Campfire in the Basement

By Darrell J. Pedersen

A self-described "little dickens" during his growing up years, the author shares memories of a not-well-thought-out campfire in the basement and the tragic misadventures of being asked to care for the class goldfish over Christmas. Pedersen's stories will remind readers of their youth when old country stores were "candy heaven" and how every little boy wanted to be like the cowboys from Gunsmoke.

"Campfire in the Basement" includes memories of heartache, loss, and long goodbyes. But these tough retellings create a perfect balance of relatable stories and raw authenticity. This book is not only a memoir; it is a reminder of the pure joys in life and how faith can help us through the good times and the bad. Campfire in the Basement will keep readers engaged from the first page to the last.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798986268170

Book preview

CAMPFIRE IN THE BASEMENT

What could possibly be wrong with my cousins and I building a campfire on our basement floor? I knew what I was doing. I was eight and had started many previous fires, just not inside the house. The snap. The crackle. Dancing red, orange, and yellow tongues of flame. The sweet smell of burning wood would be beautiful. So fun.

My father, Charly Pedersen, did eventually express serious reservations about my idea. My fire conflicted with the two big dreams Charly had for his life. He longed to have a family that he could adequately take care of. And he longed to have a home alongside some sort of body of water. Dad was busy working at his dreams when I, his youngest child, tried to burn one of them down.

I like fire. Fire has been a pivotal part of human hopes and dreams for a long, long time. I thought that a campfire in the basement would be a wonderful idea and everyone else agreed. It was Christmas Day, 1960. The house upstairs was packed with all of my aunts and uncles, the older cousins and Mom and Dad. The younger cousins and I had been shooed down into the basement so that the precious space on our house’s tiny main floor could be reserved for the grown-ups. That was okay; we kids could have a good time in the basement. First, we broke into small groups and played Sorry, Parcheesi, and Scrabble—new Christmas games. I’m sure that we played pretty nicely for quite a long time. No doubt we were called back upstairs to fill plates with some of the marvelous dinner that all of the aunts had contributed their favorite dishes towards. Then, back downstairs we went, while the adults and older kids played cards or visited upstairs. Younger kids need to get a little active sometimes, though, so at some point, we decided that it would be good to play camping. Many of us had been a part of roasting marshmallows in our respective backyards, a part of camping out under the stars in those leaky, old canvas tents. This sounded like some pretty good fun! It didn’t take very long for me to come up with the campfire idea. We had a big wood-burning furnace in our basement, and I had watched my mother and father start fires in it many times. I knew where the match holder hung nailed to a support post, and I didn’t even have to stretch that much in order to reach it. The holder was filled with those big, wooden farmer matches that everyone used in those days. The old newspapers were close at hand, and then there was a nice big wood room just full of campfire wood. All of my cousins thought it was a fine idea and gathered around to watch me work. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself.

I liked fire. It was my job as the youngest in our family to haul the burnable garbage down the hill to the burning barrel next to the swamp by the lake. We burned the dead grass in that swamp right after the snow melted, so that it would green up and not present a fire hazard when things dried out later in the spring. Our whole family would be out there circled around the burning area, rakes, shovels and buckets of water close at hand as we kept the fire from burning into the bordering woods. It was a great adventure. So, it turned out, was garbage burning. I would not only bring the paper bags of garbage down to the burning barrel, but I would also bring my plastic army guys, tanks and trucks. Into the burning barrel would go all of the paper and stuff like that, but I would cull out all of the cardboard milk cartons, Velveeta Cheese boxes and such other valuable items capable of being used to construct a village around the base of the burning barrel. Of course, this village needed to be protected by some of my good soldiers. And without a doubt, the enemy soldiers would soon show up and lay siege to the town. When an enemy army lays siege to a place, you know that some buildings are bound to be burned. I never discussed this with my parents. They didn’t need to be bothered. This garbage burning chore was one that I didn’t mind at all. I liked fire. I thought everyone liked fire. Smokey the Bear taught us to be careful with fire, and I always was.

That is the reason why it came as such a surprise to me when things went awry concerning our Christmas Day, camping trip. As I’ve noted, all of the other kids stood circled around the site that I’d chosen for building our special campfire. I had been particularly careful to select a spot on the concrete floor that was at least three feet from any of the flammable objects which filled our basement. Things seemed to be right to me. There was definitely, shall we say, anticipation in the air amongst all of my very impressed cousins. There was also smoke in the air. I had just gotten the newspaper sheets wadded up, stacked in a little pile and lift. Things were going well, but I hadn’t had time, yet, to start adding the kindling wood. The next thing I knew, the multitude of onlookers parted as my mother, horrified look on her face, burst through the crowd. In a flash, a bucket of water had been filled from the nearby laundry tub and my soon-to-have-been masterpiece was transformed into a sloppy pile of charred papers scattered across the floor.

