Wild Berries
Picking blueberries was a way of life. Families with knowledge of fertile patches were secretive. Farmers were alert to trespassers and threatened pickers found on their land. Berries were particularly lavish on burned-over state land near Buckotoban, twenty miles north. Such first crops on burned land were always prolific.
On the last Saturday of July, we packed bologna sandwiches, lemonade, cookies, and coffee, threw a galvanized washtub and an assortment of lard pails into the car, and drove to Buckotoban. When we arrived, cars were already parked, the pickers getting an early start. Dad drove down the circuitous dirt road until he came to a depression as large as a lake. Tall dead firs, still blackened from fire, stood at intervals. On the far bank, large hazelnuts flourished. We could find shelter there from the sun. A narrow stream we could drink from ran through the blueberry patch.
The shrubs were loaded, and there were huckleberries, darker than the blueberries and larger. Dad took his pail and went off alone, leaving the rest of us to stay within sight of the car. We tied pails to our waists with rope. Nell and Everett quickly tired and spent most of their time eating all they picked or napping. Mom was a fast picker, as I was. We were proud of how clean our berries were, with minimal leaf and twig chaff.
I worried when Dad was out of sight. What if he were lost? What if a grizzly loomed over us?
The most fecund shrubs flourished around the trunks of burned trees. The berries were so thick you simply cupped a branch with your hand, palm up, and raked your fingers through. Once a pail bottom was covered, filling the pail seemed easy. Each pail dumped into the washtub was another guarantee against winter’s hunger.
By 5 P.M. we were within inches of filling the tub. We had picked nearly half the patch. Since we had concentrated near the road, Dad felt we’d find berries there next week. Cars looking for productive spots would stop, see the stripped bushes, and drive on. We reached home tired, ate cold chicken and tinned beef and went to bed.
In the morning we cleaned the berries by passing them from one hand to the other, and blowing on them to dislodge light debris and withered fruit. In the steam processing, all green fruit would soften and absorb color. Once we’d filled a kettle, we floated the berries in water to wash off dust, scooping out any defective fruit. We filled sterilized quart jars and processed them in our wash boiler. By evening we had canned over fifty quarts.
The following Saturday we returned to Buckotoban, an outing as successful as the earlier one. After that we limited our picking to patches near the farm. One fertile spot was a bog on Kula’s land. We had to be quiet there, for Kula, pitchfork in hand, chased trespassers. We ate this fruit raw in milk and sugar or cooked in thick pies smothered with homemade ice cream.
We also harvested raspberries, wild pincherries (for a delicious jelly), and blackberries. Raspberries grew on old brush heaps or stone piles. Garter snakes darted from hiding. We killed every snake we could, not realizing they were harmless and, in fact, controlled vermin. We whacked snakes in half with hoes or sticks, watching the halves squirm. We draped dead snakes on barbed-wire fences, a warning, we thought, to other snakes. I recall digging up a writhing nest, shoving the snakes into a tin can, clamping on a cover, and presenting them as a “present” to Margie. She closed her eyes and then opened them to find her hands filled with the writhing creatures. She ran screaming to the house.
None of us cared much for blackberries, although they made a superb jam. For several years, juneberries flourished. Then, suddenly, mysteriously, there were no more juneberries. All of the trees were dead.
Part Four: Fall
First Frost
The first week of September brought the first hard frost. Maple tree sap ebbed along myriad capillary streams, finally reaching the roots, where it remained all winter. It was the sap withdrawing that stained leaves with the persimmon, scarlet, and saffron tints that made those autumnal forests wondrous. Nights grew short, and the icily resplendent tones of aurora borealis formations covered the skies. In elaborate, noisy patterns, wild geese migrated south. Eagerly awaited parcels of school clothes arrived from Sears, Roebuck. My various summer jobs—caddying, stripping timber, selling arbutus, picking potato bugs—paid for the new clothes, with fifteen dollars left over. I had helped my family I looked forward to the county fair, where we would exhibit livestock and produce, and the carnival preceding it. The cataclysms that continued to swirl through Europe seemed unreal. Our political sentiments were staunchly “America First.”
