“Amazing Stories—yeah, that’s keen,” Teddy said.
“Kids back home called me Metal Mouth,” Mendel said. He strained to make his voice several tones lower than usual. “I’ve started drawing a comic strip with a hero called Metal Mouth with braces that act as a radio antenna, so he can receive secret messages from Buck Rogers. I’m also training my dog Togo to be a sled dog.”
Terpsichore was relieved that Mendel had again dispatched that rumor of being her boyfriend before it spread. He was nicer than she had thought he was at first, but she was still happy that he was making other friends to listen to all the stuff about mosquitoes and spiders she didn’t want to hear.
The teacher rang a crystal bell. “You’re in alphabetical order, class. The As start in this front corner by the flag and the Zs are in the back corner.”
Terpsichore found her place, and Gloria and Mendel were behind her. As she lifted the desktop to put away her tablet and pencils, she ran her hand over the underside of the lid. No stale gum wads or carved initials. She quietly closed the lid, sat up straight, and folded her hands. For the first time ever, she had a spanking new desk. She would try to keep it nice for whoever sat there next year.
After everyone had found their places, the teacher rang her bell again. She was as fresh as the school. Unlike Miss Burgess, this teacher was dressed more like Terpsichore, in a plain dark skirt and white shirt. Her collar lay flat, and Terpsichore self-consciously folded her own collar down in the back.
“Good morning, class. I’m Miss Zelinsky, and you are my very first students. I graduated from Eastern Montana State Normal School in Billings, so I know about hard winters and I’m excited to be here with you in this brand-new school.
“I’ll warn you now. In this sixth-grade classroom you’ll be expected to work hard, but we’ll have fun, too. Twice a week, you’ll have music class with me, and when I go across the hall to Miss Olafson’s class for their music lessons, she’ll come in to you for art. The school will also be putting on a musical just before school lets out in June.”
Terpsichore heard impatient rustling from the seat behind her and could almost feel the wind on the back of her neck from a waving hand.
“Miss Zelinsky, Miss Zelinsky, what musical are we putting on, and when are the tryouts?” Gloria asked.
“The Wizard of Oz,” Miss Zelinsky said. “There’ll be a part for everyone who wants one. Tryouts will be after Christmas. Terpsichore, I’ve already heard about your younger sisters, and I hope they will perform. There will be non-performing roles too—the artists among you can make backdrops, anyone handy with a hammer can make props, and we’ll need seamstresses for costumes.”
Miss Zelinsky didn’t mention needing anyone who could cook salmon a dozen different ways.
“But only one person can be Dorothy, and that will be me,” Gloria whispered from behind her.
On the way home, Gloria talked on about what a good Dorothy she hoped to be.
Terpsichore interrupted Gloria’s bubbly rambling with an awkward hug. “Thanks for being such a great friend.”
“Ditto,” said Gloria. “But what made you say that now?”
“I knew from the day I met you that you loved acting more than books, but you helped me most of the summer with the library.”
“But that’s what friends do, isn’t it? Help each other?” said Gloria. “And I had fun too, with the story hours.”
“Anyway, thanks. You’ll make an amazing Dorothy! Now that you and Mendel have helped me, I think I can keep on with the library project, even if you both get busy. We can still be good friends even if sometimes we’re doing different things, can’t we?”
“You said it!” Gloria said.
Every Saturday from ten to two for the last two weeks of August, Terpsichore took charge of the little library. Soon, every kid who liked to read was calling her “library girl.”
At the end of August, a box arrived from Demco Library Supplies in Wisconsin. The box was full of supplies: india ink, a wooden pen with metal nibs, mending tape, real circulation cards, an ink pad—even a date-due stamper with metal ratchets to change the month, day, and year. The note on Demco letterhead read:
For our pioneering librarian from Demco’s home state of Wisconsin.
Terpsichore doubted they knew the “pioneering librarian” was eleven years old.
