Kelvinator

Uncle Spud gave our family his old icebox back in 1950.  A life-long bachelor, Spud never bothered to learn the finer points of housekeeping over his eighty-five years so when the box came to us it was an abused appliance. Technically it wasn’t an icebox, it was a refrigerator, a Kelvinator that ran off kerosene. That mattered since we were yet to be electrified in our hindquarters part of rural Missouri. Reddy Kilowatt wouldn’t come knocking at our cabin door up Courtois Creek until 1958.

We relied on fuel lamps, woodstove, fireplace, and tallow candles making our daily lives a decade or two behind middle-class townsfolk and the high hats pushing buttons or flipping switches for everything they needed.  Buttons were for shirts and breeches.  The only switches we used were those we cut to hurry along the milk cow or convince old Fergus (our mule) to pull the cart.  A switch was also a homemade instrument to stripe our bare legs or the backsides when we sassed or did something wicked bad.  

Samuel P. Dudley (hence the nickname Spud) had kept the Kelvinator under a lean-to shed attached to his cabin on a bluff above Huzzah Creek.  Before his life-clock came near midnight, Mama helped sell his property and the family pitched-in and moved old Spud up to an old soldier’s home in Marthasville.  Didn’t see much of Uncle Spud after that, which was sad since we all liked him.  

Our Mama’s uncle, Spud had once been a timber man.  He told stories about how he and his cousins and uncles would fell trees and rough-hew ties and braces for the Iron Mountain Railroad or for the nearby mines.  The fun part, he said, was when they bound hundreds of ties into rafts and floated them down Huzzah Creek onto the Meramec to Steelville where they got loaded onto railcars and shipped all over. 

We liked it best when he talked about his times down in Cuba (the real one, not that highway town up on Route 66); how he volunteered to fight with Teddy Roosevelt in ’98 but ended up a muleskinner building temporary bridges across creeks, streams, and rivers. He regaled us with stories about being ambushed and trading potshots with Spanish bushwhackers (and rum shots with pretty señoritas) and how he stumbled out of a cantina one night to take a leak and found a Spanish guitar leaning against a wall abandoned.  Spud took it into the cantina and after no one claimed it he took it back to camp and eventually learned to play it. He would play it for us and sing old songs and ballads to make you laugh or cry.  That beat-up guitar was his prized possession and it made me jealous when he bequeathed it to Coy, my older brother, who never did learn to play it better than a sideshow monkey. 

Times were good for Spud after Cuba; even better during the German war when the government needed to feed and supply the military.  Wages rose, the economy boomed and life for him was flush into the late 1920s.  Spud spoke proudly about the “quality shine’ that he and his Huzzah Creek buddies made and ran twice a month up to St. Louis to sell to Irish bootleggers.  

Every time he got down in his cups he would declare, “If I hadn’t gambled and sported so much on my big city trips…why I might’ve got rich investing in the Stock Market.  Of course them damn Republicans, tycoons, and bankers sold the country short, brought us working folks to our knees.”  Spud was a dyed-in-wool Democrat since the days of Grover Cleveland, and Uncle got red-faced and spitting when politics got heated.

During hard times Spud was spry enough to clear forests, run mule skids, and hew timber braces for the lead and iron ore mines until demand fell and the good seams fizzled out.  To make ends meet he cut and split logs off his own land, hauled and sold the firewood off Betsy, his old beer truck he bought in an auction from Lemp Brewery up in South St. Louis.  Lemp Brewery made Falstaff, the only beer Spud ever drank, with a sprinkle of salt from small pewter shaker he kept in his vest pocket. 

His other vest pocket he kept an old railroad watch on a chink chain from which dangled a church key that acted as his fob.  Spud was as convivial as a parson.  Everyone knew him and thought well of him.  He could liven-up any gathering by his stories or he would bring out his old guitar and serenade the folks.  Spud could dance, too. Did the Fandango, Lindy Hop, and Foxtrot.  Could croon like Bing Crosby and yodel like Jimmy Rodgers.  He hung out with hillbilly, river rat, grease monkey, and starched collar folks.

Mama’s raucous remembrances with Uncle Spud from when he was a young rake were too blue for us to hear but we kids stuck our bedtime ears to the door-jam many a night.  Spud taught us kids how to play cards, shoot dice, and throw a knife. He helped us whittle wood effigies, set game traps, showed us how to hunt and fish.  He even helped sister Sadie master the fiddle she inherited from Aunt Polly.  She got so good the state university paid her to go to school over to Rolla.  Now Sadie teaches music in a fancy St. Louis college.

