Harry's War
Harry's War was his second war and my first. Inside our house the war effort was real. My dad was a meat and potatoes man. To Harry these were the important essentials of life. Therefore, we were a meat and potatoes family. To Dad vegetables were just something to mix into leftover gravy. My father thought Roosevelt's War was important. So important that he volunteered to be an Air Raid Warden and he viewed the national call for a meatless meal once a week, a meatless Tuesday, as a necessary sacrifice. In announcing his decision on this issue his face took on a stern serious look and that expression told our family members not to question his next statement.
"We will have two."
Consequently, Dad accepted both vegetable and potato soup weekly without even a grimace and quietly scooped cream-style corn on top of his mashed potatoes. While he took his training to be an Air Warden, Dad explained to us that his job was to see that Evansville, our town, was dark during a Warning, a blackout, so that Nazi bombers could not find our house in the dark. Dad went on to explain that meant practices at first; I believed in my young mind that later real bombs would be falling on us. To keep the bombers from seeing our house, we all helped to cut out, watch Mom hem them, and put heavy black curtains on all the windows.
The night of the first practice, Evansville's first Air Raid Warning, was also father's first night as an Air Raid Warden. Our proud new Warden went out inspecting the dark town wearing his wide canvas belt, painted black metal hat, and black metal whistle tied on a black shoestring around his neck. While father was out working, we did not pull our blackout curtains, just turned off all the lights, and gathered around our RCA radio. We passed our first blackout listening to the Grand Ole Opry.
After a while, Dad returned all winded from running, walking and then running back home. He burst through the front door, hurried across the dark living room, and clicked off the radio. The music and dial light blinked out. Standing in the suddenly dark and quiet room breathing heavily he blurted out, "I could see that thing way up on the hill by the Water Tower."
It seemed that our house was the only one in town that night with a light showing. Over the next month, townsmen that came into his barbershop teased Dad. On the next drill, Dad personally pulled all the blackout curtains before he left.
When soups got boring Dad started to grumble so Mom added pancakes topped with fried eggs, not syrup or molasses for sugar rationing coupons were in short supply. Mom started looking through her cookbook for even her children grumbled about soup or pancakes and eggs with salt and pepper instead of sweetening twice a week. She discovered that fish was not a meat in the back of her cookbook. Mom suggested to Dad that we add fish to our meatless menu. Her main argument was, "Catholics have meatless Fridays and they eat fish."
"I'm not a Catholic," Dad replied frowning. "I'm a Presbyterian," he added to end that argument. After that, he went on to inform us, "In my house fish is a meat." Thereafter, even the large round Red Sail jar of pickled herring vanished from the center of our round oak table on both Tuesday and Friday, our usual Meatless Days.
Meal boredom continued to grow over soups, pancakes topped with fried eggs, and newly added scrambled eggs and toast or hard boiled eggs and toast. This boredom led Mother to start spacing in beans and cornbread without any ham chunks, or ham bone, or even a single bacon rind. One look at a pot of white navy beans, a cast-iron skillet of cornbread, a butter dish, a small bread plate of sliced onions, and a full vinegar vial made Dad ask, "That?" Harry pointed at the center of the table, and Mom only smiled and nodded as she handed him the big serving ladle.
The next addition was baked Cream-style Corn Casseroles with onions pieces to change the flavor which I liked if the slimy pieces of baking skim did not end up on my plate. After that came Sauerkraut Casserole that Dad liked with polish sausage, ham chunks, or ring bologna and slices of apples to take away the bitters. However, Sauerkraut Casserole with only apple chunks was not the same without meat. Only doing our part in the War effort could have made us, the children, finish our small single spoonful. Only closing my eyes and imagining a starving soldier, my cousin Jack and his buddies in France, shot and dying because he ran out of meat and bullets could make mine disappear. I felt miserable over Dad having two big scoops on his plate. He muttered over it some but it did disappear. However, his loudest and almost painful muttering came over Green Bean Casserole.
While Dad watched Mother with her potholders carry his most hated dish toward the table, I thought about the many times Dad told us stories of growing up on his family's farm-the Erickson Place. He told of working on threshing crews, neighborhood hog butcherings, and wood splittings for sick or elderly neighbors. On these affairs, some wives brought food and warmed their donations in the local oven for the workers.
