Why Publish a 2nd Edition?

 When I am looking for a book to read, here are some of the things I like to do. I look at my friends on Goodreads to see what others are reading and what they think about a book. I question friends that tend to have the same taste in books that I do. "Any new books you want to recommend to me," I ask. I write the titles of book contenders  in a handy little thing I call my "working journal" and I also add them to a list that I keep on Goodreads  that is quite cleverly called... wait for it..."Books that I Want to Read." There are already more books on that list than I can shake a stick at but I can't afford to delete any of them. I still want to read them even if I put them on the list ten years ago. 

I like to take a look at online websites, too. Some of them offer free books, like Free Booksy, for example, or Perlego. And because I tend to like historical fiction, I follow a few FB pages that focus on that genre, such as the Historical Fiction Company which is one that reviews books, as well. If you like historical fiction, too, there are a lot of FB pages that may interest you.  And if you love to read other genres, there are many Book Lovers Club pages on FB too. 

I always read the brief summary of a particular book that I might be interested in reading. Doesn't everyone––whether I'm browsing in a library or browsing online through BookBub or Library Thing, or one of the other platforms such as those listed above. If I am interested enough to examine the book more closely, I like to skim the reviews written by other authors, newspapers, and professional reviewers. It's those very brief snippets of reviews that I'm talking about. They're printed in the front matter of the book, those very first pages of a book.

I've always ("always" as in... since I started writing books, I mean) been envious of those books with those first few pages that are devoted to telling the prospective reader how awesome some professional reviewer thinks the book is. How I secretly longed to have those pages at the front of  Driftless.

When I recognize the name of one of the reviewers, probably because I've previously read a book by that particular author, that makes their recommendation more powerful for me.  

And if I were to be entirely transparent, I should say that sometimes, only sometimes, mind you, I have chosen a book because I liked the cover. Yes, I can be one of those people, too. 

Over the past several months, I've thought about how I'd love to see some of the reviewer's comments about Driftless in the front matter and that got me thinking about printing a second edition of the book. 

More importantly, there were two other topics that I thought were important to be included in a second edition, too. 

1) A message from the Mayo Clinic. Facts about schizophrenia.  What you can do to help someone that you are concerned about.

2) Fifteen Questions for your book club discussion.   

as well as, tah dah––

3)  Selected Reviewer's Comments about Driftless. There are reviews from other Authors, a psychologist, a clinical social worker, a previous mental hospital patient, and professional book award judges.

Stay tuned. A 2nd Edition will be available soon. Happy reading.

Author Reading and Book Signing in Spring Grove

Summer is here! 
I am excited to have been invited to do a few Author Readings and Book Signings this year. I'll be in St. Louis, MO at Spine Bookstore and Cafe, in Memphis, TN at Novel., and in my hometown of Spring Grove, MN at the Public Library. The Reading in Spring Grove will be on Thursday, August 18th at 6:30 PM.  The library has chosen Driftless for a community-wide read this summer. What an honor for me to have my hometown choose my book to read and discuss. I'll post dates for the other Author events at a later time.

I am thrilled to be able to do these readings.  If you know of other independent bookstores that would be interested in having me come for an Author Reading and Book Signing,  you have my permission to point them in my direction. I may be contacted on this blog.  Or ArdysBrevigRichards https://www.facebook.com/DriftlessStory 

If you have not already read Driftless, I hope it's on your summer reading list. These fifteen questions may facilitate discussion in your book group. 

 

Reading Group Questions and

Topics for Discussion

1. What is the overall theme or message of Driftless?

2. Why do you think the author chose that title for this historical novel?

3.  Identify the values apparent in Driftless and compare them to those of today. Do you think these values relate to the type of community where the story takes place––a homogenous town and countryside populated with families that share a common ethnicity and religion?

4.  Much of the novel is told in Caroline's voice. Do you think that the first-person narrative approach is effective?

5.  There are many examples of friendship in the book: Arvid/Bear, Marit/Orpha, Caroline/Marilyn/Celia. Compare and contrast these friendships. 

6.  Describe Marit physically/emotionally. Where does she get her strength?

7.  Caroline and Arvid married quickly, giving them little time to discuss their backgrounds and experiences. Explain how this complicated their lives. Do you think that some people truly "fall in love" when they first meet? 

