Curtiss Anderson - Blueberry Summers: Growing Up at the Lake

{GROWING UP AT THE LAKE}

Curtiss Anderson

To understand America,

it is merely necessary

to understand Minnesota.

SINCLAIR LEWIS

INTRODUCTION

I was writing an article called Islands on My Mind, where I rounded up my favorite experiences visiting some of the most captivating islands in the world. The most memorable to me were Bali, Hong Kong, Lake Rudolf in Kenya, Corfu, Malta, Venice, and oddly enough, a simple little island in a northern Minnesota lake where I spent most of my summers so successfully disguised as a child, in the words of James Agee.

Nancy Lindemeyer, the founding editor of Victoria magazine, read the article and asked if I could focus on the brief section on the Minnesota lake country. I loved the idea but I knew the article would have to be short. Those halcyon days were some time ago.

Well run it as a reminiscence, Nancy assured me. The article could be more anecdotal than biographical. I was thrilled that my coming-of-age journey was not over after all.

For once in my life I was grateful for having been a pack rat and a compulsive note maker all my life. I have been teased and even scolded for these rituals; still, they have only intensified as Ive gotten older. (Just ask AnneAnne Sonopol Anderson, that is, modswrevealed here for the first time in fifty years: My Own Dear Sweet Wife. The two of us found it amusing to reduce our pet name to an acronym, for which Anne substituted H for Whusband for wife!) In my search for material for the Victoria article, I came across a small red diary I maintained at the lake, a record, really, of fish caught, visitors received, picnics prepared and eaten, blueberries pickedand a secret code with private stuff that I was sure only I could decipher.

I located some short pieces I had typed on discarded onionskin using my Underwood typewriter, handed down from generation to generation, with its broken letters and o s that pierced the fragile paper. Among the pieces were vignettes about Great-Aunt Ingaborg, for example, and the long hot summer when I had a broken leg.

I unearthed scrawled notes and awkward sketches in school notebooks. I had even started working on a couple of novels way beyond my reach; I just hadnt lived enough nonfiction to write about it. And then there was my one-act play, Kaptain Kemps Kidnapping Kase, intended to be performed in the church basement until the ever-so Reverend Johnson found out that someone got rubbed out in it.

Family and friends who had spent time at the lake with me revealed their findings, too, with snapshots, souvenirs, and storytelling. Albums filled with Brownie box-camera photos appeared by serendipity, like a visual trip through those patiently drifting days of summer.

Perhaps the most cherished of all were the huge scrapbooks I squirreled away so securely that even I couldnt find them. But my mother did, crammed in cardboard boxes that had been stacked together with industrial-strength tape and stored out of sight for years in her sewing room.

I found envelopes stuffed with unsealed handwritten letters. Most were from Sarahwho lived across the lakeand Jackie and Pearl and others from nearby lakes, farms, and towns. I was a relentless correspondent, even with friends back home in faraway Minneapolis.

A few pages celebrated holidays and events with printed programs for the Fourth of July, Memorial Day and Labor Day, county fairs, 4 -H club exhibits, food festivals, and churchand still more church activities.

I had devoted more than a few pages to the much-loved dogs I had outlived. Shep was probably as old as I was when we picked him up discarded on a back road. Their dog collars were anchored to the pages in Elmers Glue: endearing Shep and mischievous Mickey, jumpy Nebby and persnickety Bunny. I never met a dog I didnt like.

Any vacant nook and cranny in the house had provided shelter for these treasures that had been frequently threatened with eviction or served with hundreds of overdue parking tickets. I felt as if I should turn myself inor be subjected to a humiliating citizens arrest by my own mother.

The dna-like evidence that sealed my fate was when she checked into the stacked boxes in her sewing room. She had always assumed they contained fabric swatches, spools of thread, dress patterns, and, most important, the makings of Norwegian samplers, quilts, comforters, doilies, shawls, and hotpads. Hotpads! Hotpads! Hotpads!

Threats came hurling at me like grenades: Your father will hear about this latest of yours... If you dont clean out this stuff by... You never look at it anyway... Before you leave for school, I want all of this out of here... Youll find your trash in the city dump. (We actually had a couple of dead grenades in the house, along with a bayonet and a German soldiers helmet with a bullet hole in it. These were all souvenirs from World War I that my dad kept in a trunk in the attic.)

Of course, my collection remained intact exactly where it was until I returned from the navy and finished college. Then most of it accompanied me to my first job of any consequence as an editor at Better Homes and Gardens magazine.