Sweet and Sour Pie: A Wisconsin Boyhood Read online

  Rapids State Graded School didn’t have a gym, so instead of

  physical education we had recess. Weather permitting, we spent

  recess improving our hand-eye coordination, the girls with a ball and jacks and the boys playing mumblety-peg with their pocketknives.

  Almost every Rapids boy started carrying a pocketknife when he was seven or eight; it was part of his basic equipment:

  Left front pocket: Knife

  Right front pocket: Pennies to buy candy at Felix

  Woytal’s store

  Left rear pocket: Handkerchief

  Right rear pocket: Billfold with a picture of Ava

  Gardner but no bills

  Shirt pocket: Trading stock of baseball cards

  We traded baseball cards because in 1950 the sixteen major league baseball teams ruled the world of professional sports; pro football 18

  Beans for Breakfast

  and hockey were curiosities that showed up from time to time on the back page of the sports section. As a result, one of the high points of the Rapids State Graded year was our annual softball World Series, played during lunch hours in early October. We formed two teams

  with about twenty kids on a side, ranging in age from seven to fourteen. The teams were named after the pennant winners who were in the major league series each year, and in 1950, they were the Yankees and the Phillies. As a born Cleveland Indians fan I would have nothing to do with the Yankees, so I was a Philly.

  It was difficult to fit twenty defensive players on our ball field in the vacant lot east of the school, but we managed it. There were two catchers, one behind the other, to cut down on passed balls. And in addition to the usual five infielders we put a “short fielder” in each gap, making the hit-and-run game pretty difficult to execute. The remaining eleven kids played outfield.

  The field had a healthy stand of weeds, worn down to the bare dirt on the base paths. There was a rudimentary wire backstop behind

  home plate, but no outfield fence; instead there was a ditch that ran from the left to right field foul lines. The ditch was three or four feet deep and full of slimy green algae fertilized by the overflow from failing septic tanks.

  A ball hit into the ditch was called a “sewie ball” and was scored as a ground rule double. A ball hit over the ditch was a home run, although no one had ever done it. To field a sewie ball, you scrambled down the side of the ditch, fished out the floating softball with the webbing of your glove and flipped the ball up onto the grass. Then you would kick it around for a while until it was reasonably dry and throw it in.

  In the seventh and deciding game of our 1950 Rapids series, the

  Phillies led by one run in the bottom of the ninth, and the Yankees were at bat with the bases empty and two out. The Phillies needed 19

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  one more out to win, and the tension grew as a fifth-grade girl

  named Vivian walked to the plate for the Yankees. She batted cross-handed and had never been known to hit a ball out of the infield.

  But this time she whacked a dribbler to left that dodged all the fielders and went into the ditch.

  Mr. Lensmire was the umpire. “Sewie ball!” he shouted. “Vivian,

  take second.”

  I was playing deep left field and had to retrieve the ball. I tossed it to the pitcher. There had been four or five sewie balls in the last two innings, and it was getting waterlogged.

  The game was at its crucial moment. With two out and Vivian in

  scoring position, a single or another sewie ball could tie it up. And given the uneven quality of our outfielders, some of whom did not have gloves, a long line drive could score two.

  “Who’s up?” I asked Doug Goeters, the fielder to my left.

  “Doyle,” he said. “Oh, God,” I said.

  Doyle was the pride of the Yankees that year, a strapping eighth-grader who was big for his age and usually needed a shave. The

  infield chatter fell silent when he came to bat. He took a couple of savage warm-up swings and then glared at our pitcher, a sixth-grade girl named Ruthie.

  “OK, ya little twerp, I dare ya,” he growled. “Go ahead, strike me out!”

  Ruthie challenged him with a perfect strike across the heart of

  the plate. There was a crack of bat on ball and a spray of sewage. We stood frozen in our tracks as we watched a towering fly soar to deep center. The nearest five or six outfielders overcame their awe and broke for the ball, but they didn’t have a chance. Doyle’s shot landed a good ten feet on the far side of the ditch, and the game ended with a walk-off two-run homer. The Rapids Yankees won, 27–26. The

  New York Yankees won that year too, drubbing the Phillies in four straight games.

