows, and fruit from the plum tree in our pasture.
The one who spent the fewest years of his life with us on the farm, Bill, became the grand keeper of our family and its traditions. Through the years, as my siblings and I moved away to different states, Bill and his wife, Ruth, made the shift to a suburb northwest of Chicago. The two of them worked hard—though they made it seem easy—to make sure we didn’t lose touch with them or with each other. Phone calls, letters, and their open invitation to “come stay with us anytime” kept us all loosely bound.
On one of my visits to Bill and Ruth, at the end of a dinner, where the table was set with fine china and brightened with flowers recently picked from their garden, Bill announced there was to be a surprise. Then he brought in a tray of crystal dishes filled with the family favorite. However, as much as the dessert was appreciated, it had been made with domestic plums, and its flavor proved to be only a proxy of the original. The special tang, the zip, was missing.
One summer when Bill returned to our hometown, he drove down to the farm and, with the permission of the new owners, walked to the pasture where the wild plum tree had flourished. When he reached the site, he found only a bleached brown stump. The plum tree of our memory had died. There was no way to grow a duplicate.
In an attempt to find domesticated plums that would replicate the taste of wild ones, he researched and pored over catalog offerings and, at last, ordered a plum tree. He planted it near the crab apple and fig trees in the mini-orchard he had created at the edge of his large garden. Disappointedly, the tree never yielded more than a few anemically flavored plums. Then John decided to join the search. He found wild plum trees at his wife’s childhood farm in Iowa and planted saplings of them in his yard in Indiana. When the word went out that the trees failed to thrive, we were all disappointed.
Over the years, news of my brothers’ quest for a fruit-bearing wild plum tree spread beyond our immediate family. Ten years ago, when Bill and Ruth were visiting her hometown, a cousin of a cousin ceremoniously presented Bill with a treasure: three gallons of wild plums from trees that grew eighty miles north of the original bearer of the famed fruit.
Our family reunion had been set in a small town near our farm on the following weekend. Lodging is in short supply in that area—and none of it is grand. The date of our get-together also happened to be the date of two local weddings and a farm-machinery convention. The only reservations we were able to get were at the lowest-rated motel on the local accommodations list.
By the time I’d checked in, I was exhausted. It had been a long day of travel by plane and car. So, after our group returned from a burger-and-fries dinner, I excused myself and went to bed. I was tossing and turning, trying to find a comfortable position on a lumpy mattress, when, sometime before midnight, I heard pounding on my door.
“Barb, meet us in the lobby.” I recognized Bob’s voice.
“I’m already in bed,” I yelled back.
“This is important!” he responded, and before I could even ask what had happened, I heard his voice fading down the hallway as he continued to emphasize that my presence was essential.
I tossed a sweatshirt over my pajamas and grabbed the room key, wondering what could be so pressing.
I hurried down the narrow hallway and walked into an alcove next to the check-in desk. The small space was dominated by a huge soda machine. My sister, three brothers and their wives were crowded together, sitting on folding chairs around a worn Formica table, but Bill was missing.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Just wait,” someone said
.
A few minutes later, Bill emerged. As he walked in, he mimicked the sound of a trumpet as he held aloft a casserole. The dish was overflowing with wild plum cobbler! He’d baked it at a relative’s house and brought it in a cooler.
Then I noticed that a place setting had been set for each of us—a Styrofoam cup and a plastic spoon. The casserole made its rounds. As we served ourselves, trying with the flimsy, shallow spoons to corral the bread and plum sauce into the small cups and keep it from falling onto our clothes, Bill stood behind us and topped each portion of his creation with a dollop of heavy cream.
We all took a bite. A moment of silence, followed by a chorus of “Oh, this is so good!”
That was quickly followed by a circle of smiles. Bob jumped up and grabbed more cups and a nearby carafe of coffee and poured some for each of us.
Together we raised our cups, cheered, and thanked Bill for giving us, once again, a taste of our childhood.