Carnival
The carnival took place in a field at the junction of Sundsteen Road and Highway 17. I walked there before opening day to help erect tents and booths. Brightly painted vans were arranged in a row at the back of the field. Barred wagons, badly in need of paint, held a lion and a gorilla. Some booths were already up. There would be a ferris wheel and a merry-go-round. The carnies looked rough, most of them unshaven, some stripped to the waist. The women among them dressed like men.
A large tent was splayed over the dirt, ready for hoisting. Half a dozen men were driving stakes into the ground and tying guy ropes. “Don’t just stand there!” a voice shouted. “Get to work.” The man, in his mid-twenties, wore red trunks and was tanned a savage brown. His biceps were huge and flexed as he stood before me. His accent was strange. “He’p get this tent up and you’ll earn a silver dollar.”
I held the guy wires taut while he secured them to stakes. The crew raised the tent, working a large center pole upright. We erected shorter poles. The pungent odor of crushed grass blended with the snake-like smell of canvas.
We set up platforms for a trapeze and surrounded an area of painted boxes and hoops with a circle of wire, where the lion and gorilla would perform. I hustled, working twice as hard as I normally would, knowing I was being watched, craving approval from these exotic men. Near the center pole stood an ornate calliope, which received power from a noisy generator being tested to make sure that the ride would move efficiently. I helped position some of the battered, paint-chipped wooden horses, holding them erect until they were bolted to the floor.
When we broke for lunch, the carnival man, Brik, invited me to his wagon. The latter was generic gypsy, with gilt paint, small barred windows with perforated shutters trimmed with wild roses. To enter you climbed a set of steps attached to the vehicle by straps for easy raising and lowering.
Brik said he was from Georgia. He traveled with the show for half the year, moving north during the warm season and moving south when it got cold. He bossed a pair of older men, carnies, it seemed, down on their luck, who looked like boozers.
The interior of his wagon was set up like a living room, complete with small sofa and an emboridered, brightly colored pillow saying “I LUV U MOM.” A small dinette contained a couple of chairs and an icebox, and a mattress and blankets were on the floor. “Like liver-wurst?” he asked. “Sure,” I said, sitting at the table. He brought out milk and pop. “Milk keeps my muscles big,’’ he said. “I suppose you noticed.”
“I want to look like you,” I said, feeling stupid as soon as my words were out. I must have sounded giddy, like a pimply boy asking a girl he revered to go to a school dance.
“You’ve got height, lad. Here, stand with your back against mine. You’ll see.”
His buttocks flared against mine. He tightened the muscles of his back. I could easily have reached back and touched his biceps.
“I was right. You’re taller.” He faced me. His chest was covered with curly black hair. “You’ll have hair, and it’ll be as black as mine.” He laughed. “And you’ll get muscles.” He had grown up on a farm. “I like ramblin’,” he said. “I could never be like my dad, married to some woman, with kids tying me down. In some ways, I wish I was a kid again, like you.”
He smeared liverwurst on slabs of soft A & P white bread, piling the sandwiches on a paper plate. “Two’s fine,” I said.
Later, I went to his wagon to collect my pay, a new silver dollar. “Don
’t see many of these around,” he said. “Plenty in Colorado, though. Say, if you come back and help take down tents tomorrow night, you’ll earn another dollar, and I’ll give you a free pass for the show.”
That evening I plastered my hair with brilliantine and regaled Margie with descriptions of the tiger (actually a defanged beast) and the gorilla. I wanted her company on the long walk home in the dark. She could use my show pass; I’d sneak in under the tent.
The Big Show was exciting, particularly the aerialists, billed as “The Flying Goedickes from Poland.” Spangles barely concealed the runs and tears in their tights. Glimpes of peach-colored flesh glowed whenever the woman balanced on her head and spread her legs and the trapeze turned.
