Tales of the Whetstone River: Harvest-time Birthdays

During four months, the especially busy harvesting months of June, July, August, and September for my mother as well as my father, I and four of my siblings, Patt, John, Bill, and Bob, had birthdays.

Years earlier when my sisters Helen and Patt were little, our mother had time to make birthday gifts for them. Perhaps a pair of mittens or a sweater, but as our family grew, she no longer had time to knit. Instead, she began baking an angel food cake to mark each child’s birthday. There was never a party or any ceremonial flourishes, my mother simply brought the dessert to the table at the end of the evening meal. Frosted but without candles.

She made the cake from scratch carefully separating the egg yolks from the whites of thirteen eggs, making sure that not even a spot of yolk sullied the whites, before whipping them into a tower of froth and then adding flour and sugar a little at a time. When the cake was taken from the oven it was re-splendent with a golden crust. If there were enough time for the cake to cool, my mother coated it with frosting.

In those same earlier years my mother served homemade ice cream on the side. I remember for my later birth- days she substituted the incomparable, delectably rich ice cream made at the Ortonville, MN creamery. During berry season a colorful sauce of strawberries or raspberries topped cake and ice cream. The birthday child was always served an especially large first piece.

The cycle of the cakes was interrupted when John was sent to Korea shortly after the armistice was declared. The logistics of finding a box to fit the tall cake and the knowledge that it would no longer be light and fresh by the time he received it kept our mother from maintaining the tradition for John while he was overseas. When he eventually returned to the states she owed him two cakes. She immediately paid off half that debt.

Then, as time went on, child after child wasn’t on the farm for his or her big day. By the time I, the youngest of the six, returned in 1968 from the Peace Corps in Thailand, my mother owed me three cakes, the others for nine for a total of twelve!

Tales of the Whetstone River: The Day I Watered My Weeds

I came back from upstate New York three months after I’d left Manhattan, forced out by the COVID-19 crisis. On my usually busy street that night there was only one moving car, two pedestrians, and a lone bicyclist. It was spooky. The drive down had been frightening. During the two and half hour trip, my son and I’d driven through both tornado and hail zones, and encountered torrential rain and fog.

After that, the lobby of my building was an oasis of peace, but when I turned the key and entered my apartment I found a disaster. Because I’d had to pack in a rush, supplies were scattered all over, and the ever-present oily dust of the city covered every surface. The AC had been turned off. It was sweltering.

I was thirsty. When I opened the refrigerator and pulled out the filtered water pitcher, a terrible odor hit me. I grabbed the pitcher, quickly closed the door, and poured a glass, then took a gulp. I gagged and spit it into the sink. The taste was horrific! How had someone entered the apartment and put poison in the pitcher? And who would want to poison me anyway? Those were my first wild thoughts. I summoned courage and opened the door again. I’d had no time to empty the contents of three small bowls. I could see through the plastic covers, that the food in them had rotted--so much so that I couldn’t identify what they once had been.

For three days I struggled to rid the refrigerator of the odor. Somehow it had managed to seep through the packages, even those in the freezer, tainting every item and making them inedible. I spent hours throwing food away and wiping down every surface. Then repeating the procedure.

To add to my growing despair, my beloved old coffee pot had collapsed. It still bubbled away, but the product that dribbled out in little gasps was dark and thick. I continued to make it, not because it was tasty (I often took just a few sips, then dumped it out), but in an attempt to return to some sense of routine and normalcy.

It was three days before I stepped out onto my terrace. Had my plants survived all that time without any care, I wondered. The ivy was thriving. The jade plant was a healthy deep green. Some weeds, growing in the same pot, were a bit bedraggled because rain water hadn’t reached them. I was about to go back into my apartment to fetch my trowel, when I heard a commotion. The ringing bells, whistles, and cheers were part of the daily recognition given to those fighting the COVID-19 virus. TV newscasts had featured the new tradition, but this was the first I was there for it. I smiled and joined in, clapping and cheering along with my neighbors. When all was quiet again, I filled my water can.

Tales of the Whetstone River: Out of Whack

Originally published in the Ortonville Independent on June 9,2020 as part of the ongoing series, “Tales of the Whetstone River”.

Time drags, but the days go by quickly. Organized, responsible people forget what day of the week it is. With seemingly less to do, people feel overwhelmed by the inconsequential. Those who are calm by nature get irritated by the smallest thing. Some days fatigue settles in early and refuses to leave.

