UC POIKA

Talking to my Walls

Book Number One

By Gerald R Carver

 

 

IntroductionMy name is Gary Lee Cartier and it is time. Somewhere I’ve heard there is a time and a place for everything and this is the time and the place for the story that I am about to tell. It is based on a true story. It roughly follows and depicts the events I think are pertinent to what has happened in my life and perhaps what has not happened that should have happened.I reserve the right to have embellished, invented out of whole cloth and otherwise twisted facts to hide pieces and parts of the events of that life that might have upset; embarrassed or otherwise impacted people I know and love in a negative way. Just where I have done these things only myself and my God shall know so it is not my intent to have written an expose’. It is merely my intent to tell a story that is interesting in a human-interest sort of way. I have been telling some of these stories to people all my life and many people find my life to be so unique, as far as circumstances go, that they have long encouraged me to write about it. I have tried to do that but find that cold statements of fact, such as autobiographical accounts of what I did and what others did to me, are not very interesting, either to me or, I assume, anyone reading them, not to mention there is no practical way you can avoid hurting someone’s feelings in that process.Even though I have fictionalizing a lot of what I write, my hope is that I will be able to minimize that hurt. Most of that hurt will fall on people who deserve to receive it or are not around to care any more anyway so I am not that concerned about that possibility. One of those people will be me though and I definitely don’t want to let too many cats out of my bag!I guess the next step is to give the reader some background information so that I don’t have to break up my story line with historical fill-in at undesirable moments. I was born December sixth, 1944. My birth certificate is on file at the court house in the county seat of Koochiching County, Minnesota in the City of Northome, Minnesota although I was born on the bed I was conceived in on the farm my parents lived on some twenty or so miles north of Northome at approximately 7:30 in the morning. My father’s name was George Patrick Cartier. My mother’s maiden name was Emma Jordan Brighton.She was an even dozen years younger than my father and as calm and self- assured as he was volatile and not easy to warm to. She was quick witted and loving he could be considered slow on the draw and cold most of the time. Most everyone who knew her loved her; most everyone who knew him didn’t trust him instinctively or like him at first blush. He was introverted and spoke very quietly though generally with vulgar negativity and could become quite loud and . . . well . . . scary when he was angry. She was quite extraverted and jovial with an infectious laugh that lifted the spirits of anyone within hearing range and seemed to be in good spirits most of the time in spite of her long hours and difficult working conditions. She was slow to anger and could be thoughtful when confronted with a situation calling for disciplinary action, choosing to make these moments teaching opportunities if possible “Compromise will get you a lot farther down the road most of the time. It never pays to fly off the handle.” she used to advise us. The real problem for me was that she also knew where to draw the line!George still conceived himself to be a crack businessman/sales type. He was, of course, neither. His idea that a businessman/sales professional was autonomous with crook, cheat, thief and liar was, of course, off base if not completely at least to some extent, a fact poor George never really understood.Like is often the case though, what George was really most talented at, he valued the least. The talented carpenter whiles away his life wishing he had talent to be a rock star when he has a talent many, many others wish they possessed. The painter wishes he was a world-class basketball player when he already has a gift for matching colors and choosing pleasant patterns in such a way that there are legions of satisfied customers beating down his door because he is talented in a way they are not and will never be. If you asked him about his true talent he would shrug it off and mean it when he lightly dismisses it as “nothing”. To him it is nothing no matter how demanding and difficult it might be for you because he has a special relationship with what you don’t understand. That was the way it was with George Cartier and farming. No big deal; just a lot of work. To him it didn’t take a lot of talent but, in fact, though it was a lot of work, it took a lot of talent also. Perhaps the only true talents George really had was farming-and making children.George was born February 21, 1888 into a very strange emigrant family of which he was the baby. His mother was named Serenity Ann Cartier and was first generation German. His father was named Johann Sebastian Cartier and he was a volatile mixture of