Crunching Gravel Read Online Free PDF Page A

twigs from his pocket, scooped out a spot in the floor, and struck a large wooden match to start a fire. He unwrapped a small packet of waxed paper, revealing two small strips of venison. “Your lunch,” he said, holding the meat over the flames. “Big hunter come from hunt.” The meat looked juicy. He took the first scrap for himself then handed me the second.
    He ordered me to stay while he went for the others. I heard voices at the far end of the tunnel, then laughter. The igloo shook. I started toward the passageway and was horrified to find it blocked. They were crushing the whole thing in on me!
    Fighting panic, I returned to the igloo, finding it hard to breathe. I was too short to reach the domed roof Would death be like this—ice-breath seeping through my skull?
    I thought I heard Osmo’s voice. I was wrong. They had returned to classes, leaving me there. I would not cry! Slowly, I began to dig with my hands where the entrance had been. I shoved snow in behind me. I cleared a few feet but realized I was getting nowhere. The compacted snow was too deep.
    I found a block of frozen mud, scraped up by the snow-plow, which I flung against the roof It broke through! The tumbling snow formed a mound, which made it easier to reach the roof blocks, to push them by hand. I was free!
    Â 
Our Food
    We used bacon grease for frying eggs, stirred it into bread batter and biscuits, and mixed it with Welfare peanut butter to make the spread go further. Peanut butter usually came wrapped in butcher paper. We filled lard pails half full, set them on the stove reservoir to warm, and then mixed in bacon drippings. The result was delicious—salty, smoky, and loaded with calories and cholesterol.
    We churned our own butter from Lady’s cream in a gallon-sized glass jar with screw-on top and wooden paddles and handle. It took half an hour of vigorous churning. We loved the buttermilk. When Lady’s supply of cream didn’t suffice, Dad bought oleomargarine, which in those days could not be colored since it would pass as butter, something prevented by the powerful Wisconsin dairy lobby. We dumped the pale oleo into a mixing bowl, opened up a bead of orange dye, and proceeded to color the oleo to resemble butter. It seemed more palatable that way. Colorless oleo resembled lard, something only truly destitute people ate on bread.
    Twice a week we baked bread. The flour, from government surplus, came in fifty-pound cloth bags. None of these were wasted—all were bleached and sewn by my mother into dresses, shirts, sheets, towels, and handkerchiefs. We begged for bits of yeast cake to eat. Once the dough was kneaded, we turned the loaves out into heavily greased tins, black from use, and stuck them in the warming oven to rise. We stocked wood—pitch pine if we had it—until the stove was hot. Mom fried pieces of bread dough in deep grease. These “fritters” were delicious smothered in peanut butter and sugar!
    We seldom had meatless days. The staple, which we soon tired of , was corned beef from Argentina. “Not to be Sold” was stamped in black letters on the gray tins, followed by “U. S. Department of Agriculture.” I liked the meat best either straight from the can, cold, in huge forkfuls, or warmed with peas. We had variety, too: In the fall, at Thanksgiving, we had venison, and later a butchered pig or a yearling calf Chicken, a special treat, was reserved for holidays and an occasional Sunday. In late summer, when we culled the new flock, we frequently had chicken.
    Butcherings occurred shortly after the first snows. The semiarctic cold would preserve the meat, cut into roasts and chops, wrapped in butcher paper, and hidden in snow on the roof of the house, secure from thieving dogs, skunks, and coyotes. Most meat, except for the occasional roast, we fried or braised, usually with sliced and fried potatoes. We would never eat sausage made from animal blood, in the