This is how I’d been feeling when I received an offer I couldn’t refuse.

“Want to ride along with me to Albany?” my son, Steve, asked. The city is about an hour away from his house in upstate New York. 

“I’d love to. Why are you going?”

“To drop off my nail gun. Have it repaired.”

It was a perfect spring day, and I’d have no responsibilities. All I had to do was enjoy the passing scenes. Steve had driven the route innumerable times, but when approaching a notorious interchange of two major interstate highways he missed the exit.

“Here,” he said, handing me his cell phone, “read the directions as we go. The audio’s not working.”

Distracted by an old magnolia tree in full bloom directly across from an intersection, I read the instructions too late, and I missed calling out the turn. It wasn’t just me who was out of kilter, but time and again by the time the instructions appeared it was too late to make the turn. This happened time and again. We were often going back in the wrong direction in order to go forward.

The directions brought us into a luxurious suburb. I was torn between looking at the beautiful houses with wonderful landscaped property or reading the screen. My eyes went back and forth between flowering crab trees, beds of jonquils, and redbuds and the screen that would intermittently give another turn right or turn left. Then, unexpectedly, a woman’s voice spoke up telling us when to turn. The audio was working.

“I can’t believe we’re going in the right direction,” I said.

“Me neither, but I don’t have a map with me. Let’s give the GPS a little more time.”

The “grand” homes turned to “fine” homes which after a time became “normal” homes. But gorgeous trees and lush foliage continued to amaze me.

Steve took the phone from me.

“What the hell!”

“What’s wrong?”

“It says we have another hour and twenty minutes before we arrive at our destination!”

The shop was closing in fifteen minutes.

This time he pulled over, looked at the screen again, and started to laugh.

“It says more than an hour, but that the shop is only a mile and a half away! The GPS is out of whack today!”

We didn’t have a map, but not wanting to take time to boot up a different GPS site, we continued following the woman’s directions.  Another “turn right” brought us to an industrial strip. On one side of the wide street stood vacant buildings, some with ornate brickwork, others with richly carved wood pediments.  Incongruously, there was also one small business, a Vietnamese take-out.  On the other side newer utilitarian buildings housed storage units and construction supply companies. Everything was one drab color except for a magnificent red crab apple tree standing on pavement without a blade of grass in sight. It was all rather otherworldly.

The street signs were hard to read as the GPS woman’s voice continued to whip out directions. By chance, Steve saw the company’s logo high atop a group of low buildings, made a quick exit, and pulled up in front of the shop. We’d made it with only five minutes to spare.

That afternoon Steve and I’d been at the mercy of technology gone haywire with no way to fix it. Just as these days all of us feel helpless in an out of kilter world. In time, Steve’s GPS will right itself, and in time, I trust the world will also. 

Meanwhile time continues to drag. Fatigue settles in early. We’re all still out of whack.

Tales of the Whetstone River: From North Dakota, With Love

Barbara Hoffbeck Scoblic, author of ​ “Lost Without the River,”​ continues to share stories about this region in her ongoing series, ​“Tales of the Whetstone River.”

My siblings live in Minnesota,  Illinois, Indiana, and North Dakota. I live in New York. None of us live in our home state of South Dakota. I’ve often bemoaned the many miles that separate the six of  us.

Born at a time when large families were the norm, my siblings and I were part of a large exodus of young people who left the area where we were raised and moved to other parts of the country to seek employment, scattering family members across the United States.

Since the first week of March, my brothers, sister, and I've been calling each other regularly inquiring about the other's health, and whether we all have enough food and essentials.

Sanitizing wipes, toilet paper, and paper towels have been unavailable here in upstate New York in stores or online for many weeks. My son, daughter-in-law, and I are following the state’s guidelines, including wiping down surfaces often and each item that's delivered to the door. Three weeks after I arrived, we had only a few paper towels left. By that, I don’t mean “rolls,”  I mean “pieces.” The same was true for sanitary wipes. We did have a bottle of a household cleaning product, but with no way to apply it, what were we going to do? We were stuck.

When I talked to my brother, Bob, in North Dakota, I voiced my frustration.

“We have plenty of food,” I said, “but we can’t find any paper or sanitizing products. It’s impossible for us to follow the cleaning guidelines when we don’t have the necessary supplies.”