Spanish Basque and Portuguese. His mother was a very religious, pipe smoking, cursing, dominating lady. His father was a very hard working, hard fighting, “I’ll do my thing you do yours” type of man that was easy to anger, quick to get physical when he was angry, and known to lose control in a violent manner when he got angry. Most people who knew him believed him to be more than just a little “off.” Both Johann Sebastian and Serenity Ann demanded respect and were respected- to their faces at least.Both Johann and Serenity ruled their children with an iron fist-except for the last child in the family which had been George. His mother treated him uncustomary like a little God! He could do no wrong! He could get away with being lazy with his chores; he could get away with cavorting with loose women when he was a young teenager; he could get away with stealing the family money and getting drunk at harvest time. He could get away with . . . just about anything he wanted to get away with as far as his mother was concerned she so dominated his father.George’s first wife had died giving life to the couple’s seventh child. Her name was Anna Ramona Bolinie. She was the daughter of a local gypsy family not very well respected in the community at large and her father was referred to by George’s father as “that dirty little gypsy bastard!”When she turned up pregnant with George’s first child, George’s father had disowned him, telling him he was not welcome in the Cartier family anymore and not to dare bring any of his “dirty little gypsy bastards” around. That had been a quite a blow for young George but he loved his Ramona so he cut all ties with the family.After the death of Ramona, during the birth of their seventh child, George had gone a little crazy and had taken to leaving his very young family alone for days at a time while he went on drinking binges to cope with his grief and guilt over the loss of his wife. He would stagger home to find them dirty, hungry, and scared he might never come back as well as sick and traumatized and he would promise never to do that again. For a while he would keep his promise, with a lot of effort, but only for a while. Sooner than later, he would give in, promising the children and himself he wouldn’t stay away very long this time. Of course not very long would wind up to be two or three days again and he would find them in as sever a condition as they had been in last time when he returned. In his sober moments he hated himself for what he had done. He worried in those moments that he would die on one of his drinking bouts and no one would find his children until it was too late but that still did not keep him from leaving them.Finally one binge too many caught him and there was a large Sheriff’s Deputy waiting for him when he staggered in from it. After a severe beating and an overnight opportunity to sober up, George had stood before the judge half hoping his children would be taken away for their sake and frightened to death of what that would mean for him if the judge did. As it turned out, the judge did terminate his parental rights to all but the two oldest ones and even placed them in the custody of a family to care for them until George could get his act together before he could get custody of them. If that didn’t happen within a reasonable time frame, that couple would be allowed to adopt those two children also.I suspect, George finally grew up, accepted the responsibility for what had happened, and, after several years, managed to pull his life together because, when Emma and he met, he held a responsible position with a traveling thrashing crew and was, I assume, the picture of health and vitality. In fact, Emma was the last piece of the puzzle for George. He had met a man who owned a piece of property in northern Minnesota that needed money. George had the money but he didn’t want to leave the state without his children. If he had a young wife, a farm to go to and money to make sure all of his planned new beginning could come together, he was assured of regaining custody of his children. Sure enough; once he married Emma Brighton, getting custody of his two oldest children was a matter of asking for them basically and the newlyweds were off for Minnesota and a new life.Emma Jordan Brighton was born into a mixed nationality kind of Nebraska wheat farming family by the name of Emily Sue and John Francis Brighton at the turn of the century, January 1, 1900. She had been the caregiver in her family way to long as far as she was concerned. Oh she didn’t complain! That was not what a dutiful daughter did in those days. Society demanded certain restraints and, if you were to be respectable, you complied. She went to church every Sunday. She sang in the choir and she left it up to the men to curse. Ladies did lady-like things. Ladies had lady-like thoughts, now that was all there was to it! Heaven forbid if it was done any other way! Surely bad would come of it! I tell you, bad would surely come of it! But oh sometimes Emma could not help but dream! “How would it feel to do just one bad