Breeding Like Rabbits Page 17

  Mr. Stenshol had told Andy of a place for rent not far from the shop. Andy could walk to work, and Britt could have the use of the old gray Ford in case she needed it. With young children, you never knew when an emergency might crop up. Britt was thankful that the apartment was on the ground floor. It had only two bedrooms, but they could partition the bigger bedroom with screens to make two small bedrooms. She’d use the same technique they’d used in country school when constructing a stage for the Christmas program—hung sheets on wires. And soon—how exciting!—they’d be house-hunting in Rillstead.

  Rillstead was settled by homesteaders who were attracted by the small stream (rill) that coursed through the valley and by the depth of the fertile topsoil. Small at first, it grew quickly, especially after the addition of a railroad. In the fifties, the population was about fifty thousand, and it boasted of an agricultural college and a university. Two hospitals, Bethesda and St. Francis, took care of Rillstead’s sick. Public and private schools dotted the suburbs. Catholic high schools separated the girls from the boys. Several churches—most people could find their preferred denomination—were quite evenly balanced by barrooms and cocktail lounges. Shopping was superb. Two large department stores dominated the downtown area—one actually had an elevator! It was a city on the move.

  Britt knew this place. She had attended two years of college here before she married Andy. Frustrated at not being able to settle on a major, she opted for marriage to Andy and a chance to see the world. That was her vision, but it didn’t pan out. Her world ended up consisting mainly of cleaning up messes—dirty dishes and diapers, dusting, spit-ups, and scrubbing, and the ever present snotty noses—all within four walls.

  Britt had met Jesse at the university. They’d gone out a couple of times, and then he’d joined the army. He wrote to her, telling her where he was and asking her to write to him. She didn’t write to him. She was already married. Britt thought of him from time to time—sometimes while bending over the diaper pail. What would my life have been like if I hadn’t married, and instead I’d answered Jesse’s letter? Or if I’d finished college—became a nutritionist or a dress designer? Ridiculous. Wishful thinking is wasteful thinking.

  Eight months after Amy quit the breast, Britt was again pregnant—she would give birth to her fifth child in Rillstead. This is where we’re making our home. This is where I’ll have our last baby.

  CHAPTER

  20

  Andy worked five days a week, but Sundays and Mondays—barbers had Mondays off—they looked for a house.

  Britt wanted a house on a tree-lined street, close to a grade school, a park, and a library. She did not want to spend her days chauffeuring children around. Cherry Street was promising, and a house there would also be close to a hockey arena; that would keep the boys busy when they were older. It would have to be a traditional looking house so that early American furniture would look good in it. She liked her mother’s Tel City maple furniture. Britt would make lots of throw pillows—not fancy ones, just comfortable ones. She felt about throw pillows the way others might feel about comfort food. The pillows must be soft, colorful, and inviting, the kind that, after a punch or two, would fit your head like an old, soft and floppy hat.

  Sidewalks, extensive sidewalks, were another must. She wanted her children to enjoy roller-skating, riding their trikes, and just walking around the neighborhood. She and Hannah had learned to roller skate in a dim, dank basement, and the floor had a few cracks in it. Their skates were fastened to their shoes with clamps tightened by a roller skate key. The skating also created concrete dust. It got boring pretty fast—just going around and around. Soon they used their skates as cars or trucks for their clothespin dolls.

  A fenced-in backyard was also on the must-have list. Britt would never, never forget Sara’s narrow escape. She could have died but for the roadside curb that prevented the garbage truck from squashing her flat.

  They found their home, one built in the 1920s. It was on Cherry Street, within walking distance of a school, a library, and a park. It had sidewalks in all directions, and it had a small, fenced-in backyard. A gable jutted from the north and another from the south roof area. Virginia creeper crawled up the west side of the house, turning bright red in the fall, according to the neighbors. Warm gray stucco with windows framed in red, it also sported a full-length screened porch on the front of the one-and-a-half-story house or bungalow—a place where children could safely play.