It was Dad's belief that every woman in the world if given a free choice of what dish to make and take to a potluck gathering would choose Green Bean Casserole. In one of his stories that I remember all seven neighboring women did. Dad told us how he moved down the line taking a thick slice of ham, two generous scoops of mashed potatoes, and drowning both in a puddle of redeye gravy. He stopped to look down the line at the remaining dishes, and there sat seven Green Bean Casseroles. After blinking, he looked again hoping for something else. This time, he noticed seven smiling women watching to see if he would take his scoops from her dish. One good long stare at the dish Mom carried and Dad muttered as he often did at meatless meals, "Dang War."
After placing the hot steaming dish of Green Bean Casserole on the extra cutting-board we used for a heat pad in the middle of a flat metal pan to catch serving spills that might ruin our oilcloth, both potholders moved to one hand. Mother's other hand offered Dad our big serving spoon with her usual justification.
"It's for the War effort."
I think it was my Dad's bravest moment, greatest sacrifice of the War; the moment I was most proud of him. He took his normal two scoops and tried to keep his face from showing what he felt as he chewed. I never complained but somehow felt my small half-scoop might lose the war. Dad buttered three slices of Mom's homemade bread and started in again on the terrible chore. With a bite or two of bread followed by a small forkful of Green Bean Casserole, Dad chewed blank-faced and washed the mess down with long sips of water. Twice during this evening's war sacrifice Dad filled his water glass. The rest of us during that meal helped finish the first loaf of homemade bread and started on a second one. From the look on Mom's face I could see she was thinking about having to bake bread twice this week and wondering about her flour supply.
Halfway through Dad reached for the jar of horseradish muttering, "I'll bet not even this'll disguise it."
As he unscrewed the lid my next oldest brother Richard, nicknamed Bud, picked up his plate and quickly left the table. Bud could not stand the smell of horseradish. That year through a great act of war effort courage, Bud did manage to stay in the room, put some on his plate, even tasted it, and managed to eat a little. Although he served in Vietnam, Bud's greatest act of valor was to learn to eat horseradish. I believe that for this alone, Richard should have received our nation's highest recognition for the Horseradish War that he fought and won.
Orlie, my oldest brother, took a heaping teaspoonful of horseradish to be like his father. Yet, that small gray lump on the side of his plate was carefully placed so as not to touch any of his other food. Mostly it just lay there. A first tiny smear on the tips of his fork while the rest of us watched was the first and last horseradish to leave his small pile. While cleaning the table it went into the slop bucket for our hog every Green Bean Casserole night. That fall both of my older brothers sniffed any served bacon, ham, or pork chops to see if they could smell horseradish.
As meatless days worked their way through the list toward Green Bean Casserole again, a dread settled over our supper table. To make matters even worse the good women of Evansville started trading and creating meatless casserole recipes as their contribution to the War effort. Mother
tried several that sounded promising because we happened to have the fixings. Mom got those same looks as she carried in each new and strange casserole dish. We knew that we all had to take a first taste for the war, close your eyes, and swallow. Every time we hoped, the newest creation would taste better than Green Bean Casserole. None ever did. We all knew what the next dish after our first complaint would be. No one complained and Father never even muttered.
Finally, Dad exploded after a strange speckled casserole that looked like spaghetti, peas, and carrots chunks baked in peppered milk gravy, and tasted like spring garlic-tainted milk. We all hated garlic because Dad often told us, "It's what people in hot places use to hide the taste of spoiled meat." After struggling though supper on three pieces of buttered bread he demanded in his sternest voice, "Can't one of these meals taste good?"
Mom looked suddenly like she had a bad toothache, stared straight at him as her face got crimson, and then looked down at her plate. After a long awkward moment, Florence Evelyn with a look I had never seen before spoke simply and softly.
"Clear the table."
As I remember that moment, our table was cleared the quickest and quietest that six children ever cleared a table in my world. While we worked to scrap plates into the slop bucket not a single word was spoken.
Friday night, the next meatless supper night, Harriet and I were not surprised when we saw the big soup pot back on the stovetop simmering and the oven cold. We traded smiles over no casserole. We put on empty water glasses, soup bowls, table knives, and tablespoons. Harriet put on both butter dishes.
I watched Mother slice two loaves of bread. Then strangely, Mom poured a glass of milk at each plate and carried to the table a pitcher of thick cream. Out of the icebox, she took our largest cut-glass bowl full of whipped cream, put a large wooden spoon in it, and ordered Harriet to put it on the table. I was instructed to tell everyone it was time to eat.