8.  Caroline was a stranger to the part of Minnesota that would become her new home. She did not share the same ethnic background. She'd never been on a farm, nor had she lived without electricity or indoor plumbing. What were the likely thoughts of Arvid's neighbors and church members about his choice for a wife?

9.  When Arvid went to church after Caroline's hospitalization, he discovered the congregation already knew where she'd gone. If you were in his shoes, would you have found it comforting that friends and neighbors had already heard the tragic story? If not comforting, how would you have felt?

10. Why do you think Arvid waited as long as he did before hospitalizing Caroline the second time?

11. As more of Caroline's life experiences were exposed, did your feelings about her change?

12. In 1948, there was a stigma, perhaps shame, attached to having a family member in a mental hospital. Do you think the kindness and support shown to Arvid and Marit was typical of that era? Is that stigma any less in today's world?

13. Which scenes or developments in the story affected you most?

14. How does the setting or landscape of Driftless play a role in the story? Is the setting itself a character?

15. A question for fun: What stories have you heard from your own parents or grandparents about their courting days, their engagements, and weddings? 

#driftless, #historical fiction, #AuthorReadings, #SpineBookstoreAndCafe, #Novel., #SpringGrovePublicLibrary, #DiscusionQuestions

First Time Away from Home 1960

Grandpa and Grandma Oomodt were going to be leaving the farm. I was four years old. My brother and sisters, and lots of cousins had all had turns staying with Grandpa and Grandma on  Beaver Ridge. I loved that name, Beaver Ridge.  I wished our farm was on a ridge named after an animal.

A very steep little road went up the bluff to Grandpa and Grandma's farm. Looking out the car window, I could see the tops of the trees below us. Way down in the narrow ravine. I liked that. There were some good stories about that steep road.

One story was about my dad courting my mom. He backed his car all the way up that steep hill to see my mom! Why? Something about the gas had to be in just the right place inside the gas tank. Driving backward did the trick. That was a fairytale story.  Just think of it...the handsome prince in his shining armor... riding backward up the mountain to rescue the beautiful princess in the tower. 

Another story was about Grandpa. He skied up and down the steep hills to help his parents on their farm. Mom said Grandpa was really good on his wooden skis. I can imagine Grandpa as a rosy-cheeked young man with frosty wire-rim glasses. Probably doing loop-de-loops and taking jumps on his skis through the woods. Wish somebody would have taken pictures.

So, it was my turn to stay with Grandpa and Grandma. There was no time to waste because right around the corner, they'd be moving to town. They weren't going to move to Caledonee even though that's where they went for groceries and stuff. (Grandpa called the town "Caledonee" instead of "Caledonia." He was funny like that.) They were going to move to a house in Spring Grove where my grandma's parents used to live. And that would be the end of visits to Grandpa and Grandma's farm on Beaver Ridge.

"Do you think you can stay a whole week by yourself?" My mom asked me that. "You've never stayed away from home before." 

"Oh, yes," I nodded my four-year-old head. On Sunday I rode home from church with Grandpa and Grandma They had a brown and cream-colored car with big fenders. I had the backseat all to myself and it was clean, too. Like nobody ever used it. So different from riding in the back of our big blue station wagon. And looking over all those heads in front of me to see where we were going.

Grandpa drove pretty slowly and he was a slow talker, too. In his deep voice, he pointed things out to me on the way to Beaver Ridge, kind of like I was a grown-up, too. Sometimes I thought he might have been making things up, but I didn't mind. I liked listening to him talk. Once in a while, he said, "Ya, ya den."  I always wondered when he said that because he might not have been talking about anything at all at the time. He just said it out of the blue, "Ya, ya, den." Just like that. And then I guess he must have gotten ready to start thinking about something else.

When we got up on top of Beaver Ridge, it was kind of like being on top of the world. Spring Grove was over one way and Caledonee was another. Grandpa stopped the car at the end of the driveway into the farmyard and got out to unhook the barbed wire gate. That was when he told Grandma that she could just as well drive the car through the gate.

"Regina. You could yust put de car in Drive and give 'er a little gas and take her right through the gate." I could see right away how that made sense. That way he wouldn't have to get out of the car, open the gate, get back in and get out again to shut the gate and back in again.

