By traversing Ewald’s forty and our own, we reached Perch Lake, the best of all nearby lakes for swimming. Minnow, nearer our house, was thick with bloodsuckers. And wading was impossible—you were soon up to your knees in muck. Perch Lake had a wide sandy shore and a sandy bottom. To get to the beach you had to cross a large potato field owned by a bad-tempered bachelor, John Simon, the town grave digger, whose house was invisible from the lake.
A grassy bluff with scrub Norway pines overlooked the beach. By getting a good run, you propelled yourself into the water. We had contests to see who could jump the farthest. For a swimsuit I wore old jeans cut off above the knees. My sisters had one-piece suits from Sears. Nell, only four, rarely went with us. My cousin Grace’s breasts had already formed. George Jolly delighted in flashing his rear at Grace—“mooning,” he called it.
I enjoyed going to Perch Lake with the Jollys. George was my age, Bill a year older. They lived at the opposite end of Sundsteen, a mile and a half past the school. I thought nothing of walking the distance to meet them, and since there were no telephones, there was no way of knowing whether they would be home or not. They came from a huge family of ten children. Bill and George loved fishing and often went to Columbus Lake.
The Jolly house was a two-storey affair covered with gray shingles. It had the usual spread of outbuildings—a barn with lofts for hay, a henhouse, a pigsty, and corrals for cows. The father and the oldest son worked for the Wisconsin-Michigan Lumber Company. Mrs. Jolly was an ebullient woman with huge breasts who wore the same dress for months, until it turned to shreds. All of her dresses were of the same magenta Rit tint, the hue rubbed dull by grease and child-soil.
The downstairs living room doubled as a bedroom. Here the parents slept in a single bed with the three smallest children. Upstairs, the four boys shared another bed, as did the girls, Margaret, Helen, and Lucille. No rooms had rugs or linoleum. Bill and George would lie on the floor directly over the dining table, collect bed fluff wood slivers, and mouse turds, and drop them through a crack into a pan of baked beans below. Daily, Mrs. Jolly baked bread and cinnamon rolls. She gave me thick slabs of hot bread smeared with bacon grease and peanut butter or wild-cherry (“pincherry”) jam. There was never enough silverware. The family ate at a rectangular oak table in two shifts, the older girls feeding the younger children. In the center of the clothless table, near a platter of fried pike and perch, stood the blue roaster full of beans. Bread, homemade jelly, butter, lard, fresh milk, coffee. To help yourself to food you simply reached into the roaster and then wiped your fingers on some bread. No plates matched, and most were cracked. Only the parents used spoons and forks. Cinnamon rolls. Fresh gooseberry pie.
At school Bill and George often took my part against Osmo Makinnen. Bill, blond, short, and muscular, was quieter than George, who had black hair like mine and was always mischievous. Both were good students. The three of us would start high school together. Bill later died at Monte Cassino in the early years of the war.
From the Jollys I learned how to fish, and they taught me the little I knew about sex. They seemed wiser than I, perhaps because they had older brothers, perhaps because they were raised far more permissively; their mother hardly had time to linger over their nurturing.
For our night swims in Perch Lake, Bill would bring matches, and after we swam, we’d rustle up wood for a fire. Bill had already reached manhood, but George and I lingered in late adolescence. One evening, George and I, naked, were horsing around, grabbing one another. Bill squatted near the fire watching. When George wrestled me to the sand, pinning my shoulders, Bill came over. His penis was hard. He started to play with it. George also began masturbating. I sat hunkered with my head on my knees, amazed, excited, yet vaguely embarrassed. Out in the lake, hundreds of toads swam toward our fire. As they hopped frantically ashore, we beat them with sticks and threw them into the flames. Then we doused the fire and left the beach.