“The situation isn’t so bad as all that out here,” Bob said. "I’ll look around. Check both big and little stores. I'll get an early start tomorrow morning so I'm there as soon as they open up."

Within the week a large bulging box was dropped at the door. Several strips of tape kept it from popping open. When I cut the tape and lifted the flaps, I was greeted by individual rolls of toilet paper lined up in perfect game board fashion, packed in so tightly that I had to struggle to pull one out. The next layer was made of paper towels, again squished from one side to the other. The final layer was more paper towels with yellow cans of sanitizing wipes in the corner, again packed so tightly I had a hard time removing them.

In the past I’ve certainly received more elegantly wrapped boxes, with more expensive contents, but none so appreciated as this, purchased with so much care and packed with so much love.

Tales of the Whetstone River: Walk with Me

Twilight was approaching on the day before my husband, Joe, and I’d be leaving our beloved country home. During the previous months Joe had suffered a series of health crises that required he be near medical specialists. This would be our final night. New owners were about to move in. I’d skipped my usual morning walk so I could pack the last of our belongings, and I was determined to take a final one.

I ran down the hill from our house and hurried as I followed the tree line, all the while scanning the bushes and trees for blossoms. It was too early for the showy displays of the hemlock or apple trees, but there was a variety of hardwoods that might be starting to bloom. A few rays of the setting sun shone through masses of dark branches. Looking up, I saw bits of the most incredible color. It was the emerging buds of a red maple tree highlighted by slices of the late-afternoon light. 

One branch of the tall tree dipped down. I wanted to look at the delicate blossoms closely, but no matter where I stood, the hill’s slope made it impossible for me to reach up to the branch.

I decided to take a photo so I’d be able to enjoy the beauty later. But then, with camera in hand, I realized that shooting straight into the sun would yield nothing. As I struggled to find a better angle, the sun dropped lower, and my last chance of a photo was gone. 

Yesterday, another day of a different decade, another day of an unimaginable time, was beautiful and sunny here in upstate New York.

It was mid-afternoon when I set out on my usual route. As I walked, I searched the sides of the road, hoping to spot a wildflower. No luck, but when I looked up, I saw bits of an amazing crimson color. The blossoms of a maple hung frustratingly out of reach in the midst of thick brambles and vines, some of which were almost certainly poison ivy. Once again, I could use a photo to replace the chance to examine the delicate blossoms more closely. I pulled out my smartphone, and spent a little time deciding how much to zoom in, then aimed toward the lowest blossom. I could see nothing. In those few seconds, the sun had sunk lower. The tree was now in deep shadow.

“Slow learner,” I chided myself. “When will you learn to just enjoy what you have at the moment!”

If there is another sunny day this spring before the maple blossoms wither and drop, I’ll forget about trying to take a photo, instead I’ll just look from a distance. Savor how those glorious bits of red decorate the dark branches.

Tales of the Whetstone River: Spring Peepers and Beethovan

It’ll soon be a month since I moved from Manhattan to my son’s home in upstate New York in an attempt to avoid contracting the coronavirus. It’s been cold and rainy almost every one of those thirty days. Today​,​ I awoke to a forecast for more of the same, but the day turned out to be sunny, and amazingly the temperature that had hovered around forty day after day reached sixty!

Knowing how cooped up I’ve felt after all these dreary days, my son offered to take me for a spin in the car. Upstate New York is beautiful. In large fields, edged by decades-old trees, the grass is just beginning to turn green. Chartreuse-hued furls of a weeping willow’s new leaves contrasted with the dull gray siding of an old barn. Then, after a quick turn, we entered a pine forest with a brook. As it tumbled over rocks down the steep slope, its music sounded like a multitude of flutes playing in harmony. This brought back warm memories of mountain hiking with my husband and our sons years ago.

I thought the moment couldn’t get any better when I spotted little dashes of yellow along the road. Coltsfoot blossoms had pushed their way up through the thick carpet of dead leaves. Soon a multi-colored progression of wildflowers will follow.

Back at the house, I worried about my friends who’d remained in the city, called my family, and wrote a little.

As twilight neared, I sat on the deck of my son’s home, breathing in the evening air, and looking out at the pond while I listened to Beethoven, that genius of music, on my cell phone. In the piece, “Septet in E-Flat Major,” minutes of soothing string arioso were interspersed with abrupt snatches of horn statement. To me it seemed as though the composer was telling us, the listeners, to stop being complacent, and to instead appreciate what we have.