  To enter the front door, they had to come in the front porch door and walk across the width of the porch to reach the front door. Entering the front door, they understood why the house was listed as a fixer-upper. The large, rectangular living/dining room’s ceiling was wallpapered in a faded maroon, and long strips of it hung down as much as three feet. But the windows were lovely, arranged in threes on each side of the front door, and in twos on the east and the west. The top half of all the windows in the house had framed “lights.” With twenty-four windows in the house, heat would be expensive at nineteen cents a gallon, but they’d have plenty of light to brighten the dark, cold, cloudy winter days—priceless. First floor also had a half bath next to a kitchen with built-in cabinets and it had a small bedroom—the master bedroom.

  Upstairs were two more bedrooms, a large one on the east in which the boys would sleep and an even larger one with an “ell”—for the girls. A bathroom with a claw-footed tub was across from the boys’ room, and a little farther down the hall, a storage area with a slanted ceiling. It would just fit the Hughes family.

  A full basement was under it all. Going down to the basement, which they could do immediately upon coming in the back door, was a journey into the dark unknown. First you’d come face-to-face with an asbestos-clad, many-tentacled monster. It was the furnace, and it took up a large part of the basement. In the northwest corner stood the fuel oil tank, cradled in its steel rack. A northeast room had built-in shelves for canned goods and preserves. To the southeast was a workbench with a window above it. The southwest corner was the domain of the washer and dryer—a clothes chute on the second floor dumped its load in front of the washer.

  The walls were plastered, with very few cracks under the layers of wallpaper—no sheetrock in this house. All doors closed without any sticking, evidence that there was no settling in this house either. Walnut-stained woodwork was in terrific shape throughout the house. This was definitely a fixer-upper worth fixing.

  Before Andy could apply for the GI Bill housing loan, the house had to be inspected. An inspector came out and said that if a jack post was put in the basement, between the workbench and the food storage room for added support of the upstairs floor, the house would pass. That was done, the papers sent in, and the loan came through. It was a twenty-year loan in the amount of $10,500. Every month, for twenty years, Andy made a payment of eighty-five dollars. (A local bank soon took over the loan from the federal government.) The Hughes family moved into their new home on June 12, 1962.

  So much to do, and a baby was due at any time. Pressure! Britt felt she had to get things cleaned and set up fast. All the kitchen cupboards had to be scrubbed before the dishes, utensils, pots, and pans could be put away. Beds had to be made and floors scrubbed. Run to the post office and change the address. Connect the telephone and the TV. Arrange for regular milk delivery—important with four children in the house. There seemed no end to all that needed doing. Britt was worn out.

  The June weather was hot and sticky, so Andy put a picnic table out on the screened-in porch. The kids loved it. They ate out there, and they played out there even when it rained, and they were safe from mosquitoes. (Minnesotans sometimes joke that the mosquito is the state bird.)

  Five days into their new home, with Britt on her hands and knees, scrubbing the upstairs hallway, she felt a contraction, then another. By six at night, the contractions were five minutes apart and Andy was home from work. Six in the car and a baby on the way, they spe
d the six blocks to St. Francis Hospital.

  In the labor room, the nurse jabbed Britt with a hypodermic needle with something in it to relax her. And that it did! The contractions stopped, and she fell asleep and slept for twelve hours—a much-needed rest.

  The next morning, Dr. Evans, an obstetrician, came in to see Britt. “After breakfast, you get up and walk, and you keep walking up and down this hall. We’ve got to get those contractions started again.” So she spent most of her day walking, and it worked—the contractions began again.

  The birth was easy. It just took three good pushes before they plopped a baby on Britt’s stomach. The baby was covered with whitish stuff—like a waxed parsnip. Britt could see bluish pink skin through the wax. This was another sight she’d never seen in the four previous births. The baby cried, and Britt laughed.

  The little one weighed in at seven pounds, nine and one-half ounces, and was nineteen and one-half inches long—a nice healthy baby girl with brown hair. Once she was cleaned up, the nurse let Britt hold her. Britt looked at the tiny red face and smiled. “Hello, Laura.”