We gathered around our round oak table as Mother carried in the soup pot, set it down on the table's cutting board, and took off the lid. All of us could only stare in amazement for it was full of hot steaming, still bubbling, Chocolate Pudding. Smiling Mom handed Dad the soup ladle.
Harry smiled as he took three big scoops, buttered a slice of bread, took a glob of butter an inch thick for the middle, poured a little cream on top making the melting butter into a yellow island, and topped off his bowl with two full scoops of whipped cream.
It was a night to remember. Full bellies of sweet wonderful chocolate pudding, fresh baked bread and butter, thick cream, and whipped cream. To me at age six it was a king's delight. My young mind just knew the rich lived this way three times every day. That night I felt happy and rich when the pot was empty, finger licking empty. That meal earned first place on my world's Greatest Meals list.
"That's the end of our sugar coupons," Mom informed our smiling faces.
No one complained the rest of that quarter with only a little corn syrup or molasses purchased at high prices paid quietly to her friends for their extra sweets for our few cookies. Another great thing about that night was that never again after that did we have any casserole dishes on a meatless night other than baked Cream-style Corn with a few onions. That next day the pig must have gone hungry for nothing was scrapped into the slop bucket.
Addspeak: Even today in my household casserole is a seldom-used word. Twice more during rationing, Mom recreated her greatest cooking moment, a second Chocolate Pudding Night, and another equally great creation.
Later that same winter on another Meatless Day, which she temporarily moved to Sunday, was the second best. With squandered horded sugar coupons, the last two quart jars of sweet red cherries canned before rationing, a double recipe yellow spice cake baked in three shallow pans, and two borrowed ice cream freezers we had another meal to remember.
Three cranks turned outside in a cold northwest wind. All of us took turns cranking, scooping snow, or sprinkling rock salt around each freezer's turning metal cylinder. On that late February Sunday afternoon those warming themselves front and back inside kept poking in wood until our heat stove almost hummed. While preparing our meatless war-sacrifice meal we sweated inside and froze outside. Outside just as the handles on the freezers were getting hard to turn snow started falling.
More than sixty years later in my memory Mom, Dad, and six children sit around a round oak table with smiling faces. Janet in her highchair does not wait. Her little fingers play with her cold food and spill it on her tray, giggles, and ponders over cold ice cream. Mom smiles as all the other heads bend over a soup bowl filled by freshly made vanilla ice cream covering a square of yellow spice cake and topped with two tablespoons of sweet red cherries. Our anxious hands held spoons at the ready during Grace. Ten eyes waited for Dad to take the first taste and hope for seconds and thirds as mother started spoon-feeding Janet.
I have always wondered if Dad's reaction to the importance of the war resulted in the military service of three of his four sons. Orlie and Bud made military service their careers and I took one three-year enlistment in active duty before heading to College to become a teacher.
For the war effort
"Gene, put on the sideboards and bring the wagon," Harriet ordered and I obeyed for she was in third grade.
I was larger but three years younger, and so I obeyed. My hands lifted and adjusted the wooden sideboards and grabbed the handle of our old second-hand Red Flyer. The wheels had lost their rubber rings and ran on just the metal. Dad built a small wooden frame around its sides. We called that frame "sideboards" like trucks or big wagons pulled by horses. I walked behind Harriet pulling our Red-Flyer wondering which direction she would go-up or down the railroad tracks.
It was Saturday and school was out. The war was going on in some far away place, and every Saturday we helped too. Dad was an Air Raid Warden, and he went around after dark to see if all the black-out curtains were in place. His first night the only house showing any light was ours. All the lights were out and we sat in the dark listening to the radio. The light was from the dial light on the radio. Dad's embarrassment made it doubly important every Saturday to find some metal for the war. We were hunting for scrap metal for the war, and Dad and Mom only allowed us to go up and down the road ditches or along the railroad tracks.
Harriet walked away from our small house on the island outside of Evansville, across the wooden plank bridge, and quickly turned in an arc toward the railroad track. Then, I knew she was going up the tracks.
We moved between the tracks past the small white house that we use to live in with Harriet still in the lead. The Red Flyer bounced badly and noisily on the cinders and ties between the rails. My sister was busy looking on either side in the tall grass and cattail reeds of the slough, and between looks she glanced at me more than a little annoyed at the racket the Red Flyer made. Her looks at me always seem to tell me she believed it was my fault.
It was a disappointing morning. Warm sun and little breeze made both of us hot and thirsty. We sat on the rails to rest often, and I was glad when Harriet turned back toward home.