My aunt Kate’s eldest son, Albert, was illegitimate. His father, according to talk, was a handsome roustabout who had slept with Kate and then abandoned her before Albert was born. Dad always feared Kate. He blamed her for his brother Pete’s death at age fifty-three, ostensibly from eating stale bologna sandwiches. Kate, Dad surmised, had tired of Pete, as she had of her other men. Dad feared he would be her next victim.
At twenty-one, Albert was a shy, lanky, sandy-haired youth with an engaging smile. He loved cars and had bought his own Model A from wages he earned at the local lumber mill. My uncle forced him to contribute most of his salary as room and board. To his mother and stepdad, he was a quasi-slave. He seemed to accept his persecutions; his mother never took his side, favoring the legitimate sons.
He often took me riding in his car, and I helped him with his chores. One evening, as we were playing five hundred rummy, a storm came up. My aunt said I should stay over. Albert offered to share his bed. During the night, he embraced me.
On the last Sunday of June, we went fishing for muskellunge. Albert’s girlfriend, Rose Howe, came with us. We rowed through connecting streams to a pair of lakes on the famous Chain of Lakes, lakes ideal for muskie. Landing muskellunge was difficult. Rich sportsmen carried revolvers for the purpose, shooting the exhausted fish while it was in the water.
I trolled my line, and Albert trolled his. We used chub minnows for bait. At noon we ate lunch, had a swim, and then turned the boat against the current, toward town. I helped with the rowing. As we neared the channel, Albert got a strike, a big one! To play the fish until it was exhausted, we turned the boat around, facing the open lake. Fifteen minutes later, Albert managed to play the muskie close to the boat.
The fish was almost four feet long, a prizewinner. Though subdued, he might suddenly flash forth, ripping the hook from his mouth or even damaging the boat. Albert threw a mesh bag over him and drew it tight against the boat. While Rosa and I held the bag, Albert rammed a gaff at the skull, piercing it. The stunned fish thrashed for several minutes and then died.
My uncle, I was later told, dismissed the catch as paltry and berated Albert for taking the day off without his permission: He should have cultivated corn. His mother refused to cook the fish, even after Albert cleaned it. He gave most of the meat, wrapped neatly in newspaper, to my dad, keeping a steak for himself He shellacked the head, mounted it on a pine board, and hung it near his bed.
The next morning he found the mounted head crushed flat on its board. His brother Jim had smashed it with a hammer. An altercation ensued. From the start, Albert had the better of Jim—until their mother appeared and started to beat Albert with a stick. Jim swung an axe at Albert, who grabbed it and sent it flying into the grass. Jim retreated to his room, locking himself in. Kate screamed, berating Albert, claiming he had cut her. She seemed to want to drive him to more violence, to the suicide he had threatened on more than one occasion.
Albert entered the house, grabbed a .22 rifle, and declared he would kill himself Near the road, a few feet from his car, he died, a single clean hole visible behind his ear.
Hysterical, Kate sent my cousin Frenchy for my dad—Uncle Pete was in town. Albert appeared to be sleeping on his side with his knees drawn up. The gun was still in his hand, his finger on the trigger. The bullet hole seemed no larger than a hornet’s bite. My mother stayed with Kate, who was screaming that it was all Albert’s fault. Dad drove to town for the sheriff and the undertaker.
The funeral, two days later, was at Gaffney’s. A fundamentalist preacher said a few words, but nothing personal, since he had seen Albert only twice in his life and my aunt and uncle were not members of his flock.
Some deaths jolt survivors into something like enlightenment over the cryptic and tragic nature of life. Albert’s death served that function. I stand now in memory at the site, the luxuriant grass crushed where his body lay. I visit his grave. There are no answers.
The survival equation was clear: The harder we worked during the brief growing season, about ninety days, the better supplied with food we’d be for winter. Once the potatoes blossomed and the corn grew silk, the soil required mounding. When hilled, potatoes reproduced more prolifically, and corn plants better withstood wind and rain. Cheap canvas gloves protected our hands. Against sunburn, we wore straw hats.
