In my book Taste of Spruce Gum (1966), Libby’s stepfather spent the long icy winter evenings doing what he called his knittin’ work. This could be to sharpen saws blades or mend logging equipment. We’re not over winter yet – still snowbanks over what I trust are my snowdrops. Do they bloom underneath the snow? Funny to go into daylight savings time with snow, and robins blowing on the tips of their wings to keep warm. It’s hard to know what farmers do now, the big factory farms and CAFOs operating all year regardless of weather. Of course, they aren’t farmers…
All posts by Jackie Jackson
A question for the sages
When I published Taste of Spruce Gum back in 1968 or so, I used actual names gleaned from Grandma Vi of people who lived and worked on top of Shrewsbury Mountain in Vermont in 1905. To my surprise, I got letters from people knowing those folks and telling me what happened to them! So this is something I’ve had to be aware of in using real names. Current problem: In Vol. 4, I have a lovely chapter of my dad in the 50s traveling Wisconsin with a young Swede, visiting seed-corn salesmen. He has written this trip up in a lively letter to his kids. At one point, he describes having lunch with a family: “the father, a widower, married a school teacher. Together they added a half-a-dozen more children to the ones he already had.” My dad describes the house as “dirty,” the former school teacher as “blowsy,” and the children as “absolutely beautiful.” The last name is distinctive and he gives the town. So, I looked up that name in that town and find the area is absolutely crawling with this family. If this chapter is published as is, there’s a likely chance this unusual name will be recognized and the adult kids will read Dad’s description. Question: Do I change the name in the book? Or, do I let that extensive family know how beautiful they were? Of course, the house was dirty – so is mine. Of course that overworked mother was blowsy! This might sell a lot of books. So what would you advise?
Research takes us many places!
Megan wrote, “What about Grama’s sister Kate? There’s something about her and Father Divine and then we don’t hear anything else. What happened to her?”
Well, I remember meeting Great-aunt Kate when she came through Wisconsin and stopped at the farm and was all full of Father Divine, an African American religious sect leader of the Great Depression and after, and was on her way to some big gathering I recall as being in Michigan – but I was a little kid, maybe 6 or 7. I do recall that over the years, there was conjecture by my Grama and other family on the farm as to where was Kate and what had happened to her. She just vanished after that visit and nobody ever heard from her again. There are darling pictures of her baby son in old family albums; did any adult write him and say “Where is your mother”? If so, there’s no record. This has put me looking up Father Divine, too. He had an infamous history. Kate settled in Washington state, where Father Divine had followers, mostly white. I learned he also had followers in California, France, Switzerland, Canada, and Australia. Apparently one of them was Jimmy Jones, of Kool-Aid fame! I’m sorry I can’t write all this up in Round Barn, but I guess it’s peripheral anyway. He did not come to the farm, as did the daughter of General Booth, who held a rousing service in the living room of the Big House, and rates a whole chapter in Vol. 2, “La Maréchale.”
Jackie’s Promise
I thought I started the Round Barn book by telling Grampa when I was 15 that I was going to write it – I’m not quite finished with it yet. But I’ve just found in an old notebook from my room at the farm that I wrote, at 13, a note to myself saying “Grampa I am going to give you a book of my drawings for Christmas. I will call it ‘Being on the Farm’” This one I really followed through on. I have that little book with a cover I made in art class. A few of the drawings I like are of myself; the ones I did of others are mostly sloppy cartoons of detasseling. I wish I’d tried to draw Grampa. But here are a few of mine:
Deadlines
If I didn’t have deadlines, all this Round Barn work would be total fun and absorption and interest. But with the amount of material I have, that lopped over Vol. 2 into Vol. 3, now ditto into Vol. 4, I really have to get Vol. 4 out and finish up this project, especially since it’s been advertised as out last year. Just got a phone call from John Onken up in Madison, Wis., who publishes the Agri-Dairy Newsletter, and writes a column in another dairy publication, informing me that Farm Progress Day of 1961 was held on the Dougan farm and 160,000 people came, and how come I haven’t written about that? Did I know about that?! Well, of course, I’ve known, and I told him that Vol. 4 has three chapters, rich with pictures, on Farm Progress Days. Well, he wants to write about it NOW. And so we have had to send him pictures and other data, even though I tried to dissuade him til Book 4 was out. So, deadlines and I’m not getting any younger…
Here’s how old I was when I began this book: 
Here I look now: 
I’m heading to Nevada to put Book 4 together, with my “staff,” before this is my deadline:
Speaking of tombstones, my friends have come up with the epitaph to go on mine: “It’s around here somewhere.”
