Coop_ A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Michael Perry [35]
For a short time, it appeared as if my parents had settled in Nekoosa. Dad went to work at the mill in the morning, and cut firewood out back in the evenings. They were content at home, but Dad was dissatisfied in his work. Hired as a “research scientist,” he spent most of his days at a desk with nothing to do but watch trains come and go. As he looked out his window he began to formulate the idea that he would be happier in the northwest part of the state. He had pleasant memories of visiting his uncle Robert, a farmer up near Spooner, and his family still went deer hunting in the area every November. When a job matching his qualifications became available at a small factory in Bloomer, Wisconsin, he took it. This was a little farther south than he and Mom were hoping, but when a farm fifteen miles to the north came for sale, they decided to take the plunge, paying $14,900 for the buildings and 160 acres—80 of it tillable, the rest swamp and trees.
And so it was that in June of 1966, the three of us put the noxious stacks of the Port Edwards mill in the rearview mirror of our ’56 Chevy wagon and headed across state for a new life in the northwestern corner of Chippewa County, Wisconsin. To this day both Dad and Mom claim the motivation behind the move was to raise their children in the country—there was never any plan to farm. In fact, when I ask him about it now, Dad says, “I don’t think I even realized I had that particular defective gene.” He went to work at the factory in Bloomer, making $2.20 an hour. But within a year he got a half-dozen sheep, and not terribly long after that he drove over to the neighbors and came back with the milk cow, and despite all the best-laid plans, my mom became a farmer’s wife.
One of the reasons we’re having a baby is that Anneliese felt Amy should be allowed to grow up in the same house as a sibling. When she asked my opinion, I didn’t really know what to say, having never known any other way. The first sibling I can recall was a girl named Eve. She had blond hair and cat’s-eye glasses. I remember her pulling me in a wagon beneath the yard light beside a wild rosebush, although there is a black-and-white photograph of that moment in my baby book, and I wonder if I have animated it for memory’s sake. Eve was yet another “pre-adoptive” child, and she stayed with us for a year before the county placed her permanently. My father says her last night on the farm was one of the worst of his life. She cried and screamed that she didn’t want to go. I would only see her two more times—once a decade later when we were teenagers and she came to a nearby Bible camp, and once at her wedding reception. Both times it was wonderful to catch up, but so much time and life had passed that it was difficult to envision her as the sister I knew. In fact, while I can clearly remember her face from the days we played on the farm, I cannot summon it from either of the later two visits.
I don’t know where Eve is now. Our last contact came fifteen years ago in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where I had heard she was serving as a police officer. During a trip to the public library I got caught up in the stacks and returned to find I had overstayed my parking meter. When I read the signature on the citation, I recognized Eve’s name, and thought fourteen bucks was a fair price for the fun of getting a parking ticket from a long-lost sister.
My brother Jud was mentally disabled (we simply used the term retarded in that age) as a result of complications at birth. He was the youngest of five boys orphaned when their mother died of cancer and their father subsequently