My Brave Little Man

CHAPTER 1

The Doctor’s Wife

Cook, Minnesota, June 12, 1971. I took a right turn off Highway 53 onto First Street and slowed my red 1967 Camaro SS to a crawl, searching for a restaurant. It didn’t take long. The main retail section of town was only three blocks long, and its one and only restaurant was in the center of the second block. I pulled into an open slot, turned off the ignition, and stretched to get the kinks out of my back and neck. It had been a long drive from the Twin Cities and I was tired.

How did you ever remember the name of this little town? my wife asked as she gathered up her belongings and stuffed them into her purse.

I never forgot it, I said. My sister and I talked about where we came from for years, and except for some of the buildings we saw on the highway, it’s exactly as I remembered it.

And you’re sure that your grandma and grandpa’s last name was Johnson? she asked.

No, but I think it was something simple like Johnson.

A waitress met us at the cash register and directed us to a table. We ordered and ate in silence as I thought about my next move. I knew I was born in Cook and that I had lived with my grandparents on a small farm outside of town. Were they still alive, and where was my mother? Had she moved back to Cook? When the waitress came with the check, I asked, Did you grow up around here?

I’ve been here all my life.

Do you know of any Johnsons living in the area?

After thinking about it for a few seconds, she said, I don’t think so. There might be some folks who come up from the cities by that name, but as far as I know there aren’t any Johnsons who live around here.

I was disappointed, but just as I was taking out my wallet to pay the bill, an epiphany struck. Do you know of any doctors that practiced medicine here in the 1940s?

I don’t know about the 1940s, she answered, but Doc Heiam delivered me, and he’s been the doctor in town for as long as I can remember.

Do you know where I could find the doctor?

Well, unfortunately, she replied, he’s senile, but as far as I know he’s still alive and living at the nursing home.

My heart sank, and I was just about to thank her and leave when she suddenly exclaimed, But you could talk to his wife, Margaret! She was his nurse for years, and she’s as sharp as a tack.

Where could I find her? I asked, my spirits rekindled. After all, if the doctor was old enough to be living in a nursing home, there was a good chance he had practiced medicine in the 1940s.

Right over there, she answered, pointing through the café window. See the third house on that street over there, the gray and white one with the three-season porch? Excited, I thanked her, paid for the meal, and left a big tip. Big is probably an overstatement, but for a college student it was big.

Do you want to go with me? I asked my wife as I pulled up in front of the gray and white house.

No, I think you need to do this by yourself.

I walked up to the house and knocked on the door. Within seconds, a gray-haired woman poked her head out. Yes, what can I do for you, young man? she asked.

Hi! My name is Terry Allen. I have a sister named Gloria Jean and a brother named Larry Michael…

Oh, my goodness, it’s the Haataja children! she exclaimed. I was your nurse when you were born, and I’m your grandma’s sister. Do you remember your grandma?

A little, I answered, but I don’t remember her name.

Lillian. Her name was Lillian, and your grandpa’s name was Nels Larson.

CHAPTER 2

The Nest

Cook, Minnesota, August 25, 1945. I arrived eight months after my parents, Niilo Haataja (nicknamed Nels) and Eileen Larson, tied the knot and, as luck would have it, just in time for a light lunch. Master Terry Allen Haataja is what my mother wrote on the first page of my baby book, and under the heading of Remarks she wrote, He is always happy and smiling with very cute dimples and big blue eyes. Photos, and what little information I have been able to find about my parents’ courtship, suggest that conception most likely occurred in Duluth. Why I was born in the hospital at Cook and why I lived with my maternal grandparents for the first two years of my life is unknown.

My sister Jean arrived at 10:15 on the evening of October 18, 1946. On the first page of my baby book, our mother added an entry for Mistress Gloria Jean Haataja. She did not write anything under the Remarks heading, but in small print in a column to the left of the entries she had made for me she noted the date and time and Jean’s weight and place of birth.

How my mother managed to get pregnant with my sister is a mystery. From all accounts, our father did not live with us. He lived either in Cook or with relatives in Tower, a town not far away. Family members would later tell me that my grandparents refused to let him stay at the farm, and photos seem to confirm this. I have one of him with my mother and me at the lake when I was a baby, suggesting occasional contact, but there are no photos of him at the farm.

