Every Little Scrap and Wonder
CBC Books | | Posted: January 10, 2020 3:18 PM | Last Updated: January 10, 2020
Carla Funk
Carla Funk grew up in a place of logging trucks and God, pellet guns and parables. Every Sunday, she sat with her mother and brother in the same pew at the Mennonite church while her dad stayed home with his cigarettes and a fridge full of whiskey.
In these tender, humorous stories, Funk stitches together the wondrous and the mundane: making snow angels and carrying sacks of potatoes, tossing pig bladders like footballs, and vying for the Christmas pageant spotlight.
Part ode to childhood, part love letter to rural life, Every Little Scrap and Wonder offers an original take on the memories, stories, and traditions we all carry within ourselves, whether we planned to or not. (From Greystone Books)
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From the book
Every September, as the last green of summer dropped to umber and rust, and the winds chilled toward frost, we ushered in the fall with a bonfire. This was no celebratory rite. This was cleanup from the season past and preparation for the winter ahead. In a clearing in the trees, on the same ground where last year's fire had burned, a pile of ashes hinted at the future.
Over a starter of bark scraps, lumber odds and ends, crumpled newspapers, and a few punky blocks of wood, my dad dumped gasoline from a jerry can, then took the half-smoked cigarette from his mouth and flicked it on the heap.
The spark flared to sizzle, then to high-flame shock within seconds, threatening to singe our eyelashes with the heat. When the surge had calmed enough to let my mother relax her grip on the garden hose, our purge began in earnest. Down the trail through the trees, my brother and I dragged brushwood and deadfall.
From the garden, my mother carted wheelbarrow loads of ragweed, chickweed, clover, and purple thistle. We hauled paper feed bags full of feathers and chicken heads and an assortment of creature debris that crackled like live wires when tossed into the flames. My father backed up his pickup truck as close to the burn as he could get without bubbling the paint, then stood in the box, chucking out whatever garbage had accumulated.
Empty cigarette cartons, warped 8-tracks, grease rags, last autumn's Ritchie Brothers auction catalogues — the fire took it all.
From Every Little Scrap and Wonder by Carla Funk ©2019. Published by Greystone Books.