But my Grandma didn't think much of that idea. She said, "Oh, MURDER MELVIN." Now, I don't know what she meant by that, exactly, but she sure liked to say "Oh Murder, Melvin." I think she said it when she thought Grandpa had teased her just about enough. She must a' said it at least twice each day. Her eyebrows would be knit together like she was mad at Grandpa, but I don't think she was. I think that's just what they did. Grandpa teased her. Then she said, "Oh Murder, Melvin." And then his eyes twinkled.

Yup, Grandpa's eyes grinned when Grandma said that to him. He grinned at me like it was our secret joke. I think that Grandpa and Grandma had had that very same conversation about moving the car through the gate into the farmyard many times before that day. Grandpa was good at teasing her, that was for sure.

After Grandpa parked the car, Grandma probably fed us Sunday dinner. I say "probably" because I really don't remember that part. I was too excited to be staying with them on their farm. I ran outside again as soon as we got home from church. There were lots of things to see and do, and like I said, I had Grandpa and Grandma all to myself for one whole week.

For one thing, Grandpa had a huge pond right below the house down in the pasture. I could see it from the yard. At home, I had to walk a little way to get to our pond. But Grandpa's was right there! That was a big plus in my book. I ran down there to check out the pond first thing. Grandma probably said, "Be careful now, down by dat pond. It's deep. Don't go in there."

I probably told her I wouldn't, but I might a' been fibbing. I believe that I did go in the pond, just a little anyway. Along the edge. But what I remember best about the pasture below the house was the tall thistles. The tallest thistles I had ever seen! When I walked back up the hill to the house, I measured myself next to those thistles. They were taller than me! And they had pretty purple flowers on 'em. The prettiest thistles I'd ever seen.

When I got back to the house, guess what I found there? One of my boy cousins was there. I don't think he was invited, because it was my week to stay with Grandpa and Grandma, but nobody else seemed to mind. And anyway, I could see that my aunt and uncle weren't planning on taking him home again with them.  They'd come all the way from Austin just to bring him.

My cousin was a lot older than me; almost the size of a grown-up. What was he doin' on Beaver Ridge, anyway, I wanted to know, but I couldn't ask like that. That wouldn't have been nice.  So I wasn't going to have Grandpa and Grandma all to myself for a week after all. That didn't seem right, but I had to make the best of it. Grandpa and Grandma loved ALL of their grandkids very very much. They didn't have favorites. At least, none that I knew about. But it did seem to me like those Austin cousins got to visit Grandpa and Grandma more often than us farm cousins.

Why had my cousin come? What was all the fuss? Well, then I found out. It was FISHING! It was all about the fishing. In Beaver Creek. My boy cousins in Austin were just crazy about fishing. Their mom even said so. Those Austin cousins would fish morning, noon, and night if they could. And I think they did, too.

The best thing about fishing was that my cousin took me along with him. We walked to Beaver Creek. And since I'd never fished before, he very carefully showed me how everything was done. My job was to say, "Oh, I see," and "Yup, okay," and "I'm being quiet now." He seemed to like my encouragement. Plus I got to see something really exciting when we were in Beaver Creek. It wasn't a fish.

The exciting thing was a giant snapping turtle! My cousin put a big stick by the turtle's mouth and he snapped at it and didn't let go. I had seen different kinds of turtles before but nothing like that giant snapping turtle. If he'd have been friendlier, I'd have ridden on his back. But he wasn't being very nice, so I didn't. He was a very serious turtle.  It turned out that my cousin knew lots of interesting things about animals and he said that snapping turtles could live to be a hundred years old! I'll bet that's about how old that crabby turtle was. 

One day Grandpa helped me to climb up onto his big red tractor with him and he sat me down on the seat right in front of him. He drove the tractor out onto the gravel road and then, when we were going kind of fast, he let me drive! Maybe Grandpa helped me a little bit with the steering. And my feet didn't reach the pedals. But still! Grandpa laughed and laughed at my little hands vibrating on that steering wheel. In fact, I was vibrating everywhere. Grandpa said I was a pretty good tractor driver. He told Grandma at supper.

That night it rained hard. I slept up in the loft and my cousin did too, so I wasn't exactly alone up there when the rain was pounding on the roof. But it wasn't like being at home. I missed sleeping on my sister's arm. I lay in the bed and watched for things that might move in the dark. There wasn't much to see, but I had a good imagination.