My father was the next to arrive on the scene, the cousins now slinking backward more and more into the shadowed corners of the basement, seemingly having had nothing to do with the whole thing and bewildered that I would have come up with such an idea. That’s about the time that the second fire was lit in that little basement space. I well remember having my hide tanned right there on the spot. I don’t remember which was more painful, the rapid and repeated swats to my butt, or the fact that all of my cousins stood as witnesses. I do remember, though, making the personal decision to spend the rest of that Christmas Day under my bed, alone.

Fires are nice. Some sixty plus years after my Christmas Day fire, I keep a box of farmer matches in the kitchen cupboard of my own home—for starting campfires. I keep another box in my underwear drawer for times when my wife and I want to share some intimate, candlelit time together. There are matches tucked safely into my deer-hunting backpack for the campfire at the base of my deer stand. We keep matches in our car glove compartment in case we become trapped in a northern Minnesota blizzard. There were candle-lighters all over the church where I used to work. The eternal light burns all of the time. You never know when you might need a fire.

My son, John, age six, and his little friend, Gregory, started a campfire in one of the baseball dugouts at the city park. This took place in the tiny Northern Minnesota border town of Littlefork. It was a little embarrassing that the city police officer’s son was involved. What could I say? It was safe; the ground in the dugout was all dirt. What was my son thinking about as he started that fire and sat gazing into its flames? What were our cave dwelling ancestors thinking as they huddled around their prehistoric campfires? How about our Viking ancestors as they stoked their fire for the mid-summer festival? What was my own grandfather thinking as he sat gazing into the hearth of his parents’ house in Sweden on the eve of his departure to start a new life with his young family in America? What was my mother thinking as she checked to be sure that the flame was doing its work beneath the pot of boiling potatoes that she was preparing for our Christmas day feast? What was she thinking when she spotted my basement campfire?

I suppose I could mention the fact I almost burned down the first home my wife and I lived in after I finished graduate school. I was just trying to be environmentally conscious and frugal as I acted to recycle some used barbecue briquettes. After my wife finished grilling our burgers, I used tongs to pick the half-burned coals out of the grill. I conscientiously dropped each piece into a coffee can full of water to douse them. Then I used tongs to take them back out again, setting them on a piece of cardboard that rested on our second-floor wooden deck. There they would be able to dry out before our next use. I guess that I hurried too much while thinking about eating a warm burger. Somehow the deck on that rental house caught on fire. It didn’t burn very long before we smelled smoke and easily extinguished the flames. My dad visited us the following week and was able to easily replace the deck boards with some weathered wood purchased from the local lumber yard. Nobody else even knew that it happened. I later joined the volunteer fire department in that same town.

There were a few chimney fires over the years too. And my son did start another small fire in one of the window wells in the home where we presently live. However, most of these events, as I see it now, were of no real consequence in the larger scope of things.

I’ve never built another fire on a basement floor. I no longer build and burn cardboard villages. But I do have a very beautiful, steel fire ring, centered on a burning pad constructed of patio blocks. That fire ring sits just on the edge of the little lake where my wife and I now make our home. The ring has moose and spruce punched out in an alternating fashion around its circumference. When the sky is dark, when the moon slips above the horizon, when you can see the flames rise and fall behind those moose and spruce, then you can literally be transported back to a far distant time when people hunted those moose with wood and stone weapons. With the stars dancing above and the fire crackling before you, it is almost possible, as you gaze into those flames, to see clearly all the way back to the time when God first brought order out of the creation’s bubbling, churning, gaseous, belching chaos and said, Let there be life! I like life. I like fire.

Eier Lake in Springtime

REFLECTIONS FROM A NORTH WOODS LAKE

In 1952, Charly Pedersen, my dad, had those two dreams to pursue—and also a little demon to chase. He had been working on his two aspirations since his bootlegging father died when Dad was four. The demon was new, his third born child, me. Dad thought his dreams were about a lake and a family. It turned out they were about a whole lot more.