LOST
The last time we were all together
Someone said
Remember Mother’s wedding ring?
A thin band of white gold
With seven small diamonds.
Mother had seven children.
One child died.
One stone fell out.
Which was lost first?
Child or stone?
None of us had the answer.
ANNUAL PILGRIMAGE
For years, my returns to South Dakota were always trips of necessity. My parents and my parents-in-law endured serial, concurrent medical emergencies. Life-and-death crises intertwined with death itself.
In the middle of the night in Manhattan when the phone clattered from its spot in the kitchen, my chest would tighten as I clambered out of bed and stumbled down the hall to answer it. What had happened? Who had been rushed to the hospital this time? Would it be essential for us to make another long trek back to our hometown with two small children in tow? When my youngest was three and sick with an ear infection, his pediatrician told me I absolutely must not take him on an airplane. I understood the gravity of the doctor’s orders, but we had no one to leave my toddler son with. And how could I not say a final goodbye to my mother?
Even if all four of us were well, just getting there was a physical ordeal. The trip involved an often frustratingly slow cab ride to LaGuardia Airport, a three-plus-hour flight to Minneapolis, the hassle of renting and picking up a car from the lot, and then a four-hour drive to our destination.
One time, we made the trip during a terrible ice storm. As we crept along, I prayed and worried. Would we arrive in time for the viewing and recitation of the rosary for my father? We did not, but gratitude that we’d arrived safely helped moderate my disappointment.
After these sad reunions, gathering our belongings and saying goodbye always took longer than anticipated. Following my father’s funeral, that had been especially true, and Joe was trying to make up for the lost time on our trip back to the airport. The roads were clear and there was little traffic, so, as we turned onto Highway 7, Joe began driving a few miles above the speed limit. Peter and Stephen sat quietly in the backseat. We were all emotionally drained. Two hours or so into the trip, Peter said he was hungry. Remarkably, in this area of few towns, we spotted a McDonald’s on our side of the highway. Convenient indeed.
Joe slowed down and began to pull off. Suddenly the car lurched violently to its right side. Joe turned off the engine. Then he got out. I did the same and helped Peter and Stephen out of the rear passenger door, which was now resting near the ground. We stood silently. None of us could believe what we saw. The rear axle had detached. The car looked like a large broken toy. Peter and Stephen began to cry. Joe and I looked at each other and smiled. We were safe. In my mind, though, I saw the church we’d left two days earlier, four new coffins lined up in front of the altar.
To get to another funeral one winter, we drove through a blizzard at night. As we neared our hometown, the half foot of snow accumulating began to harden into ruts. When Joe inadvertently hit the side of one of them, our car went spinning around in the middle of the highway, crossing over the center line into oncoming traffic. Time was suspended as I watched him fight to keep the car upright and get it back into our lane.
So, years after those nightmare trips had ended and I had an opportunity to make the journey under less traumatic circumstances, it was a relief to pack for one, board the plane solo, open a book, and read my way to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. I was to represent the college where I worked at a recruitment fair. It was all so simple: work for one full day, until noon the next, and then I’d be free for several hours to do as I wished, before I met up with my sister Helen after she left work.
Before takeoff, I looked out the window of the plane and was thankful to see clear skies above, which hinted at an easy flight. Checking the skies comes second nature to me, a habit inherited from my father.
I remembered when I was a child and snow began to fall on our land and the wind picked up, my father would say, “I wonder what kind of blizzard we’re in for this time. Well, it’ll never be as bad as the Armistice Day blizzard. I’ll guarantee you that.”
Was that a touch of fear in his voice? As an adult, I happened to be visiting when a terrible blizzard hit. For days it was impossible for us to get into town. Later we learned that a young boy had perished. He’d gone out to his family’s barn to feed the animals, but on his return to the house, he’d lost his way.
My mother, who seldom criticized anyone, remarked, “Why didn’t his parents tie a clothesline around his waist before sending him out there?” Sorrow and frustration mingled in her words.
