Blueberry Summers [book review]

I first read an excerpt from Blueberry Summers nearly twenty years ago in an edition of Victoria Magazine. In this beautiful, old edition – yes I still have it – I read an excerpt from Curtiss Anderson’s book, Blueberry Summers, Growing Up at the Lake. 

It was on my to-read list ever since. A few summers ago, feeling in need of something with a warm and compassionate voice, I finally read it. It’s a book of smiles and nostalgia and the joys of human nature, revolving around a young boy’s summers at the lake. 

Curtiss Anderson, a writer and editorial consultant, is the voice of this memoir. Every summer, his parents and brother packed into the two door Model A Ford with storage racks on the running boards, left Minneapolis and its Depression-era joblessness behind, and headed for the old family farmhouse by a northern Minnesota lake. 

It was our lake, he writes. 

The house had a trail of wobbly stairs leading down to the lake and no indoor plumbing. It had a wood-burning stove, and pump water, and kerosene lamps. It was a frail and forlorn house, he writes, with its tittering beams, and broken pumps and rusty water and uneven floors and sagging mattresses.

They were always joined by Clara and Leigh Johnson, and their daughter Carol May. Clara and Leigh were old family friends. 

I adored Clara and Leigh Johnson as much as I did my guardian angel, Anderson writes, contrasting them with his seldom-laughing father and melancholy mother. I wanted to be their real son. I loved being with them. I loved their smiles and laughter, and their skills and affection. He called Leigh the father of his heart, and the most treasured companion of his childhood. He was a man with a smile that fully occupied his face and a year round wardrobe of plaid flannel shirts, stretch armbands, a clip on black leather bow tie, and matching black leather shoes with crisscrossed laces on bright metal studs.

All this despite the heat. 

He had a theory about keeping the heat out, Anderson writes, and I don’t remember ever seeing him sweat.

At the lake, life revolved around fishing, and Leigh was the master fisherman. He was the meticulous lord of the lake. He was such a gentle, honorable man that he even granted justice to the fish. If he judged one to be too small, it was returned to its home, despite our grumbles.

There was blueberry picking, and pies, and swimming. There were game nights with popcorn and brownies and coffee and raspberry lemonade. And sometimes root beer made in Grandma Anderson’s root cellar. There were pet dogs, and first loves, and family dinners.

The pages are filled with a rich and varied cast of characters. 

There was Dear Old Great-Aunt Ingaborg, who seldom spoke but when she did it was often about something disagreeable. When you first meet her, she seems to be an afterthought to the family, treated as if she were just another relic. But the summer Anderson broke his leg he spent hours on the screened-in porch with her, listening to her stories. To know that someone was finally listening to her encouraged her to say more, he writes. And no longer was Dear Old Great-Aunt Ingaborg just a visitor. She became an important part of the summer. She became family. Years later, he writes, if I had to break a leg, it may have been worth it to discover this constant, endearing, and bewitching companion. 

Then there were the Brodeen sisters, who bravely lived year round on the lake even after it froze and the temperature got as low as forty degrees below zero. At least the windchill factor hadn’t been invented yet. Their baking skills were legendary, especially a chocolate fudge cake creation they named The Devil’s Disciple, which was the triumph of every fund-raising food bazaar at church. I could never eat plain old milk chocolate again with any interest after having tasted the Brodeen’s rich dark variety. 

There was Grandma Anderson, Norwegian to the core, with a glorious bundle of white angel hair that, when released from its mother of pearl pins and combs, flowed like the snowfalls of the fjords. She was proud of her Norwegian cooking, viewed Clara’s colorful cooking and spices with suspicion, and commented on her daughter-in-law’s lack of cooking guardedly to avoid creating still another bump in her son’s marriage.

There was Naomi the babysitter who was called in occasionally, and whom they called The Bay of Naomi as she was so large. She cracked a toilet seat in the outhouse and broke a chair in the kitchen when she pulled it up to the icebox like it was a drive in. After the children were tucked into bed she would reward herself with the icebox leftovers. It was a secret they kept for her. Puddings were great favorites, and cakes – whole or in part; Naomi was not picky.

There were the neighbors across the lake – the Schumachers – a large, happy family who were poor without even knowing it. Anderson writes, the family drew me into their enchanted realm as though I were one of them. I spent as much time with the Schumachers as I was allowed to. It was as if I had gained twelve brothers and sisters overnight.

There was Uncle Skoal, whose search for new bars was as dogged as Leigh’s for new fishing holes. Skoal often maneuvered his fishing trips with Leigh to end at some bar he’d found, taking Anderson along, despite Leigh’s reluctance. But Skoal just propped me up on the bar, bought me an Orange Crush and some beer peanuts and gave me a few nickels to play the pinball machine.

And then there was Clara’s kitchen. 

