19. Adventures and Mishaps
Wild Indian Paintbrush
Photo by Dan Forman
We loved our wild rosebushes blooming in the front flower bed. Those modest unassuming little pink flowers put out more heady fragrance than their over-bred long-stemmed sisters. We watched every day as new varieties of wildflowers appeared in the meadow: larkspur, tiger lilies, daisies, fennel, and brilliant indian paintbrush. A grid of tangled purple vetch vines wrapped around a stand of black-eyed susans, goldenrod, buttercups and blue lobelia. The subzero mornings we had spent hovering gratefully around the woodstove while Mother made oatmeal and coffee were long forgotten. In the sweltering heat, our house became more of a trap than a refuge.
We still had no screens, but the mosquito netting Mother had tacked over the window frames our first summer now had holes. There were no pleasant options - unbearable heat when they were closed or swarms of flies and mosquitoes when we opened them. Finally, in a fit of formidable determination, Mother reached her limit one afternoon, took all cash on hand from her various stashes, loaded John and I in the car - and headed for town.
Later she confessed, "We went to Park Rapids Saturday and I'm afraid you'll think we' re extravagant, but I spent most of the money I had. I bought a nice screen door, unpainted, at the Lambert Lumber Co. for $3.00 and screen for the other two windows for 8 1/2 cents per foot, coming to 50 cents, and fixtures for the screen door were 25 cents. We have not had fresh meat for a long time so I bought a nice pot roast for 50 cents and a lb. of bacon for 20 cents.... It will be much cooler and pleasanter...."
But Daddy reassured her, "Don't worry about being extravagant. You needed all the things you bought, and more too. I sent you five dollars so use it."
Going to town - even if only to get necessities - was always a welcome break from work, but our venture in the second week of June was even more festive, because we were buying Daddy's birthday presents. Our first stop that day was a pot-luck lunch, given by the Ladies Aid at a nearby church. My friend from school, Mavis Rood, was there and we invited her to join us for the rest of the afternoon. As we drove out of the church parking lot, John and Mavis shared the back seat and I sat in front with Mother. Although we left the pot-luck a little later than planned, we enjoyed the novelty of having a school chum ride with us, and looked forward to finding Daddy's gifts.
We were making good time, and had only two landmarks to go - Dorset hill and the turnoff for highway 34 leading into Park Rapids. The road at the bottom of Dorset hill was on a built-up section running through a slough with open water on each side. Along the far edge of the open water you could see wooded hills sloping up from a lush fringe of cattails and reeds, a little pocket of wilderness tucked away among fenced hayfields and woodlots.
Past the slough the road cut sharply into the hill, with embankments rising from the ditches on each side. Any climb up a long steep grade was a challenge for the car, and we always finished in low gear. This time, however, when we were halfway up and Mother tried to shift into low, nothing happened. As she frantically pumped the floor pedal, our speed continued to drop, setting off alarms in my head. As we came to a complete stop, Mother pushed the brake pedal - which did not respond either.
Instinctively John and I scrambled out of the car and then watched helplessly as it began to roll slowly backward down the hill toward the open water of the slough - with Mother and Mavis trapped inside. Terrified, we saw the car gain momentum and the rear end headed for the ditch on our side of the road. The back wheels eased over the shoulder and the car gently tipped over onto its side, resting finally against the embankment. The door through which John and I escaped, had swung closed because of the incline and was not damaged.
We ran down to where Mother was calmly crawling out through the window on her side. The three of us helped Mavis climb out, shaking, her face pale and drawn. Neither of them found any bruises, but Mother's dress was stained by gasoline which had leaked from the tank under the seat. We were all in shock mode; none of us said a word until Mavis was safe on the road.
Once again we sought help from the Finlanders who lived at the crest of the hill. Telling John to remain by the car, Mother took Mavis by one hand and me by the other and led us up toward their farm. Looking back from our higher vantage point, we saw John standing by the car - which appeared for all the world like a dead horse, fallen in its tracks.
Wild Roses
Our sudden quiet appearance on foot startled the Finnish girls who were gathering baskets of wild rose blossoms to dry for sachet. One of them ran to get her father, who came at once. He joined us after yelling for his sons, and we all headed back toward the car. As we reached the road John was waving his red bandana at a car coming up the hill, which stopped, and we had another man and woman to help.