CHAPTER 28
Popcorn Wars
IT WAS MOVIE NIGHT AT THE COMMUNITY CENTER. Terpsichore and Gloria sat cross-legged on the floor near the front of the audience as the projector whirred into action and the words “Hearst Metrotone News” flickered against the sheet hung on the wall.
The newsreel shocked everyone to silence. In the background was their own Matanuska River. In the foreground was a two-seater plane, ladder set up against the open door. Will Rogers waved good-bye to the hundreds of people gathered to watch him take off.
Terpsichore could barely swallow. “It’s hard to believe that two weeks ago Will Rogers was here.”
“He wasn’t waving good-bye just to Palmer, but to his fans all over the world,” Gloria whispered, still staring at the screen.
After the newsreel flickered off, the community center remained quiet.
As the feature film started—State Fair with their lost hero, Will Rogers—someone tried to lighten the mood. “If I just had a bag of popcorn, I could imagine I was back home in Minnesota,” he said.
After hearing that, Terpsichore hardly paid attention to whether Janet Gaynor, the actress playing Will Rogers’s daughter, was going to fall in love with the newspaper reporter. Instead, she ran calculations in her head. If she sold popcorn at ten cents a bag, and the popcorn and the bags cost her three cents—she’d have to check prices—she might net seven cents a bag. If she could sell fifty bags, she’d clear $3.50 in just one week and it would only take six months to save enough for a whole set of World Book encyclopedias.
• • •
The following week, Terpsichore was ready. With a Shirley Temple movie like Bright Eyes, the community center would be packed. Terpsichore got her father’s permission to put small brown paper bags and popcorn kernels on their tab at the general store. She took over the kitchen all afternoon, popping batch after batch in a pan on the stove and measuring two cups into each sack. She folded the tops over twice and loaded them into Mother’s laundry baskets. Mother and Matthew sat with Pop on the seat of the horse-drawn wagon, and Terpsichore sat in the back with Cally and Polly, holding the baskets steady so none of the popcorn would spill.
Terpsichore stood just inside the entrance to the community center. She was shy, but her sisters and Gloria were not. They called out, “Popcorn, get your popcorn! All profits to the Palmer Library!”
“Selling popcorn—crackerjack idea!” Gloria told Terpsichore. “I bet we could sell twice as much and I could help you make it.”
“That would be keen,” said Terpsichore. “If we sell a hundred bags a week, we’ll have those encyclopedias by Christmas!”
• • •
The next Saturday, Gloria went to Terpsichore’s and she and the twins helped Terpsichore pop and package one hundred bags of popcorn. An hour before the movie started, Pop helped load the wagon with bags of popcorn heaped into packing crates and laundry baskets.
At the community center, Terpsichore led them toward what she considered to be her station just inside the door. But Mendel was in her spot.
“Get your popcorn, fresh hot popcorn!” Mendel already had a card table set up with his pile of popcorn bags.
Terpsichore dropped her basket with a thud and shoved past the line of people waiting to buy popcorn from Mendel.
“You stole my idea. You knew this was how I was raising money for the library.” Terpsichore could feel her cheeks beginning to redden.
“I’m not on the library committee anymore, and I need to raise m
oney too,” Mendel said, avoiding her eyes.
“Well, selling popcorn was my idea . . . you’re a copycat!”
“You weren’t the first person in the world to sell popcorn at a movie, so it’s not like you invented the idea.” Maybe Mendel did feel a little guilty, because his cheeks started to redden too.
“But I was the first person to do it here!” Terpsichore said.
Gloria, Cally, and Polly shoved through the line to stand beside Terpsichore and back her up with fierce nods. “Trip was here first,” the twins said.
Mendel was outnumbered, but he stuck out his chin and said, “Well, you weren’t first today.”
A curious crowd paused at the doorway to watch the showdown before taking their seats.
Terpsichore would not be weak and girly in front of Mendel and all these people. “You’re a dirty rotten thieving claim-jumper.”
Gloria, Polly, and Cally echoed, “Dirty rotten claim-jumper.”
Mendel pointed behind them toward their stacks of popcorn bags. “There’s the real claim-jumper.”