We hoed for entire mornings or afternoons, stopping only long enough for swigs of ice-cold water from mason jars. We took pride in our neat rows, knowing Dad would be pleased.
By early July, potato bugs appeared. For picking these one by one, Dad paid us a nickel a quart. The bugs spit orange juice and stank. We filled quart jars, which we dumped into a pail of kerosene to kill the bugs. We also examined the undersides of leaves for deposits of orange eggs. We either picked the infested leaves and crushed them or rubbed the sides of the leaf together into an orange mush.
The vegetable garden required more weeding and hoeing than the fields. Radishes matured first, followed by string beans and peas. We picked the ripe vegetables and helped my mother can them. Beets—not one of our favorites—and carrots matured late. These we buried in sand under the living room floor. When the sweet corn was ready, we ate it at numerous meals and spent hours shucking and slicing kernels for canning. Dad made a special rack for the jars so we could process a whole wash boiler at a time. By September, the cellar shelves were crammed with jars. The cobs we fed to the pigs.
Of all the crops, strawberries and rhubarb were the most resistant to insects and diseases. We always had luck with strawberries, and we devoured gigantic shortcakes topped with mounds of whipped cream.
We took no daily newspaper and no magazines, and we rarely listened to radio news. The Sunday paper, which we bought, was long on features and short on current events. The editors loved sex murders, Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson, and Indian children raised by wolves.
In 1936 Hitler occupied the Rhineland. Italy annexed Ethiopia. King George V died and was succeeded by Edward VIII, who soon abdicated for Mrs. Simpson. The Spanish Civil War started, as did the war between China and Japan. Dachau was in operation. Life magazine first appeared in November 1936; we received a notice in the mail and subscribed. European turmoils rarely figured in its pages. Hitler was seldom mentioned. Parties, rich foods, new kitchen gadgets, and arcane moments in popular culture were featured. Nothing was designed to produce a single tremor of dismay in American readers, nor to inform them of the impending war.
Dad’s friend, George Botteron, on a visit with his family insisted we tune the radio to Father Coughlin, the Jew-baiting, Hitler-loving Roman Catholic priest. Coughlin opened broadcasts with Hitler addressing the masses. When Dad expressed disgust, the Botterons stopped their visits.
Dad did, however, share the local distaste for Jews from Milwaukee and Chicago who made up our summer tourist population. To the impoverished locals, they were ostentatious with money, cars, and clothes. The women’s makeup and scanty shorts were considered offensive. Their “pushiness” was also legend: they would shove you off the sidewalk, we believed. Caddies joked about serving Jewish women. They let the shorts-wearing players tee their own balls, so the caddies could catch glimpses of intimate flesh. The anti-Semitic myth of Jews as nontippers persisted. When Jewish golfers needed caddies, we often tried to hide behind the caddie shack.
Jews were shamelessly excluded from all resorts except one. Not until 1948, after World War II, were signs announcing “Restricted Clientele” prohibitied by law. The single resort catering to Jews was Eagle Waters. Any locals working there as handymen or maids were regarded as inferior by those employed at gentile resorts. Fishermen kept their boats well back from the river fronting Eagle Waters, certain that Jewish sewage contaminated the game fish.
Many girls were more than willing victims, Falling for promises of a glamorous, rich life away from Eagle River. Most such promises were summer-short. When the Lotharios returned to the city, the girls remained behind disillusioned, tainted, and often with child, accusing the summer residents of having shamelessly exploited them. No hard-working local male would marry such used goods, The conflict between the local ethos of poverty, constancy, and illiteracy and the glamorous allure of city life destroyed many of these girls and intensified the anti-Semitism. Some girls lingered in the town. Once their beauty faded, they turned to alcohol, welfare, and prostitution. Others disappeared into the cities to the south.