Mother had just begun to explain to everyone what had happened, when the minister from the Ladies Aid meeting pot-luck drove up with his wife. The senior Finlander took charge and stationed everyone at the right places for maximum leverage. They all worked together and slowly, with coordinated heaving, finally rolled the car back into an upright position on the road, and blocked the wheels with big stones.
Then our Finn leader checked the interior - which reeked with the smell of spilled gasoline - and discovered the cause of our trouble. An upper floor board had shaken loose and slipped under the pedals. Explaining to Mother as he worked, he replaced the board, then started the car for her, just to be sure. Like his son last winter, he refused anything for his work, accepting only our heartfelt blessings and gratitude.
By the time we finished thanking everyone, the spilled gasoline had evaporated, so we got back in the car and continued into Park Rapids. After stopping for gas and water for the battery, we tried to put the whole incident behind us and salvage the rest of our day. We browsed the lavish big-city wares in our favorite stores for Daddy's birthday gifts; Mother picked out a shirt, I decided on a leather pocket change purse, and John chose white handkerchiefs. For our last stop in town, Mother decided we had all earned something extra special, and she took us to the drug store for ice cream cones - a rare treat....
At Mavis's house, we told her father about the accident, and after checking out the floor board also, he nailed two light strips of wood across the boards to prevent it from coming loose again. The model T must have been one of the last cars made that could be repaired with hammer and nails. Although it seemed to need continuous attention, fortunately the problems were usually minor, and most men knew how to fix them.
Mother concluded her carefully worded account of the incident to Daddy by saying, "I hope you won't be nervous about my driving as I drive very carefully when the roads are poor or sandy, and the same thing will probably never happen again. The children weren't a bit frightened [her words] and I didn't get nervous, although I couldn't sleep much last night thinking about what happened..."
That was our quota of excitement for awhile. From then on our days were filled with garden work and harvesting wild berries and hazelnuts. These fared better than the farmers' crops. Grain was scarce and potatoes were in short supply - and expensive - forcing us to start using our own, which were so small it took a hill to make a meal for the three of us. The most bountiful crop was, luckily, also our favorite - the green beans. Never allowing even one bean to be wasted, Mother made continuous batches of pickles with the extras to preserve them. We began to feel rich as we saw the colorful jars of green pickles lined up on our shelves, along with rows of jewel-toned pincherry jelly, wild raspberry jam, and Juneberry sauce.
John and I noted that our cellar shelves were beginning to look like the storerooms in our building plan drawings from last winter. But we weren't the only ones dreaming of a well-stocked larder. "Wouldn't it be nice," Mother said in a letter to Daddy, "to have a store room with shelves and drawers in it and keep a month's supply of food on hand? Then we could keep a year's supply of wood so as to have plenty of dry wood and we'd be 'sitting pretty.' It would be great if times would get back to normal, but I think most of us had better just plan to get along with what we have. If we get more, all right."
Our garden plot was three times as big as the summer before, but required more than three times as much effort to maintain. We could use our wheel cultivator in the old section, but the weed-infested new area demanded more labor intensive hoeing. Even in 90+ degree heat, we kept up our assault; Mother was stronger and more skilled at selectively annihilating weeds (while preserving our actual crops) so she wielded the hoe; John worked the cultivator; and I hand-pulled the weeds growing too close to plants for Mother to hoe safely.
Our seedlings had sprouted well but soon suffered from lack of rain. Day after day temperatures rose - sometimes creeping into triple digits - as sun and hot dry winds parched all the fields. In garden triage mode, we filled water buckets and carried them by wagon to our shriveled vegetables, but it never seemed to be enough. We did not lose many, but the poor survivors were stunted by their harsh beginnings.
Our extended time outdoors working the land had its other hazards, as Mother wrote, "The children are kept busy pulling wood ticks off Mitzi, to say nothing of those that get on us." She used her various home remedies for sun burn, mosquito bites, blisters, and scrapes.
As the weeks passed, and puppy became dog, there was a dramatic power shift in the dynamics between Mitzi and The Mother Cat. As she returned to the house one afternoon, Mitzi found the cat in her regular sentry post on the back stoop. But when the cat made her usual menacing threat with lifted paw and ears laid back, Mitzi counter-attacked. She barked and growled, holding her battle line, maddeningly out of claw's reach. It was the end of feline despotic reign... Hearing the commotion, Mother watched from the door, but did not interfere. The cat grudgingly yielded passage and then glared after her for a while - twitching her tail from side to side - before going off to console herself, probably at the expense of some hapless mouse.