"No use coming up here again," she said disgustedly.
"We didn't even find a soda bottle," I offered. I liked finding soda bottles for we got a penny for three and root-beer barrel candy was eight for a penny.
"Nothing," she said with disgust as we stood and walked away toward Evansville.
On the way back we found nothing either. That is, until we were sitting on the rail for our last rests stop just outside of Evansville. We sat looking across the cattail reeds, over the open water, over the cattail reeds on the other side, up the slope to our house on the island. Mom was outside hanging clothes on the line. We watched until she finished and went back inside. As our eyes came down, I think, we both saw it a once. In the cattails close to our side was a tan spot.
"What is that?" Harriet asked while I was studying the strange tan spot.
"I don't know."
"Sun shines off it like meta
l."
"It might be!"
"Let's get it and see!" Harriet ordered. She popped upright, pulled me up, and we walked down through the tall grass. At the bottom of the embankment the grass was taller than our heads. Our feet stomped down grass to make a path until we came to the mud.
Now we could see that no more than ten feet ahead of us upside-down in the mud and tall reeds just inside the edge of the cattail reeds was an old copper double boiler and lid. It was just like the one Mom used to boil wash and bath water. Many times I had taken a bath in just such a double copper boiler until I got too big, but this one had a hole in the bottom.
For the longest time we talked about how to get that boiler. We looked for and found several long branches, but all were too short. Finally, we had to admit defeat.
I started to climb back up the path and leave.
Harriet stopped me. "We tell someone to come get it. Or, we go get it," she said with a stern sound in her voice.
That was no easy choice for me. I answered, "Who should we tell?"
"They will not listen to us! But if they do, they will not get muddy for an old copper boiler with a hole in the bottom."
"Leave it then!" I told her.
"No! It's copper. Mister Ferdig said they make bullets out of copper. Just look at that old boiler. It would make lots of bullets. Cousin Jack needs bullets. Are we going to go back with an empty wagon and leave all those bullets lying out there?"
I could tell we weren't. If we lost the war I knew who Harriet would blame. Even if just one soldier from Evansville or Jack died, she would blame me. And I could almost hear her say "He would still be alive if he had had some more bullets." So, I tried what all cowards try.
"We'll get a switchin'."
"What's a switchin' to soldiers dying without bullets?" Harriet barked back at me as she yanked her dress tail upward by the handful. She was wearing jeans underneath, and my third grade sister glared at me as she poked her dress hem down behind her waist band.
"Nothing," I admitted with my head hanging down. It wasn't the switching so much, but I wasn't old enough to take the butcher knife and go get a switch. I had to stand and wait while someone else went and got one. The waiting was terrible, and I'd rather have had three switchings than wait even though Mother never did the switching. It seemed to me Mom should go out and cut a dozen and have them on hand when she needs one. Then, she could just grab one and quickly get it over with. I always thought I should suggest that to Mom, but I never did.
"Grab hold!" Harriet ordered as she held out her hand.
I took her hand and looked her right in both brown eyes.
"Walk!"
I walked into that gooey mud first, pulling my feet, and each time a foot came out with a sucking or slurping sound. The mud came over the top of my high top shoes much too quickly. Wet cold gooey mud rose higher with each step and soon closed around my ankles and then calves. I took one careful step at a time closer to the copper boiler with Harriet behind me stepping too. When the mud was up to my knees we were only halfway. I looked back at Harriet hoping she would tell me to forget it.
However, she just jerked her head in a motion to keep moving.
When the mud got to my thighs I stopped.
"What you stop for?"
"It's deep ... too deep."
"Two more steps."
"Harriet ...."
"Two more steps."
Who could win with an old third grader anyway? Not me! So, I pulled my foot upward until it slurped in the sticky mud and took another step. After putting that foot down closer to the boiler I had to pull out the other one and move it closer. I could hear the slurp-slurp sound of Harriet's steps.
"Can you reach it?"
"I don't know."
"Try?"
"Okay!" I answered and leaned forward, and my fingers were only inches away from the boiler. Harriet's arms were too short and holding me back. I released her hand, but her fingers still clutched mine. I shook my hand and half shouted, "Let go!" When she let go, my fingers could just barely touch the boiler's bottom. I leaned a little more forward and managed to hook my middle finger on the rim of the hole in the bottom.
"Goody!" Harriet squealed behind me as my finger managed to pull it back and lift it a few inches. Then, I was able to get all of my fingers in the hole and drag and lift the boiler to me. I held out my hand and together we struggled, one slurping step after another back to the path.