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  The autumn wore on. The trees changed color, and before long

  there was a crackling frost every morning. The ground froze too

  hard to play mumblety-peg at recess. After Thanksgiving it seemed to snow every day. The gravel street that ran along the south side of the school grounds was too steep for cars to climb in the winter and it became our sledding hill. Kids who had sleds brought them to

  school and coasted down the hill at recess and lunch hour. At the end of each school day we stood our sleds up against the wall of the school and left them there overnight. No one ever bothered them.

  Along with the snow, winter paid another dividend: government

  surplus food for lunch. There was a big gas range in the basement of the school, and early in the morning the teachers would begin baking and roasting. A couple of days a week we had huge baked

  potatoes swimming in surplus butter. And before Thanksgiving and Christmas there was turkey: big brown drumsticks and steaming

  slabs of white meat. No one ever told us why we got the surplus food, but I suppose it was because somebody in Washington thought we

  were poor.

  At Christmas, Mom, Dad, and I drove down to Lorain to spend

  the holiday with Grandpa and Grandma Lester. We headed back to

  Manitowoc a couple of days later. Dad backed down Grandpa’s

  driveway and waited for an opening in the traffic. Then he pulled out and shifted into low.

  “And away we go,” he said, “homeward bound.” Mom looked at

  him.

  “Do you realize what you just said?” she asked. “You called

  Manitowoc home.”

  “Isn’t it?” Dad asked.

  Mom hesitated for a minute. “Well, come to think of it, I guess it is,” she said. “Enso?”

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  The Fannie Farmer Mystery

  W hen you buy an old house on the outskirts of town, there’s a good chance that some resident wildlife will be there to welcome you. At least, that was our experience.

  A couple of days after we moved into our place on River Road,

  Mom was cleaning the kitchen drawers before stowing away the

  silverware and utensils.

  “The people who lived here must have liked rye bread,” she said.

  “These drawers are just full of caraway seeds.”

  Dad was in the dining room, washing the windows with vinegar

  water and an old T-shirt. He came into the kitchen to have a look.

  “See for yourself,” Mom said.

  Dad opened a drawer and wiped it out with the T-shirt. “Char-

  lotte, I hate to tell you this,” he said, “but these little things aren’t caraway seeds—they’re mouse poop.”

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  The Fannie Farmer Mystery

  “Oh my God,” Mom gasped. “Now what do we do?”

  “Catch ’em, I guess,” Dad said. “When I’m done with these

  windows I’ll run in to the A&P and get some mousetraps. We

  should be able to thin them out in a week or so.”

  “All right,” Mom agreed, “but don’t go to the A&P. If you buy mousetraps t
here, they’ll know we have mice.”

  “Charlotte, the A&P doesn’t care if we have mice,” Dad said.

  “Yes, they do,” Mom responded. “We were there the day before

  yesterday, and I don’t want them whispering about us the next time we go in.”

  Dad sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “OK, OK, I’ll go to the

  hardware store.” He grinned at me and dug the car keys out of his pocket.

  While Dad was gone Mom wiped out the drawers with bleach.

  “When you live in an old barn out in the sticks, you’re going to be infested with things, I suppose,” she said. “First there were bats in the bedroom, and now mice. What’s next, rattlesnakes?”

  “Mom, there was only one bat,” I pointed out. I loved the house

  and wanted to defend it.

  “Hah!” Mom said. “Where there’s one, there’s more. You wait

  and see.”

  Dad was back in about an hour. He had bought six mousetraps,

  two extra blades for his coping saw, a rat-tail file, a pound of eight-penny nails, and a set of screwdrivers. He was not to be trusted in hardware stores.