One Jew, Harry Holperin, lived permanently in Eagle River. He reputedly had sold apples on the streets of Chicago during the Depression, eventually earning enough money to buy a grocery in Eagle River. Here he married a gentile and became a town booster. His grocery carried foods for the tourist trade. He was accepted as a “white Jew,” which meant he was inconspicuous and not pushy. When he grew rich, he still lived in modest rooms above his store. He traveled often to Milwaukee, where it was rumored he had complex business dealings. His wife, Orpha, helped by his two sons, looked after the grocery. Since the store was seasonal, after Labor Day it opened only on weekends. Holperin, a gracious man of much charm, contributed generously to the high school band fund, and he gave numerous local boys their first jobs, training them in his store. I was one of these boys, and remain most grateful to him and to his family.
Anti-Semitism was thoroughgoing, worsening during the summer when tourists tripled the population. Since they constituted no economic threat, Indians were less the butt of prejudice. Dislike for Indians festered month after month, but anti-Semitism was far more virulent. No blacks were visible in town, either as inhabitants or tourists. After World War II, as locals migrated to work in the auto plants of Racine, Milwaukee, and Beloit and competed with blacks for menial jobs, more bigotries arose. Most locals cheered Hitler’s efforts to control the Jews; however, most, I think, would have been horrified by the gas chambers.
The Fourth of July was a replay of Memorial Day, without the funereal solemnities. Dr. McMurray’s services were not required—no commemorative wreaths were dropped from his biplane to honor dead servicemen. The July parade was more elaborate and stressed humor. Clowns sought to keep an old Model T running. Floats carried bathing beauties tossing candy, Indians in regalia, local politicians, mounted cowboys dressed like Gene Autry. Other floats urged more fishing, hunting, and golf The parade disbanded at the county fairgrounds where in the evening there would be fireworks.
At home we feasted on chicken and dumplings, fresh lettuce drenched with milk and sugar, tomatoes, pies, and watermelon. The day was sultry, continuing the pattern for the week. Despite our high elevation, over a thousand feet, our usually dry air was uncomfortably humid. Huge mosquitoes swarmed. Unless you had immunity, venturing into the woods and swamps was a nightmare of mosquito attacks. We sprayed the cattle twice a day. Not only were they plagued by mosquitoes, but huge flies burrowed through their hides, depositing eggs in clusters beneath the skin. The spray, bought from a Watkins dealer, did not kill insects but was sufficiently noisome to keep them from alighting. If we failed to protect Lady, her milk dried up.
We managed to keep the house fairly free of mosquitoes. Screens fit well, and my mother nagged us to keep the doors closed. Evenings, we took a pail with holes punctured in the sides, arranged dry wood shavings in the bottom, lighted them, added more wood, and then covered the fire with green grass. We burned this smudge throughout the house. The thick smoke either drove the insects out or numbed them so we could smash them.
On warm evenings we sat in the front yard, with the smudge drifting over, protecting us. We believed that, once bitten, if you allowed the mosquito to fill himself with blood, withdraw, and fly off it would not leave an itching welt. We also thought that a blood-logged mosquito would soon die. Citronella helped minimize their bites. Since the lotion was expensive, we used it sparingly, primarily when we were in the woods or fields.
Nell saw the first indigo clouds swelling to the east. “That’s a bad one,” Dad said. “It’s over at Minocqua and speeding this way.” The stilled air had gotten several degrees colder. We pulled in the chairs from the front yard. Everett took the cow and calf to the barn. A vast current, like a great river, whirled through the upper sky, crackling and snapping. Near the ground, all was frighteningly calm. The storm clouds, still some distance off resembled great churning brains, the deep blacks and indigos slashed with lightning. Then, horrified, we realized that a funnel was heading for us! Its swirling tail was light-colored, almost white, in contrast with its body. It whipped treetops in its path.
Dad said we’d be safest on the floor, where we could scoot under the table. The thunder was horrendous. Birch trees swept the ground. Sheets of rain scudded past the window. The house shuddered. Guy wires holding the stovepipe to the roof snapped and flapped. The lightning was incessant. Everything was pitch black. A pair of birds flung themselves against the window. We found them later, dead.