Halfway back Harried stopped, gave me her "you're stupid look", and made an angry face with thin angry lips. "You forgot the lid."
I looked and I had. Looking back at Harriet's face I knew we were going back for the lid. There is no answer to being stupid, but doing something more stupid like going back into that mud. But my feet moved that way making slurping sounds going deeper and deeper again in the cold wet mud again. This time when my fingers could reach the lid the mud was trying to go inside my pockets.
Clutching the lid Harriet pulled me back. Dribbling mud on the grass we struggled up the bank with our prizes. After washing off most of the mud the lid was on the copper boiler and it was in the Red Flyer, I knew we would get a switchin' for certain. We were both a muddy mess.
Mister Ferdig went on and on about what great scrap find our copper boiler was as he tossed both on the War Scrap pile people donated to the war. Afterward he smiled, and he tried to give us a penny out his own pocket. All the other scrap we turned in for the war had not been for money, but I think he felt sorry for us because we were all muddy.
At home Mom took one look at us and said, "Harriet, go get a switch!
I had to stand and wait. It was awful just waiting and in fairness to Mom she never used a switch on us. I did not think she would this time, but you never know. Dad did the paddling, but this could be the first time.
Harriet got a chance to move. She ran in the kitchen, came out with the butcher knife, and ran down to bushes along the slough. My sister, the third grader, came back with a good one too. I hate to admit it but each year my sister was getting better at cutting switches. This one was really a marvel. It was long, at least three feet, and as thick as Mom's ring finger with all the brushy branches cut away.
Strangely I thought "I've been bad too many times. I've taken to admiring switches." Be that as it may, I did have to admit Harriet had made an Ottertail County Fair blue ribbon one, a Fergus Special.
"I made a good one," Harriet said proudly as she handed the switch to Mom.
Mom tried hard to hide a grin as she inspected that switch up one side and down the other while Harriet took the butcher knife back in the house. Mom nodded approving at the good switch and her strong wrist flicked it twice. It made a swish-swish sound. It was such a good switch that Mom had a hard time holding back a smile.
When Harriet got back, Mom asked, "Why are you two all muddy?"
Mom looked at me, and out of me spilled, "Cause of bullets."
"What bullets?"
Harriet rescued me or we would have had a switching for not giving the right answer. "Mom, we found an old double copper boiler and lid. It had a hole in the bottom and it was out in the cattail reeds. We could not reach it. So, we walked out and got it for scrap metal for the war. Mister Ferdig told us they make bullets out of copper, and he was so pleased he wanted to give us a penny out of his own pocket. We did not take it. It was for the war."
"For the war," Mom asked frowning?
"For bullets," I said weakly hoping I did not get the answer wrong again and stiffened up waited for my switching.
Mom smiled and looked down at that fine switch Harriet had cut. She gave that great switch another strong swooshing before she broke it in two pieces. As she tossed the pieces on the wood pile Mom softly said, "Go down to the bridge. Take that bucket with the rope. Wash off some of that mud."
Harriet and I raced down the slope to get the bucket with the rope out of our small barn. We heard Mom behind us shout and laugh.
"You did good ... for the w
ar effort."
Addscript: I do not remember Mom ever threatening to spank or use a switch on us after that. She did several times with reason say she would tell our father.
As the men went off to war business in the barbershop declined. Games were not played as often on the two pool tables in back or as many nickels put in the slot machine-the one-armed bandit as people called it. Dad leased the shop to his second chair barber and took a job with the railroad. He worked on the line repair crew. When Kaiser Frasier Corp offered jobs for welders in San Francisco he took a train west. While working at welding plating on a ship's side on scaffolding welded on the side of that ship the scaffolding broke free, and he fell down with the wreckage into the waters of San Francisco Bay. A Mexican worker higher up on the ship dived down into the water and tangled metal and pulled my father out. Dad had a broken arm, collar bone, and several ribs. We never did find out the man's name, but I have made it a practice to never be anything but kind to Mexicans. A debt received is a debt to be paid.
Sunday Paper
"Get out," Grandma Lystrom ordered with a look in her eyes that stopped all arguments. She was around five feet tall, maybe an inch more or less, and I did not think she could make Orlie and Bud leave. She held out a grape jelly sandwich cut in half to each of us for our breakfast. On the 14th of January in Minnesota it's cold outside. My older brothers looked not at Grandma Carrie, but the big handlebar mustache on the 235 pounds and more than six-feet tall Grandpa Lystrom standing behind her.
