Odd ends

by G Russell Peterman

  Chapter one

  A dawning

  When I was young, my world was young. My world was young in 1937. April tenth was the dawning of the first day. Today, I am old and my world is old. A heart attack and triple bypass surgery old as I write this in 2003 with the first three little yellow crocuses blooming outside along the south wall. When I go, my world will go with me. That's the way it has been through the millennia for millions and billions of people before me, and it is my hope it will continue for at least that many after. It pleases me to think falsely of my world being nearer the middle than the end regardless of what others imagine or how many years are added on. Small scientists and bean counters try to tell me there is only one world and it's billions of years old. As so often, they miss human reality. Also, they miss the simple truth that the only science of core value is the knowledge and abilities that will get us to someplace else when the free utility company in our galaxy turns out the light. And before my light of remembering goes I'll include a brief glimpse of family history as a resume for a writing job if anyone reads this far. My mind is too close to these stories so I've asked for understanding as you edit them to make me and my relatives' sound better.

  This point of different realities reminds me of a math problem that Mrs. Christiansen, that married Daryl Runningen, and I disagreed about. It was out in District 114, a rural one-room school between Ashby and Battle Lake. The same school house my father visited in his young years, but that's another story. Our problem was one of those John and Bill have apples situations. She said that I had the wrong answer. Like a young fool headed for the corner seat I told her that the real answer was not the number of apples, but which one had the apple with a worm in it. Or even more important, which boy had the apple with half a worm in it. As in all student-teacher disagreements I lost, earned my corner seat and did math during recess again. For the rest of the nine-weeks my papers looked like it had been held for ransom and tortured by the Nazis. This outer world mindset filled with death and dying in World War II made me think of my paper with all those red marks as bleeding. Cousin Jack died on the drive to Cherbourg after Normandy. He served in the third battalion of the 317 Infantry. After Mom taught me my numbers the bleeding slowed and Jack's war seemed only slightly further away.

  Blessed with a noise in my ear, tinnitus, and unable to hear well did not let me do well in the phonics method of reading instruction of the day. It was near impossible to learn Phonics, the new way they taught reading then, for this child with a loud noise in his left ear as long as he could remember-and still has. So, Mom taught me to read out of Max Brand western books and my grades increased. What I have been, am, or hope to be I owe to my mother Florence Evelyn Lystrom Peterman. Part of my debt was paid by having her trailer parked next to my house for her last years. But I gained too listening to the stories of her world, and it saddened me when she took her world away with her.

  In looking back we remember our world as we all will do some day. You and I will remember first in glimpses or slivers of memory and what was told to us. These flashes of remembrance hide in my memory and yours, little slivers of thoughts. These are somewhere in there long before we remember a whole event, a thing, or a happening. Yet, mixed in with these slivers, we have some memories we do not actually remember.

  It's difficult to separate the real brief slivers of memory from things we think we remember but were told about. Like the fact that I know my first words were "cut-cut." I was born as a 10 lb. 6 oz. baby in the back of the barbershop in Nashua, Minnesota, the living quarters behind Dad's shop. Everyone came around to see this big baby, and Dad was always bringing me out into the shop to show off his big baby. When I got older, he would sit me in the barber chair. Once when they did this, they said I surprised them and said, "Cut-cut."

  Or the time my family went to visit the Knudson's over in Erdahl. They did not have a crib for me. So Mrs. Knudson and Mom put a blanket in the bottom of an old galvanized washtub. After I finished nursing, Mom rocked me to sleep and laid me down to sleep in the wash tub. Mrs. Knudson pulled a sheet over top so their whist playing noise would not bother me. Later on the way home Mom asked, "Where's Gene?" She thought Orlie and Richard, my older brothers who had wanted to name me Gene Autry Peterman after their hero Gene Autry, had me in the back seat. I wasn't in the car. They had forgotten me, and Dad had to turn his black 1936 Ford around and head back to Erdahl.