The storm passed. The sun came out, producing a beautiful rainbow.
We checked the animals and found the barns and coop intact. The tornado had cut a huge swath through the woods, barely missing Kula’s farm. We drove to town to see the damage. Except for the loss of a few roofs, Eagle River was spared. Near Conover the storm had uprooted trees for a mile. The violence was incredible. It would take years for the forest to return.
I continued to attend the Lutheran Church, was baptized, and two weeks after Easter had my parents, sisters, and brother baptized. I hurried through catechism in order to teach Sunday school, a class of fourth-graders. I was soon promoted to superintendent. My duties were simple: call the sessions to order, lead prayers, conduct the offering of pennies, teach my class, conclude the session with another prayer, count and record the offering, and then attend the adult services in the nave.
Each Saturday night, just before going to sleep, I worked over my Sunday lesson. The church provided booklets, each featuring a colored picture illustrating the biblical text to be studied. Teachers received simple teaching manuals and were encouraged to memorize a psalm each Sunday, our students one per month. I affixed gold crosses to study papers whenever a student completed a psalm. I rarely missed memorizing, reciting both on my walk in to church and on the return home. My pedagogical methods derived from the belief that passionate prayer resolved all problems. It seemed to work, even with a pair of smart alecks whose dads were church trustees. Although my mother rarely attended services, Dad usually drove us to Sunday school. I preferred to walk whenever I could, memorizing psalms.
Eventually, Dad got himself a blue serge Welfare suit, attended church, and made a friend of Rev. Krubsack, who would come to the house on visits. The reverend liked laborers, probably because of his own working-class German origins. His lugubrious air of learning, however, prevented his ever being “one of us.” His sermons, delivered in rich guttural tones, were often scary Among his principal tenets were the following: 1. Simply by being born, you have broken all ten commandments. 2. Since the only way to Eternal Life is through Jesus intercession, and since He finds public confessions of sin distasteful, the best way to catch His ear is to pray solo, in your closet with the door closed. 3. All church organizations except the Ladies’ Aid are suspect and disallowed. 4. Roman Catholics are anathema. 5. No good Lutheran boy or girl will join the Scouts—they put too much emphasis on doing good deeds and not enough on asking Christ’s forgiveness for your having broken His commandments. 6. A communicant must register at least a day in advance of taking Communion, as a guarantee that the parishioner will not “drink damnation unto himself”
It was difficult to admire someone so rigid, but I tried to live his ideals. Later, when I was drafted into the army, for nearly two years, I wrote him for permission to take Communion from a cleric not of the Missouri Synod faith. When, of necessity, I ate the wafer and drank the wine without first securing Krubsack’s approval, I felt as much grace without his permission as with it. From that experience dates my fall from organized religion.
My propensities for flinching delayed my learning to drive. Dad, incredibly patient, seated beside me in the Model A, would guide me through the gears. My Achilles’ heel was sensing the exact moment for releasing the clutch.
One Sunday Dad stopped the car in the middle of Sundsteen Road. “You drive,” he said, just like that.
He turned off the engine and changed seats. I set the choke and started the ignition. He cautioned me to release the clutch slowly. I tensed, pushed in the clutch, set the gear, and released the clutch. There was a loud rumble and clank. I had broken the axle! Why couldn’t I learn something so simple? Other boys did. “Next time you’ll get it,” Dad said. We pushed the car off the road. “Well, let’s get Kula.”
Kula returned with his horses and pulled us home. Dad was greatly inconvenienced—for a week he had to walk a good mile to catch a ride to work. He traded a pig for a new axle, brought it home, and on the next weekend repaired the Ford.
He insisted I try again; delaying would only make it harder to learn. This time we practiced near home. Caution paid off. I learned to feel that subtle moment when the clutch releases itself and the car moves forward. Within days I was driving short distances up and down the road.