  Coming home a few days later to a home that they owned was wonderful. Laura slept in her parents’ room, in the same little white crib that had originally been her uncle Owen’s. Later that summer, the family went on a day trip to Park Rapids where they fed the deer in Deer Town. When they returned, they found a litter of newborn kittens in Laura’s crib, nuzzling their gray mother, Fluffy, searching for dinner.

  Laura was a good baby—no colic, no allergies, and she slept through the night when she was three months old. Britt and Andy now had a total of five healthy children all born in different places with different doctors in attendance—one for each finger of a hand; one might call it a handful. And what do you call five children in seven years? According to Britt, “Too much to handle.”

  At her six-weeks checkup with the doctor, she asked him to write her a prescription for the pill. After three months of nursing, she put Laura on the bottle and then filled the prescription, grateful that after FDA approval two years ago, it was now available more widely for birth control.

  Britt’s father, along with the hired man and twins, William and Owen, almost ten years old, started the repair of this fixer-upper. They installed a new roof on the garage. Armed with a box of tools, they took off the old shake shingles, laid down heavy black tar paper on the roof, and then they nailed down new shingles of heavy asphalt in a gray that matched the stucco of the house. First big project done.

  Britt did most of the second big project—though Andy, Sara, and Daniel pitched in when it suited them—the removal of seven layers of wallpaper off the living/dining room walls. Wallpaper had to be removed from the ceiling too, but thank goodness the ceiling had only one layer to remove. Under the wallpaper was a powdery substance, calcimine. Britt learned that it was a wash or covering for walls containing zinc and glue. She learned firsthand that it was quite a challenge to remove. It had to be soaked and then scrubbed off with soap and water. It was a drippy mess. Eventually wallpaper was removed from all walls that had it, and then the rooms were painted. A tedious, horrible job—it took more than a year—but the outcome was worth it. Things were shaping up.

  The Hughes family spent a quarter of a century in their Cherry Street house. In 1971, the front porch was removed. The children didn’t need a porch to play in anymore, and the screens were getting tattered. They wanted a more direct entrance into the house—always entering the porch first was a nuisance. They utilized all the space where the covered front porch had been to construct a den, a foyer, and a side entrance from the west with a Gainsborough blue front door that opened onto the foyer. The beautiful living room windows were now the windows of the den.

  Though gone, memories of the old front porch linger on. It was the place where you could bed down in your sleeping bag on a hot, sticky August night and get a little breeze.

  Amy had a slumber party out there when she was nine. Unbeknownst to her parents, she and five little “nudies” streaked to the streetlight one-fourth of a block away.

  Britt well remembers two-year-old Laura toddling out there to see what that moving yellow thing was. It was a goldfish in a bowl. Someone had taken it out there—to give the fish some sun?—and set it on a wide sill. Laura picked it up and dropped it. Water and glass shards flew, and a piece of glass grazed Laura’s forehead. It bled a lot—head wounds do. Britt wrapped a dishtowel around Laura’s head, carried her to the car, and off they sped to the hospital five blocks away. It wasn’t as bad as it looked, but Laura still carries a small scar right below her hairline. The fate of the fish? No one knows. There were bad times, of course, but more good times, and there were never any boring times.

  A baby robin, just starting to get feathers, fell out of his nest. Sara picked him up, put him on the porch, rounded up all the neighbor kids, and set them to work digging for worms. They kept the worm supply coming, until one day the robin flew away.

  Those things all happened on the porch, but the house itself witnessed many more events, both bad and good.

  Of the bad times, the following stand out: two broken bones (Tony broke his jaw slipping on ice and landing on the concrete back steps, and Laura broke her elbow falling off a horse); numerous cuts and bruises; poison ivy; measles and chicken pox; fights and squabbles—often between Daniel and Tony but also between children and parents over the amount of an allowance, who does the dishes, curfew times, proper skirt length, and which TV program to watch.