My birth, October 3, 1952, made Mom and Dad decide not to have any more kids. I tried to come at five months gestation. The lives of both Mom and me were in jeopardy. Mom had to do bed rest at Auntie Gunhild’s in Duluth until my proper arrival date. Three kids were enough. Little did Mom and Dad know.

Every day Dad would pull on his khaki work pants, khaki shirt and steel-toed safety boots. Then he would eat a hot breakfast prepared by Mom, grab his thermos bottle of coffee and his black metal lunch pail, also prepared by Mom, and head off to work. He drove the 70-mile round trip from Alborn, Minnesota, to Duluth and home again to earn the money needed to achieve his goals. He showed up at Diamond Tool and Horseshoe Company no matter what the weather, or how under the weather he might have been. He traveled often lonely and dangerous roads. Icy conditions and blinding snowfall were frequent companions as he drove in before sunrise. Winter months brought temperatures that often dipped to 30 degrees below zero or colder, even before wind chill was factored in. During the hottest days of summer, Dad’s 5’11" frame, drenched with sweat, helped to hammer red hot steel into tools that carried a lifetime guarantee. The temperature sometimes rose to 140 degrees in the hellish forge shop where he made a living. Yet, you could count on one hand the total number of days of work Dad missed during his 38 years of employment at the Diamond.

On the side, to help make ends meet, Dad cut pulpwood and firewood. He trapped mink and muskrat. He fixed old things and created new ones. All this Charly did to realize his dreams. Unknown to him, my dad’s aspirations would contribute to the lives of far more people than he could ever have imagined.

Can you see it in the photo? There’s no smile on Charly’s face but you can see contentment, maybe pride. My father sits relaxed and comfortable in a well-used lawn chair. That chair was dragged home from the Alborn town dump, with a bolt added, a touch of paint and as-good-as-new serviceability restored. Dad had a knack for turning the discarded into the useful. Behind Dad stands his firstborn, Rodney, artificial smile pasted on his face. In the chair to Dad’s let sits his second born, Judith, almost scowling as she observes the antics of her little brother Darrell, third and last born, as he too poses in his father’s lap. That’s me.

Behind Dad stands his firstborn, Rodney, artificial smile pasted on his face. In the chair to Dad’s left sits his second born, Judith, almost scowling as she observes the antics of her little brother Darrell, third and last born, as he too poses in his father’s lap. That’s me.

I appear to be almost three years old. That would make my sister almost nine and my brother almost thirteen. It is 1955. I am wearing shorts and a summer shirt, ready for play. Dad and Rodney, on the other hand, are dressed in t-shirts and long sleeve work shirts. Dad is wearing work boots, suspenders and work pants. There is always work to be done. Rod stands ready for action. Dad embraces Judi, hand resting on her shoulder. At the same time, arm around his youngest, he keeps a firm hold on my leg. Rod and I both sport the typical butch haircut of the day. Judi’s shoulder length hair is neatly combed and pinned back with a barrette. She wears a dress appropriate for helping with inside work or for playing with dolls. In her hands she holds a bowl. There is no spoon. Maybe she is headed for strawberry picking along the edge of the hayfield. That would make this late June or early July.

The freshly cut grass smells sweet. Just a few shafts of sunlight slip through the mountain ash trees overhead. A little lake rests behind our family. Its aroma carries with it the odor of the fish that drift beneath its surface. Across the lake, the water is calm. The wind is from the east, not riffling the water until it has gotten past the trees and drawn closer to the western shore where we sit. Paper birch trees line the lake shore at our backs. The breeze rustles their leaves.

I’ve described what most anyone could see in this family photo.

What you don’t see is my mother, Olga Pedersen. She is, no doubt, the photographer. Mom would have coaxed Dad away from his work, assembled us and taken our picture with her Kodak box camera. Mom was often behind the scenes in our family. True to her generation and farm family upbringing, she did the cooking, baking, cleaning, sewing, ironing, and everything else related to running a household and seeing to the daily needs of her husband and children. We knew Mom would always be there when we came home. Again and again in later years, during the time when Mom’s Alzheimer’s held her captive, Dad, with a faraway look of deep gratitude on his face, would sigh, Your mother did such a wonderful job raising you kids.

