Chapter 6 Minnesota “Cousins Cousins Everywhere”

 

 

 

Chapter 6

Minnesota

“Cousins Cousins Everywhere”

 

            Forty five cousins by fourteen aunts and uncles, my father had seven siblings, and I was the first adopted mullato into a family of German Catholics. We would fly up every summer without exception. In the first years I was of course and infant and stayed with my parents the whole time. We would always stay at Grandpa and Grandma’s first in the spare bed room in the two floor cottage were I an infant and toddler would share the bed with Mom and Dad and then the basement in my early years a small cot was put in the corner. It’s a funny thing now that I think about it. I used to sleep on a lot of old army cots as a child, with adults using them as well in large gatherings where sleep over was required, and then they phased out with time. The street was a soft black asphalt street slow diving street with a driveway that went up quickly on the left side of the house under an awning. A small walkway next to the bushes that would gently prick you on the left and right with these little red berries with a very sour taste, really not to be tried just because they are red, and they had a funny little reverse nipple where the black seed lay snuggled in a sticky clear syrup with like I said It had a very red skin which I considered in the realm of good things to eat as a toddler. Cherries in the fruit can red, strawberries red, red was good, the first instance of red in berry form being bad kind of sticks in your head. The clear stuff was kind of sticky and would act as a good mini bomb in a game of War later with my cousins. My hands were always on the move as a child. There were just three steps up to the screen door which opened to the right off of the small ledge. The top of this ledge at the age of 3 and 4 was like the top of a great hill for the grass and hill stretched down to the curb which of course I had rolled down with many times an added child in tow as we flipped down the hill. The first room inside was the living room the dark Walnut organ with all its peddles and switches on top in long rows. I read each one on an afternoon, the coco clock lay above that at the far right of the room, a gentle blue carpet lay on the floor.  The house was two story Rambler with bed rooms in the back right with a bathroom and a big basement under ground. It had the most amazing wood paneling that covered the whole room, an old style round picture tube television set was actually be hidden in the wall. A huge freezer was at one end laying on top of the checkered white and pink tiled work that covered the whole floor. I was about nine and I was at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s Ernst for a week that summer until I went to see Mark and Mary at Aunt Irean’s, and John, Joe, Becky, and Uncle Jim Fisher.

I was stationed down stairs, with a pot. A ritual I had to endure any time I stayed at Grandma and “Gramps”, that’s what all us kids called him like he was our best friend, he was “Gramps” even when we got older. I would have to wake and try to hit that pot and then bring it up in the morning; I was still a tart then. I graduated up stairs, when my other Grandma Lucile got a hold of me a few months later. It was like that, back and forth during the summers Minnesota and upstate New York. I would wake early to hear Grandma Ernst call me up the stairs to breakfast. The kitchen had glass bricks all around here and there to let in the light, intermixed with white and blue tiles and a small counter curved counter with a metal edging with little grooves in which I used to run my nails back and forth like little groove races in awaiting my meal, in need be large meals like the Christmas we spent there the leaves could be put into the main dining table in the proper dining area right behind my seat at the counter which faced the kitchen. Breakfast was always here with toast and soft boiled eggs, bacon, or oat meal, her soft boiled egg is revisited still to today, her apple pies, I don’t know if it was gathering of the apples in the morning or waiting any part of a day and as a food thought is pretty hard as a kid, just be wanting that apple pie to be done. Her crust is flakey and light holding the apples in perfect suspension. She also made these elephant ears a traditional Germen pastry brought from the old country, and pin wheels all of this fine fried dough which were browned and crunchy like a wagon wheel with high sides. I have no idea to this day how she did that.

This morning was exciting because I was going back to the pond and the raft we had been working on all of three days was almost done. We had just used junk we found around the pond to build the raft, and had lashed it together, so I finished off my egg, bacon, and toast had a few words with Grandma after washing up, and was in a hurry to be on my way. I had found the pond on my 2^nd day in the neighborhood. It was down a street or two at the end of a road by the train tracks. I was loaded with frogs, minnows, a few sucker fish and a occasional perch, sunfish a rumored bass or such, and it had turtles sunny them selves on logs, all kinds of turtles, and snapping turtles, swim with you’re a shoes on don’t touch turtles, and the biggest sunned them selves all day on a log near the center of the pond. The pond was maybe the size of a football field scrunched funny. It had its main area and lots of little swampy inlets and a few muddy beaches. I met Paul on my second day of vacation when my when I found the pond. He had called over at me while I was using the refuse around the pond to gain head over the water teetering and balancing along rocks and logs. We became instant friends, because he needed my help to catch “The biggest snapping turtle in the lake.” adding “Way out there”; he pointed, on that log. I covered my eyes and spy the log that lay near the unapproachable side of the pond.

“Out there” I asked lifting my arm and pointing, with the most dubious of looks on my face.

“Yeah” He replied “You see they way you catch a snapping turtle is you get them to grab a stick, and then you grab them, simple.” And he swung his arm and snapped which I thought was pretty cool. He wore blue jeans and a dirty old white T- shirt rolled at the sleeves. His hair was a dirty blond; he had light freckles and gray eyes seeming to be of light character which in difference to the way he carried himself.

“Hi. I’m Paul” and he shoved out his hand. We shook and that was that.