Their final clash came right after Mother had installed our new kitchen screen door, which opened into the room. The cat was sitting just inside the door looking out, when Mitzi decided to assert her right to enter. Barking with uncharacteristic ferocity, Mitzi bolted through the door. But when the cat started after her, she pulled a new move, turning away, ignoring her. With this show of disdain, their long-standing feud ended in an uneasy truce.
We all loved our little furry black and white perennial wagger, and she filled a special place in our family. John wrote. "say Dad do you know how me and Mitzi play? I pretend I am a buffalo and butt him just enough to make him roll over. say Dad whenever anybody lays down on the ground Mitzi comes and crawls all over them."
And as she matured and thrived on our devoted attention, her natural protective instincts flowered. I wrote to Daddy, "just a minute ago the dog looked at herself in John's window and saw herself in the glass and Boy O Boy did she bark and growl at herself, and the other night she saw Jenson's go by and she barked and growled and woofed for about 5 minutes afterwards...." Daddy replied: "You folks did just right by praising Mitzi for barking when folks go by, but its best that she stay at the house or on the porch as she did. She is going to make you a fine watch dog and there won't be much going on that she won't know about."
Mitzi extended the area of her supervision to the fields as well, including one day when we were planting melons and squash. Mother wrote. " ... Mitzi noticed that Jenson's horses had gotten into the oat field and she chased them out. She is so proud when she does something and we praise her for it. Last night we left her in the house and when we were all asleep she crawled into bed with John, right next to him. She pushed him clear to the edge of the bed...."
Daddy was pleased too: "I am sure proud of Mitzi. I don't think we could have got a nicer pup, and if you praise her each time she does something good she will remember it and know what to do next time. I would like to have seen her push John over in his bed. I bet he was surprised."
She became our constant companion, running freely, except when we were on the road. She was fascinated by cars and - whether for love of the chase or the challenge of barking the monsters away - she ran after them. John and I tied a rope to her collar whenever we walked by the road, and she trotted along with us contentedly.
One morning, late in August, we were on our usual daily mission to Jensons for milk. On the way home, I was carrying the full pails and John held Mitzi's leash - when a car seemed to come out of nowhere behind us. Somehow breaking loose, Mitzi bolted, and - seizing her moment of sudden freedom - tore after the car. John and I watched in horror as she ran too close, and was struck by the rear wheel. The scene was forever etched in agonizing slow motion - she flipped over and landed in a heap by the side of the road, yelping in pain.
With a sickening feeling in my stomach, I ran to where John was already kneeling on the gravel trying to comfort her. We knew it was bad from her pitiful cries. I pulled off my jacket and - with both of us cringing with every yelp - we lifted her onto it as carefully as we could. Grasping the edges of our improvised stretcher, we carried her the rest of the way home.
My grief was compounded by outrage that the driver did not stop to help us - or even slow down - but he may not have realized that Mitzi had been hit. Even before we turned into the yard we were yelling for Mother to come and help. She ran to us, and together we brought Mitzi into the house and arranged a soft bed for her to lie on.
Checking her over as well as she could, Mother concluded that despite Mitzi's badly scraped and bruised hind quarters and limp tail, there were no broken bones. We stayed by her the rest of the day. She finally managed to eat a little and lapped some water, but cried whenever she tried to move. We used our stretcher arrangement to carry her outside to relieve herself.
It was one of the longest nights of our lives. We laid there feeling helpless as Mitzi whimpered or whined most of the time. But by morning she seemed to have less pain, because she slept for a while and woke up acting a bit perkier. It was hard to watch her move so slowly, dragging one leg behind. Mother examined it carefully again but still concluded that it was not broken.
By the third day, Mitzi was improving steadily. Her main problem at that point seemed to be her bowels. Mother had one remedy for a multitude of conditions - whether child or puppy - and that was Castor Oil. One dose did the trick. She still favored the leg for many days, but as the bruises healed and the swelling disappeared, she seemed to emerge from the episode as her old cheerful self. She was not able to jump up on us any more, but the saddest result of the accident was that Mitzi's joyous tail was forever stilled. We were all so glad to have her alive and on her feet, however, we did not stop to think of possible future complications.