Eventually, I bought myself a used Model A, and learned to make minimal repairs. If I had patience, it appeared, I had mechanical aptitude. I learned also that smearing your hands with grease and grit was not an odious experience.
Dad never teased me about my differences from other boys. My brother, for instance, loved cars and hunting. Dad encouraged my “book” education, saying he hoped I wouldn’t end up digging ditches as he had to. He helped me buy an old reconditioned Underwood typewriter through the Sears, Roebuck catalogue.
I met Bill and George Jolly one morning at their house at 6 A.M. Their seventeen-year-old brother, John, a freckled, husky youth, was still asleep on the bed the three of them shared. He was lying on his back and his sheet had worked up across his chest, revealing a sizable erection. George settled a noose of fishing line around John’s penis and dropped the loose end of the line out a nearby window. “Watch,” he laughed, running downstairs.
The black thread moved with delicate tugs. John grew even more erect. George yanked harder, and John awoke, cursing. “That’s George doin’ it again, right?” Keeping the string taut, he went over to the window and urinated. George yelled, ran back upstairs, and proceeded to wrestle his naked brother to the floor.
Later, while George ate breakfast, I helped Bill dig night crawlers. They loaned me a cane pole; they each had casting rods. They jammed some bread and cheese into a bag, which would serve also for bringing fish home.
To reach the lake we traversed a superb stand of virgin timber—pine, hemlock, and cedar, with some yellow birch. Partridge flew from thickets. When we reached a floating bog, I matched my footprints to George’s. One misstep and you were up to your waist in muck. As it was, on any portion of the bog your feet were under water. The trick was to leap to the next clump before the mass sank deeper under your weight. The vast lake was visible a hundred yards off We soon reached high land and a rapid creek that flowed into the lake.
We dropped our gear on the sand and stripped to our underwear. The shallow water was rife with pickerel weed. Beyond was a drop-off where Bill planned to fish. We tied fish stringers and a small bag of worms around our waists. George showed me how to bait the hook.
Bill hooked two walleyes and some bass and bluegills. George caught a pickerel, which he threw back, saying it was too bony, and nearly a dozen bass, bluegills, and large perch. My catch consisted of six bluegills and three smallmouth bass.
We stopped for lunch, stripped, and had fun swimming and splashing. When we were thirsty, we simply scooped up handfuls of water and drank. A doe and a fawn appeared. A black bear, fortunately without cubs, spied us and waddled back into the forest. While Bill continued fishing, George and I lay stretched out on the sand, absorbing sun and talking about girls. He claimed that he “did it” with Alice Carlson. She was the oldest of a brood of children left motherless when their mother had died giving birth. I knew George was fibbing, yet I chose to believe him, enhancing his prowess, fearsome and mysterious to me. Perhaps I had a crush on George, of the kind youths have on one another. I don’t know. The more masculine—and crude—he was, the better I liked him. I wished for the afternoon never to end.
Charlie Mattek had staked his Guernsey bull in the north pasture, waiting for Lady. When I led her to the gate, the huge Guernsey caught her scent, grew aroused, reached the end of his tether, and pawed the ground. While he grew frenetic, his penis dripping, Lady seemed oblivious of him and kept munching grass, well beyond his reach. When Charlie pulled Lady nearer, the bull began licking her, his penis a hot rod of meat ready for penetration. He shuddered and withdrew, lowing. Strings of semen dripped from Lady. “That should do it,” Charlie said. I led Lady home. I was to bring her back if she remained in estrus.
Visits from local families were rare. Only the Botterons spent occasional Sunday afternoons with us, until the quarrel over Father Coughlin. When he was in his teens, George Botteron immigrated from Glarus, Switzerland, and married a Polish woman from Chicago. Rose babbled as much in Polish as she did in English, which often disconcerted my mother. There were three children: Norman, Rose Helen, and Gerald. Norman, the oldest, was my age. We lived too far away for walking, so roughly once a month we exchanged visits by car.