"Outside," Grandmother Carrie repeated.
"Hot water," Doctor Massey yelled as his head popped out of the doorway to mom and dad's bedroom and then disappeared as the door slammed.
Grandpa just pointed at the door as Grandma moved to get the hot water, and my older brothers turned. They put on their hats, mittens, coats, and took the half sandwich offered. Harriet and I followed. Outside the howling wind was blowing snow. It drifted around the tires of Doc's old black Buick and Grandpa's two toned cream and brown Packard. Dad had already driven off to the barbershop in our '36 Ford, and we would soon have to walk to school. We huddled out of the wind and blowing snow against our small barn's wall and chewed on our thick half-slice of homemade bread smeared generously with grape jelly. We ate leaning over and eating to make sure any drips of jelly fell in the snow not on our coats. When everyone was finished, it seemed best to walk to school for it would be warmer there than here.
All the way home that evening across the slough road from Evansville the older ones wished the baby was born so we could get back in the house. As we walked up the road we saw that the doctor's Buick was gone. During that Thursday, the fourteen of January, we found out that our sister had been born; but Grandma still chased us outside. It was too cold to just stand around in the snow. We went down and kept Bessie, our Jersey milk cow, company in our small warm barn until Grandma yelled out it was supper time. After supper Dad told us that our sister was named Janet Irene and ordered all of us to be quiet and go to bed.
In the morning, Friday morning, after Dad left Grandma gave us our grape jelly half-slice of bread for breakfast again and pointed outside. Today, instead of waiting, we just walked to school eating our bread glad that only the wind blew little snow spider webs across the road. After school, Grandma chased us outside. Orlie and Bud were bored and found in the barn an old baseball. Struggling to run in the snow they played catch with a frozen baseball. They threw it high until they tired of that even with Harriet and me watching. We watched them when we were not making snow angels. A new idea came to them to play bounce the ball off the wall of the house and the other catch it. No more than a half a dozen loud bounces of the ball with the other struggling through the snow to catch the ball brought Grandma came outside in her coat.
"The ball," Grandma Carrie said and held out her gloved hand.
Orlie had missed the ball when the front door slammed behind Grandma. Orlie fished the ball out of the snow and tossed it to Bud, and he walked over to put the snow-covered ball in Grandma's hand. She whirled and went back inside.
They were bored and hunted icicles to see who could find the biggest one. Harriet and I joined in, but did not find a single one for only a thaw makes icicles. Minnesota in January did not have many thawing days that year. Bud was the only one that found one, one smaller than his longest finger, and claimed his was the biggest. Orlie argued it was not because he had not found one yet, and he claimed that when he did his would be bigger.
Right in the middle of the only interesting thing of the evening, their argument, Dad drove our '36 Ford into the yard. He chased us all inside the house and after that we got to stay inside until bedtime, and all the days after that. On Saturday morning we all got to see Janet. Sister was tiny and red looking.
During the winter Janet got most of the attention and got fatter and bigger. When she could sit up and grab things she got into trouble, but never got punished like the rest of us. All five other children, and that included three year old Neal, had to keep quiet when she slept and watch her head when we held her.
As spring grew closer I worried more about rationing than Janet. The shelves at the store had gaps and the clerk had gotten tired of saying, "Sorry, we're out of that." When Mom asked for something from a shelf gap, the clerk just shook his head. I wanted a birthday cake, but the new rationing books would not be out until May 1st. My birthday was Saturday the tenth of April and we were already out of sugar in March. Mom still had three full jars of molasses and one jar of corn syrup.
Whenever I asked, "Mom, will I have a birthday cake?"
Mom just smiled and said, "I'll make you a syrup cake."
In the early morning Mom gave me my gift wrapped in a brown shopping bag tied with string. To make it pretty Mom tied a piece of one of her red ribbons in a bow. After I opened my present to find two new sets of underwear, Mom took back her ribbon, hugged me, rocked Janet to sleep, and then started on my cake. I'll have to admit the house smelled like cake, but when it was finished it didn't look like one. On the platter it looked like a brown brick and when it cooled Mom made red syrup frosting that never did set up hard like frosting should. She cut pieces, scooped up runny frosting from the side of the plate, and put it back on top. My birthday cake was sweet, and if you did not look at it or think about syrup, it tasted like cake.
