After mother decided that we should remain on the farm, my father gave up the rented bungalow we had lived in. He found a housekeeping room for eight dollars a month, including utilities, which also made his erratic schedule easier to manage. It was closer to the station, and, with a convenient streetcar stop nearby, he was able to reduce his commute time. Our course was now set….
The future of his job remained uncertain, however. Although he was able to get all of the extra runs he could handle during the ten day span of the Minnesota State Fair prior to Labor Day, the company was busy modifying streetcars for one-man operation. Until that time, most runs had a motorman driving, and a conductor collecting fares. As much as he disliked most aspects of his job, he did enjoy interacting with passengers while collecting fares, selling tokens, and giving out transfers. With the new modifications, they were eliminating two-man crews for all but the heaviest traffic routes, and his only chance for steady work was to learn to drive. He had purposely avoided driving and the added risk to his precarious job security; if they determined that he was responsible for an accident he could be fired. But with no other possibilities available in those grim days of 1932, he reluctantly learned to drive.
This did not free him from irregular two-piece schedules, however. He described a typical day, “from 5:48 to 7:57 A.M. on Emerson. I got along pretty good but it is no fun. This afternoon I work a one-man car from 3:05 till 3:55 and then am a conductor on a two-man car till 7:09 pm.” So his work for the day, beginning before six in the morning and ending after seven at night, netted him a total of six hours and thirteen minutes of paid working time — at 53 cents per hour, which he felt fortunate to get. His four trips to and from the station used even more time. Mother could only write, “I’m sorry the work is falling off,” and later, “I’m sorry money is so scarce and I know you are working as much as you can.”
He always gave his schedule times to the exact minute — both in writing and in speaking — and that’s the way he thought about them. Precise scheduling was one of the shared traditions of both streetcar and rail-road lexicon.
He did not mention his heavier concerns to John and me: “Daddy would sure like to be up there with you but he will have to earn money to buy some cows and horses with so we can farm good. You just keep Mama supplied with wood and help her and it won’t be long till we can make things go.”
Playing with the kittens was a welcome diversion from schoolwork. We had regained The Mother Cat’s trust enough so that she didn’t object when we took her babies outside on the grass. We laughed at their clumsy efforts to waddle about, and delighted in watching their tumbling and boxing with each other, but our pleasure was tempered by the painful knowledge we could not keep them indefinitely. We had never been so personally connected to any of her previous litters, because Daddy had always dispatched them, as humanely as possible, shortly after birth.
Finally Mother explained that in his absence we would have to take on this task ourselves — and that the longer we delayed the more painful it would be. We could tell that she was not looking forward to this prospect any more than we were, but we all realized that keeping six cats was out of the question. When we finally accepted the deed as inevitable, with that perverse quality of childhood, our revulsion gave way to curiosity, which was in turn replaced by planning for the burial. There was a beautiful spot in the grove close to the wagon road, which we thought would be a perfect site for our cemetery. A shoe box lined with scraps of Mother’s sewing material became the coffin.
Drowning was the least violent method we could think of and, being inexperienced, Mother decided to try with just one kitten first. We helped fill the pail of water, and then filled another to use as a weight to keep the kitten submerged. Solemnly carrying the chosen victim out, we placed it in the pail, looking the other way until the second pail was in place. Mother, obviously agonizing over this operation, did not speak. We went back in the house to wait, where our sorrow and guilt were increased by watching The Mother Cat search for her missing babe.
When we were sure that the gruesome deed was accomplished, we went out and removed the kitten’s body from the pail. This tiny amorphous mass bore no resemblance to its fluffy, animated siblings still playing near their mother. We sobbed as we laid it in the coffin and solemnly carried it out to the grove. Mother went back to the house, leaving us to attend to the grave by ourselves. We set the shoe box down and began digging, but dense grass and long tough roots in our chosen spot made the work hard and slow. We were dirty and perspiring by the time we finally decided the hole was deep enough.
At that point we were startled to hear a faint, bubbly mewing sound, coming from inside the casket box. We tore off the cover to find the bewildered creature struggling to get on its feet. Its pitiful mewing, between dribbles of water from its mouth and nose, turned into desperate cries for mother. Grabbing the coffin, we ran back to the house shouting, “Mama, Mama, it’s alive, it’s alive!”
There were more tears, but this time for joy, as Mother put the waterlogged kitten back with the others. We watched the grateful Mother Cat carefully licking her lost little one from head to toe and back again, until, by the end of the afternoon, it was impossible to tell which of the four had only eight lives remaining. All Mother wrote the next day was, “We still have the four kittens. I tried to dispose of one of them but the experience wasn’t very pleasant or successful…. “
We made a unanimous decision to grant them a temporary stay until Daddy’s next visit….
With winter approaching, we needed more living space, and Daddy came up late in September for a two-week stay to complete our preparations. Since there was only a single layer of boards between the inside of the front room and the outdoors, his first major project was building a tight inner wall. He began by applying strips of lath horizontally, onto the vertical studs, as though preparing to plaster. He nailed heavy blue building paper over those, and then nailed more strips of lath along the seams of the paper to seal the joints. It not only provided an insulating air space inside the wall, but the blue paper added a certain rustic charm.
Next on the list was our heater. Each day when John and I came home from school, we eagerly checked his progress, and one afternoon we found the round, woodburning stove installed in the center of the front room. He then cut and split a pile of wood for us to use in both stoves, and we helped carry and stack it behind the house. The wood stove and stocking our woodpile was a higher priority than completing the front wall, so he did not finish putting up all of the blue building paper before he had to leave. And we still had four kittens….