A kid stooped over Terpsichore’s laundry basket heaped with bags of popcorn and held up a bag in each hand. “Hey, guys, free popcorn!” Within seconds, almost half her popcorn was gone.
Terpsichore dashed back through the people entering the community center to protect her inventory. “That’s ten cents!”
Mendel continued shouting like a sideshow barker. “Popcorn, fresh hot popcorn! Get your popcorn here!”
Terpsichore glared at Mendel and shouted even louder, “Best popcorn in the valley! All profits to a new library!”
In between customers, Mendel and the girls traded epithets:
“Spoilsport!” That was the girls.
“Crybabies!” That was Mendel.
“You should be set out on an iceberg!” That was Terpsichore.
A stranger, too old to be a colonist or CCC worker, greeted Mendel. “What are you earning money for, young man?”
“A real dog harness,” Mendel said. “I’m training my dog to be a sled dog.”
“Come see me when you have the harness and I’ll help you,” he said. “Ask anyone out at the Butte where old-timer Crawford lives.”
Terpsichore was trying to think of another insult when the old-timer turned her way. “Here’s another enterprising popcorn seller. What are you saving money for?”
“I’m saving for a set of encyclopedias for the new library,” Terpsichore said, “not for something for myself.” She glared again at Mendel.
“Well,” the man said, “I guess I should buy a bag of popcorn from you too.”
“Who was that, Trip?” Cally asked.
“It’s Terp-sick . . .” Terpsichore’s rebuke about using her nickname trailed off as her eyes followed the strange man as he carried his two bags of popcorn to find standing room at the back of the audience. “I don’t know who it is. Somebody who likes popcorn, I guess.”
Gloria looked up from counting money. “Even with Mendel stealing your spot and wise guys making off with free popcorn, we collected four dollars and eighty cents for the library!”
“Yay, our team,” the twins cheered.
CHAPTER 29
More Popcorn
ON THE RIDE HOME FROM THE MOVIE, TERPSICHORE looked anxiously at the Chugach Mountains. When it rained in the valley, it snowed higher up in the foothills. The wind had howled through Palmer the night before, blowing every gold and red leaf from the alders and cottonwoods, leaving the trees stripped bare as skeletons.
Throughout the next week, the stove burned constantly, partly to warm the tent, and partly to process the last of the beans and tomatoes and peas from the garden and berries foraged from the wild. The kitchen table was covered with jars. The tent was filled with steam.
Pop had built shelves and more shelves in the root cellar so they could store jars where they wouldn’t freeze. The floor of the root cellar was heaped with bins of potatoes, turnips, beets, onions, carrots, parsnips, and rutabagas.
They wouldn’t starve this winter. Terpsichore’s garden had yielded some of the largest vegetables she had ever seen. Pole beans grew as long as her forearm. And one pumpkin grew so big her father couldn’t budge it. After he split it open, she got inside it with a shovel to scrape out the seeds. Some she toasted, to eat. But she cleaned the biggest ones, spread them out on layers of newspaper, and brought them down to the shelves in the root cellar. In a month they’d be ready to put in envelopes, ready for next spring. If a pumpkin could grow as big as a washtub without any special attention in Alaska Territory, how big could a pumpkin grow with proper care? Next year she would try Farmer Boy’s recipe for champion pumpkins. Next year, she would grow the biggest pumpkin Palmer had ever seen.
No one knew quite what to expect of an Alaskan winter. They’d been told it wasn’t much worse than the northern Wisconsin winters they had left behind, but Mother didn’t seem to believe it.
After the week of canning, Terpsichore took over the kitchen on Saturday, making more popcorn.
“No fair. Mendel stole my idea for popcorn,” Terpsichore muttered.
“You’ll just have to make your popcorn better than his,” Mother said.
“Popcorn is popcorn, isn’t it?”
“Does his have butter?”
“I love hot buttered popcorn,” Cally said.
“Me too,” said Polly.
“How could I serve hot buttered popcorn in the cold community center?” Terpsichore said.
