Spring
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Winter
Fall
The last of the summer garden was being picked
daily for meals and the fall garden was producing. Late beans
were canned if the summer crop had not provided enough for winter.
Mama and Aunt Merica cut the heads of late cabbage, pulled rutabagas,
turnips, parsnips, and salsify and piled them out in the garden
where Daddy dug a deep hole or two, lined it with leaves, buried
them, topped with many leaves, for use later in the winter.
They had to remember just where the hole was and which hole
had the cabbage and which the other things. Enough for several
meals was taken out when the weather permitted the opening of
a hole; the extra was stored in the cellar. Salsify was sometimes
left in the ground where it grew but this limited its use, for
it could not be dug if the ground was deeply frozen. The thick
layer of leaves helped get into the holes.
Mama and Aunt Merica made it a habit to glance
around the shelves at the cans to be sure none had sprung a
leak and was spoiling. When a can was brought down in winter
it was checked, opened and the food examined. Anyone who lived
six or eight months of the year on home canned food knew how
the food should look and smell, and knew how the opening of
the can should sound. "Batcha!" Aunt Merica would
say if the food had spoiled, and we knew to go for another can
while she threw away the contents of this one.
The days were bright, crisp and sunny. After church
you asked, "Are the chinquapins ripe? Are you going to
hunt this afternoon?'' Later, the chestnuts began to fall and
we went to hunt for them. Mama collected
sacks of black walnuts from under our tree up by the wash kettle,
dumped them in the car tracks out in the lane so Daddy could
run over them with the car and break off their thick, brown
staining outer shells. Then she finished the job with a hammer
and spent several days with golden brown hands. The sack of
nuts sat in the corner of the dining room, there behind the
open Franklin stove, and dried. During the winter, after school,
I got an iron, the shoe hammer, and a nut pick and ate my fill,
throwing the empty shells into the fire. In spring, the sack
was moved to the shed.
Mama treated us to one hickory nut cake each year.
Afternoons, sitting out on the front porch, she would crack
and pick out the nutmeats. The pick point was sometimes bigger
than the nutmeat crevice, so she would use a long darning needle
to free the bit of nut. Finally, she would have the cup or two
required and one night we would have this most delicious dessert.
Often, when we sat on the porch, wrapped in sweaters,
watching the people go by, we could see the men in the Lindsey
field cutting and shocking the corn. Mounds of shucked corn
grew as they made their way down the rows; yellow pumpkins appeared
where they had grown in the corn's shade all summer. It looked
just like the pictures put around the top of the blackboard
in my classroom. Soon Mama, Daddy and Aunt Merica would get
me dressed for Halloween, for the town drug store's Halloween
costume contest. That was a bigger event to me than Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving Day got more attention at school than it did at
our house or at any of the neighbors. It was just a day. Maybe
Mama would bake a chicken. And Aunt Merica made pumpkin pies.
However, it was Halloween that was exciting.
They got my outfit ready. From the depths of the
big chest in her guest room closet, Aunt Merica found black
garments to clothe me, and a black hat on which Daddy fastened
an orange cardboard funnel. Mama found a small broom. Together
they fashioned a veil to cover my face, with great eye hole
so I could see and not fall down. Later, at the crowded drug
store, I wandered around, down among the knees of the big people.
Sometimes I could see Daddy looking at me. Then, the people
all said I had won! My costume was the best! I was given a black
glass cat to take home. I won the next year, too. And got a
little ivory elephant. Mama and Aunt Merica and Daddy knew how
to create costumes for me.
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