Crunching Gravel by Robert Louis Peters

unofficially bestowed, would never be missed, I thought. So far as I knew, Dad never used the dynamite, nor was his cache discovered by the authorities.
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Music
    Dad gave me a Spanish guitar, one he had bought through a correspondence school. Dad played accordion, violin, and mandolin at taverns, usually accompanied by Charlie Mattek, who played guitar and sang. Dad said that if I practiced, I could join the duo and make some money.
    Dad bought a guitar book, and with his usual patience, showed me how to place my fingers—G-F-G—and to strum time. Once I learned chords, he played his violin and I accompanied him. His favorite tunes were sentimental country songs from his childhood or ones he had learned as a roustabout and farm hand: “Over the Waves,” “Red River Valley,” “I’m Dreaming Tonight of Sweet Hallie,” “The Prisoner’s Song,” “Red Wing.” He made no effort to learn popular songs.
    Hardly a day passed without his playing or singing. He sang us to sleep, holding both child and banjo on his lap. On the rare occasions when we had company, Dad performed. On good days we would take kitchen chairs to the front yard and play The music seemed so perfect, so pure in contrast to our lives.
    Although I learned to manipulate a handful of guitar chords, I never mastered the skill of picking out solos. I strummed mechanically, rarely feeling the music. When I later played tuba in the high school band, despite hours of practice, my playing was rote. I lacked Dad’s spontaneity; he could relax, and, immersing himself wholly in his art, produce music.

Part Three: Summer
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The Jollys
    By traversing Ewald’s forty and our own, we reached Perch Lake, the best of all nearby lakes for swimming. Minnow, nearer our house, was thick with bloodsuckers. And wading was impossible—you were soon up to your knees in muck. Perch Lake had a wide sandy shore and a sandy bottom. To get to the beach you had to cross a large potato field owned by a bad-tempered bachelor, John Simon, the town grave digger, whose house was invisible from the lake.
    A grassy bluff with scrub Norway pines overlooked the beach. By getting a good run, you propelled yourself into the water. We had contests to see who could jump the farthest. For a swimsuit I wore old jeans cut off above the knees. My sisters had one-piece suits from Sears. Nell, only four, rarely went with us. My cousin Grace’s breasts had already formed. George Jolly delighted in flashing his rear at Grace—“mooning,” he called it.
    I enjoyed going to Perch Lake with the Jollys. George was my age, Bill a year older. They lived at the opposite end of Sundsteen, a mile and a half past the school. I thought nothing of walking the distance to meet them, and since there were no telephones, there was no way of knowing whether they would be home or not. They came from a huge family of ten children. Bill and George loved fishing and often went to Columbus Lake.
    The Jolly house was a two-storey affair covered with gray shingles. It had the usual spread of outbuildings—a barn with lofts for hay, a henhouse, a pigsty, and corrals for cows. The father and the oldest son worked for the Wisconsin-Michigan Lumber Company. Mrs. Jolly was an ebullient woman with huge breasts who wore the same dress for months, until it turned to shreds. All of her dresses were of the same magenta Rit tint, the hue rubbed dull by grease and child-soil.
    The downstairs living room doubled as a bedroom. Here the parents slept in a single bed with the three smallest children. Upstairs, the four boys shared another bed, as did the girls, Margaret, Helen, and Lucille. No rooms had rugs or linoleum. Bill and George would lie on the floor directly over the dining table, collect bed fluff wood slivers, and mouse turds, and drop them through a crack into a pan of baked beans below. Daily, Mrs. Jolly baked bread and cinnamon rolls. She gave me