  Or the time Orlie and Richard, who was always called "Bud" meaning Orlie's buddy, were supposed to be looking after me in Wendell. Our family was over visiting Uncle Roy and Aunt Julia. Wendell had sidewalks and I was just learning to walk. You know that time before a child really learns to turn or walk over uneven ground. They let me walk down the sidewalk to the end. The rough ground at the end made me fall and roll down in the road ditch. When I rolled over I crawled up the steep bank to sidewalk or onto the side street. At the top my brothers took turns carrying me back up the sidewalk a ways to let me go again and again. I entertained them until Mom came running out to end it.

  Or the time Orlie and Bud got mad at me and locked me in the closet while Mom was out hoeing in the garden. I cried in the dark. Mom took me out and was angry at Orlie and Bud. I was told that they were playing Chinese checkers and I had ruined their game by swallowing a blue marble. For days everyone worried about if they should take me to the doctor, but it was the depression. Doctors cost money and that was in short supply. For years after the blue marble returned to the game neither Orlie nor Bud would take blue as their color.

  Or the time we were all watching an Evansville baseball game. The ballpark was dug out of a hillside with nice slanted grass-covered clay banks around for the fans to sit on. The banks were to steep for me to walk on and Mom said I enjoyed crawling up, crawling to one side or the other, and rolling down. During one of these fun trips crawling up the batter hit a line-drive foul. The ball hit the ground beside me, bounced up with most of the force gone, hit me in the side, and rolled me down the bank screaming more in surprise than in pain. The game was delayed as people gathered around yelling for a doctor until they found out that I, the baby, was not hurt. I was only frightened.

  Or the times my older brothers sent me into the Evansville hardware store with a penny to buy a "sky hook" or a "left-handed monkey wrench" or a "cup of air." These times everyone laughed in the store and outside. Each time a smiling thoughtful and understanding clerk told me that they were out of that item, but they would be sure to order it.

  I hope you see the point. These things and others I was told and do not remember any of them. All of us believe these sort of things happened because we believe our family members that told us. We do not believe they would lie. We all have dozens and dozens of these stories from other people's memories before we really remember. Our first real memories are just small slivers of memory or glimpses into our past mixed with things told so often we think we remember.

  SLIVER # 1

  "Mmrrrr," growled the noisy motor of my wooden blue truck with black wheels that Grandpa Fred Lystrom made for me as it raced lightning fast along the railroad track carrying supplies. After its important run down to pick up cinders and carry them back to the pile for the new road, I always stopped to look at my sister Harriet riding her red tricycle under the maple tree in the front yard. Distracted from my road work I walked over to sit on the other track to wait for my turn, and my turn would happen after she tired of it. The tricycle was hers, but she let me ride when she was not.

  "Clang, clang, clang," went the bell on the real big black smoky train. The noise made me turn and look. A big black train engine was coming down the tracks. I knew I should run but somehow I just sat there looking.

  The front door slammed on our small white house in Evansville. My Mom came charging out of the house. Her hands were all soapy from washing dishes and she was wiping them on her apron front as she ran yelling.

  "Gene! Get away from there!"

  "Eeeeee," screamed the steam whistle
on the train as Mom grabbed my shirt collar and pulled me away.

  Mom dragged me away, saved me, but I lost my wooden truck. I had left it on the track and the train ran over it. One wooden wheel popped out from the train wheel and made a bruise on my thigh. I squealed in pain. And, while the boxcars and flat cars rolled past Mom paddled my back pockets. Afterward she knelt and hugged me and cried. I never played on the railroad track again.

  SLIVER # 2

  "Honk ... Honk!" blasted a big brown Packard's horn out front.

  Harriet and I ran out to see Grandpa Fred and Grandma Carrie. Grandpa has a cabinet shop behind their house in Clitheral and they were talking about buying the Clitheral Movie Theatre. Mom came out on the front step with Neal, my baby brother, on her hip. She shouted a greeting and waved.

