Heathens After Midnight

Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression
By Mildred Armstrong Kalish
(2007, Bantam)

These days everyone is into “urban homesteading” and “upcycling” or whatever, but back in the day it was just called “farming” and “not being wasteful” and, y’know, “common sense.” I totally get it. We are essentially living on a big, spinning ball of garbage covered with broken plasma TVs, disposable baby diapers, and old hypodermic needles. Even homeless dudes have smart phones. With everyone all wired up, it’s only natural to start romanticizing ye olden days when people churned butter and knew their neighbors and such. I am guilty of it too, which is why I wanted to read the memoir, Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalish, who was a farm kid in Iowa during the Great Depression.

I LOVE hardscrabble stories, especially since I can read them while I’m luxuriating at home from the comfort of a tub full of fancy bath products. Admittedly, I did expect more stories about her family being forced to eat rocks and hair, but nope. Greenbacks were definitely few and far between, but farm people are nothing if not resourceful. No need to wait in line at a soup kitchen when you grow your own vegetables! Kalish’s storytelling definitely has a Little House on the Prairie kind of vibe, with lots of references to caring for various adorably-named farm animals, family gatherings where everyone helps gather enough nuts to last the winter, one-room schoolhouses, and making toys out of scraps of wood and nails. There is something sweet about these tales— I mean, this lady and her siblings tamed a bunch of wild raccoons who would sleep in their beds like cats and hop from chair to chair and “chew gently” on the kids’ ears as they did their homework at the kitchen table. That sounds so freaking CUTE, but when I imagine the smell of those furry fuckers or what would have happened if they’d ever bitten down on one of those earlobes, it makes me want to puke.

From a medical standpoint, this book makes me grateful to live in the age of wet wipes and Monistat 7. Kalish’s family solved problems like her childhood case of frickin’ BLOOD POISONING via time-tested bumpkin remedies like slicing her toes with a razor and squeezing out pus for a week straight. And maybe a dribble of peroxide here and there. Also, a classmate’s mom dropped dead from gangrene after trying to give herself an abortion with a lead pencil. Call me morbid, but I could have read an entire book of this shit.

If this stuff sounds like it’s up your alley, buy the book. As an added bonus, there are even some cleaning tips and recipes to round things out. NO ONE is too cool for Grandma’s Apple Cream Pie. Be real.

Grace After Midnight
by Felicia “Snoop” Pearson and David Ritz
(2007, Grand Central Publishing)

Continuing with the theme of women living through challenging times comes Grace After Midnight, the memoir of Felicia “Snoop” Pearson. Pearson is the real-life Baltimore drug dealer who became a cable TV fan favorite by playing a fictionalized version of herself on HBO’s The Wire. We may be living in a post-Glee era of “sexual fluidity” (barf) on TV right now, but from Snoop’s first appearance on the show, her presence was wholly unique and captivating. Was this calculating and magnetic character a boyish girl or girlish boy? Her sexual ambiguity, natural confidence, and cool intelligence made her one of the series’ standout characters.

Snoop started life as a cross-eyed, three-pound crack baby with a drug-addicted mother and a stick-up man for a father, but she grew up with a pair of loving but inattentive foster parents. She was running drugs at eight, got her first 9mm in 6th grade, and when she was 14 went to jail for shooting a woman in the head (she claims self-defense). Iowa farmland this ain’t. She managed to get her GED in prison— where she also romanced a female correctional officer and started a homemade dildo business (!)— and tried walking the straight and narrow with jobs at a car wash and a factory after her release. She was fired from each when they found out she had a record, and the predictable backslide into dealing commenced.

Snoop was written into The Wire after one of the show’s leads, Michael K. Williams (“Omar”), spotted her in a bar and introduced her to the creators. But even after nabbing a role on TV she kept on slinging. She’d keep tabs on her drug business while she wasn’t in front of cameras acting like someone working in the drug business. That’s some surreal shit.

Grace After Midnight attempts to turn itself into a story of hope, making vague noises toward the end about her role on the show helping bring about a change of heart and a “new Snoop.” Raw talent notwithstanding, her success in the role seems like it was due more to dumb luck and good screenwriting than any real desire to change her life. The Wire went off the air in 2008, and just last month Snoop was sentenced to three years supervised probation when she was one of 60+ people busted as part of an East Baltimore drug sting. Wah-wah. But realistically speaking, how many acting roles are gonna be available to a lesbian baby gangsta from the corner? You want her to end up like The Wire’s Cuddy and his boxing gym, but maybe she’ll end up more like Michael or Dukie. Life really sucks.

The book, like many ghostwritten celebrity autobios, is poorly structured and features senior citizen-sized text and clunky musical references used to give us a sense of time and place. All that said, if you’re a Snoop fan or Wire completist it’s worth checking out at the library (but maybe not worth spending money on). The knowledge that Snoop’s very first crush was Smurfette is something I will treasure forever and always.