  Of the good times, these stand out: bringing a new baby (Laura) into a new home and witnessing her first smile, her first step, and her first word (“Dada”); birthday parties—two for every child, one when a child turned six, and the other when a child became a teenager; five bicycles—the nine-year-old birthday gift; trick or treating—sometimes with a snowsuit worn over the costume; dressing up for the prom and having your picture taken before you went out the door; two graduation receptions—all of the children graduated from high school, but only two had receptions because the idea of a reception after graduation was just becoming an “in” thing; Easter baskets; and Christmas with the grandparents.

  These memories seeped into every corner of the house on Cherry Street, where life was not always a bowl of cherries, but at times, it most definitely was.

  CHAPTER

  21

  Andy’s shop was doing well. He enjoyed being a barber and talking to his customers. He even enjoyed sweeping hair off the floor—hair of all colors and textures; it was a sign of his success. He worked in his clean shop with his clean hands and felt good about himself.

  In 1964, the year that Laura turned two, the Hughes family started camping. It seemed to them an economical and family friendly way of enjoying Minnesota’s many parks and excellent camping facilities.

  Andy bought a big tent, one with two side rooms for sleeping. Britt sewed seven “fart sacks” to use in the sleeping bags—a top and a bottom sheet rolled into one, easy to remove and wash. She also made each one a “ditty” bag that had a drawstring closure. The ditty bags were for dirty clothes. They bought a secondhand, homemade camp kitchen. It fit right in the trunk and carried dishes, silverware, a couple pans, and a few utensils. Add a Coleman stove, which they did, and they were all set to enjoy Minnesota’s many lakes and state parks.

  Being a barber and having Monday off was an advantage. They would drive into a park before noon, scope everything out, especially the campsite, maybe do some fishing or rent a boat, and then when the Sunday people started to leave their campsites, they’d move into a vacated one, usually a site that was close to a beach and close to the restrooms. Mondays the entire park was almost theirs alone. It was the ideal mini-vacation for a family with an ample number of kids.

  The first year they camped, Sara was nine and spent her time catching tadpoles, snakes, frogs, minnows, anything she could, and searching for interesting stones and shells. She
wanted to earn a brown Camp Fire Girls bead, the Outdoors and Environment bead. She went fishing with her brothers—Daniel, eight years old, and Tony, six—if they let her. Sara and Daniel, only eleven months apart, were very competitive. Sara thought she should have her way because she was older. Daniel thought he should have his way because that’s the way the world worked—boys were the bosses. Needless to say, they fought a lot.

  Daniel fished most often with his brother, Tony, who usually caught the biggest fish; failing that, he’d catch the most fish. Why are some people luckier at catching fish than others? I’m one of the unlucky ones, so I don’t even bother. Though both could swim, they had to wear their bright orange life jackets when fishing or boating. Sometimes Sara, the boys, and their dad got up early, rented a boat, and fished for hours, all wearing life jackets—Andy had to set a good example. Britt, Amy, and Laura would sleep late and take their time rolling out of the sleeping bags. They lay, looking up at the tent ceiling as birds walked overhead. Tiring of that, it was time for breakfast and then the beach.

  Amy was four, and she kept her eye on her little sister. Britt was Laura’s mother, but Amy was her second mother. They filled their buckets and built sand castles with moats around them. They walked along the water’s edge looking for pretty stones and shells—not easy for Laura. At two years old, she’d stumble at times and come home with Amy leading her by the hand and her bottom leaking lake water and scratchy with sand. Britt, sitting on a beach towel trying to get a little tan, kept her eye on them. They are even closer than Hannah and I were. Lucky girls!

  When Daniel was twelve, the camp-outs stopped. Most Minnesota and North Dakota parks have poison ivy, and Daniel was very susceptible. The other children and Britt were allergic to poison ivy too but not to the extent that Daniel was. Andy never got poison ivy. The last year they camped, Daniel picked up such a bad case of poison ivy that he had to be hospitalized. The doctor told Britt and Andy that the steroids he had to give Daniel should not be used often. He suggested that they quit camping. Daniel never said anything. He was more of a doer than a talker, but he may have been relieved—not only because he’d now escape the itchy poison ivy rash but because he’d also escape sleeping in a tent, a claustrophobic experience for him.