My mother did not spend a lot of time at the farm, especially on weekdays. I say this for two reasons: First, what few memories I have of nurturing do not involve my mother, only Grandma. I sense my mother’s presence, but I have always had this feeling that Grandma was the primary caregiver. Second, the photos show my sister and me playing outdoors in our underwear or in our grubby clothes, with Grandma working nearby. When our mother is included, she is dressed to the hilt and posturing for the camera, suggesting that she may have worked in town or at a resort on one of the many lakes in the area. My best guess is that her brother drove her to and from work and that she spent most of her evenings and weekends at the farm, but for reasons that will become obvious, she continued to have a relationship with our father.

My mother’s parents, Nels and Lillian Larson, owned a small thirty-acre farm located between the town of Cook and Lake Vermilion, arguably the most beautiful lake in the state. They were opposites in many ways, but they seemed to be suited for each other. At least, I don’t recall any major arguments or blowups over finances or any of the other domestic issues that destroy so many families today.

They had raised four children. Alan, their only boy, was the only child still living at home when we arrived on the scene. He did most of the physical labor on the farm, which didn’t amount to much, as only ten of the thirty acres were cleared. Grandma and Grandpa’s oldest daughter, Rhoda, and my mother’s twin sister, Irene, had moved out in the early 1940s and were living and working in the Duluth area.

Grandpa towered over everyone, including Uncle Alan. He had to remove his hat and bend over whenever he entered the house to avoid hitting the top of the doorframe. Uncle Alan, who was six-two, looked to be about two inches shorter in photos, so that would put Grandpa somewhere around six-three or four. Grandpa was skinny, with narrow shoulders and a small waist. His face was thin and weathered and he had a firm jaw, large nose, and squinty eyes that made him look as if he had been staring at the sun too long. Except for those times when he entered the house, I seldom saw him without his hat, even at the kitchen table. Once I asked Grandma why he always wore his hat, and she whispered conspiratorially, I think your grandpa is embarrassed about his shiny head.

Grandpa had a great sense of humor. He loved to tell jokes and stories. During lighter moments, he would speak with a thick Norwegian accent. When the conversation turned serious, his accent would abruptly disappear. Sometimes he would become downright cynical, especially when he talked about city folks. I remember one conversation at the kitchen table when he lectured Jean and me about the trees. You kids are too young to remember the way it used to be, he began. Heck, my kids are too young, but at one time the trees around here were gigantic. They were so big it took a full day just to cut one of them down. They were all hardwoods, not the soft junk you see around here today. New growth, hah! That’s what they call these saplings. They can’t even protect us from the cold winds blowing in from Canada. They’ll most likely cut them down before long to make more toilet paper for all those city folks who come up from Minneapolis. Fishing was another of his favorite topics. Those city folks are the ones taking all the fish out of the lakes, you know! he would exclaim. At one time, I could go out on the lake for an afternoon and bring home a string of walleyes. Now I’m lucky if I catch a perch. Sometimes, if he really got rolling, he would go into the growing traffic problems and all the new cabins the city folks were building around the lakes. I would sit there with my chin resting on my hands, taking it all in.

[I inherited Grandpa’s sense of humor and his accent. In my early twenties, I went through a phase where I would tell Ole and Lena jokes at social gatherings into the wee hours of the morning. On rare occasions, I still use the accent, but I seldom tell the jokes. As for the cynicism, perhaps I inherited a little of that too, as I do have a sense of doom about the misuse of the world’s natural resources. But that is a subject for another time and place.]

Grandpa may have had the size, but Grandma was in charge of the house. At five-foot-four, with petite but hard features, thick, unruly, graying hair, and distended ankles, she ran the household with an iron fist. Serious and demanding, both of herself and others, she went about each day focused on her chores. She seldom smiled, but she was a good listener, and beneath her stern and sometimes gruff exterior, she had a genuinely warm heart and gentle spirit.