“You could drizzle warm butter on each bag of popcorn as you sold it,” Mother said.
“How are we going to keep the butter warm in the cold?” Terpsichore asked.
“I have an idea,” Mother said. “Your father made fun of me for packing my mother’s silver serving dishes, but I packed them anyway.” Mother got down on her hands and knees, pulling boxes out from under the cots to read the labels. “Sheet music, records . . .” Mother paused at the box of records. “Records were another thing it was probably foolish to pack, but I couldn’t stand to leave them behind. Even though I don’t have a way to play them here.” She patted the box like it was a beloved pet. She shook her head. “What was I looking for?”
“Something for the butter,” Terpsichore said. She felt sad for her mother. Terpsichore now had boxes of books to partly replace the library she had left behind in Wisconsin, but how could Mother replace her music?
Mother shifted more boxes. “Ah-ha! My mother’s silver.” In addition to the felt-lined wooden chest that held twelve place settings of wedding silver and a box with a silver sugar and creamer set was another box with two sizes of silver chafing dishes.
She held up a small silver chafing dish and fit a can of Sterno into the cup made for it. “Let this and my homemade butter be my contributions to your library project.”
Gloria came in time to help bag up the last batches of popcorn, and Terpsichore and her family arrived early to beat Mendel. Her father set up a borrowed card table and Terpsichore smoothed out one of her mother’s linen tablecloths over it. She peeled back the top on a can of Sterno, set it in the heat cup under the chafing dish, and lit it. Soon her mother’s homemade butter was melting in the chafing dish and she was ready for business.
Mendel wandered over to see what his competition was up to. “Well, la-di-da—aren’t you the fancy one. A linen tablecloth and the family silver to sell popcorn?”
Terpsichore mimicked her mother’s formal voice. “One can’t relinquish all vestiges of civilization just because one is in the Territory of Alaska.”
Mendel went back to his own station and still sold popcorn—especially after he lowered his price to seven cents.
Gloria and the twins got in the spirit of rivalry.
“Hot popping corn’s our favorite treat! Pour on the butter, now let’s eat!” The twins singsonged and hopped, p
artly to draw more attention to Terpsichore’s booth, and partly to stay warm—and it worked!
The girls drew in a crowd and Gloria helped by calling out, “Hot BUTTERED popcorn! All profits to the new Palmer Library!”
Terpsichore was awhirl, taking money and opening each sack to drizzle in a teaspoon of warm melted butter.
Not playing favorites, old-timer Crawford bought a bag of popcorn from Mendel, and one from Terpsichore.
That night Terpsichore held her own, even with Mendel’s seven-cent competition.
Two weeks and two movies later, Mendel strolled over to Terpsichore’s booth after both had sold all their popcorn. “Popcorn business is all yours now. I have all the money I need for Togo’s harness. Still friends?” He held out his hand.
“What do you mean—still?” Terpsichore hesitated, then sighed and held out her hand too. “You haven’t acted like a friend lately, but I’ll accept your handshake as an apology,” she said. “Good manners don’t cost a cent and are the cornerstone of civilized life.” Mother would be proud.
• • •
The next Saturday movie was dull without having anyone to shout insults to across the aisle. This time the old man bought two bags of popcorn from Terpsichore. “Got so used to eating two bags a movie, have to support my habit, especially since it’s for the library.” He started for a chair, but then came back. “Which group of colonists did you come up with?”
“Uh . . . the second group; we’re from Little Bear Lake, Wisconsin.”
“Not Madison? You’re almost the picture image of somebody I used to know from Madison. She would also have brought out a silver chafing dish to serve popcorn in Alaska . . .” He squinted at Terpsichore’s face. “And there’s something about your stubborn chin and eyes that don’t miss anything that remind me of her.”
Terpsichore couldn’t help fingering her chin. How was a chin stubborn?
“Are you any relation to the Olmsteads?” he asked.
“My grandmother’s last name was Olmstead before she got married. She’s from Madison.”
Sweet Home Alaska Page 12