As Mother feared, by then we were even more attached to the kittens — and had given them names — Chief Long Claws, Heap Big Squawk (so named because he fell out of bed one night and “squawked” loudly), Heap Big Gent, and Chief Eyes Open (his were the first).
To spare our feelings he did the task on the last day before he left, while John and I were in school. Using a .22 rifle so their end was quick and painless, he buried them in the little cemetery plot out in the grove that John and I had prepared. He was kind and empathized with our sadness when he showed us the graves, but explained again we could not afford to feed six cats. If we allowed them to run wild they would kill the birds and small animals in The Big Woods that we enjoyed watching — and whose territory we shared. He was right, but it was still hard…
Daddy’s biggest accomplishment during this visit did not concern the house or grounds; he taught Mother to drive. She hated being dependant on neighbors, and had been relentless in her resolve to learn. This time when he left, their plan was take Daddy into Park Rapids to catch the train, and we would keep the car with us.
I was not at all happy with the idea of riding with her. After being in an accident in my grandfather’s car when I was four years old, I had never been comfortable riding in a car. We were hit broadside at an intersection in West Concord. I was sitting on my father’s lap in the front seat and vividly remember being handed out of the car to strangers who tried to comfort me, but all I wanted was to be back in my father’s arms. They found a knot on my head where his chin had bumped me, loosening some teeth — his only significant injury.
For a long time I was nervous whenever we rode across an intersection. In fact the only times I really enjoyed being in the car was when John and I played — while it was parked in the yard. Now as I began to realize that Mother would be driving us to and from town, long-buried fears came back to haunt me.
A Model T Ford was not a complicated machine, so even John and I knew how the controls worked. Instead of a clutch and gearshift it had pedals on the floor for low speed, reverse, and brake, and the speed was controlled by a lever on the steering post. Mother knew this much already, but she needed hands-on experience… a lot…. Daddy himself complained that the car was hard to control on our bumpy gravel roads.
Steering required a constant strong grip on the wheel, particularly over ruts. Washboard sections bounced the skinny tires around, making the car as hard to handle as a horse with the bit in its teeth. Backing up was Mother’s greatest problem. Attempting to reverse her forward steering movements — even at a slow speed — was a real challenge for her.
They went out for practice drives each day while we were in school. John and I were happy to be left out of the training sessions, although we were (albeit unwilling) participants for some of her later trials. We found it curious that her normally over-cautious nature took flight (literally) when applying hand to gas lever. She seemed to imply that Daddy’s driving was far too conservative, and wanted to demonstrate the right way — particularly on hills — where greater speed going down created more momentum for climbing a steep grade.
Daddy’s departure came on a weekday. Mother elected to have us accompany them to the train station in Park Rapids, dropping us off at school on the way home. She had baked extra goodies for the occasion, and packed her usual outstanding lunches for all of us. We were fairly certain she wanted our moral support for her first solo run on the drive back home. John and I were both pleased with the first half of the arrangement, because we would have more time to visit with Daddy and less time with Eula.
He spent most of the trip to Park Rapids giving Mother her last driving instructions. John and I were very subdued in the back seat, partly because of having to say yet another good-bye to Daddy, and partly because we both dreaded the return trip, with Mother at the wheel for the first time.
We stayed to watch his train pull out of the station, and walked back to the car, our sorrow mixed with growing anxiety. Her first challenge was getting out of the parking space — in reverse. To complicate matters, there was a telephone pole directly across the road. She told us to stand behind it, and call out instructions as she backed out and turned. Despite our careful directions, she did more backing than turning, and hit the pole. At her slow speed there was no damage — except to the last shred of faith we had in her driving ability….
Grim-faced, she motioned us into the back where we both sat bolt upright rigidly gripping the front seat. We kept our eyes glued ahead, alert to stop signs, street crossings, and other dangers she might miss, until finally we were out of town and on the open road to Nevis. Of the two possible routes that we could have taken home, they had chosen the longer one, because part of it was paved. There were several rough spots on the other road to Park Rapids.
Our biggest test was the seven miles of gravel road past Nevis. John and I resumed our seat-gripping, intense-scanning positions. Our foreboding increased as we realized that she was going faster than Daddy ever had over the bumpy washboard stretches. She must have sensed this too, and tried to slow down, but pushed too hard on the brake while trying to steer toward a smoother section of road. We watched in horror as the car skidded toward the edge of the shoulder, and finally stopped — teetering on the edge of a deep ditch.
Shaken but relatively calm, Mother had us get out of the car, while she tried to maneuver it back on the road. But going forward only made the wheel slip further down the incline. Getting out to check for herself, she decided that backing up was a more promising tactic. Between the telephone pole incident, and my resurgent past fears, I expected the worst. Remarkably, she managed to ease the car onto the solid part of the road, and we were on our way. Again….
The last potential hazard was a sandy stretch at the bottom of a steep hill we had to climb. Although this spot had given daddy problems before, Mother’s bold strategy of speeding up before the sand proved to be effective. Much to our surprise, we easily crested the hill. We retained our now white-knuckle grips on the seat, however. Having proved her point that speed could be our friend, she did not slow down to Daddy’s usual pace.
We passed Jensen’s turnoff and continued toward the schoolhouse, where she dropped us off before heading home. I got out of the car slowly, feeling dazed and a bit queasy — my legs strangely uncooperative. The rigid position I had held, bracing for disaster, had cramped my muscles. Once on solid ground I felt stretched out and taller, like Alice in Wonderland when she drank the magic potion. The ground looked far away, my head felt tight, and a heavy knot twisted inside my stomach.
I managed to wave good-bye to Mother as she drove away… John joined the class inside, but I headed for the girls’ outhouse, and remained there for a good part of the afternoon….