Anyhow, Daddy figured Spud got a hold’t of that Kelvinator from some busted luck family caught by the worst of hard times when folks with no timber access or spare folding money could not afford heat.  Money was scarce as feathers on a dingus, even scarcer up on Huzzah Creek.  Bartering and living off what the land allows is our lot in these hills, ravines, creeks, and rocky bottoms south of the Big Muddy.  

After Mama clapped eyes on Spud’s icebox she refused to have it indoors.  It was stained so nasty that even after a righteous scrubbing Mama would not relent.  She didn’t trust the combustible nature of kerosene no-how.  Usually she got her way in household matters but this time Daddy haggled a compromise.  He was a first-class sweet-talker, Daddy was.  Mama allowed he could put the ugly box out in the mudroom, what we called our back-porch.  This was where we kicked off our boots, hung our coats, and stored our tackle, traps, and squirrel rifles.  Daddy had to promise to affix an old boilerplate betwixt the icebox and the kitchen; in case of fire Mama wanted a shield, so we could “up-sticks and skedaddle,” as she put it. 

With the boilerplate Spud’s old appliance proved to be “noisy as a badger in a tin box,” Mama claimed, acting like a tympani (her Italian word).  What with the old motor, cooling condenser, and pulley hissing, rasping, and growling it was a hellacious commotion that got worse if we neglected to lubricate the beast every few days.  When that happened Spud’s box “screeched the banshees such to drive a deaf parson to pitch his Bible at it,” Mama japed.  That was a good one.

The box broke down so often Mama wouldn’t keep anything important in it.  Daddy got tired of fixing the blame thing within a week or so, after which he trained brother Coy to work at it.  Coy took a special interest in it.  For nearly two weeks.  Then he volunteered the job to me after a week of thumping, pestering, and chiding.  All to no avail until he promised to pay me with some of his baseball cards, though never the good players.  Not even his duplicates of Stan Musial, Pee Wee Reese, Bob Feller, Jackie Robinson, Enos Slaughter, or Joe DiMaggio.  Coy was a piker who always welched his bets. To share the chore I recruited Sadie, my twin sister.  She was a tag-along tomboy and liked working with tools, gadgets and gizmos way more than dollies and girl toys. She’d quit them years before.  She was a half-mile smarter than me (I can admit now) and that proved useful more than once.  Sadie was practical and no lazybones (truth-be-told) and I was not above filching credit for her work whenever I could skin it. 

Even when the box worked proper, the Kelvinator danced the shimmy.  Scooted down the porch like it was trying to escape out the door and back up to Huzzah Creek.  After weeks of scooting Daddy ordered Coy to “nail the claw feet to the damn deck and be done with it!”  That sure enough fixed it but we had to keep a dedicated mop (we called her Hagface) and a bucket handy just to soak up the yellow trails it peed everyday. In winter the rusty pee trails froze and we kids would dash in or out skittering and sliding down on our knees, elbows, and butts.  

In the mudroom mayhem, Mama, once or twice, forgot to watch her step and plunked down on her backside.  She cussed such that we all giggled half-past silly, especially Daddy.  This rankled Mama more than the fall down.  In hindsight I realize, that old Kelvinator brought a frost to their already chilly marriage.  And the icebox served to aggravate our sibling warfare in those years.  But on the plus side, that old Kelvinator fostered a few classic interludes of hilarity within the dribble-drabble of our life on Courtois Creek. 

Spud’s box was way too small for our growing family so we kept most of our perishables hanging in the smokehouse or cooling in the springhouse.  Built back in the 1840s, according to Mama our family historian, the detached outbuildings kept most of our tuck and vittles.  The more exotic foodstuffs, wild game and such went into old Kelvinator.  Mama called it the ugly box and carried an outsized anger toward Spud’s old appliance; probably because she let Daddy get one over on her.  Just another minor skirmish in their decade of icebox warfare.  

As Sadie and me were guardians of the ugly box we took turns mopping up the spillage and disinterring the spoilage.  Kelvinator was prone to stinky breath and mold, far worse than the regular fumes and kerosene farts it omitted.  In the summer when food rotted more quickly, the box went from pinky-stink, to spanky-stank, to skunky-stunk in just a week.  I got to be the family sleuth, could detect the exact degree of putridity from a three-second whiff.  My special talent was my bloodhound nose.    

Cleaning Kelvinator after abandoning him for a week or ten days was the worst chore (other than moving the outhouse and burying the old crap-hole).  But the stand-alone worst chore was the time I was anointed to crawl up the fireplace chimney to fix a stuck flue.  I was cursed with that perfect balance of being just small enough, yet old enough to accomplish the nasty job.  Coy reasoned this and Daddy always admired his sound logic.  So it were me that squirmed up there, swimming through soot to find what turned out to be an owl corpse blocking it. 