Outside afterward Orlie teased me. He said, "Your cake tasted like wallpaper paste." But then everything he liked tasted great and everything else tasted like wallpaper paste. I guessed he'd tasted wallpaper paste or how would he know. Even chocolate drop cookies that Bud loved he would say that about after he had eaten half a dozen. Oatmeal cookies his favorite he never said that about no matter how many he ate. When we teased him about that Orlie's answer was, "Some things are hard to tell about. You have to try several just to be sure they're no good." His silly answer did make all of us laugh.
One Sunday we went over to Uncle Floyd Lystrom's farm outside of Vining. Floyd was Mom's only brother and his wife was Niamey. While we were having milk and sugar cookies Aunt Niamey laughed and told one on Floyd. It seems that last week she had baked cookies for her children: David and Lucille and to take to a group. Floyd came in the house and took three of her still warm cookies with his coffee. She had only made a single batch and scolded him.
"Now I'll have to make another batch."
Floyd answered, "Do you want them to get old age pension."
Harriet, Neal, and Orlie would have birthdays in May. All three of them would get sugar cakes and Mom talked to me so I would not be jealous. I tried hard, but the only thing that helped was that we would be out of sugar again when Bud had his birthday in November. I had company.
When the grass got green Mom and Dad put new wallpaper in the living room. We all got chased outside whenever anyone got in the way. I licked my fingers and from that experience I had to admit to Orlie that wallpaper paste does taste awful. Neither Mom nor Dad would let us go scrap metal hunting for the war during a school week. W
e were so excited about being able to go on Saturday morning that Harriet wanted to go again Sunday morning. Janet had a running nose and we would not be going to church.
Harriet did not have to try very long to talk me into going. "For the war," she said and promised to read the funnies to me on Sunday morning.
I agreed.
She wanted to go early and I wanted to wait for the Sunday paper. Harriet won and we found only an old rusty railroad spike going out. All the way back home I kept reminding Harriet about reading the funnies and she kept saying she would.
When we walked in the house Dad was holding Janet and reading a Zane Grey book on the couch. Mom was in the kitchen working on our noon meal, and there sat Neal in the middle of the floor holding up a piece of the funnies in each hand to show us. Around him the rest of the funnies and Sunday paper lay torn into small pieces. Both of us were in shock and about then Mom came to take Janet away to feed her and change her.
The rest of the day Harriet and I lay on our bellies laying pieces of torn funnies side by side on the floor. When one cartoon would finally be complete true to her word Harriet read it to me a box at a time, and then we began piecing the next one together. We never did find one piece. Both of us believed that Neal ate a piece out of one Dick Tracy square. And one piece had a square corner on it that would not fit in any of the cartoon squares. It had lots of wiggly lines and shaded places. Harriet did not know what it was. Dad was dozing on the couch with his western open on his chest. When Mom came back from putting Janet to sleep, we asked what it was and she looked at the piece.
"It's a war map," Mom told us.
That got both of us interested. I had never thought of the war being someplace. To me it was just the war-a thing going on out beyond Fergus and Saint Cloud.
My study of geography started when Harriet asked, "What's a war map?"
"A picture of where the fighting is going on."
"Show me," I pleaded.
Mom stepped over to get a book in the magazine stand Grandpa Lystrom gave her last Christmas that now sits beside my computer as I type this. Opened the book without a front or back cover, turned several pages, and held it out for us to look at it. One page had around circle and so did the other.
"This is a book of maps. If you were high up in an airplane above the earth this is what the world looks like."
I had never been up in an airplane or ever seen a real one. But I had seen pictures and one or two in movies, so I nodded.
"We live here," Mom told us as she touched a place inside one circle.
Harriet and I looked carefully, but neither one of us could see our house or even the slough.
Seeing the looks on our puzzled faces Mother turned a few pages and said pointing at a page, "This is where the fighting is going on."
We looked and Harriet asked, "Does the paper tell about the fighting?"
She nodded.
I pleaded, "Read about the war."
Mom looked through the Sunday paper; put the torn war map pieces in place for us to see. Then she read what the paper said about the fighting and pointed several times to places on the small map.