There are some things that you may not be able to see, deeper, richer, but which are somehow reflected in this old picture. If you look at our family photo once more, you might get just a little glimpse of my factory worker Dad’s two biggest life dreams. They are reflected in the proud, contented look on his face, one of his aspirations being to have a solid family that he could adequately provide for. His own upbringing included the death of his father when Dad was so young that, later, he couldn’t even remember him having been around. When that happened, Charly was farmed out to live with distant relatives so his mother could go to work. It was years later before he was restored to his mother and brother while gaining a new step-father. Dad wanted his young family to have it better.

Then there was that second aspiration to own his own place alongside some kind of water. Some of Dad’s best years, as a teenager, were spent fishing, swimming and trapping in the Artichoke River, just upstream from Culver, Minnesota. Those good years came to be once his mother was able to reunite their family on the little farm that bordered that river.

It was as an adult with a wife and two little children that Dad discovered Eier Lake, shown in the picture. He was out scouting for new places to run his trap line. One small farm stood alone in the clearing that had been grubbed out on the shore of that little glacier-formed lake. He fell in love with the place as soon as he set foot on the land. When he learned the property was for sale, he and Mom sold their little farm in Culver and bought the place where I was raised.

Dad never smiled for pictures. But he smiled often and laughed heartily when he experienced humor, love or joy. Dad has a look of satisfaction in my old photo. And did you see my facial expression? My impish grin reflected either a great passion for life or a little demon dwelling deeply within me. My brother and sister would no doubt have witnessed to demon-possession as the noisy, little brat ran recklessly through their days and lives. To this very day, my cousins say that I was a little dickens as a child. They must have heard that from their parents.

A place on the lake and the will to make a good life for his family—little did Charly Pedersen know how rich the gifts were that he and Mom were going to be providing for the little demon-possessed kid and his older brother and sister. Dad and Mom worked long and hard to fulfill these shared aspirations and to share the fruits of their labors with their children. And, it turns out, with the world.

The little lake that rests behind our family in the photo embraced our young lives as we grew up. There on the shores of Eier Lake, in the passing of the seasons and of the years, we learned the value of a simple life well lived. From the warm orange globe sparkling across the waters at sunrise to the call of the loon at dusk, that body of water spoke ancient, life-giving words to the little family that lived on its shore.

Dad dreamt of having a solid family that could grow and prosper along the edge of some life-giving water. The expression on Dad’s face in that 1955, summer day photo reflected delight in his beloved family and in his beloved lake there in Minnesota’s great north woods. Mom, Dad, Rodney, Judi, and I had hopes to pursue and lessons to learn while living along the edge of Eier Lake.

That small lake, the little white house on its shore and the vast, surrounding woods became my first classroom for life. The little dickens had a lot to learn.

Check those eyes — What trouble can I get into next?

"I GET TO GO TO SCHOOL!"

I announced that to almost anybody I saw. Three of my cousins were going to start school along with me. That summer we talked about it whenever we were together. I’m sure we all had a mixture of fear and excitement regarding the adventures awaiting us in first grade. By early August my parents had already purchased my little pair of wire-rimmed glasses, three new pairs of pants, three shirts, a pair of shoes and my winter coat. Then our party-line phone rang. The Alborn School secretary was calling to inform Mom and Dad that my October 3, 1952, birthday was three days past the deadline for enrollment. She said I would have to wait until next year. It was only two weeks until school was supposed to start.

Charly Pedersen worked for thirty-eight years in the same factory, sold pulpwood, trapped, put in a garden, fished, hunted, burned wood and could fix anything or create something useful out of apparently useless junk. He did all of this in order to best take care of his family. When, during the Great Depression, Dad had finished eighth grade, he was told by the principal that he would be more help at home and that was the end of his formal education. He worked so very hard during all of our young lives and even after we had all grown and left home to make sure we had enough. He wanted more for his kids. Alborn School was the start. And I was ready.

The town road we lived on was a mile long. Tiny Alborn was five miles away. We had no close neighbors with kids. All of my three cousins, just a little older than me, did get to start school that fall. My older brother and sister went to school. I had been longing to go to school. My dream of discovering that magical place crashed and burned. After all of the excitement and anticipation, now all I had to look forward to was another year of long days spent home alone with Mom. Imagination would have to be my play companion for a while longer. Army guys, cowboys and Indians, gravel trucks and road graders would still have to be the center of my world. That year passed ever so slowly…

Finally, the day came, and I climbed aboard a big, orange bus and went off to meet the wizard. Two more of my cousins started along with me that year. It was good we had a big family.

Alborn School, the beautiful, three-story, red brick building with pillars beside both front entrances, stands just a little southwest of the headwaters of the Artichoke River. That little