Fall as experienced lately is more an extension of
summer than an outright season of its own.
Our September continues the pattern. Mild temperatures
and dry sunny conditions make us feel Kansas hitched a ride north.
Canada is the direction we look as days shorten. Our cool air comes from there.
While a zonal flow from the Pacific persists we
tend to forget this fact, to be pulled up abruptly at the first chilly outbreak.
Putting our boat into storage, which has just been done,
is our particular rite of passage into fall.
It doesn’t matter that summer hangs on, or the
lakes still sparkle and the fish are probably at their fighting best. Common
sense forewarns that October is known to bring snow showers.
Before all this happens, as it’s bound to do in its
own good time, we took a short color trip north.
Color season can be brief. Fortunately in our state
it comes in waves starting in the north and working southward.
Perhaps particularly this year of so little rain,
with trees protecting their root systems, and many branches looking dusty with
faded color, we wondered if the seasonal display would amount to much.
The drive was pleasant in its own right but
the dominance of color which we found made it even more so.
We enjoyed the yellows and reds of the hills along
with the various shadings of green. The forests were like tapestries woven
through with bright yarns and hung side by side for maximum effect.
Lake Superior was very blue which is a treat
because the big lake wears many moods and not all of them are sunny.
We remembered pictures on TV of the muddy stain far
out into the lake after the damaging June rain at Duluth. It heartens one to
see that renewal happens.
A constant presence of billboards along the highway promote historic Ft.
William over the border in Ontario.
"Original road trip," "Original GPS"
(showing a guide) and "Original Five Star Hotel" (teepee under starry
skies) are some of the signs. The signs are catchy. Clever marketing, we agreed.
Afterwards, as the trip was summed up to friends, the Original
Road Trip theme played in my mind.
It caused me to consider early road trips made by our
family. We could have been poster children for these signs along I-35 and
Highway 61.
I was two on my first North Shore trip. The roads
wouldn’t have been smooth as now.
There was little in the way of
the comfortable lodging we currently seek out. We'd have been the ones with five star lodging, camping out under the spangled night skies.
This isn’t the trip that stands out since I can’t
remember it anyway.The trip that comes to
mind, instead, is a trip to Missouri. It was spring and we were driving to my grandma’s funeral.
School was in session but we got excused to
attend the funeral. It was different to be in the car, strangely free
of all familiar structure, while rural school buses dropped off students and kids our age ran in the schoolyard for recess.
At a gas station in a small Iowa town my brother
and I walked in together. We noticed a policeman park his car. He came in the door behind
us, trailing us by a few steps which set up a sort of unease in us.
We probably poked each other in the ribs. We were
half way expecting (and half way wanting) to be caught up to by this officer in
blue.
He’d be very direct. “What are you kids doing in
here? Don’t you know you’re supposed to be in school?” In our heads we heard
him asking this with firm and almost fatherly concern.
We had our replies ready, hoping his badge wouldn’t
shake our courage or resolve.
“We’re going to our grandma’s funeral.” The
response would be polite but it’d show him we weren’t a couple truants to round up and take to the principal.
My brother and I either used the bathroom, or made
our small snack purchases, or both, fidgeting with coins as we assessed the
officer’s interest in us.
Memory fails at this point. Did he speak to us or not? Did we return to the car relieved we'd passed his scrutiny? Nothing comes to mind.
Remembrance picks up in my dad’s hometown. This part has stayed with me. Family and friends gathering. Tears,
laughing and hugs. For the first time, privy to the workings of death, the
emotions of mourning gave me much to ponder.
I thought very possibly my brother might remember
the gas station scene. He’s older than me and has good recall for some things.
No, he said, in reply to the email, he didn’t
have any recollection of being in Iowa with a policeman and a hint of truancy suspicion
between him and us.
“How could you?” I wanted to send back. “You were
my sidekick. Together, stoutly and boldly, we were going to face the police if
he called us out."
I could hardly believe he didn't remember. We were going to prove we weren’t truants but lawfully out on business to attend our grandmother’s funeral. And he'd forgotten this!
Remembering a detail when another has forgotten is like holding a bag of candy. The sack is filled with goodies but the other one,
peeking inside, tells you it’s empty.
You’re astonished. You say, “How can this be? I
know there’s candy in the bag because look! – holding out the piece in your
hand - “here’s my share.”
For now I’ll have to enjoy my share of the memory. There’s
a chance my brother will recall it, or some part of it, in the future. I hold
to this so as not to be left holding an empty bag.