This was early fall and the owl must have been there all summer. It was filled with a million wiggling maggots under the withered feathers.  Half of ‘em spewed all over my head and face.  Since I had gone shirtless under my bib overalls and the maggots spilled down across my shoulders and belly and farther south to splattered and fill my sockless, over-sized boots.  You haven’t lived until you squish around in boots full of maggots.

That didn’t gross me out half as much as the fact that before the Owl muck went south it had discharged into my open mouth.  Even got snarfed up my nose and nearly choked me.  This was followed by a fit of spitting and a chunk-stream of puke mixed with maggots.  As this nasty torrent of maggots, gore, and vomit poured down, sister Sadie, brother Coy, and Daddy screamed a one long chorus of…Eeeeeewwww!  Then, fits of laughter, knee slapping, and giggling.

My cross to bear.  Royce, child errant of the family.  And of course, Coy and Sadie never let me forget the hilarious, ignominious encounter with the baked chimney owl with maggot stuffing.  For a time I was Sir Gore of Smellinore, or Sir Stinks-a-Lot.  They japed at me, for weeks, months, and even years. Called me an old owl-hoot.  Would chant, “whoo, whoo, whoo you talkin’ about hoot-hoot?”  

A year later, when I donned a bandanna (this time) and asked Coy for the fireplace poker to check the flue, Coy handed me a kitchen plate, and Sadie followed-up with a knife and fork.  At Sunday dinners one of my siblings would crack-wise, especially if we were having chicken, or turkey, and ask “wouldn’t you prefer a nice baked owl, Royce? Maybe some chimney biscuits and a little soot gravy?”

As life moved along we had need to expand our cabin after little runt brother Macklin arrived in 1954. Mama bugged Daddy until he added on to back porch.  More floor and  a new roof with real windows and screens. This was good because Mama wanted to keep out the skeeters, ticks, and flies.  It served as an airy workroom and became Mama’s getaway of sorts, a place where she did her ironing and her sewing in peace, despite the noisy reminder of the Spud’s ugly box in the corner.    

Mama brought lady friends, or Aunt Peg, out there for her socials, out of the hot kitchen into the cool breezes coming up from Courtois Creek that ran along through the hills, bluffs, and forests that surrounded our cabin.  Daddy eventually turned the old larder into a little room for Macklin.  Trouble was, Spud’s old box shared that wall and just on the other side was Macklin.  Old Kelvin gave him the heebie-jeebies.  We had gotten used to Kelvin, but it kept Macklin up most nights and his fussy outcries kept the rest of us awake (except for Daddy, who Mama said could sleep through the end of the world). 

Many a morning we would find Macklin in bed with one of us, usually Sadie who favored him most (she even put up with him wetting her bed). This went on or a few years until the summer of 1958 when our stretch of hollow finally got electrified.

The Christmas of 1958 Santa brought a plugin refrigerator that we put in the kitchen, but Daddy still would not get shut of Kelvin.  Spud’s old box was workable enough, he maintained, to keep deer meat, squirrel, possum, and other vittles through the long winter months.  But the old box cooled less and got more ugly, especially after brother Coy painted it a mustard baby-poop color that peeled off in great scabs making it seem to be dying of some dread, exotic disease.  Mama took to draping a sheet over it when she sat out on the porch.

Then Daddy had the bright idea of gluing an old bear hide onto it.  Yes, that’s right…a bear hide!  Of course he waited until Mama took the train up to St. Louis for a week’s stay with her sister, Aunt Peg.  Daddy drafted us older kids to help transform old Kelvin, and so we did, whispering wiseacre remarks aplenty, giggling as we worked. 

Sadie, Coy, and me heard Daddy explain himself to Mama through the kitchen screen-door after she got back from Aunt Peg’s a week later.  Still in her travel clothes, stiff in shock after he unveiled his dubious masterpiece, Mama was speechless while he told her the why and how of his efforts to transform the Kelvinator.  It was a hoot!

     “Tabitha, I know it’s a bit unorthodox, but hear me out.  I got that old black bearskin from Vardaman. Had it out in his tobacco shed drying for a few years now, just going to waste.  It don’t smell hardly at all. Sadie and Royce helped me scrape and salt it down to get rid of any pests.  We even sewed shut the buckshot holes in the pelt. Coy put the glass eyes in the head and cleaned the teeth and brushed the tongue, even added some food dye to pink it some all the way down into the maw.  Then we stretched and glued it onto the box, covered it like a fine winter coat.” 