The next morning, I followed Grandpa to the barn after breakfast. Good thing I had my red boots along with me because the barnyard was really muddy. Not to mention the cowpies. I had my little white purse with me, too. I got the idea to walk to the lower side of the barnyard and once that idea was there, I had to do it.  I carried my little white purse with me, swinging it on my arm. I took one big step after another.

When I got to the lower side of the barnyard, I turned around to go back to the barn, but one of my boots didn't want to go any further. It stayed right there, sucked into the mud. So suddenly I had one bare foot up in the air and one foot in a boot that wasn't going anywhere with me. A person might a' said that I'd had gotten myself into a pickle. But Grandpa came to get me. He picked me up and carried me out of the barnyard. No problem. My boots stayed behind in the mud. I giggled at being rescued from my pickle and I swung my little white purse around and around until it flew out of my hand and landed. Plop. Right in the mud.

Here's the kind of man my Grandpa was. He chuckled just a little and he said, "Oh, no. I'll have to pick up dat purse, too now." And he did. He carried me all the way to the house, where Grandma cleaned me up at the outside pump. 

Guess what Grandma said. "Oh MURDER, Melvin." And that's all there was to that.

I'm not sure when, but sometime later I got a funny feeling in my tummy. It might have started while I was thinking about my own bed at home. I thought about how my sisters probably missed me a lot. They'd never had me go away and leave them before. They'd probably be talking to each other in the dark that night; probably wondering what I was doing at Grandpa and Grandma's. Probably counting the days until I'd come back.

After milking was done that night, my mom came to Beaver Ridge to get me. She said to me, "Ya, I kinda wondered if you would be able to stay a whole week, Ardy. Your first time away from home and all." But she wasn't mad.

It's hard to explain things to grown-ups sometimes so I just shrugged. I'd had my turn at Grandpa and Grandma's on Beaver Ridge. And I stayed away from my own bed exactly as long as I wanted to. And no more.

Nicknames

 Nicknames. Ugh.

How do we get 'em? How do you get rid of 'em?

I've collected a few in my lifetime. Most have gone by the wayside, thankfully. Many have been really, really dumb, in my opinion. But you don't get to have a say in your own nickname.  Is that fair? First, your parents name you when you're a newborn. Obviously, you don't have anything to say about that.  And then before you know it, people begin to call you by other names of their own choosing.  As if the one you were baptized with wasn't good enough. 

In the spirit of full disclosure, I will share some of my nicknames. Not to resurrect them, but just to make a point about the unfairness of it all. 

First of all, I want to say that your nickname has more to do with who gave it to you than it does with you. Some folks may disagree and that's fine. People can disagree with me all they want. That doesn't make 'em right. 

The first nickname I can recall was "Ardy." That one was fair. Not much of a bastardization of the name there. In fact, I remember thinking that my family had realized their mistake in naming me "Ardys" and were trying to make the best of it by changing my name just a little. I was embarrassed about my name, "Ardys" until I was in my thirties. Heck, maybe even yet in my forties. "Ardy" has been a long-standing nickname. I still have friends who call me by that nickname.

There are nicknames that are only used by certain people. Sometimes only one person. Take "Radish" for example. My sister, Lou gave me that one when I was quite small. I have no idea why. Did I resemble a radish in some round, perky, biting way? Was she trying to have fun with the letters of my name and that was the best she could come up with? Hard to say. 

My mother called me "Misskaterriann." (pro. MISS-kah-TAIR-ree-ANN). I don't know how to spell it. Never seen it in writing, so you'll have to do the best you can with it. If someone reading this has heard this nickname before and you know how it is spelled, please tell me. Perhaps it's a word my mother made up. If so, that makes me like it a little better. And to think that I encouraged that kind of creativity? But what does it mean? In context, I suspect it means something like "little trouble-maker." In spite of that, she was usually smiling when she used it. On the other hand, my mother didn't spend a lot of time frowning so it's hard to say what her true meaning was.

"Squirt" was a popular nickname for a time. Popular with my brother, that is. I suppose it's short for the phrase "You Li'l Squirt" which to me, means something entirely different from just plain "squirt." "Squirt" puts me in mind of a liquid that accidentally shoots someplace you hadn't planned on having it go.  Or, even worse than that, a bodily fluid produced when your stomach has been feeling queasy. At the grave risk of indelicacy, it is used in the expression "so and so's got the squ***s.  Now really, who wants to have that for a nickname?