One of my first detailed memories is from the summer of 1947. I loved Grandma’s cookies, especially chocolate chip. They melted in my mouth—that is, if the chocolate made it past my face and clothes. One day after Grandma went outside to do the laundry, I decided to make an assault on the cookie jar. I opened several kitchen drawers and, using them as a ladder, climbed to the kitchen counter, balancing myself as I skirted the sink—not an easy task for an almost-two-year-old. I reached in, grabbed a cookie, and bit into it. To my astonishment, it was not chocolate chip, but raisin, which, as far as I was concerned, was like going from cake to mashed potatoes. Jean started to beg me to throw one down to her, but before I could, Grandma walked in. What are you doing on the counter, young man? she shouted as the screen door slammed behind her.

Startled, I almost lost my balance. I just wanted a cookie, I said, knowing I was in deep trouble.

Well, you don’t get cookies that way. You ask first. You could have hurt yourself getting up there like that. Do you know how dangerous it is to do what you did? she demanded, grabbing me off the counter. She got out the butter paddle, laid me over her knee, and spanked me until my bottom turned red and I started to cry. Afterwards she said, I’m sure that hurt, but it would have hurt a lot more if you had fallen and cracked your head wide open. She may have been right, but I didn’t see it that way—not at the time anyway.

[I have inherited Grandma’s work habits and her serious nature, which, when combined with Grandpa’s sense of humor, is a worthy combination, but I have stayed away from corporal punishment. The mother of my three children asked me to spank our oldest daughter once. It hurt my sensibilities so much that I told her not to ever ask me to do it again, and she never did.]

For many families, the second half of the 1940s was a time of celebration. The nation had just won two major wars, one in Europe and the other in the Pacific, and it was entering a time of renewal and growth. Money and jobs were in great supply, new homes were going up everywhere, and cars were on the verge of growing wings. Almost every home had electricity, running water, radios, and a few even had television sets. While the rest of the country moved toward prosperity, however, Grandma and Grandpa remained stuck in the Great Depression. When I watch old black-and-white reels of life in Appalachia during the Prohibition era, it reminds me of life on the farm. We were isolated. Meals were prepared over a wood-burning stove, laundry was done by hand, and light came from candles or kerosene lanterns. Going to the bathroom meant a long hike to the outhouse or, at night, a five-gallon pail. Since Grandma and Grandpa didn’t have a telephone, they had to drive into town to communicate with the outside world.

Winters were especially difficult. The living conditions were harsh and, at times, unforgiving. A potbellied stove in the dining room and the wood-burning stove in the kitchen were the only sources of heat. In the middle of the night, someone, usually Grandpa, would get up to stoke the fires. On many winter mornings, I would come down to breakfast and see a thin sheet of ice in the water bucket next to the kitchen stove.

Despite the lack of modern conveniences and the harsh climate of the north woods, I don’t remember ever going without food or the other necessities of life. We ate fish and lots of small game such as rabbit, duck, and goose. When Grandpa or Alan shot a bear or a deer, they skinned and dressed it right there on the farm. Occasionally Grandpa would kill one of the chickens that nested in the barn, or a pig, but most of the meat came from the surrounding woods. I remember many a conversation around the kitchen table about the taste of the meat—had it been corn-fed or had it lived off the bark of trees?

I can’t say with certainty that Grandma loved to cook, but I can say with absolute authority that she was a good cook. Her desserts, pies especially, were delicious. I loved her strawberry-rhubarb pie, which she made with the wild berries my sister and I helped pick from the floor of the surrounding woods. The aromas of her piecrust and fresh bread overpowered all the other odors in the house. We had caramel rolls, cake, or pie with every meal, and I always ate dessert first, a practice that will most likely go with me to the grave. If a host makes the mistake of putting dessert on the table with the rest of the food, rest assured it will disappear first.

Besides baking, Grandma pickled or canned everything. Because the farmhouse didn’t have a basement or a cellar, her stewed tomatoes, green beans, rhubarb sauce, and an assortment of other canned vegetables and berries were stored in anything cool. During the spring thaw, Grandma would put the jars in the ditch alongside the driveway, but usually she stockpiled them in the creek that ran through the woods about a quarter mile from the house. She would tie a string around the neck of the jars and drop them into the hole Grandpa had dug for her. Then she would tie the other end of the string to a stick she had pushed into the mud at the edge of the creek.