thing? Not one evil bad thing, you understand, but one naughty bad thing! Like maybe tell some damn man he was wrong! To stand right there in front of God and everybody and look that male fool in the eye and tell him point blank as big as oh my! “You are wrong!” How delicious would that be?!Or how about playin’ with fire? Not the fire that burns ya’ now, but you know, the bad boy kind o’ fire? You wouldn’t have to sleep with him but you could play with him and he might entice you a little? Wouldn’t that be fun Emma? Wouldn’t it though? How would it feel not to be so straight laced!? Not for long you understand. Just for a while! Just for a moment. I’ll bet that would be delicious!” But then reality would set in and she would realize that convention ruled her just as it ruled all “nice” girls but it never hurt to dream. If you did more than that you wound up a divorcee like the former Missus Carlton.Missus Carton caught her husband having sexual intercourse with a younger woman and decided to end her marriage over that one indiscretion. “Poor girl! Now every man in the world thinks she misses her husband so much she’s an easy touch” she told me once. “The reality of the world is you have to “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” when it comes to your man or you won’t have one and no one wants something used so you had to choose your man knowing you made your bed and if your were smart you’d commit to laying in it!” That summed up the conventional wisdom of Emma’s day and she, like so many women of her day, lived by the system. It may have been a double standard but she didn’t know that. She was too busy doing what was expected of her as a lady and, make no mistake, dreams or no dreams, Emma Cartier was a lady! A lot of life was the way it was and there were prices to be paid for rocking the boat and rewards to be given for going along with what was expected of you. Emma Cartier wanted a good life. She was willing, in fact, expected to work hard for her rewards and, realizing she could not reap them by trying to change the way life worked, lived her life the way it should have been lived as a good and loving wife, mother and later grandmother who harbored unfulfilled dreams.Certainly one of those dreams, I would assume, would not have been to live on the very edge of a large swamp that was the recipient of all the filth thrown on the city streets of Bemidji Minnesota. I would further guess that, as a little girl, Emma Brighton never dreamed of living in a house with three small upstairs bedrooms on a manmade hill that seemed to lose the battle for survival with that swamp a little more every fall and spring due to the undermining of the raised foundation the house was built on. The water table in the swamp would rise to ground level in most areas surrounding the house causing the foundation to shift in different and unpredictable ways being supported on a bed of mud. This, in turn, caused the floors to become unstable and not level in unpredictable ways also. It also began to cause walls to pull away from foundation members leaving gaps between floors and bottom plates of walls. The old house whistled when the wind blew and allowed snow to blow into the house under the walls on the ground floor level in the wintertime whether or not it was snowing. For the same reason the house was virtually impossible to heat to any kind of reasonable level. The house was anything but a dream house so, I’m sure she did not dream about it or about living the way she had to live to live there but live there she did.She finished raising her family there in fact and her family loved living in that old house and playing in that neighborhood. Two of her sons married two of the neighbor girls they grew up with and, in addition to her future daughter-in-laws, Emma Cartier’s home was a meeting place for many more childhood friends that called her Missus Cartier but thought of her as a second mom and I am sure she dreamed about that some day when she was much younger. She was born for the role.Why her children did not suffer dire consequences for living and playing in such surroundings, however, is a mystery to me though. The town dumped its filthy liquids in a drainage system that wound up in what my brothers unanimously called Cartier Creek. It was little more than a major drainage ditch beside a built up extension of Parkside Lane a street of no more than one-and-a-half city blocks in length. As you faced the swamp, the Cartier property laid across the alley and to the right and a much smaller home, owned by a large family of Irish emigrants named O’Leary, laid behind that property and behind that was endless swamp. On the left the city had dug out a rather large ditch that was fed by a culvert that, in turn, was fed by the city’s storm drain system. That meant that every time a drunk urinated on the street beside his car, or donated his used drink to posterity, one way or another, it would wind up in Cartier Creek, the swamp or the Cartier’s backyard or on the O’Leary’s property. Sometimes it wound up on all of the above