kitchenpoem #2
(originally published October 19, 2006, in the Illinois Times)
if you’re wondering how to
get rid of a pesky housefly
turn off all the lights open
the fridge door he’ll fly right into
the sudden brightness slam the
door later on open it cautiously
in his numbed state he’s easily
dispatched with a napkin but
be sure you’ve covered the butter
my grampa had the idea earlier
his cows entered the round barn
through a dim passage a hanging
blanket brushed the flies off their backs
the only light a bright slit overhead
they flew up crawled through
into a closed room all windows
no way out no sense to crawl back
through the now dark slit a farmhand
would sometimes enter the room and
shovel up a bushel of desiccated
bodies not many of us have cows
these days but most of us have fridges
maybe I should send this household
hint to heloise I wonder if she pays
The little red cupola
How can you see me in living color and talking, too? How did the Round Barn become part of Illinois? Listen, my children, and ye shall hear –
I’d heard that Illinois’s two major museums: the Illinois State Museum and the Abraham Lincoln — were into a big oral history project on Illinois farming. So of course, I ignored it. However, I attend an archaeology lecture once a month at the Illinois State Museum, and one night after the session, a man approached me holding the Northwestern “Stories from the Round Barn” and a colorful map of Illinois marked off into counties, and on the very top – Illinois makes a straight line – a little red square cupola. I began to laugh for it was obviously Rock County, Wisconsin: from our back field, you can spit into Illinois with a high wind. The man laughed, too. It turned out that Illinois wanted to incorporate Rock County, Wisconsin, into Illinois for the purposes of their oral history, for I had more going back than anybody. I figured Rock County wouldn’t mind, so I didn’t ask it, but the oral history project recorded me talking for nine hours (yes, we did it in two sessions) and I still have a half hour to add because their last question was important and took me by surprise (I’ll write about that later). You can find the whole interview at the Illinois State Museum’s Audio-Video Barn along with a lot of other interesting interviews, but of course, none so interesting as mine. 🙂 Another reward of all this activity: the museums had a show at the State capitol, their booth right in the middle of the rotunda, huge television screen – I walked in and there was me, talking away. I found me rather fascinating, but needing a hair cut.
I’d heard that Illinois’s two major museums: the Illinois State Museum and the Abraham Lincoln — were into a big oral history project on Illinois farming. So of course, I ignored it. However, I attend an archaeology lecture once a month at the Illinois State Museum, and one night after the session, a man approached me holding the Northwestern “Stories from the Round Barn” and a colorful map of Illinois marked off into counties, and on the very top – Illinois makes a straight line – a little red square cupola. I began to laugh for it was obviously Rock County, Wisconsin: from our back field, you can spit into Illinois with a high wind. The man laughed, too. It turned out that Illinois wanted to incorporate Rock County, Wisconsin, into Illinois for the purposes of their oral history, for I had more going back than anybody. I figured Rock County wouldn’t mind, so I didn’t ask it, but the oral history project recorded me talking for nine hours (yes, we did it in two sessions) and I still have a half hour to add because their last question was important and took me by surprise (I’ll write about that later). You can find the whole interview at the Illinois State Museum’s Audio-Video Barn along with a lot of other interesting interviews, but of course, none so interesting as mine. 🙂 Another reward of all this activity: the museums had a show at the State capitol, their booth right in the middle of the rotunda, huge television screen – I walked in and there was me, talking away. I found me rather fascinating, but needing a hair cut.
Fish soup
About that last post, I had a package of soup mix with directions in Norwegian, from a San Francisco store—Marie Lang-Ree gave it to me. But you can make it this way: make a good sized roux of butter, flour, and gradually add a can of fish broth; I got mine at a fish store. Poach fish: cod, tilapia, or whatever you choose, until barely tender, and add to that the broth, too. Same for scallops. Use cooked shrimp. Small size, or maybe medium size (you don’t want the great big fatties.) Have ready some small peas and small cooked carrots – for color. Maybe one chopped potato. Add in lots of whole milk or cream til you get the right consistency. Cook until hot, but don’t overcook – you don’t want your fish tough. Sprinkle chopped chives on top. When I made it, I made several visits to the fish store and six calls to California. If I count the trip to Norway, this soup cost me some big bucks, but I can take it all off my income tax.
Norway adventures
This past summer, my granddaughter Cressida and I spent a week in Norway. This was after the repeated urgings of Nils and Marie Lang-Ree, who live in California but return to their property in Norway every summer. My friendship with many Scandinavians is one of the rewarding fallouts from writing Round Barn, and my dad’s relationship with the American-Scandinavian Foundation (for 25 years after World War II, he hired two Scandinavians a year). Back in 1979, when on sabbatical, I began writing RB in earnest, I figured I better get in touch with our Scandinavian friends and made my first trip to Norway. I stayed with Gilbrand and Solveig Gjestvang, met the babies who had been born on our farm, now young men, and carried home, in translation, the diary Gilbert (as we called him) kept while he was at the farm. You can find it, and more besides, about the A-S Foundation and the farm in my Volume 3. Nils, Gilbert’s brother-in-law, was one who didn’t return to Norway to live, but got a Stanford degree and has done very well in the United States. I see him in California. Year after year, he has urged me to visit Norway again, and this summer, we did. (My granddaughter is half Norwegian!) Here is the Gjestvang family on the Dougan farm, and here are the same grown-up boys with their families, who gave us a lovely reception on a Gjestvang farm this summer. Olaf Byrne also came, and the son of Jurgen Gjestvang, who drove seven hours to join us. He had heard about the farm all his life from his father. I returned from Norway with, among other things, Marie’s fish soup recipe – when I make it, it gets rave reviews.
Richest Black
on bitter nights when deep drifts
blocked our long country lane we
hiked up left the car on the road
snowpants boots our white breath
searing our windpipes we followed
daddy’s tracks as he pushed the way
to light and warmth I loved those treks
the sky its richest black and the stars!
the stars so bright so close you could
swipe down handfuls in your mittens
in your arms hug the frozen milky way
Many of you know that I write a poem a week for the Illinois Times; it’s on the Letters page and you could look it up if you want to at www.illinoistimes.com. I’ll put this one here because so many people have gone out of their way to tell me how much they like it (many of my poems do not receive comments).