Maybe he needs to take the road trip we just
finished. The Original Road Trip signboards may work on him as they did for me. Vanished memories may rise to the surface.
And maybe he’ll discover that, strangely enough, I
simply can’t help him when he looks for confirmation on a recollected road episode.
Original road trips are called this for a reason,
which I’m just starting to understand.
They’re original to the way we remember them. Even
with the best of memory aids – photos and the like – recall chooses its own
course and steers us as it will.
The school bus makes its stop on
our block with each morning a bit darker as days shorten.
School schedules quickly become
the norm.
So it is with sweaters once cooler air arrives. Reaching for a
sweater as we head out the door already seems something we’ve been doing forever.
We wouldn’t have believed, back
in sizzling July, that an extra layer would ever feel good on us again.
Sweaters which I marked for consignment for almost certain lack of use are receiving
full appreciation as sized up for service for the crisp weeks ahead.
It’s been lovely far into the
month. Tuesday we woke to 46 degrees. The weather guy said it was the coolest overnight
low since April 28. There was nice rebound into the 70s yesterday. Sunshine and 65
degrees made it pleasant today.
As a recent trend summer is more firmly entrenched than autumns recalled. Turning
on the furnace (this year it had an exceptionally long rest) is not the immediate measure it was in Septembers of the not so distant past.
I remember this because my folks
used to go West after Labor Day. They were gone a couple weeks to a month. They
came back glowing with sun and buoyed by perfect vacation weather and visits to
family members.
In the meanwhile my sister and I
watched our small kids – and the baleful weather outside the windows. We gave our
parents the weather report when they returned.
“You didn’t miss anything,” we assured
them. It was cool – or wet – or both in their absence year after year.
Squirrels have been active this long
while with their acorns. A plentiful supply litters the ground. Lots of acorns
used to foretell a hard winter.
Driving to the store this
forenoon I saw an albino squirrel. A gray squirrel was chasing it. Their bushy
tails were exclamation marks completing the suggestion of bullying tactics unfortunately put to the test on some playgrounds.
A small brown bunny made the second interesting sighting of the day. I caught it
out of the corner of my eye as I walked to the library.
Movement in the rose shrubs
alerted me. Almost definitely the bunny had been jumping.
It was trying to reach the thick
clusters of rosehips which were too high off the ground for easy pickings.
The bunny needed a long stretch to get at the rosehips if not making an actual leap. The stir of activity was its calculated attempt to attain the bright fruit.
The bunny crouched low feigning
innocence, or perhaps hoping for invisibility, as I came up to it. It scuttled into the roses bushes as I went by.
Out of curiosity I circled back.
Sure enough the bunny was in its former spot on the brown patch beneath the roses. It was in
its familiar crouch. The round red fruit pod was in front of it like a prize.
It's been a pleasant month of
various outings. These have included apple orchards, attending to the bridge
construction at Hastings, Parade of Homes (an annual event), and festival
weekends in the little towns around our lake.
Somehow we’ve also fit in projects,
volunteer work, laundry and the daily regimen of owning a house.
The outings will subside as we settle into fall. We’re ready for this to happen.
It comes with the territory. It comes with fall.
Fall is detected
by the darker mornings. It’s felt by the cooler winds.It's smelled in the changing
vegetation – the leaves and grasses that rustle and sigh.
The seasonal change is made
abundantly clear all around by such signs as blue jays that show up, you wonder
where from, absent during the warm days and brazenly appearing on the first
cool morning.
Fall color won't dazzle
this year. Foliage has a faded look. It's the dry conditions, we hear, that will mute the autumn scene.
There are a few brilliant maples and the sumacs which
add their scarlet tones to the yellowing countryside. It’s a time of rest,
peace and home comforts drawing us in.
Gray sky hints at the kind of cloudiness we
hope will bring rain.
Precipitation is
way overdue.
We’re told to water our trees before winter. We’ll have to get
going at that. Rain gauges have been practically empty since June.
We intended to
make a country drive for apples last week. We got busy with other things and
now will wait for a prettier day.
Our apple trip
is in the future but we did attend Apple Days in a nearby town over the
weekend. The big turnout, as happens every year, adds to the community feel.
The closed-off streets are
lined with table after table of items for sale. This assemblage of creativity makes
me realize that, if asked what I’m good at, my first and most telling answer is that
I’m good at spelling.
Appreciation
would be my second reply. It got well used at the apple days festival. I admire the ability and stick-to-it attitudes that have gotten the exhibitors here.
