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Fall

Over on the Philippi hill the men were beginning to cut the cane. Miss Cynthia called to ask Mama and Aunt Merica if they would like to come help stir molasses. They were always glad to go. The women talked and talked, the night was pleasantly cold, the fire under the big vat lit the surroundings and outlined the old horse plodding his way round and round, harnessed to the long tongue from the crusher into which the cane was fed. The green juice in the big vat over a blazing fire, gradually turned cream then tan then brown and finally as the night ware on, the ladles were harder to push through the mass. About this time, and after several tasting tests, someone declared it molasses. After the gallon tins were filled and set aside, we all took our long handled, wooden ladles and began stirring another vat of green liquid. It was exciting to stay up so late.

The ladle we used was our applebutter ladle. The blade was fully six inches wide and the handle six feet long. Each fall Mama and Aunt Merica peeled and cut pan after pan of apples from one certain tree, dumped the apples and sugar into the brass applebutter kettle sitting in the washtub's rack out over a fire and stirred and stirred until at a certain point cinnamon flavoring was added and soon after the batch became delicious applebutter. Sometimes it was stored without processing and afterwards Aunt Merica lifted the sheet of blue mold from the top, removed a thin lawyer of applebutter and declared it alright. Any mold on jelly and marmalade was carefully removed, too. Sugar products were different from the other things.

Mama and Aunt Merica's garden work was ending. Sewing, raking the leaves in the yard, digging the dahlia bulbs, bringing in the house flowers, sunning any quilts that got missed in the spring, collecting old quilts to have ready to cover the potatoes in the cellar or even the car engine on the coldest of winter nights, and piling leaves on the perennial beds drew the months of hard outdoor work to a close. Soon even the slopping of the hogs would end.

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