I would suppose.The city would bring a dragline out every so often and dredge out the sediment that accumulated in the bottom of Cartier Creek to make sure it did not backup during the severe downpours common in mid-summer in northern Minnesota. They would park there dragline in the middle of Parkside Lane and dump their dredging along the opposite side of the ditch. After years of dredging, some rather large mounds formed along the length of ditch and when the Cartier family moved in the boys christened these mounds the Jordan Mountain range after their mother, using her middle name. My enterprising bothers soon had roads, highways, farms and ranches running throughout the Jordan Mountain Range. If you couldn’t find one or all of them, that was a good place to start looking. Bear in mind the nature of the dirt we played so blissfully in!The Creek itself was an irresistible place for us as well. We became avid frog riggers and there were a lot of frogs in the creek. After all, it teemed with the frogs’ favorite food-bugs and mosquito larvae. Someone had told my brothers that frog legs were a French cuisine delicacy so they began to harvest frog legs and deep-fry them from a disturbingly polluted source. Perhaps the healthiest area that we did play in was the open field adjacent to the Jordan Mountain Range. There was an open field that backed up to the mountain range approximately two city blocks square and reasonably flat that had, before we Cartier boys appeared on the scene, remained uninhabited and unused by man or beast for years. It was, to us, a perfect play area. We had a football field; a baseball diamond, a wrestling ring or whatever else we may want to consider the big wide-open space to be and, more important than anything, it was almost like it belong to us though in real fact it did not.Neither did the acre after acre of thick growing hazel brush that bordered it on all sides but one. Hazel brush grows hazel nuts and in there wild, natural form are a delightful taste treat like nothing modern day children can imagine and it was there free for the taking. Once they ripened, we took and took and took; as many as we could take; as often as we could take them! They say that philbert nuts are hazel nuts and they may be a type, I guess, but they are not the same as those I ate as a child. They are similar though and that is why I am addicted to them especially at Christmas time when my mind goes back and I remember those days of old.Miracles of miracles, none of us seems to have contacted any lethal condition or deadly disease from this hodge-podge of pollution and unimaginable filth that we wallowed in as we did what we didn’t know any better than to do. We played in it. It was, by modern day standards, an uninhabitable place to live yet, we lived-no we thrived there. We are all on the short side of the long walk through life but, only one of us that lived in this horror show of pollution has a severe, life threatening illness that is, in any way, considered rare that might be tied back to that hell hole and that is an extreme long shot. So, I ask you, how did that happen? It remains a mystery to me.You have just been introduced to the people and the neighborhood most important in making me who I am. Now, they say a rose by any other name is still a rose so I am a Cartier and will always be a Cartier. There have been times when I didn’t want to be one but I was one, even then, and now the fact that I am one is just that, a fact.Yes, I have come to realize that a rose by any other name is still a rose made up of individual petals with nary a one looking like another so it comes down to a matter of quality equals beauty you might say but I would say that is an over simplification. My rose is made up of petals with individual needs, abilities, desires, temperaments and insights, in this case, all contributing in their own special, highly individual way to the flower as a whole. In addition to the petals we also have the soil, sun and environment in the rose garden contributing to the flower’s general health and wellbeing which effects each and every petal from the oldest to the newest one.A rose by any other name may still be a rose but it has a lot in common dynamically to a family in a much more simplified way. Whatever one petal of a rose does or fails to do effects all the others petals, causing them to spread out in splendid unison or honker down and hide to protect themselves from conceived harm. Sometimes one petal will spread out and the others will sense danger and honker down leaving the one lonely petal to fend for himself. That does happen but not very often. In a lot of ways I was that petal in the family rose. I am, was and will always be the renegade petal whether I want to be or not so, this is a story about a petal not a rose although the rose is a very important part of the petal’s story as is the rose garden and its effect on the rose and its petals.I hope you enjoy your journey through this petal’s life. I have not always enjoyed living it but, all and all, I wouldn’t change a thing. Read on!