It takes gumption and patience to stand with your product in front of a passing audience of potential buyers. You accept the vagaries of weather (ideal this time) and interest not always registering on our faces.
With apple harvest
in full swing we’re squarely in apple dessert time. It's a good time of the year.
Hot apple pie cooling on a
trivet is the picture that comes to mind. My apple cravings, if truth be told, run more
along the line of cobblers, cake and even applesauce bread.
Apples remind me
of the good cooks we can all name who take the annual crop and come up with
family-pleasing specialties.
While my mom has
the corner on apple pie there’s a friend from my young married days who stands
out when it comes to applesauce bread.
Edna was our
neighbor across the street. She was a widow. She may have been in her eighties. A specific age is irrelevant when you're young. Everyone, after all, is older than you.
Her married daughter lived out of state. She was alone except for a brother and
his wife who were in town.
She was
interesting to know. She had a droll wit which inserted a twist of humor into
most of our conversations.
She had Welsh in
her background along with German and English. She had a love for horses such
as the fine breed her brother raised.
She was a
storyteller. She talked about her town which was a career relocation for my husband and me. She drew back
the curtains on the eras previous to our arrival.
She and her husband as young marrieds - as Al and I were at the time - had been members of the
Silver Bow Dance Club.
The name struck
me as young, lively and happy-go-lucky. This would have been the golden
Twenties, the Gatsby years, the boom times before the stock market
crashed.
Small town living could be very secure. Good friends and comfortable events could lend a country club atmosphere to your lifestyle. If
you fit in the fit was very cozy indeed.
Edna was shaped
by her small town and lived her decades almost entirely within those boundaries. The
place defined her but didn’t confine her.
She liked to
talk about trips she’d taken. There weren’t that many of them. It made them all the
more important.
The best road memory was of a vacation with a carload of
relatives to Niagara Falls. She rated the
scenery of Wisconsin, traveled through by car on the trip to New York, as very
beautiful.
She’d made several flights to see her daughter in Arizona but objected to the heat.
We had coffee
and we visited. I went to her place. She didn’t come over, in part because she
seldom left the house except to tend her flowers. She was getting unsteady on
her feet.
She and I stayed
in touch after Al and I made another move. One letter reported a serious heart attack. She was in the hospital eleven
days.
Her daughter was urging her to move to Arizona. She resisted the
idea.
Edna was
attached to her home of over fifty years. She had lifelong friends and her brother
to count on. More to the point she didn’t want to go to the desert. The
heat would pretty much finish her off she wrote.
The letter came
enclosed with an undated clipping from the local paper. The newspaper article was
titled “Two Many Cooks.”
It must have
been a regular column although I didn’t remember it from our time there. Maybe it was a new feature.
Edna was the featured
guest in this particular column. It was a nice write-up of her gardening
interests and longtime activities in town.
She was photographed
with her South African amaryllis of apple blossom pink. The plant was a birthday gift
from a granddaughter the story noted.
I was so happy
my friend made print. Her phone would have rung off the hook with friends
calling to say they saw her in the paper.
She’d have given a joshing
response, savoring all the while the recognition accorded her.
The column
included her recipe for Applesauce Bread, which follows.
Applesauce Bread
(Edna’s recipe)
In bowl combine
1½ cups applesauce, 1 cup sugar, ½ cup oil, 2 eggs and 3 tablespoons milk.Blend in 2 cups sifted flour, 1 tsp. baking
soda, ½ tsp. baking powder, ½ tsp. cinnamon, ¼ tsp. nutmeg, ¼ tsp. allspice. ¼
tsp. salt. Add ½ cup walnut pieces.
Pour into oiled
9 x 5 x 3 loaf pan. On top sprinkle mixture of ¼ c. nuts, ¼ c. brown sugar and
½ tsp. cinnamon. Bake at 350 degrees one hour or test for doneness.
The State Fair, which ended Labor Day, was second in attendance
surpassed only by the 2009 crowds.
Fall is in the air as the gates
to the fairgrounds swing shut. Wind blowing through dry leaves and
migrating waterfowl in their overhead groups give proof to the fact.
We remarked at supper that a week
of September is gone. With the holiday weekend behind us, and the big yellow
buses stopping in front of the house as if never on hiatus, the first days of
the month have simply vanished.
Labor Day, including the preceding
nine days at the State Fair, was warm and sunny. It was a delightful period of
weather.