"Aardvark" was one that I was given in high school, believe it or not. Aside from that nickname, I'd always thought the giver was a close friend of mine. But to call a friend by a name that clearly involves an extremely long nose and eating ants? Well, it makes a person stop and think.

A friend in my thirties gave me the nickname "A.J." (Back when my last name was Jennings). Frankly, I felt rather good about that nickname. When your nickname is your initials, I think that puts you in good company with people like B.B. King, T.S. Eliot, J.R. Tolkien, J.F.K., C.S. Lewis, B.J. Hunnicut, C.J. Cregg, k.d. lang, e.e. cummings, J.D. Salinger, H.G. Wells, J.K. Rowling...I could go on and on, but I'm sure you'd prefer that I stop. Suffice it to say, initials are cool. When a person is known by their initials, you gotta think, "wow, he/she is so well-known you don't even have to speak their name and people automatically know who you're talking about." 

Then there were the nicknames that attempted to flatter. "Ardys the Artist" was such a nickname. I didn't mind it so much. Just had to be glad my name wasn't "Merill (the Barrel)" or "Jane (the Plain)," or " "Kari (the Hairy)" or "Patty (the Fatty)" or worse, "Fitch (the B****)." 

Some nicknames are funny the second they leave your mouth. Like "Babe-a-saurus," for example. When a nickname makes you laugh out loud, the giver knows he's struck gold. This one struck me as hilarious. This was my translation, "You sexy dinosaur, you." Flat out one of the most ridiculous phrases I've heard in a while. Alternatively, "You ancient reptile."

Nicknames that are given to you by an offspring have their own special zing. Especially when your child gives you a nickname of someone that he says reminds him of you. And then when all your other children, stepchildren, spouse and in-laws agree, that nickname ain't goin' away anytime soon. You'd have to be an SNL fan to get this one. Remember the skit with Lorraine and Carl?  Ya, that's me apparently. I'm "Lorraine." Could a' been worse. 

The next and last one that I'm willing to share is more of a mantra, really than a simple nickname and it's a bit mean-spirited. Little boys are not known for considering the feelings of a fourteen-year-old girl cousin. I have yet to pay him back for the humiliation of it. In all fairness, though, I give him five stars for creativity. Two for rhyming and zero for scarring me for life. It went like this: "Ardys Retardys, Let a fartys. Blew it all apartys." Only a ten-year-old boy would come up with something so gauche. 

What nicknames have you been saddled with? How do you feel about your nicknames? If you could have picked your own, what would it have been? Please, let's hear about your nicknames in the Comments after this post. 

 

Fertile Acres Brown Swiss Farm

Yes, it WAS a charmed life for Fertile Acres Brown Swiss Farm. Our farm had a name, you see. And I had sisters to tell me that the sign on our garage said what the name was. It was a real big sign, painted white with black lettering that hung pert 'near across one whole end of our garage. "Fertile Acres Brown Swiss Farm," it said, plain as can be so that when anybody drove out to our farm, they'd know for sure where they were. And if that wasn't where they meant to go, they'd have to just turn right around and drive back up the little hill and around the corner and keep on going because there wasn't anybody that lived past our farm.

If a farm had a sign with the farm's name on it, seemed to me like that farm had to be kind of a big deal. Maybe kind of a fancy farm. Leastwise, that's how I figured it. And nobody ever told me any different. Of course, I never asked.

When my dad packed all of us into our big blue station wagon for a Sunday afternoon drive, I kept an eye out for farms with their name printed on a sign. I couldn't read yet, but a sign was a sign. Those Sunday afternoon drives were kind of a dirty job for me, (that's what my dad called it when he had to get his hands real dirty) but that was because of the station wagon and my seat in the car. I got to ride way in the very farthest back part of the car, next to the rear window. There were no seats back there either, so you see, once again, I didn't get a chair to sit on. Not for eating at the table and not for riding in the car. But I didn't complain about it. (I didn't complain about much back then...okay, maybe mosqpuito bites but that's about it. And yes, my brother, Fordyce with his extra long arms, but that's just about it.) The reason I said it was a dirty job was because of the gravel roads and the dust that floated around inside the car. There must have been an awful lot of cracks we couldn't see in that car. But even though it was really dusty inside, I kept on looking for farms with signs. And I don't remember ever finding another one!

The "Fertile Acres Brown Swiss Farm" sign played a part in one of my earliest childhood memories.It's about my big sisters doing yet another thing together. 