The aerialist doubled as lion-tamer, while his partner put the gorilla through hoops and loops. A scrawny elephant, tuskless, performed listlessly with a girl dressed as a ballerina with glittering tiara sitting on his head. A pair of clowns pretended to throw pails of water at the audience; the water was feathers. During the show, Brik circulated, supervising the erection and removal of props.
I treated Margie to cotton candy and a sideshow featuring a fat woman with a second head growing from her side, a midget missing all fingers except for his thumbs, and a mummy, reputedly the body of John Wilkes Booth, stolen from its grave. Most fascinating of all was a lady geek. Once a night, so the hype went, she required a feast of hen’s blood, Black Orpington, to be precise. We paid our fifteen cents and crowded close, A nervous hen was tied by its leg to a stake in the ground. Harsh recorded music, in scratchy violins, heralded I-Zelda’s appearance. She undulated forth, painted like a gypsy and dressed in a gaudy skirt and layers of beads. “A good fat hen holds one pint of hot blood,” a tout exclaimed. “For your admission you will observe I-Zelda, Princess of Turkey, bite this here black hen’s throat. It will cost you another fifteen cents to see her suck out the life, killing the chicken dead!” He motioned us closer. “Anybody with a bad heart, leave now. What you are about to witness ain’t for the squeamish!” No one left. Margie looked puzzled, then horrified.
With ceremonial gestures, I-Zelda smoothed her hands over her body, jangled her bracelets in a brief dance, circled the hen (now positioned between two large lighted candles), took up the fowl, and began sucking its beak. She pulled a scarlet scarf from her cincture and wound it about the hen, securing its wings. Taking the bird firmly by its feet, she placed its entire head in her mouth. The bird struggled. I-Zelda withdrew the head. Trickles of blood were visible on its throat. I-Zelda’s mouth was bloody.
Margie was sick. We pushed our way through the crowd and started home.
I did not return to Brik the next evening. I stayed in the field all afternoon gathering and husking corn. I chopped wood. After supper, I lay in bed praying to Jesus. He approached with palm extended, the wounds visible. He was smiling.
County Fair
The fair was the social event of the year, and people you seldom saw surfaced. Clubs and lodges sold beer and food. Most families attended the entire three days. Livestock had to be fed, watered, and kept clean, so boys brought blankets and slept in the straw near their animals.
On Friday morning we loaded our sow and piglets and a dozen hens into a trailer. At the fairgrounds we secured pens and cages and attached entry tags; then we returned for garden produce and canned food—string beans and peas, pints of blueberry and strawberry jams, and a strawberry-rhubarb pie.
By Saturday noon the judging was complete. My mother won firsts for jam and pie, seconds and thirds for the other entries. A plate of cucumbers, ears of sweet corn, and string beans also took firsts. The sow and piglets received a third, with a note scribbled by the judge saying that he doubted they were purebred. Our “white leghorn” pullets earned seconds. Here we fooled the judges: Before displaying the birds, we plucked black feathers, betraying their impure breed, from their bodies. Our Plymouth Rock hen took third, after a string of firsts the five preceding years. Our winnings totaled $45.
A drunken, henna-haired Chicago lady was so enamored of our piglets she suddenly reached into the pen and grabbed one. As the animal wriggled and squealed, the lady gave it a juicy, alcoholic kiss on the snout. The irate sow narrowly missed the woman’s arm.
To walk through the fairgrounds at night was to walk through jewels: the lights ablaze, the smell of gasoline and oil propelling the clanging ride motors, the hawkers shouting from their booths, the melancholy music from the merry-go-round pipe organ, the odors of animals and flattened grass. How magical fairs were, so bizarre, so free. The drifters who manned the rides and the skill booths, and the scantily clad women who performed bumps and grinds on the midway were truly glamorous!
At the very top of the ferris wheel I sat suspended by fragile cable and thin steel, in a swinging wooden seat. The starry sky seemed touchable, and the people below, walking in the haze, were small dolls. When I saw my parents strolling, holding hands, with my sister Nell following, I was overwhelmed with love. Later I saw Dad pound at a target with a sledgehammer, the bell he struck ringing magically through the sky.