A blue moon (second full moon in August) illuminated the starry night
skies. Sunrises were rivers of pink and plum. Sunsets were glowing bands of deep
orange and violet.
Our family used the holiday weekend to deepen connections with our family tree.
We had so much fun in the process that we propose making the holiday, or
another such time as we can get together, an annual heritage event.
The family project came about
because we located the lake on which our antecedents, four generations back, laid
out their homestead.
The lake is unnamed on county
maps but identified in the old platbook we used as our guide. Lakes,
rivers and roads, and the owners on each section of land within the townships, give
unique translation to this area our family settled.
Visiting the site of the homesteading years was an adventure to undertake. One of us volunteered to drive and the rest piled in.
Some of us haven’t been
in a car together since we were kids. Maturity ruled and no one elbowed others as
could have been reported in the past.
This lake to which we were going
was the farm of our great-great-grandparents. We couldn’t have told you their
first names until we stopped at the rural cemetery afterwards.
The couple are buried side by
side on a west-sloping hill. A large lilac bush is in front.
The bush will be heavy
with blossoms and sweet with aroma in the spring. It is a planted bush, put
there as a sign of someone's remembrance of them in that neat graveyard of country neighbors.
This couple – Peder and Bridt – came to America in 1880. In Norway they famed
and had a small herd of cows. Peder traveled the nearby countryside
repairing windows and doing odd jobs.
The incentive to immigrate might have been economic. More likely at
its core was family considerations.
Family in all its complexities is future oriented. Its momentum is forward. Sometimes all we can do is latch on and go with the flow, which is maybe how it was for them.
The oldest son drowned at twenty as he moved away from home to start a new job. This was their recent
past. It was a devastating blow. The desire to put space between them and the
tragedy is totally understandable.
Equally important, their oldest
daughter was in Minnesota and mother of an infant son. The yearning to see their
first grandchild served as a force for courage to direct them.
They left their mountain valley in Norway
throwing their hats in for America.Their younger daughter and son came with them. Another son followed the next year.
The sea route was from Kristiansund, Norway to Philadelphia via Liverpool, England. The three-week Atlantic crossing was aboard a steamship with
auxiliary sails.
They traveled by rail to Minnesota. The last eleven miles were
covered by oxcart.
The middle-aged couple (47 and 45
respectively) were not young bones who could lightly toss off a trip of this
magnitude.They must have been weary and almost awestruck at their accomplishment of coming so far.
They had completed an Atlantic passage. They were still absorbing the
speed of the railroad across the Midwest. They watchfully kept their children in
tow and were in wonder of the new sights and strangeness of so much of the new world.
Safely arrived, and with their first
grandchild to bless, the greetings exchanged would have been fervent. A
mingling of tears, relief and happiness sealed the welcome as they moved in temporarily
with their daughter.
Eventually they found a farm about
an hour’s walk from their daughter’s farm. The homestead had been previously
occupied. They lived the first year in the 8 x 12 foot dugout cabin on a steep
hillside above the little lake.
The lake, when we got to it by way of gravel road,
hides behind steep hills on two sides. It’s marshy at the other end.
No
development has come to the lake. It makes it easy to picture the hills as they first saw them. Not that much has altered since then.
The next year they cleared land for a
garden. A small log house was built. From this home they lived to usher in the
twentieth century.
The new millennium was a time of
wonder for the pioneer families who toiled bravely and supported each other
generously.
Hope walked alongside them as they plowed the fields, educated
the young, built their churches and rode out the hard times and harsh winters.
The youngest son – seven when he
came to America – farmed with Peder. When Peder died he left farming and
eventually went West.
He explained the move as an
action originating with Peder. He said his father had a desire to move on to
the Pacific Coast but lacked the means.
In the years the father and son worked
together on the farm he learned to share this longing.
Great development was happening in
the West especially in Oregon where the Great Northern was building a railroad
from the Columbia River into central Oregon.
With a desire to get in on the
enormous opportunities talked about the son made his decision to turn his head
to the West.
I thought of all this as we
studied the hilly terrain where their home might have stood. Imagination
placed the doorway so that it would fill with the setting sun.
The aging immigrant farmer, bent
with labor but with dreams aplenty in his heart, might have paused from that
vantage point and scanned the western skies. He could plot his course over the
mountains he would never travel.
His hope was the roadbed for his
son. When his time came he said goodbye to the land which had nurtured him. He
went forward to his future laid out long before.
The school bus makes its stop on
our block with each morning a bit darker as days shorten.
It’s been a treat of a late
summer.