Dark clouds rolled in. During the time I’ve been here I’ve learned to differentiate between the dull banks of rain clouds and these dramatic tumbles of gray and purple with their long slices of pink and yellow with the sun’s rays peeking through, whose only purpose--it would seem--is to make an already beautiful landscape even more breathtaking.

As sundown grew closer, spring peepers, a small frog about the size of a paper clip, belonging to a species noted for its raspy trill (and apparently abundant near this pond) began its chorus, accompanying the orchestra. The composition became a concerto when a male turkey added his rapid gurgling tenor, a bullfrog gave one sharp call, and warblers added counterpoint. And, could that be a meadowlark?

Listening to this incredible man-created and natural-world collaboration, I realized that the coronavirus pandemic will do nothing to slow Nature and the advancement of Spring. And I gained new hope that humanity’s genius will carry us through this scary time.

Tales of the Whetstone River: In Defense of Rocks, Wildflowers, and Weeds

Large and small rocks of our geologic history decorate the hills and fields of northeastern South Dakota where I grew up. Scattered among them are beautiful wild grasses and flowers. As a child I loved both. I spent hours looking for a special rock to add to my collection, and searching for wildflowers, sometimes picking, but more often just stooping to admire them. To me these were to be enjoyed, to my father and brothers, they meant hard work.

Recently I was discussing geodes, those ancient bits of earth, with my older brother Bob. Those rocks, left in the wake of the giant glacier that had covered northeastern South Dakota during the Pleistocene Era, were scattered across two of our farm fields. My father left that acreage untilled, using it as pasture instead. The rich dirt of the lower fields, laid down by an ancient river, had no giant geodes on its surface, making it relatively easy to cultivate.

To me the geodes are items to hold in my hand and reflect upon. They’re treasures. Each is composed of different kinds of rock, forced together under the weight of that last great glacier. Bob can name those individual stones, and he has a strong appreciation of the giant forces that created them, but his empathy for the farmers’ struggles is far stronger.

As a boy, he and our older brothers helped my uncle clear his fields on the slopes west of Big Stone Lake. Practicality required the largest geodes, weighing tons, be left in place. In the summer bright green grass, and in winter banks of snow highlight their sculpted curves. If the fields were to be tilled and harvested, the geodes of lesser weight (still hundreds of pounds themselves) had to be pried from the earth, rolled onto stone boats and hauled, sometimes uphill, to expanding rock piles. This was exhausting work--sprained muscles and dislocated shoulders were a common danger. There was no “finishing” this job. Each year water from heavy rains and melting snow unearthed more geodes. Even now decades later, Bob’s face shows his frustration as he remembers those long days.

Even in my father’s fields where there were no visible geodes, danger still lurked beneath their surface. One day Bob, eleven, was balancing on the tender behind the cultivator, when a tine hit one of those unseen hazards. The jolt threw Bob abruptly forward. His nose took the brunt of the impact, giving him his first broken nose that’s still in full display.

My father’s maxim, “Any flower growing out of place is a weed,” meant that no matter what plant, however lovely its blossom, must be pulled, cut, hoed, or otherwise eliminated by any means necessary. As a young girl, this seemed terribly unfair to me. My Dad deemed me dreamingly impractical.  As an adult, I consider myself eminently sensible, consistently planning and writing endless lists, making sure I never run short of coffee beans or any other essential. When traveling, I pack both a rain slicker and an umbrella, no matter what the weather forecast is. When it comes to flowers though, well--that’s another story.

In my first years in New York, I occasionally found I had a few like-minded allies (complete strangers to me). There was the owner of a nearby brownstone who carefully watered his corn plant that grew in a tiny plot of land by the street’s fire hydrant. And the horticulturist of the famed Central Park Conservatory Garden who includes a few giant bull thistles in his intricate flowerbeds that sport glorious indigo blue blossoms each August.

Before I continue, let me say a little about the species of amaranthus that I’m most familiar with: the common pigweed. Some of that species have colorful, ornamental blossoms, but those of the common one are nondescript and drab, and as they mature the blossoms become ugly. It’s a hardy plant with a long tap root, and it thrived in the rich top soil of our family garden. As a child I struggled to weed plants taller than I was, some with stems two inches thick. I had to exert so much energy that I sometimes landed flat on my back when the root, at last, broke free.