You see, my sisters did a lot of things together, it seemed to me.  Here are some of them.They tied scarves over their hair after supper and followed my dad to the barn to milk cows by hand. (Mom called the scarves skauts. That's Norwegian for scarf. The scarves were supposed to keep their hair from smelling like a cow but I don't know if that really worked.) My sisters piled hay in the hayloft together. They picked rocks off the fields in the springtime. They went to 4-H meetings and played softball together. They sang in the church choir and they went to Luther League together. (In case you don't know what Luther League is, this is what I figured out all by myself. Luther League is a kind of club at church, like the Mickey Mouse Club, except that it was only for teenage Lutherans. A kid went to Luther League after they were too old for Sunday School.) The sisters even sang together just for fun. A lot of people thought they were pretty good at it, too. As far as I know. At least, they said so.  

The day that I remember was really hot and it must have been in between first and second crop, or between second and third crop hay. I think that because it seemed like on our farm, there was somebody puttin' up hay all summer long, except on that day. That day, my sisters were not stacking hay. In fact, they weren't doing anything but laying around!

Mary Lou was probably the oldest of my sisters that were still living on the farm at that time.

At least, I think so. She was pert 'near grown up far as I could tell. After her came Betty Jean and then Vernice. Fordyce came after Vernice but I don't remember anything about him that day. He might a' thought what we were doing was a "girl only" kind of thing.

 

The sisters had changed into their swimsuits upstairs in the bedroom with the two double beds, so I followed them and I changed, too. Then they spread themselves out on the lawn to bake. We had a large lawn on the farm, big enough to play softball. The yard was the first thing that a visitor would see when they drove to our farm. And of course, our great big sign, "Fertile Acres Brown Swiss Farm." My sisters lay on the grass below the sign, soaking up the sun.

I thought it was a useless thing to lay on the grass to get a tan. Oh, and get this...first they smeared baby oil on their skin which made them all shiny and slippery. I wasn't about to get too close to any of them when they were wearing baby oil. They did smell nice, though. They talked to each other a little. They talked about "getting a tan." They talked about getting rid of their farmer tans. It made "farmer tans" sound like a bad thing. And what did the kids living in town call their tans? I'd never worried about getting a tan and I wasn't about to start right then. Tan skin just happened when you weren't even thinking about it. There they lay, like they were afraid the sun wouldn't hit the right places if they moved. The only movement was the sweating and there was a lot of that going on. 

My sisters invited me to lay down on the grass with them and be still, but I didn't want to. There was no breeze when you lay down. How had they not noticed? But they would a' missed my company so I stayed. I skipped around between them, chattering. I had an awful lot to say in those days. Probably helpful questions like, "Aren't you hot yet? Is it time to roll over and get the other side? Do you want a glass of water? Should I go get you a cookie?" The angle with that question was that once my hand was in the cookie jar, nobody would notice if an extra cookie went missing. But no, they didn't need me to do anything for them.

                                                                   

As it happened, a man, (but maybe there were two of them, I don't remember that part) came out to the farm and climbed up the Highline poles that day. He had a job of some kind up there--no idea what it might have been, but there he was, high up in the air, hanging onto a pole right next to our lawn. Below him were my long-legged sisters, working on their tans. They ignored that man up on the pole. Didn't even wave. It was like he wasn't even there. Even being shiny like they were, it would a' been nice to wave. Even if they did have farmer tans, it's always good to be polite. 

When mom called us in to eat dinner, she and dad were chuckling about the man on the Highline pole. Sayin' something about how "the poor man was having a hard time keeping his mind on his work. Things were going to end up crooked up there." Dad said he was probably distracted by the view and I could see why. You just didn't see big signs like ours, with the name of the farm on 'em like that every day. No, you sure did not.

A Charmed World

How Now Brown Cow?

https://www.pinterest.com/ardysnbread/driftless-novel-author-ardys-brevig-richards/

https://www.facebook.com/DriftlessStory/photos/a.109771474950611/137196742208084/

https://www.amazon.com/Ardys-Richards/e/B098SD3S8K?ref_=dbs_p_ebk_r00_abau_000000

Driftless takes place primarily in the 1940s. That was the last decade before medications were being developed to treat the diagnosis that sent our protagonist to the hospital. I wanted to know more about that treatment before medicine, so the 40s was the time frame. Thus, the story begins before my birth.