Clara was a lover of food and a commander of many kitchen skills. She fried small sunfish with their delicate bones so perfectly that the skeleton lifted away like a widow’s veil. Her Saturday spaghetti nights, with sauce made from their own garden-grown tomatoes and herbs, were always a highlight. Anderson writes that her plump pies could have been patented and her donuts could have made her famous, even including the recipe for Clara Johnson’s Doughnuts.

Clara and Leigh – they were the heart of the summer. The book is as much about them as lake life. 

Clara is the one who brings the book alive, as she did in real life, and the richest stories revolve around her. As Anderson writes, Leigh remained my idol, but the lake’s culture was truly defined by his ample wife, Clara. She was all crinkly smiles that lit up her cornflower-blue eyes, which were framed by close-cut, blonde hair. She had a well-earned face, which she lived in with such joy that it warmed everyone around her. I always hoped that some element of Clara’s joie de vivre would rub off on my mother. 

There are two Clara stories I love, one involving the pompous reverend of the local Lutheran church.

The Reverend Johnson sported a big pompadour and a formal black cutaway jacket with tails and striped trousers and Leigh loathed him. The reverend preached that dancing ranked on a level with devil worship, gambling was like prostitution, and drinking was a sin right up there with manslaughter. In fact, the pastors list of really popular transgressions didn’t include anything that at least one of us didn’t do with considerable enthusiasm.

Clara faithfully attended but, annoyed at the reverend’s habit of running overtime with his sermons and interfering with her Sunday dinner, decided to buy a huge wall clock to be hung across from his pulpit. She gifted it to the church. Anderson writes, Leigh would have nothing to do with it, even refusing to pay for it. But we all knew Clara paid for the clock out of her poker winnings. 

The other Clara story I always remember was regarding a particularly memorable family dinner.

Clara did not approve of alcohol. One night, a relative of hers was visiting who was “in his cups” more often than not. That night, pickled as beets, he missed his plate and served himself a helping of mashed potatoes directly onto the table. Then, still oblivious, he proceeded to pour a huge serving of gravy all over the potatoes and Clara’s white linen tablecloth. Anderson writes:

The table went silent. I looked up at Clara with a gulp stuck in my throat. Clara’s eyes were closed, but I could make out the strained formation of a smile on her lips. I started laughing with both hands covering my mouth. When I knew my laughter was going to get out of control, I jumped off my chair. Clara jumped up at the same time and rushed toward the kitchen. She shrieked in a high pitch that was even out of her range. 

I was just behind her, laughing so hard I couldn’t keep my balance. Clara’s shoulders were shaking. Dear Clara fell into one of her rare and contagious laughing jags until we both had to sit down. A few of those stoic Scandinavian faces started popping into the kitchen, making us laugh even harder. Then one person after another fell victim, and together we were all roaring to the rafters and through the roof and into the night. 

Drinking and Depression went hand in hand. Getting drunk was comforting for the men when they didn’t have anywhere to go in the morning. Clara led us to understand it was better this way. A kind of courage and outrage spills over into uncontrolled hilarity. 

I learned then that laughter often is a kind of crying. 

This is one of those books I return to.

I return when I’m in need of remembrance. When I’m in need of laughter. When I feel the pull of my own childhood summers. Perhaps it’s because I feel a kinship with Anderson’s family. My own stoic German roots and the richness of my heritage hold some similarities to his Norwegian roots – of a family in various phases of ins and outs with each other, and the saltine crackers and tomato soup kind of love that defined them. It’s a grounding kind of love.

Reading of Clara’s kitchen, I’m taken back to the feeling I had in my own Grandma’s kitchen, as I wrote in An Old Kitchen and True Hygge. I relive my own summers of fishing and swimming and lying in the old covered bridge watching the creek sparkle through the cracks in the decaying floorboards. These memories have, time and again, grounded me despite the many waters that have passed under that old bridge in the decades since.

At the end of Blueberry Summers, Anderson writes, It seemed to me our blueberry summers would never end. No one would really age. I would remain eight, nine, ten, or twelve, at most. The blueberry patches, as onerous and glorious as life itself, would continue to stroll along our trails, climb our hills, and saunter down our valleys. But we all have to let go of childhood. My wish would have been that those blueberry summers would simply drift away serenely and that those parts that were magic would remain vivid enough to me that I’d always be able to look back on them and smile. I think that happened.

What more could you ask. What a gift. 

A note on the Victoria magazine: 

The original Victoria magazine, where I first stumbled across this book, was a treasure. It went out of print for a few years and then came back. It is still a beautiful magazine, and I still read it. But it’s different. There was something in the original Victoria that I can only describe as a feeling. It was a magazine I picked up again and again, captivated by the pictures and the stories, and by its casual warmth and unforced beauty that did not seem as if it were only staged for a picture. It has become a bit too perfect for my tastes; however, Victoria is still an inspiring magazine filled with places of beauty and inspiring women and food and tea, and it still makes my heart happy to find it in my mailbox.