  After Mom and I went to bed that night, Dad baited the traps

  with peanut butter, put them in the drawers, shut off the kitchen lights, and retired quietly to the dining room to await results. To pass the time he smoked his pipe and worked on the newspaper

  crossword. It took him about ten minutes to fill in as many of the horizontal words as he could, and he had just started on the verticals 23

  The Fannie Farmer Mystery

  when there was a loud snap in the kitchen. Satisfied, he went to bed, setting his alarm clock for five-thirty. He wanted to be up early to run his trapline.

  But the shipyard beat him to the punch. At ten after five the

  phone rang and he ran downstairs to answer it. Someone at the yard wanted him to drive in and witness a hydrostatic test, right away.

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Dad said, and hung up. He put on a pair of white coveralls, rubber boots, and a tin hat. “I’ll be home for lunch,” he hollered.

  “Fine,” Mom said.

  I got up at about seven o’clock and went downstairs to see what

  was for breakfast. Mom was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and staring grimly out the window.

  “Don’t even look in the drawers,” she said. “They’re full of dead mice.” She rummaged in the refrigerator and pulled out a quart of milk, a loaf of bread, a stick of butter, and a jar of apricot jam. “I guess it will be safe to have toast,” she said. “I don’t think our little friends have invaded the icebox or the toaster.”

  When I had finished my toast I whistled up Rip, and the two of

  us went outside to explore the woods across the road. It seemed like a good morning to stay out of the house.

  Dad came home for lunch at about noon and found Mom still

  sitting at the table. “I haven’t been able to get a single thing done this morning,” she complained. “I can’t turn around without finding

  another dead mouse. Please empty those traps.”

  Dad opened the drawers and dropped the mousetraps in an old

  grocery bag. He had caught six mice, which he threw into the garbage can on the back porch.

  “Charlotte, it’s not like they’re rats or anything,” he said.

  “They’re actually kind of attractive.”

  Mom turned away and dabbed at her eyes with a corner of her

  apron.

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  The Fannie Farmer Mystery

  “That’s just it,” she said, her voice fluttering. “They’re such dear little things. I don’t want them running around the house, but I can’t stand seeing them in those traps, either. I just don’t know what to do!”

  She looked up at Dad and tried to smile. Dad smiled back. Any

  woman who felt sorry for mice was his kind of girl.

  “Well, just hang in there for the moment,” he said. “I’ll think of something.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “By the way,

  what’s for lunch?”

  “Nothing much,” Mom said. “I suppose I could make you a

  peanut butter sandwich.” Dad winced.

  “No, thanks—peanut butter doesn’t appeal to me right now,” he

  said. “I’ll get a hamburger someplace.”

  Mid-afternoon found Dad sitting at his desk at the shipyard,

  planning the eviction of unwanted animals from his house. He was wondering what to do about the large and furry spiders he had found lurking in the coal bin when something brushed against his leg.

  “Gaah!” he shouted, and stood up so suddenly he tipped over his

  swivel chair. A long-haired black cat the size of a lynx came out from under his desk and rubbed itself against his ankle. “Merr-row,” it said.

  Dad walked down the hall to the next office. The cat kept pace

  with him like a dog at heel. He cleared his throat to attract the attention of the man in the office, who was doing something complicated with a slide rule and a ten-row calculator.

  “Hey, Ernie, who owns this cat?”

  “You mean Fritz?” the man replied. “He’s kind of community

  property. He’s been around here about a year. The janitor fixed up a box and a bed for him in the basement, and we feed him scraps from our lunches.”

  “Do you think anybody would mind if I borrowed him for a

  couple of days?” Dad asked. “I have some mice to get rid of.”

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  The Fannie Farmer Mystery

  “Be my guest,” Ernie responded. “He’s not only the biggest cat in Manitowoc, he’s also the best mouser. This building was overrun

  with mice when he showed up, but you hardly ever see one now.”

