Jim Kjelgaard
My boyhood was spent in two cultures: Polish on my mother’s side, German-speaking Alsatian on my father’s. I used to tell my blue-collar father I longed to see Europe, a continent he saw through a Sherman tank three vision blocks as a driver all of World War II. He saw action from North Africa to Normandy to the Ardennes, and he harbored more bad memories of Europe than good. I’ve made pilgrimages to all those battlegrounds over a quarter century.
“What do you got lost there?” he always replied.
My father taught me the world was a fierce, dangerous place and you were safer if you stayed between your own fence posts. His best friend died alongside him while they camped outside the tank. “He never heard the shell that got him,” was all my father would tell me.
Grandpa Henry Charles, my dad’s dad, crippled his back in a farm accident and never again walked unaided.
Uncle Norman, my dad’s kid brother, died a gruesome death trying to get the stalled family car off of train tracks.
My dad’s young sister Rose fell from a barn loft and perished in front of him as he mucked out our horse stalls.
All those reasons explain why my beloved dad cast wary eyes on the world. But in spite of all, he served his country and raised a family and lived with dignity.
I, however, as a boy envisioned the world as a miraculous place to explore, reminded always that Dad and millions like him secured that freedom with their sacrifices.
On weekends and summers, I lived on our two family dairy and pig farms, places of refuge away from the street gangs of Buffalo, New York.
My grandfather’s dog Rover, mostly collie but like me a mixed-breed, sniffed the tracks of deer in Grandpa Josef’s back woods. Now and then he surprised a red fox and ran panting as if he had a chance of catching it.
While Rover barked in worry, I shinnied up apple, plum, and cherry trees, certain that the tastiest fruit was found in the treetops. I came back to the farmhouse from the fields with jars of butterflies, wild strawberries and, often. clothing torn by barbed wire.
Rover accompanied me with sticky cockleburs buried in his coat, causing Grandfather to grumble Polish words of reproach as I brushed the dog clean of burrs.
On long hikes I loved spooking game that abounded in the back woods of this pastoral paradise. Dinner staples on Grandma Stella’s table were squab, quail, venison, wild duck, and ring-necked pheasant harvested by my uncles on our back woods and in the corn fields. Everything was over-salted, and it seemed Grandma put her homemade horseradish on everything except our churned ice cream.
You had to eat gingerly. Buckshot went deep into the breasts of game birds. You risked shattering a tooth if you grew careless while eating.
My life took a change around my seventh year. Up in the farmhouse attic of my grandfather Josef, I found the outdoor novels of books that once belonged to my uncles.
I read Jim Kjelgaard books like Big Red about hunting, fishing and adventurous heroes. I read them sitting in our barns, the smell of plowhorses in my nostrils, and Rover’s white-and-gold head asleep on my Keds’ sneakers. My favorite was Snow Dog.
To me, Rover was as magnificent as Kjelgaard’s Chiri, the valiant staghound-Husky mix who saves his master in “Snow Dog.”
Rover used to grab my pants with his teeth when I tried to cross a road that split Grandfather Josef’s farmland into two halves.
From Kjelgaard’s Snow Dog I learned that coming-of-age books can show (not teach) lessons about outdoor survival, fair play, and individual responsibility.
Kjelgaard’ heroes invariably made the right moral choice instead of choosing compromise. The author showed his readers that the way to a peaceful heart is to act decently.
He also had a nice and easy pen while creating novels for kids with animal protagonists such as a polar bear, red fox, a beaver, and a fawn.
Kjelgaard’s books showed young readers like me that clever children and heroic dogs endured life’s hardships and celebrated its joys, mysteries and sacred placed like deep woods and riverbanks. The optimism in Kjelgaard’s novels convinced me that the world was far less a dangerous place than I had been taught fit was at a young age.
Unfortunately, the make-belief world Kjelgaard created for children like me was far brighter and cheerier than the life he lived. At some point, he no longer could fish or hunt because a back injury kept him confined to a chair.
At last, his beat-up body caused him relentless pain from which physicians found him no escape. He died a suicide before his 50th birthday on July 12, 1959.
My dog Rover lived a fine old life until his eyes grew rheumy, and his steps grew uncertain. He died on the very road he stopped me from crossing. I hope he died while trailing his last elusive red fox.
I own 24 Kjelgaard first edition books stashed behind glass in an antique bookshelf. Now and then, on a free night, I still reread those old books like Snow Dog that enchanted me as a boy. They also help me as a writer see how to put together characters and action to create my own stories and books.
And now Bodie, my youngest grandson, has turned seven. It’s time I send him a copy of Snow Dog.