Mama recovered such to calmly reply, “Claude, I know you mean well but have you lost your mind?  Look at that thing, like some hideous nightmare.  That poor creature looks to be trying to hump our icebox!”  We could barely stifle our laughter from the kitchen.  We were rolling and slapping like puppies as Mama continued, her voice rising in pitch like a teapot nearing boil.

     “You say Odd Vardaman shot that poor bear?  You know I hate that odious man.  He delights in killing way more than is natural.  Don’t you know that black bears are rare, nearly extinct in these parts… and Vardaman hunts and shoots them?  If there weren’t laws against it I believe that filthy old heathen would take scalps and wear them to the county fair.  They ought never let that scoundrel out of prison that last time!”

Mama could not endure Mr. Vardaman, especially after she found out he had been tutoring me on skinning and dressing squirrel, possum, and skunk.  That was before the old trapper helped me boil a bobcat and mount its skeleton on a board for a scienceproject.  Then Mama saw him walking down Main Street in Berryman with a half-dozen Ozark hellbenders tied, pinned, and dangling alive off his coat…, well that slapped the pink off the piglet.  Odd Vardaman was no longer to be countenanced. 

    “Don’t make this about Odd Vardaman, Tabitha. That bear pelt is worth a lot of money.  I traded a jug of molasses, a barrel of raw tobacco, and a half-case of blended whiskey.  I  got the whiskey cheap from Bob Boaz.  He brung it from the PX down at Fort Leonard Wood.  You remember Bobby that joined the army with me back in ’43?” 

    “What will people think, Claude; an icebox wrapped in a bear pelt?  And those spook eyes and bare teeth snarling down like that!  When word gets out we will be the laughing- stock across the three counties.” 

    “Well, yeah it is a bit hideous.  Might keep bible sellers and in-laws away, you think?”  Daddy laughed, the solitary fan of his singular humor.

     “Is that a joke?  You know we don’t get salesmen out this far.  And the only in-lawthat comes out here since Uncle Spud passed is sister Peg.  And you like her well enough to flirt and fawn over her like a mooncalf. Don’t be so touched Claude!” Mama got hot under the collar. And Daddy got steamed, too. 

    “Don’t much care if folks laugh, or think me bat-crazy.  It’s practical!  Got some good insulation to keep that box cold.  That pelt will keep the summer heat and humid air out of it. And guess what?  It don’t growl or grumble half so much now.  All this week little Macklin got full sleep, never woke once.  Ask the kids, nary a peep was heard all through the house.”   

Mama scoffed and stormed out slamming the screen door.  She went down to the creek where it would take her an hour to cool down. I had to laugh. Yes sir, Macklin slept better.  But he no longer dared onto the porch since the ugly box got his bear coat.  Normally he would have been at our shoulder, underfoot, asking his pesky questions while we pursued our chores.  But he never spared an interest in that hulking, wheezing box that gave him sleepless nights.  All week he had been downright leery over our preparations with Odd Vardaman’s pelt.  

Then, on the day Mama was due back from St. Louis he started in to mewling over Mama’s long absence, crying, “I want Mama!”  Mama this, mama that, over and over, fussing “where’s Mama, I want my Mama!”  Even Sadie could not quiet the finicky mood and got testy with him.  

Finally, I up and slung the squealing sprat over my shoulder, hauled his taters out onto the back-porch, mocking “where’s Mama, where’s Mama, boo-hoo-hoo!  You really want to see Mama?”  

His little mouth agape, I planted Macklin front and center where he got his first good gander at the large head, fierce eyes, the sharp fangs of the six-foot black bear peltstrapped around the transformed icebox.  The glass eyes peering down into Macklin’s gawping eyes seemed to mesmerize him. He went limp quiet in awe of the beast as I knelt and sidled up next to him.  Pointing up at the rough beast I whispered,

“Macklin, Mama’s there…(long stage pause and dramatic whisper) Kelvin…ator!” 

Sakes alive, that little fellow could scream. I think he even startled the bear.  A solid stream of pee ran down the porch floor following Macklin out the back door.  After Mama got home and finally noticed her missing child it took me nearly an hour to track him into a thicket, must’ve been a mile up a ravine off Courtois Creek.  I had a small rope that I brought.  I tied it through his bib overall straps and led him home, whimpering all the way. 

Macklin was covered in mud and cockle-burrs.  Had a dozen scratches and welts raised-up by brambles and thorns.  Just before the cabin came into view we stopped so I could cut a switch, not too small, not too big.  I already felt the welts and scoring coming to my backsides.  Papa would grumble some in the doing but Mama would see to it, certain sure.