  When the car door opened on the Packard Grandpa Fred got out with a brown grocery sack in his hand with the top turned down. He was in my mind huge, almost a full head taller than Dad. Grandpa always wore a big brown hat and a thick mustache. Dad called it a "soup strainer." Grandma Carrie was small. I always thought that was where my sister Harriet, who was in kindergarten, got her smallness. Harriet was three years older and smaller than me. Grandma Carrie gave us all a hug and kiss on the cheek. Grandpa Fred shook my hand and asked, "How are you Blue Hair?" He called all of this grand and great grand children "Blue Hair." After greetings we walked toward the house.

  "I've got those patterns," Grandma Carrie told Mom, who had been looking for patterns to sew Orlie, Bud, and Harriet's school clothes.

  On the way to sit at the kitchen table for coffee Grandpa Fred held his brown paper sack out toward me and said, "Here! This is for you Blue Hair." I never really understood why he called all of us that. Mom said it was because his first grandchild had hair so black that in a certain light it had a blue shine.

  Inside the sack was a black with red wheels new wooden truck he had made for me. I gave Grandpa a hug for the truck and it was a good truck-a special highly valued thing looked after more than played with. Somehow while I owned it I never dared to drive it as fast or carry as large a load of cinders in it as the blue truck the train ran over had. It was a great sadness for me that in the move from Evansville out to the farm north of Parker's Prairie it was misplaced-lost.

  SLIVER # 3

  "You got your license yet?" Orlie asked.

  Willard Rovig, our cousin, gave that grin of his before replying proudly, "Naw. But Uncle Roy's teaching me to drive. Last Sunday when we drove over to Nashua he let me drive most of the way back."

  "I bet you ran in the ditch," Bud teased.

  "Didn't."

  "Jerked the clutch."

  "Didn't."

  "Killed the motor."

  Willard shook his head.

  Orlie interrupted Bud and asked Willard, "How fast?"

  "Forty-eight," Willard replied smiling.

  "You drive like an old lady," Orlie teased.

  "Uncle Roy said I drove too fast for a beginner. He made me slow down twice to forty," Willard replied good-naturedly to the banter.

  "Awe! You were afraid to go any faster," Bud scoffed.

  "First, I have to learn how to drive. If I go too fast Uncle Roy won't teach me."

  "When I'm old enough to drive, you won't catch me driving like an old lady," Orlie declared and added. "Willard, you'll never change. You will always be driving forty. It will be like your Sunday prayers," Orlie declared.

  "God is great. God is good. Thank you for this food," Bud teased and taunted Willard by repeating it several times.

  Orlie joined in repeating it too. But, he quickly saw it was not going anywhere and Willard only grinned back at them. Orlie added with a laugh, "I always liked it when it was your turn, because yours was short. We got to eat quicker."

  Willard just smiled that smile of his that started as a little grin, grew into a full smile, and faded away into a big grin. He was use to this banter from my brothers. It never seemed to get under his skin for after his mother died, Dad's sister Mabel, Willard came to live with us until it was time for him to go to high school. For high school he had left us in Evansville and moved in with Dad's older brother, his Uncle Roy, in Wendell.

  Willard's answer to all this teasing was to ask, "You guys want to walk around town." He already knew the answer to his question and was walking past me and down the front steps as he spoke.

  "Sure," echoed both my brothers glad to be doing something. Teasing someone who just grins and smiles at you was boring.

  Orlie and Bud hurried after older Willard and left me alone on the porch. I could not leave with them for Mom had told me to stay on the porch or come inside. I would only go inside when I could not stand being bored any more.

