Not Enough Room

So many stories, so little room! I had to cut some of the stories because there just wasn't room, and I already had so many characters. But they are essential stories too!

I am going to post some of the stories that had to be edited out for continuity. Remember, book on Amazon next week! YIKES

Dad’s older brother, Lester, was a short, stubborn guy known for being bull-headed. He was shorter than Dad and had a slim build, with a shock of white hair that stood straight up. In my mind, he looked like an angry little rooster next to my father, who was as solid as a tree.

His wife, my Aunt Ruby, was thin but taller than Lester, and she was always cold.  I don’t think I ever saw her without a sweater. She wore a scarf around her hair and always seemed mad at Lester. 

Mom told me that Ruby was once assigned to hold up a “mile-long” section of snow fencing to block pigs as they were moved to new pens.

“The pigs ran right over the top of that fence; poor, skinny, bony Ruby was trampled. Then Lester dared to yell at her for not holding up her part of the fence. We drove up, and she was still letting him have it. I don’t think she took a breath!”

Lester and his sister Hazel were like fire and gasoline; they constantly clashed. Mom told me that Grandma couldn’t send them out together, as kids, out to gather wood for heating and cooking.

“Every time she sent them out to work together, they would fight like cats and dogs.  Hazel usually beat the shit out of Lester or chased him out of the woods with a chunk of wood. Both still call the other a ‘bull-headed son of a bitch.’ Hazel couldn’t stand being around him and would rather gather wood alone than cooperate with Lester, and he felt the same way”.

Sadly, their relationship never got better with age. It’s a mystery why Lester named one of his daughters Hazel. To avoid confusion, the second Hazel was always called Bubbles.

In one memorable incident, when I was a child, Hazel bravely chased armed deer hunters off her land.  She was armed only with the stick she had picked up while tracking them through the woods. The short, chubby, and middle-aged housewife tracked the hunters down like a military scout and poked them with her stick until they marched out of the woods. Her habit of beating up her brother must have given her courage when confronting strangers armed with deer rifles.

Hazel was a God-fearing church-going Lutheran housewife.  Not blessed with children, she nurtured and loved her nieces and nephews. My siblings and I spent weeks at a time staying with Hazel and her husband, Erick. Sunday meant dressing up and best manners at church, and Uncle Erick sneaking us the tiny communion cups of wine. 

I was never the little princess she wanted to coddle; she called me Little Reuben in exasperation at my feral behaviors.  Hazel tried to teach me embroidery and canasta; I ran barefoot through the woods, coming back covered in ticks and mud.   

Uncle Erick made a little moonshine on the side, as farming in that area of Minnesota, with its swampy bottomland and pine trees, was not profitable. One day, a local boy came running through the woods—before telephones were ordinary—to tell Erick that “revenuers” were coming his way.

Erick immediately dismantled his still and threw the fermented corn into the chicken pen. Soon, the chickens began staggering around and falling onto their sides, flopping about, while the rooster attempted to stand and crow drunkenly, the alcohol giving him romantic notions.

When the revenue agents, county sheriff, and a couple of good old boy deputies drove up the gravel road to Erick and Hazel’s house, one of the officers commented on the "strange-acting chickens."

Erick replied, “Yeah, they’ve got some disease or something; they’ve been acting like that for a while now.”

After a quick walk through the outbuildings, Erick was cleared of any wrongdoing. However, shortly after that incident, Hazel made him shut down his operations. 

I can still see the sly grin on his lean Scandinavian face as he told that story to my laughing cousins and me. Hazel would pretend to be still angry about it, making us giggle even harder.