The Botterons taught me off-color Polish words. The only one I remember is pitchkie, for penny-bank slit, or vagina. There were a few insults and curses, mostly based on the reputed stupidity of Slavs. Norman arranged “shows” with his sister and a neighbor girl. For a penny each, the girls would pee in coffee cans.
George Botteron was an accordionist, so he and Dad played music. Rose Botteron’s hatred of Jews was utterly irrational and derived from her girlhood in a Chicago slum. She seemed the archetypal farm wife, tending to animals and fowl, her apron filled with grain or fat brown eggs. Norman, Gerald, Everett, and I fashioned slingshots and arrows for hunting birds—we never bagged any—and played endless games of tag and giant step.
One afternoon the Botteron kids and I returned from swimming in Perch Lake. Norman, in a loud bragging voice, tattled to the adults that I had pulled up some of old John Simon’s potatoes. True, I had been thoughtless, showing off; I had merely wanted to see how big the potatoes were. Norman had promised not to tell.
Botteron dared Dad to punish me. When I blurted out that it was only one hill, Dad yanked me to him, turned me over his lap, and spanked me. He threatened to tell the sheriff next day when he went to work.
I hid in the grove behind the house, staying until after dark. The fact that my punishment had occurred in front of visitors hurt far worse than the spanking itself Why did Dad need to save face? Before that he had never once slapped me.
For a week I spent most of each day hidden in the woods, positive that the sheriff would haul me to jail. I hid close to the house to be ready to run if an officer drove up. I feared asking Dad if he had indeed notified the sheriff. He had no inkling of the effect of his discipline on me.
A few hours of training prepared you for the Eagle Waters Golf Course, a nine-hole course that covered a picturesque area of pine and birch groves winding near a major channel that connected the vast series of lakes known as the Chain of Lakes. Here, muskellunge fishing was the best in the world. To reach the club we hitchhiked fifteen miles to the Chanticleer Inn. From their boat dock we shouted across to the clubhouse, where the caddy master, doubling as bartender, sent a boat to fetch us.
An experienced caddy walked us through a few holes, showing us how to hold the pin-flag to keep it from flapping and deflecting the player’s concentration. We were advised to walk a few steps behind our player, always to the left, ready to supply any club he wished. We were to keep our mouths shut unless spoken to—“and keep your eye on the ball.” Our first responsibility was to know where a ball flew and to lead the player to it. Seventy-five cents for nine holes. The caddy master, Jack Bacich, was impressed whenever players asked for us a second time. We contributed our tips to a kitty, divvied up by Bacich or his sister Betty at the end of each week. As I recall, the Bacichs took 15 percent for “managing” the fund. They kept complaints to a minimum by giving us free ice cream bars or Frozen Turkey candy, a white nougat marshmallow treat. Some days we sat around for hours, waiting to work. We talked dirty a lot. Occasionally there was the titillation of pocket-sized obscene treatments of “Maggie and Jiggs,” “Out Our Way,” “Blondie,” and “The Katzenjammer Kids,” circulated by the older caddies who had purchased them at a local gas station. Moon Mullins pumped Maggie; his organ was as fat as his forearm.
A high point was the Homeowners’ Loan Corporation Golf Tournament, sponsored by the Chanticleer Inn, with prizes going to the winners and their caddies. Bacich assigned us to players according to our seniority. Most caddies worked the week, earning $25 before tips. We usually served the same player, unless he complained to the caddy master, who then switched us around. One player I held in particular awe was Edgar Guest, the most popular poet of the day. He was a short, pudgy man who wore plaid knicker-type golf pants and a plaid cap with a visor. His verses, widely syndicated in newspapers, reached a huge audience. His most famous lines were “It takes a heap o’ livin’ / to make a house a home.” He stood for easy values and the virtues of everyday lives. Another of his much-loved poems was an ode to the outhouse, that structure so indigenous to rural America.
