Читать книгу Always October - C. E. Edmonson - Страница 12

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 like all the other kids, including the ones who lost family members. Minnesota was cracking down on truants, farm kids or not. Education was modern and the politicians down in St. Paul were determined to transform the state from a rural backwater into a major industrial player.

And why not? The war years were heady times. The federals guaranteed two dollars a bushel for wheat, which many of Bear County’s farmers grew as a cash crop. But even when the government didn’t subsidize commodities, food prices, including milk, butter, and cheese, went through the roof. Most farmers were driving cars by the time the war ended. Model T Fords were the most popular, and farm families took considerable pride in their flivvers, which is what we called Model Ts back then. Mind you, these same farmers still had no electricity, and they drew their water from wells and got along with outhouses. But in this way at least, they were part of the modern world.

They modernized their farms, too, buying hay rakes and side mowers and slings. The more ambitious purchased hay loaders to lift their hay from the ground to the wagons, and hay carriers to lift hay from the wagons into the barns. And they rebuilt their barns or expanded the old ones, and added more cows wherever they had enough land to sustain the animals. A single milk cow eats two tons of hay during the winter months, so a farmer with twenty cows and four horses had a lot of hay to grow and harvest. If he failed, he had to purchase hay from his neighbors.

Looking back, I believe Bear County’s farmers thought the good times would last forever, even after the flu descended on them like an Old Testament plague. All those new machines were bought on credit—the new barns, too. The investment was supposed to pay for itself; that was the general calculation. This was a fantasy, of course, a delusion they brought on themselves by denying common sense. What the government gives the government can take away. And that was exactly what happened a few years after the war ended and the troops came home. I tell you, some of my neighbors were perfect fools when it came to spending.