When my baby sister Jean and I weren’t eating or sleeping, we played in the house or outdoors with whatever happened to be handy. On nice days, I would often pull her around the back yard in a rusty old Radio Special wagon, the one Grandpa found at the town dump. Old car parts and rusty farm implements were scattered everywhere in the back yard, and unless Grandma specifically outlawed it, I would find creative ways to turn the object into a toy. Rolling old car tires around the yard was especially fun, and I spent hours sitting on the seat of Uncle Alan’s old rusted bike, which leaned against the side of the garage. Most of the time, however, Jean and I played in the dirt by the back door. This way, Grandma could keep track of us from the kitchen window. Several photos show Jean and me playing with a blue Morton Salt container, which looked the same then as it does today. I remember filling the container with dirt and making little piles in the path leading up to the house, which Grandpa had to walk around or step on when he came in for the noon meal.

By golly, Grandma, Grandpa said in his heavy Norwegian accent, I tink da gophers are making mounds in da yard den. I better get out da traps and get doze liddle buggers.

It wasn’t gophers, you silly, I said. We made them, and everyone had a good laugh.

When it rained or snowed, we played inside. Because we didn’t have many toys, we would often end up in the kitchen banging on pots and pans with a wooden spatula. I got into everything not attached to the floor, driving Grandma crazy.

She continually warned Jean and me about staying close to the house. One day Grandpa put the fear in us. We were all sitting around the kitchen table when he said, By golly, Grandma, did you hear about da neighbor’s baby den?

No, what about the neighbor’s baby?

Vell, I yest heard ‘bout an eagle dat came by and snatched a baby right outta da stroller when da mudder vasn’t lookin’. By this time, my ears were burning and my eyes were bulging out.

You mean it picked up the baby and carried it away? I asked.

You betcha, he said. I’ve heard of eagles carrying off full-grown dogs.

What do they do with them?

Vell, dey feed dem to dere chicks.

Did they eat the baby? I asked, fear beginning to take hold.

Vell, I don’t know, I yest heard bout it da udder day, he answered, but I tink da two of you better stay close to da house for da time bein’, don’t you? I nodded in agreement, and from that point on my sister and I seldom strayed far from the house without an adult nearby.

Seldom, however, is not an absolute, and I didn’t have to go far to get into trouble. The back yard, littered with used boards, broken glass, rusty pails, and old car parts, was an accident waiting to happen. One day I decided to venture into the garage at the end of the driveway, and like most of the other buildings, it had not been childproofed. My sister, who had learned to walk at nine months, followed close behind. No go! Jean scolded, trying to sound like Grandma.

Stay by the house, I said, pointing my finger at her.

No…you! she said, biting her fingernails.

The garage door was open, so I walked in, but she held back, afraid of both what Grandma would do if she caught us and of the eagle swooping down to get her. Two deep ruts in the dirt floor of the garage were evidence of its past use, but now they were both smooth, an indication that Grandpa hadn’t parked the car in the garage for some time. A workbench littered with old parts in various states of disrepair ran the entire width of the garage, and I spotted an object that looked somewhat like an old rusty bike, except that it didn’t have wheels. I had seen Uncle Alan use it once to sharpen the scythe he used to cut grass. On one end of its heavy frame was a steel tractor seat. On the other end, instead of handlebars, a large gray circular object, maybe three inches thick and twenty inches in diameter, stood upright like the head of a horse. Under the tractor seat were bicycle pedals. I climbed on and put my feet on the pedals. Then I reached out and touched the side of the gray object. It was cold and coarse and hard like a rock; hints of rust and silver glistened in the light from the open door. A steel platform or shelf not more than four inches square was fastened to the frame next to my hands. Pretending I was riding a bike, I put both of my hands on the shelf to steady myself. Then I stood up on the pedals and pushed.

I’m not sure how I got my wrist caught between the shelf and the sandstone grinder, because everything happened