Whenever I wrote poems, I wrote in his manner. At six I had attempted verses and short stories based on cute animals—raccoons, possums, skunks, frogs, crows, and robin redbreasts. My first public recognition came when the superintendent of schools saw one of my Rocky Raccoon stories, written in a pencil tablet. When the teacher singled me out, the superintendent patted my head and told me to keep writing. That spring I wrote poems, hoping to enter one in the county fair. The teacher selected a narrative piece and drew a picture to go with it. That fall I realized she had written an entirely new poem, “The Teacher with a Bully in His Class,” and entered it in my name. She had printed it in Gothic script and affixed a drawing of an old-fashioned schoolmaster berating a hulking, obstreperous boy standing by, waiting to be birched. The poem received first prize, a new dollar bill. When I questioned the ethics—the work after all, was hers—she laughed and said that I had tried so hard to write she wanted to “assist” me. After that, I kept my verses private, limiting myself to an occasional story and keeping elaborate notes on meetings of our “literary club.” Among the few books constituting our school library was Guest’s famous volume The House by the Side of the Road.
I took every opportunity to watch Guest tee up and drive his ball down the fairway. He was an indifferent golfer, but because of his fame he was assigned our most experienced caddy, Mike Tomlanovich. On Friday, the last day of the tournament, I screwed up my courage and asked him to autograph a golf card, which I then prized for years. The paradox of a True Poet (as I regarded him then) arranging home mortgages, a form of usury, never struck me. He certainly was a departure from my naive image of the poet as a romantic loner in lace cuffs, seated at an open casement window at dusk, plume in hand, seized by Inspiration.
The golf course was my first real involvement with the world outside home and school. This, a real job, differed from selling arbutus, peeling logs, and picking potato bugs—jobs I had done for my dad. For the first time, I sensed real possibilities in the larger world.
A closed community of Finns inhabited Phelps, a lumber town north of Eagle River. Importing cooperative ideals from Europe, these people found a locale of hills, firs, lakes, and swamps resembling the homeland. They established a cooperative sawmill, grocery and hardware stores, a school, a health service, and a cow fund. If any of their group lost cows from disease, calving, or drowning, the fund replaced the animal. They believed in free and universal education from grade school through university. Their ideals, like those of other immigrant Scandinavians settling in Wisconsin and Minnesota, influenced the culture at large. The Progressive party, led by Senator Bob La Follette of Wisconsin, set a national tone that incorporated Scandinavian social values.
A conspicuous Finnish effort at community outreach was the erection of a hall for meetings, festivals, and dances. These events supported the cow and family funds. The hall, built of pine logs, was located a half mile from Sundsteen School. Across the road was a grove of virgin evergreens, a spot I always feared. The deep recesses might easily conceal bear or a leech-covered wild man of the woods. One winter morning I found blood all over the snow and decided a man had been killed there. My quieter mind said that it was a deer. A fetid odor of death emerged from the sunless earth below the gigantic cedars.
The Finnish overseers scheduled Saturday night dances, charging half a dollar for each male attending. They imported a trio of semiprofessional musicians from Watersmeet, Michigan, who played both traditional and popular music. My cousin Frenchy attended every dance, drank, and got into fights. To many young men, the pursuit of violence was more important than the pursuit of women.
No other place in the immediate area so appealed to young bucks for acting out mating rituals, turf defenses, and ego pecking orders. To my cousin, cut lips and black eyes were badges of honor. Occasionally, Everett and I walked to the hall to listen to the music. Once, in the parking lot, we witnessed a vicious fight between Frenchy and another husky youth. The excitement was palpable. When Frenchy was getting the worst of it, his brother Jim jumped in. Shortly, the fight turned into a melee. Officials tried to stop it but couldn’t. My brother and I, fearful, left before the fight ended. The next day Frenchy and Jim boasted they had smeared the gravel with their attackers, men from Michigan looking for trouble. When the hall was finally closed to dances, the young stags moved to other venues to work their macho imperatives.
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.