Once more, I heard my father intone, “But this was nothing like the Armistice Day blizzard.”
I became intrigued with the event that still, all those years later, added that quiver to his voice. So, on the second day after I’d packed up the brochures and the college banner, I took a cab to the Minneapolis library.
I spent the afternoon poring over microfiche replicas of newspapers, reading about horrors and tragedies. The day of that epic blizzard, November 11, 1940, was unseasonably warm in South Dakota and Minnesota. The storm hit unexpectedly and quickly. With no warning and no time, hunters froze to death, shotguns still in their hands. In the fields, herds of cattle were turned into statues of ice. Children, unable to find their way home from school, perished.
Sometime after that, knowing that I was researching the storm, an aunt mailed me her copy of The Day All Hell Broke Loose, a compilation of firsthand accounts of people who’d survived the storm. Those details, written and published, some only hours after the monster storm, followed me into the night, into my dreams. One story in particular still haunts me.
FOUND THEM LOCKED TOGETHER, FROZEN AND OTHER STORIES
By W. P. Arndt, D.C.
Sauk Centre, MN
Early that morning my dad and I went six miles up Sauk lake to hunt ducks. The weather wasn’t bad but as the day wore on the snow began falling at an alarming rate, so Dad said “Let’s pull the decoys and go home.”
Two flocks of snow geese had lighted on the lake so I headed the boat into the middle of the lake and the geese. Each flock was reluctant to fly and would simply swim out of the path of the boat. Each time I would raise my shotgun but Dad wouldn’t let me shoot on open water. As we approached town we noticed that the lake was so saturated with snow it was just floating slush. When we got into the boat house Dad was sorry we hadn’t taken those geese. We could have had a boatload.
When we were back at our house and warm, Dad became concerned about the anti-freeze in his ’37 Buick. There was a garage only two blocks up Main street so we tried driving. We wound up with a small Allis Chalmers tractor pulling and several men pushing and shoveling to move the Buick just two blocks.… Walking home was something else as we faced that northwest wind. We made it to the mill, out of the wind, and, after catching our breath, we walked backwards about halfway acro
ss the bridge to our point of land where the trees blocked enough wind we could stand walking face forward to our house….
Two young brothers, driving a truck, stopped at the Engle farm southwest of town. Mr. Engle urged them to stay at his place that night because the storm was getting worse and they were lightly clad. They went only a short way and got stuck. They lost their way walking in the storm, following a fence line. The younger brother collapsed first; then the older brother carried him until he could go no further. My uncle, Nolan Gilbert, and some other firemen found them after the storm, locked together, frozen to death.
I’ve been in other blizzards but this one was the granddaddy of them all.
On that afternoon of research in 1989, I left the Minneapolis library about four o’clock and boarded a bus to the outskirts of the city. Following Helen’s instructions, I asked the driver to let me off at County Road 18. Standing by the side of the highway as huge semis whooshed by, I felt ridiculous and vulnerable. What would I do if she didn’t come? There were no cell phones then. But, of course, after a fifteen-minute wait, she did. We set off to her small house, which rests on a bank only a few yards above a clear lake.
Early the next morning, we began the drive to our hometown. And with that, our trip to Big Stone City became an annual tradition that we were able to maintain for almost three decades.
During those years, we were witnesses to change. We began to notice that once carefully tended houses were no longer maintained. Porch roofs were sagging, and siding had not been refreshed with a new coat of paint. White houses had always been paired with white or red barns. I always thought of the two of them—houses and barns—as partners. And for a few years the barns, always the chief source of pride for farmers, appeared neat as before. Then they, too, became dilapidated. As years passed, Helen and I became transfixed with the bare-bones architecture that was gradually revealed. Later, our fascination turned to alarm as both the houses and the barns disappeared altogether. The fields of single farms had been subsumed into megafields owned by out-of-state companies.
Lost Without the River Page 17