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They knew how to make all kinds of neat things like bows and arrows, how to hunt anything, how to walk silently in the forest, how to track and trail, how to be unseen. I used to get tips on Indian lore printed on the cardboard separators for Shredded Wheat cakes, in three layers courtesy of Straight Arrow. But the one thing I could never figure out is how they got through those cold below-zero winters.
By this time in the fifth grade, my father had pretty much deserted us and we had moved into my grandfather's summer house, on the island across the channel from my father's house which got sold. I was now living on a small island with a walk bridge. My grandparents were only there in summer, and the rest of the year they lived in the suburbs on the north-side of Chicago, and wintered in Arizona. My grandfather was a religious big-wig in the Lutheran Church, on the national synod, but I didn't pay much attention to those things. I used to argue with him about my pagan beliefs versus his Republicanism and Christianity. He thought there were a lot of advantages to his system and was a corporation man.
He thought men were superior to woman and that was an advantage, and of course there was all the technology and modern amenities as the quality of life. But the point here is that I was required to go to Sunday school and summer Bible School. So it was at religious summer school in the basement of the Lutheran Church UpTown across the highway, between fifth and sixth grades, and-so the first day the teacher lit into me for not having a pencil.
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