A few years ago some friends and I were walking by a florist’s shop in my Manhattan neighborhood. Never missing a chance to admire flowers, I stopped at its window. I was shocked to see that there, nestled amidst the roses and lilies, was a common pigweed. The florist had chosen the plant to add height and texture to a large bouquet.

That day in New York I pointed out the errant plant to my friends,  and explained that for me, who appreciates all flowers, a pigweed is definitely not a flower!

And had my father been with me, he would have pointed out the irony. City folks are happy to spend their money to buy weeds!

Tales of the Whetstone River: Another Rock for My Terrace

Barbara Hoffbeck Scoblic, author of  “Lost Without the River,” continues to share stories about this region in her ongoing series, “Tales of the Whetstone River”.

Over the last few years I’ve spent many days researching and writing about the Pleistocene glacier in South Dakota and the Lateral Moraine, the huge bank of boulders and rocks the glacier left in its wake when it receded over ten thousand years ago, more days verifying that what I’d written was scientifically accurate, and yet more time still revising when whole paragraphs had to be cut to fit the required length of my book. And now, right outside the window of our car, were chunks of that moraine, ancient bits of our geological history. How could I not hold one of those geodes, touch it with my fingers?

In a few hours I’d be on a plane heading back to New York. My older brother Bob had taken a slight detour as he drove me from Ortonville, Minnesota to Watertown, South Dakota. He’d casually mentioned that the stones in the piles along the road were geodes. They’d been raked up from the fields so they wouldn’t damage farm machines. Geodes! Actual bits of the moraine.

“Stop! Pull over. I’d like to hold one.” I told him.

In the space of an hour and in true South Dakota style, what had begun as a cloudy winter day with a few snowflakes drifting down, had turned nasty with sleet whipping through the air.

Patient with my frequent requests to stop along any kind of roadway, Bob pulled onto the shoulder, zipped up his jacket and grabbed his work gloves. He hurried to the pile, picked up a rough round glob, and dashed back to the car. I rolled down my window.

“Careful! It’s surprisingly heavy,” he said.

My hands sank into my lap with the weight of the rock.

“Can you find a smaller one? I want to take one back with me.”

Bob is used to these requests too. On my terrace in the city I have a hunk of Dakota granite and one of Alaskan jade, both of which he helped me find along the roadside during our other travels together. He climbed up onto the pile and returned with another two geodes.

“Do you think you can find one that’s better?” I asked.

“Better how?”

“I can’t see any glints of mica in these.”

“Probably not here,” he said as he got back in the car. “We’ll drive a bit farther.”

We went a few more miles, stopping twice with no luck.

“It’s okay. We can head back to the highway,” I said, disappointed but conscious of the time and my plane reservation.

Bob continued to drive another mile or so. “There might be something you’d like in that pile,” he said, pulling off again.

He got out and slipped on the icy gravel, but found his footing. While we’d been searching, the sun had appeared, melting the ice so that now a thin top skin of water made the rocks slick. I rolled down the window and yelled to him that a geode wasn’t worth a broken ankle, but he couldn’t hear over the wind.

I began to worry. If he did fall and break a bone, how would I get over to him without falling down myself? And, if I did manage to make it to the rock pile and scramble up to him, how could I possibly pull him to his feet and get him back to the car? I watched helplessly as he lost his balance, righted himself and teetered to the top of the pile, trying over and over to grab a geode with one hand while holding onto the slippery pile with his other. Then he let go, grabbed a geode with both hands and skidded, zigzagging down the pile and back to the car. 

We were once again on the highway headed toward Watertown, but now we had one more stop to make before the airport. Bob shut off the cruise control and we sped to the UPS store. The clerks didn’t seem all that surprised when I declared “rock” on the shipping label. Days later when the heavy package was delivered to my apartment in New York, I pulled the geode out and placed it next to the hunk of granite on my terrace.

They are distant members of the same family found within sixty miles of each other, the granite unearthed by that ancient glacier, the geode formed by it, both products of imperceptibly slow activity thousands of years ago. Kissing cousins of a sort. 

To buy Barbara Hoffbeck Scoblic’s book, go to any major online retailer or independent bookstore. To read more of her writing, including previous installments from “Tales of the Whetstone River,” visit her website: barbarascoblic.com.