  Inside was scary for Aunt Julia had all kinds of things setting on shelves and little glass cabinets. Just being in that house made both Mom and me nervous. Mother always tried to get as many of us boys outside as she could or held on to us like a mother hen did her chickens. Yet, mother never worried about Harriet who was free to roam around, play, and visit with Cousin Dorothy. So I sat bored and alone on the porch's front step hoping a car, truck, or tractor would pass by on the street or Dad and Uncle Roy would come back from his barbershop next door.

  Addscript to Sliver #3

  Although Willard Rovig was my cousin, the son of Dad's sister Mabel that died, I always thought of him as one of my brothers. He was always driving over to Nashua while I was young from Uncle Roy's house in Wendell for Willard had lived with us until he got of High School age. Mom always hugged him on arrival and Willard always got embarrassed over being hugged. After High School Willard joined the Coast Guard, served off New York in the War, and his unit captured a German submarine. He dated and married Ann who worked in the Empire State Building as a secretary on the Manhattan project. His son Glen kept up the tradition by joining the Coast Guard too, but he later transferred to the Navy.

  SLIVER # 4

  "I will rake down the middle. Orlie and Bud go down the left side. Willard and Gene go down the right," Dad ordered one Easter week holiday free from school so Willard came over from Wendell to spend some time with us. We were to clean the garden in the spring with rakes for Dad did not like to plow the old dry stuff under or burn it off.

  "Why can't Willard and I rake this side," Orlie asked for he knew that the older Willard would do all the work. Orlie like fixing things, wrenches and getting greasy, and one of the things that he disliked one was garden work. If he worked with Willard all Orlie would have to do would be to carry the rakings to the burn pile.

  "Talking isn't working," Dad ordered and we went to work. Dad's strip was the largest right down the middle of the garden, and he both racked, and carried.

  I was too small to rake so Willard raked and I carried. And to tell the truth he helped me carry too. Willard could carry more in one armload than I could in half a dozen trips. Willard and I were ahead of Orlie and Bud. I was proud of that. Neither of them rushed around more than enough to keep their small space raked even or slightly ahead of Dad. While I worried about keeping ahead of Orlie and Bud I grabbed armloads without looking and ran off to the burn pile.

  On one of those grabs a field mouse in that armload bit me on the thumb and I screamed, "Ouch!" I dropped the load and the mouse ran off while I stood staring at my thumb dripping blood.

  Willard saw what had happened, dropped his rake, grabbed, and squeezed my thumb.

  "Don't. It hurts," I squealed in pain.

  "Have to bleed it," Willard said loudly as his finger pressed up and down on my thumb making the blood run faster.

  I tried to pull away from him but he held me fast, and even when I started hitting him with the other hand on the arm and back Willard held me fast squeezing away.

  "Gene! Stop that," Dad ordered.

  I stopped and stood taking the pain of Willard pushing up and down on my sore thumb.

  "That'll do," Dad said.

  Willard stopped.

  "Gene
. Willard made it bleed. That washes out the wound. If you don't, it will get infected. Mice have dirty teeth," Dad looked at me to see what my reaction to this was.

  I did not know about that. All I knew was it hurt and I was trying not to cry. Only babies and girls cried.

  "Willard will go with you to the house. Mother will put some salve on it and bandage it."

  Willard held my hand, the one the mouse did not bite, and we walked up the slope to our house.

  Addspeak: My grandfather George Benjamin Peterman won at the land lottery in Winner, South Dakota the right to buy land in new Trip County formed out of a part of the Sioux Red Bud Reservation. Because he did not have a crop to harvest he could enter before September first and my Dad, Harry Trip Peterman was born in August in Trip County. My Dad claimed all of his life that he was the first settler child born in Trip County. My grandfather bought a train car load of lumber for his land northwest of Winner was in the treeless prairie. He built one building, divided it down the middle, one half for stock and the other for family, and my Dad was born in the house part. All of his life my Dad was a little careless about closing doors and often got yelled at, "Close the door ... were you born in a barn?" My Dad would grin and answer, "Yup," and keep on with what he was doing.