  Dad went back to his office, with Fritz by his side. He picked up his fallen chair, sat down, and stroked Fritz, who began to purr with a visceral vibration that reminded Dad of a Scott-Atwater outboard motor. He wasn’t particularly fond of cats, but he didn’t question fate, which had presented him with a friendly, mobile mousetrap

  just when he needed one.

  When Dad got home from work later that afternoon he was

  carrying Fritz in a cardboard box. He set the box on the floor inside the front door and called a family council.

  “Charlotte, Davy, I think I’ve solved the mouse problem. Come

  in here and bring Rip.” He explained to us about Fritz and let Rip sniff the box. Rip was normally a placid dog, but at the first scent of cat he bristled as though his tail had been plugged into a socket.

  “Oh, great,” Dad said. “I was afraid of that. Davy, hold on to

  Rip’s collar. I’m going to show him the cat.”

  Dad reached into the box, took Fritz by the scruff of the neck,

  lifted him up, and held him securely with both arms. “See the nice kitty, Rip?” he said. There was a moment of silence while Rip and Fritz looked at each other. I held Rip’s collar with both hands while he sized up the situation.

  “Let him go, Davy,” Dad commanded, and we all held our

  breaths.

  Rip was pretty smart for a beagle. He took another long look at

  Fritz, dropped his tail, and retreated to the back hall.

  Dad put Fritz on the living room floor, not knowing whether he

  would hide under the couch or chase after Rip. But Fritz did neither; instead, he ambled amiably around the house, getting the lay of the land. When Rip came into the kitchen, Fritz calmly moved into the 26

  The Fannie Farmer Mystery

  dining room, and when Fritz returned to the kitchen, Rip side-

  stepped him and went into the den. As we watched, the animals

  worked out ways to stay away from each other. There was no spitting, growling, clawing, or curtain climbing.

  “I wish the Republicans could see this,” Dad said.

 
At bedtime Dad shut Rip in my room and called Fritz into the

  kitchen. He opened all the drawers and cabinets, and showed Fritz the door to the cellar stairs. “There you go,” Dad said. “Good luck and good hunting.”

  The following morning the shipyard called early again. When

  Dad went downstairs to answer the phone he found a present from

  Fritz on the antique marble-topped table we used for a telephone stand: five dead mice laid out like corpses on a slab. The next morning there were three mice on the telephone stand, then one, and

  then none. After supper on Fritz’s fifth day with us, Dad slid his chair back from the table and lit his pipe.

  “Let’s see,” he said. “I caught six mice in the mousetraps, Fritz’s total so far is nine, and we haven’t found any fresh caraway seeds in the kitchen. I suppose I can take Fritz back to the office tomorrow.”

  “Do you have to?” Mom asked. “I’d like to keep him here an-

  other week, just to be on the safe side.” But Fritz’s visit was cut short by an incident that went down in the family annals as the Fannie Farmer mystery.

  As a rule, Dad gave Mom four boxes of candy a year: for

  her birthday in December, on their anniversary in February, for

  Mother’s Day, and in August or September, just on general prin-

  ciples. Usually he bought Whitman’s Samplers, but that night he

  had brought home a rare extravagance, a triple-decker box of five dozen assorted Fannie Farmer candies, including chocolates, pecan pralines, and Jordan almonds.

  The Depression and wartime rationing had taught Mom to

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  The Fannie Farmer Mystery

  conserve, and when she got her boxes of candy she hid them and

  dispensed the pieces like medicine, one per person every other day or so. The morning after the candy arrived I asked Mom for a piece, but as usual the answer was no.

  “We’ll have some after supper tomorrow,” she said. Candy always

  came tomorrow, never today. I decided to take matters into my own hands.

  Later that morning, while Mom was doing the laundry in the

  basement, I found the Fannie Farmer box tucked away in her closet.

  With infinite care, I dug down to the bottom layer, removed a handful of chocolates, replaced the cardboard dividers, and put the lid back on. At the rate Mom handed out candy, I figured, she wouldn’t get down to the bottom of the box until well into September, and that was too far off to worry about.