Addscript: After that as long as the war lasted Harriet and I looked for every war map in our newspaper. Mom or Harriet read about them to us. I wanted desperately to be able to read them for myself, find where the fighting was going on in our book of maps, and where Cousin Jack was at. The reading part came hard for me, because I had a noise in my left ear. Later, I found out it was Tinnitus, and was cursed with the newest rage in teaching reading-"Phonics." So, I've always credited Mom with teaching me to read by the see and say and remember the spelling of the word. Those strange sounding phonic spellings for words still haunt my writing. I've often wondered what I would have been if Neal had not torn up that Sunday paper. My life has been history, community service, and words. My life has been lived with the place and story of things. All my life I followed things in history, geography, literature, and even poetry. If Neal had not ripped out that particular piece, say only the funnies would I have spent my time wandering down some other bumpy road? Neal has spent his along the mathematics road.
Poverty
At first it was rumors of hard times in the Peterman household. Mom and Dad whispered while studying their bankbook with shaking head. Later we noticed more potatoes and less meat on the table. Mom whispered asking about finding work and Dad shaking his head. When we asked about our fears that something was wrong Mom told us.
"The men have left for the war. That means fewer haircuts and shaves. Your father makes less money."
After that I noticed things. Often when I walked by the shop Dad was sitting in his barber chair talking to two or three old men or playing cribbage. The slot machine sat unused as did the pool tables in back. Dad smiled less often. Trousers got new patches and so did shirts. Mother's sewing machine was open more often. Lunch pails changed slowly from a cookie and two meat sandwiches to only one jelly sandwich.
One day Dad came home and announced. "I've sold the shop and start work for the railroad, the Northern Pacific, Monday morning." Dad left before sunrise and came home after dark. Mother took over the job of milking our Jersey. We saw Dad only an hour or so a night, on Sunday, and most of that day he rested.
While Harriet and I were out looking for scrap for the war one Saturday we watched a yellow truck with wheels like a train roll down the tracks. It stopped and a crew of men got out. Dad was in that crew. Sis and I watched while the men dug out an old tie, pulled out the spikes, and slid in a new tie. Two men on each end swung sledge hammers to drive in new spikes. Dad's sledge hammer swung in a circle, hit the spike, bounce, and turned in another circle without stopping. Four swinging sledge hammers almost made a musical sound. When finished the crew climbed back in the truck, moved away, and Dad returned our waves.
Just as life returned to normal the Minneapolis Tribune Sunday paper had an advertisement. It was from the Kaiser-Frazer Company, the makers of the Kaiser-Frazer Car and Willis Jeep, for welders in their San Francisco shipyard making war ships. They offered free training and the wage was twice what Dad made. He filled out the application in the paper, sent it in, and two weeks later a letter arrived. It held a railroad ticket to Frisco, a paid receipt for the first two weeks rent in an apartment, and a check for twenty dollars pocket traveling money. Dad made a call to the railroad and was gone the next day, Thursday morning at ten. Mom wanted to keep her children out of school to say goodbye, but Dad would not hear of it.
I went to school and in the evening he was not there. The house seemed strange. It seemed empty, even with Mom and six children.
Checks came and life went one. The extra money went in the bank. Dad's letters were few and his telephone calls even fewer. Mom was miserable but tolerated their second separation since she married him at seventeen. The first had been while Dad went to look for a farm in Missouri and when he found one he called. Mom drove the truck loaded with their belongings down there. Harriet was born in Missouri and after that Dad returned to Minneapolis to go to barber school. He washed dishes in an Italian restaurant at night. We, the children, tolerated his absence because we saw his work making warships as noble, a great contribution to the war effort. I saw it as Dad too old to enlist was getting his chance to help.
One evening when we arrived home from school Mom was sitting at our round oak table crying. We tried to find out why but all she could do was push a telegram at us.
Aloud Harriet read: Had accident stop in hospital but alright stop don't worry stop will write.
A week later a letter came written by a company-man as Dad told him what to write. He had a broken collar bone, three cracked ribs, and broken right arm. The company was sending him home in two weeks and in seventeen days he arrived. I saw him first walking across the bridge. Orlie and Bud took off running with my wagon bouncing to haul back Dad's suitcase. Slowly the extra money left the bank with no money coming in. Uncle Rex who lived outside of town brought in a hundred
pound sack of potatoes, and told Dad he would butcher early. A few days later he brought over a half a beef and we ate steaks and roasts. Mom canned meat for days and on Sunday Uncle Roy carried in a case each of cream style corn, pork and beans, and green beans.
Orlie and Bud did yards work and did odd jobs around town. Dad sold the jersey milk cow and our haystack. Harriet and I took to roaming up and down road ditches after school looking for soda bottles to trade in for pennies. Our best week we handed Mom seven cents on bottles and Harriet found a nickel in the Creamery driveway.