So here we are shoes muddy already, jumping on at the last second and launching our make shift raft which was not what you call meant to last, it had a shelf life, so the longer we pushed it with a long pole, paddled it out in the pond the more it strained against its bonds of plastic, rope wire, and what-evers we had painstakingly sent out to create our raft that was shaking, and pulling at its bonds from the start as we went. This was our 2^nd day at this, we had found early on that turtles spook easy and now had to almost drift when we got close to the log. The water was never clear, it had a dark green or light tan color, and it stank. Each push with the pole pulled up a gas bubble of pond funk. We had tried everything to catch a snapping turtle, everything but a good net, but what parent is going to give a kid a net for a snapping turtle, and what kid was going to tell of his secret mission for the day. Every morning I would grab a fishing pole and it would sit by the pond some of the time. In the water green patches of algae mixed with other of shades plants littered the pond, so I had been all around it’s sides. We knew we entered the deep part now. This was a mud pond there was no bottom in respects to footing all sunken logs and mud. On top of the water lay lily pads with their occasional flower bright yellow and white shinning on top of the green and dark water and the floating patches of green algae. Your eye could get lost in them for they seemed so out of place like a lone star on a hazy night with flashes of light as an occasional ripple disturbed the water and was gone. We had to paddle now, using small flat boards we pushed our craft across the pond towards the far side towards the log, and getting up speed for a second until we stopped hunkered down and stayed still allowing our push to drift us slowly towards the log where lay the sleeping turtles. It was mid-day and hot with the sun beating down. We looked across the dark water spying the snapping turtle “Big Jim” as we called him laying sunning, looking off in the distance. We drifted closer, and immobile lay upon a raft of hope. Just a few feet and Paul leans forward with the stick, now to tell you Big Jim was from where I saw a lay on the far side guiding us in looked all business even from the side, his claws noticeably gouging into the log, and his shell beginning to dwarf the other turtles still all unmoving on the shared log that stretched way into pond and resurfaced some tree a few years back that had toppled into the pond. Paul made a go for it with a quick thrust, and turtle starting diving into the water every where, Big Jim grabbed the stick, just plain bit the end of the thing, and Paul’s starts whooping and pulling and Big Jim jumps of the other side of the log right, simple story right, nope. You see while Paul was hanging on to big Jim I was hanging on to Paul and the stick holding us in place while lying on the raft, which by this time in the battle was turning into a pile of logs floating underneath my belly in sort of a square. Big Jim let go; I think it is important to explain gravity in childhood, we got the idea in school, the apple thing, but real life happens way to fast to figure much, gravity took over momentary pause where I was looking at Paul’s mad face cause he was so close, and then one of surprise as he hurtled in my direction, I was always faster than most people and new he was headed my way and had long let go his leg. I rolled side ways just as he crash landed next to me which was all the raft needed to quite his contract. It broke apart in the middle of the pond, the two of us had to swim though the long part of the pond to get to the other side a muddy bottom but no pond slim, or we could get out twenty feet away to the short side. We swam pushing the muck and pond slim a head of us; I laughing at the adventure, and Paul yelling over and over “We almost had him.” “We almost had him” in his ferocity of the battle, I took one more look at his face and went into laugh hysterics one big ball of laughing took me over and I had to fight even harder thought the muck. We made the side both covered in foul pond scum from head to toe, clasping onto the muddy bank and climbing up on our bellies using the long grass on the side of the pond we finally pulled our selves out. I was still laughing, Paul had got quiet, but the same look lay in his eye when I turned finally to look at him after my fit had subsided. He was looking out across the water, the five minuets it took us to climb out just another part of his over all battle, to get big Jim, and that same look lay on his face right now.

We got, well I got in a lot of trouble, filthy slimy, muddy I ran back to grandma’s up the street full of stories for all of it was new to me the adventure, what I got was stripped down and hosed in the backyard with cold water than right in the tub, with “How could you?”, and “I never.” As she first hosed down a child that really did not want to be, and at first darted to and fro in little moves, until standing naked in the backyard, but grandma would smile at my antics and gyrations while telling the story over dinner. The shock of naked hosing in the back yard and grandma’s ministrations having worn off, I was at it full tilt, telling my story jumping out of my seat and being generally way too much kid at the table and all around. I was wearing Grandpa and Grandma out, this would be my last year as a grandchild unattended by parents or shipped to Aunts and Uncles, like I said “Cousins, cousins everywhere.”

Station wagons, reunions, places to go, Minnesota it really has over 11,000 lakes we went to so many, and the mosquito followed. I have so many memories of this time, it was a place out of time for me, as soon as that plane took off the wild trust bearing us up in the sky, watching as I always did. The slow taxi to the run way in a major airport, the set on the run way, the slow moan and shudder from the engines as they gathered to hurdle us down to the run way at break neck speed. I would always fight as long as I could leaning forward into the old seat belts which clicked loud and were brightly colored until the power drove me back into my seat. I felt that final moment when suddenly upward as the ground leapt from beneath the plane we shot into the sky. I would watch as the world got very small very fast with my eye straining to see out the window I had pulled my self to. I had to look back, see the world shrink, know I was flying again. Joy and flying, family, critters, cousins, the river with Michael, Uncle George’s the last of the Ernst’s farm line after generations he held a farm he just wanted to do what his dad, and his before did farm. Rosie his wife who has passed she was so full of laughs all the time she could get the jokes going, when we was just plain tired Bobby, Richard, Jackie their dog a golden retriever named Thor, horses, chickens, a barn or two, rides here and there, long walks with Mary Fisher and Mark Fisher after watching Perry Mason everyday to the pool for the day one year. Lets us not forget when the parents decided different activities, and I or we at the time tagged along. It was a place so dear in my heart, it was so much of who I was, part of this big family framed me. It was a time where my skin color was washed away by love, my not being a part replaced by comfort and the warm embrace of kinship, a place where I was not so confused about life for I was just part  of everything here.