For the first time, I would appear in public with Dad and Charlie Mattek, playing a medley of Dad’s favorite accordion tunes. We were scheduled for Saturday night, as part of the grandstand entertainment. Our fifteen-minute performance would follow a popular local singer, Helen Byington, who imitated the renowned country singer Patsy Montana. Our rehearsal times were limited to the preceding weekend and a brief run-through on Saturday.
We were guided backstage, kept from view while a juggler performed, followed by a man with trained hairless dogs. Then we were announced. Chairs were positioned. Charlie sat in the middle, the foot-high shoe lift and brace he wore visible before him.
We started with “Over the Waves.” Dad played, as he usually did, with his eyes closed. My playing was incredibly clumsy, and the mikes amplified the mistakes. Fortunately, Charlie played a complex guitar. “There’s a Tavern in the Town” was our next number, followed by “Red Wing.” Charlie was halfway through his song when a wag started flinging pennies—a few at first, then a flurry. Some struck our faces. They spun like small saucers, stinging where they struck. Someone shouted “Crip!” at Charlie. Dad halted the performance, and we left the stage. The announcer expressed dismay and asked for a big round of applause. We’d been mocked for our poverty, I was sure! We should have worn cowboy clothes. Dad believed that another band we’d beaten out for the engagement was responsible. Charlie laughed, saying he wasn’t in good voice anyhow.
On the way home, Dad told me not to be discouraged—I had played well. He asked me to join the band when dance-hall dates arose. He said they needed me.
Human and Animal
With their usual reticence about personal matters, particularly sexual ones, my parents obscured the fact of my brother’s condition: His foreskin was nonretractable and required an operation. My own ignorance of such matters smacked of an embarrassing naïveté. Not until I learned about sex from the Jollys was I aware that you could retract your foreskin without harming your penis, like peeling back your eyelids. Nor had I thought much about circumcision—I had read the word in the Bible, but I had no real idea of its meaning. I interpreted the ancient Hebrews’ propensity for chopping off their foreskins as yet another instance of tribal mayhem, a violation of God’s creation: If He had not meant for men to have foreskins, He would not have made them.
When Everett returned home from Dr. Oldfield’s office, he was in pain, and when he took off his pants to go to bed, I saw the bandage. My dad, in a matter-of-fact tone, embroidered the truth: “The doctor,” he said, “cut off the end of his peter.” My brother was probably the first member of my family to be clipped since progenitor Tunis Peters came to America in the eighteenth century.
Two days later, my uncle appeared with a set of knives, ready to castrate our bull, dropped by Lady the previous summer. Gelded, he would be gentle, increase his weight fast, and produce sweeter meat. I was to hold the
ropes that secured him to his stall.
Dad and my uncle wrestled the bull to the floor, roping him. “Hold on hard,” my uncle said. He knelt near the exposed belly, held up a knife, tested its sharpness with his thumb, and then brought it swiftly down and slit the bull’s scrotum. As the bull bellowed and writhed, my uncle loosened the large, bean-shaped gonads and flung them into the chicken yard for the hens to eat. He poured turpentine and oil over the incision. Once untied, the bull rose and stood near the barn with his legs spread. “Fetch him some water, Bob,” said my uncle.
Preparations for Winter
We inspected the house for deterioration, scraped off old plaster, and rechinked the logs with moss, which we secured by nailing small pincherry branches over it and smeared the whole with plaster. The roof required new tar paper. We rechinked the windows. Since we lacked storm sashes, the heat loss was enormous. On those parts of the house not built of logs, we nailed shiplap over defective boards. We cleared the cellar of debris and took out the old sand in buckets, replacing it with fresh sand for burying carrots, turnips, and potatoes. Finally, we banked an earth and straw mixture all around, covering a foot or so of the outside walls. This would prevent cold drafts from coming in under the floorboards.
Crunching Gravel Page 9