It is true that my brother and sisters were but small children themselves in the 40s, but still they had a lot to contribute to the writing of the book. Sometimes one or more of them were surprised to hear about something that only one of the older ones recalled. Or to hear about an event that occurred while the other children were not present. Memories are fascinating things, are they not? Sixty or even seventy years later, my six siblings were able to resurrect memories that would have otherwise faded into oblivion.   

I loved being able to use snippets of my siblings' memories in the writing of the book. I've often envied the years that the six of them had together--the shared chores, the hush-hush conversations meant only for their ears, the plotting to sneak something past our parents (although how often that was successful remains vague). There were all those stories told at the supper table, the debates about whose turn it was to get the white meat and who got the drumstick. My Grandma Brevig, that lived with us throughout the cold months, always took the neck and my siblings foolishly thought it was because she liked the neck. Hah. Several years later, the children recognized the error of their thinking. 

Who would not envy those private conversations whispered in the dark, three little girls lying in an ancient iron bed, cocooned beneath heavy quilts. My brother and sisters were experts at engineering their own entertainment with virtually no store-bought toys.  There was an abundance of laughter, teasing, and bickering between them, no doubt.  Of course, with six little ones, there was the incessant clamoring to insert oneself into the conversation. Oh, what a busy and energetic household it must have been! And I missed most of it. Arrived too late on the scene as it were to taste the full flavor of seven children under one roof. Sigh.

This post and those that follow will be about my very earliest memories at home on the farm. In order to give my brother and sisters their due, I am dredging up my first memories of each of them, with me on the farm. I am sorry to say that I don't remember my eldest sister, Mavis, living at home with us. At eighteen, she had graduated from high school and gone off to Humboldt Institute in Minneapolis. I had just turned four when she left home.

My first memory of my second sister, BevAnn on the farm, is a favorite of mine. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if it really happened the way I remember.  But let's set that aside for the moment. I ask the reader to humor me.

I had a deluxe playhouse on the farm. I don't recall asking for a playhouse or anything of that sort. In retrospect, maybe my parents were coming to terms with the fact that one by one, the first six children were going to be leaving home. Maybe my mom, Vivian said, "Oh, Alvin. That poor little Ardys will be left alone when they're all gone. She'll have to play by herself. So sad." On the other hand, she probably didn't say anything of the sort. But let's just go with it for now.

My playhouse was originally an old chicken coop, painted white, and it hadn't seen hard use. It had a gently sloping roof from front to back that was covered with aluminum siding. When it rained, it sounded like a Gatling gun overhead. On the front was a Dutch door which I thought was the coolest thing. I could open the top half, making the playhouse bright and sunny inside. A four-pane window was on either side of the door. 

The chicken coop had been sitting unused on one of the other two farms that were part of our Fertile Acres Brown Swiss Farm. My grandma lived in one of those two farmhouses during the warm months, while the third house sat empty. Obviously, the chicken coop had to be moved onto our farmyard to become my playhouse. I don't remember any talk about a plan to bring the chicken coop to our farm. My only memory of the move was seeing it take place. And this is where my sister, BevAnn comes in.

I was barefoot in the barnyard and looking beyond it to the narrow road rising up and over the cow pass. Up over that rise appeared my dad driving the tractor. He was pulling a hay wagon and atop the wagon sat the white chicken coop. My recollection is very clear on this next point. My sister was riding inside the chicken coop as it moved down the road.  She stood just inside the door which was open at the top, closed on the bottom.  She saw me watching the chicken coop travel down the road and she waved to me. This is what she called out, "How - now - brown - cow-?" That is my entire memory of the arrival of what became my wonderful playhouse.

Now, there may be a few details about that memory that one might find suspect. The first might be, did Alvin really allow his daughter to ride inside the chicken coop while it was being moved down the road? Hmmm. Given that she'd ridden on a moving haywagon countless times by then, I think he would have said, "Alright." The second detail that might be questioned is whether I could have really heard the words that she called out to me from across the barnyard and over the sound of the loud tractor. Hmph. To that, I'm going to say that the higher pitch of her voice would surely have broadcast toward me right over the top of the deeply guttural, droning sound of the tractor engine. Wouldn't it? The third detail might be, why would she have yelled out "How - now - brown - cow -?" Well, why not?