I came to know almost every deep pool in every stream in the forest as, over time, I marked the movements of the game. I especially followed the deer so that in the fall, during hunting season, I rarely came back without meat for the table. And that’s another point I mean to make: we ate everything I caught or killed. That’s not to say food was the primary reason for my trips to Swede Lake, at least not for me. But nothing was wasted, not in those years.
As a boy, I wasn’t given to analyzing myself the way so many are now. I was all about doing. But looking back through the years, I think what I mainly felt, as the shadows closed around me, was relief. As if I’d just unleashed a breath I’d been holding for hours. Would the trout rise? What bait should I use? These were questions I much preferred to questions about how Dad and I could raise enough cash to hold our creditors at bay. No, whenever I watched a rainbow trout tail-dancing across the water, those practical matters were entirely forgotten.
Of course I didn’t always succeed—I’m not pretendin’ to be a great fisherman or a mighty hunter. There were days I came home empty-handed, days when the fish wouldn’t bite no matter how I tried to tempt them. I don’t think I really minded all that much. See I’d usually arrive a little after sunrise, when the light cut through the tops of the trees and the shadows ran deep. Then I’d watch the dancing shadows as they gradually shortened, until the sun grew high enough to find the running waters of the narrow creeks, where it did a little dance of its own. Still…
One of the problems with telling a story as long as mine, especially when your aging brain’s forgotten how to focus, is that past and present tend to get confused. See people naturally think their memories trace a straight line, from minute to minute and year to year, like they were drawn with a ruler. But when you look a little closer, when you take an honest look, you can’t be sure. Am I seein’ Swede Lake through the eyes of a young boy? A young man? Or through the eyes of the old man I am now? I can’t be sure, and I’m not gonna linger on this topic any longer. What I can say is I took up fishing and hunting early in life, and while I gave up hunting early on, I didn’t stop fishing until I was too weak to hold a fishing rod.
CHAPTER 10
About a year after the flu swept through the county, Dad and I switched churches, from Baptist to Lutheran. This didn’t come about due to a crisis of faith. Truth be told, I’m not sure how much faith my father had to begin with. No, my father objected to Reverend Masterson’s sermons. Masterson didn’t have the courage to put his beliefs into plain words. No, sir. He was content to hint the flu was a punishment for the collective sins of the world, citing Noah, Pharaoh, and the evil cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in his sermons.
I don’t recall how Reverend Masterson’s beliefs affected the rest of his congregation. Maybe that’s because I was havin’ religious doubts of my own. My prayers weren’t exactly eloquent; but I prayed in the only way I knew how. And when Annie and Momma were sick, I prayed and prayed and prayed, but I secretly felt that my prayers fell on deaf ears. Or maybe God did hear me and decided to take Annie and Momma anyway, which was even worse.
Pastor Svensson at the Lutheran church didn’t chide us for our sins, but he did speak of the Lord’s mysterious ways and about how ordinary mortals couldn’t possibly take them in. I guess Dad found this approach more acceptable, though it didn’t matter a whit to me. Thinkin’ on the matter today, I understand my reckoning was childish. What good was a god who didn’t answer your prayers? What was the point of praying if God didn’t listen? I couldn’t get beyond these questions, and I didn’t try. I was too busy dealing with the world right in front of me.
Funny, but talk of religion leads naturally to another one of those warts that dot my personal history. I liked the Immanuel Lutheran Church with its stained-glass windows and high ceilings, especially because my friend Eddie Enstrom and his family attended services there. But if those services had been conducted in Swedish instead of English, as they had been in the past, neither my father nor I could have attended.
This was another big change that resulted from the war to end all wars. The patriotism of immigrants in general, and German immigrants in particular, was challenged almost on a daily basis before, during, and after World War I. I don’t know why, because farm families in Bear County were certainly patriotic, whether their lineage was German, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, or all-American. We were right proud of our flag, and we fought in every war.
After Woodrow Wilson joined the voices in the pro-suffrage movement, Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution giving women the right to vote. Nearly everyone—men and women—voted in every election, national, state, or local, and our Fourth of July celebrations were second to none—a parade with floats depicting great moments in American history that drew near half the county; so many community picnics you could spend all afternoon just goin’ from one place to the next, eatin’ fresh corn on the cob and apple pie till you were full to the gills; and at night, such a spectacular fireworks display, you’d think you were right there on the battlefield at the end of the Civil War itself.
But I know—and I knew then—matters weren’t so clear-cut in the rest of the country. Anti-immigrant organizations like the Ku Klux Klan were busy organizing everywhere, especially in the north. In fact, the whole country seemed to be anti-immigrant. During the 1920s, Congress even passed a series of laws to restrict the total number of immigrants allowed into the country down to almost nothin’.
For Minnesotans, these issues came to a head when a white mob lynched three black men accused of molesting a white woman. This wasn’t supposed to happen in northern states, and most folks considered Minnesota disgraced by the event. But it was no wake-up call. Bear County’s farmers didn’t return to the old ways; Germans, Swedes, Danes, and Finns continued to speak their own languages to each other, but English was employed on all other occasions, especially in schools and in churches like Immanuel Lutheran.
The other big change that came about in the 1920s was Prohibition. Drunkenness was a rare thing in our part of Minnesota—farm work is dangerous enough without alcohol getting in the mix. But folks liked to take a drink now and then, especially the Germans who had a pronounced fondness for their beer and schnapps. When the breweries closed under the Volstead Act, those who indulged made beer in their bathtubs and whiskey in stills. As I’ve said, times were pretty tough in farm country, and farmers were always seekin’ ways to make a little money. Throwing a barn dance and charging admission became common, and sometimes corn-squeezins was a main attraction. Being an elected official, our sheriff was smart enough to look the other way.
* * *
I believe I’ve already made the point about my dad being a talkative sort, quick with a smile or a joke. That changed after Annie and Momma passed. Dad sold off the pig and the chickens and never planted another garden, content to buy meat from Reinhard Grund’s store and fresh vegetables from local farmers. The choice of Reinhard was calculated. Various Grunds owned four farms in the county and they bought their machinery from Dad.
One of the things my father did was hire a woman named Miss Hattie to do some of the cooking and housework. Miss Hattie was a short, raw-boned woman. She had a blocky face with a high forehead. She was a mixed-blood Ojibwa and reserved by nature, like most of the Indians I’ve met in my life. She never tried to be a mother to me. I don’t recall any hugging or kissing on her part or mine, only a mutual respect that served us better in the long run. Within a few months, Miss Hattie became part of the family. She arrived at our house every morning except Sunday, put dinner on the table every evening—good dinners, Miss Hattie was a great cook—and left every night after washing up the dishes. A strong woman, she never complained and never took a day off.
You could say my father retreated into his business. Surely he spent more and more time in the shop, as did I. For me, staying close to the only adult in my life came instinctively. I went to school