Mailboxes and Old Barns

Canned produce retrieved from basement cupboards in November of 1952 or February of 1954 was never gobbled. It was quietly dished up with a great dollop of gratitude and enjoyed in a way that acknowledged the heat of the summer day that the canning was actually done, when it was 90 degrees and the flies were buzzing around the screened windows which had been opened in a silent appeal for  a non-existent breeze.

Or it might have been a deliciously cool day that was gratefully accepted by the wives and the aunts and the sisters who visited as they peeled and sliced and scalded and cooked and cored summer ingredients for a fall blessing, a holiday table, or a winter’s day.

They couldn’t start until the men had left for the field in the morning (which meant they could start any time after 6:30) and they had to be done with that day’s batch before it was time to start fixing supper.

Peach sauce, pear sauce, grape jam,  cherries, peach jam, apricot jam and apple butter required fruit to be ordered weeks ahead and shipped in by train.  Chokecherry syrup and June berry sauce came from the berries we picked in the coulees down in the pasture.  Beet pickles, cucumber pickles, string beans, rhubarb sauce and jam came from our garden.  Intentional canning.  Canning is not an impulsive or casual household happening.  It is, inherently, something done on purpose.

Now “peach sauce” is just peaches with peach juice.  ”Pear sauce” is pears with pear juice.  And June berry sauce is fat smoky-blue June Berries from down in the hills, picked by the buckets-full a few weeks before the Chokecherries–with juice.  The June berries didn’t have seeds or pits like the Chokecherries did and they were so sweet for eating right off the tree.

It never occurred to us that everybody in the world didn’t enjoy peach sauce and pear sauce until the summer day, about 1952, that our Dad ordered some with a noon meal in a Los Angeles.  ”I’d like the roast beef sandwich, please, and some sauce.” The waitress  was probably trying to figure out how to tell the nice man with the farmer tan lines that she was surprised that he wanted to get sauced so early in the day when a California relative who noticed her face and understood about peach sauce tossed him needed guidance in the form of, “Immanuel, you can just order a dish of fruit.”

Oh.  Ok.

Will it have juice?

It will?

Well, then.  There’s your peach sauce.

Chokecherries might become sauce as well, but just as often they didn’t, because the eating of chokecherry sauce was an acquired skill that never got better than “tedious” in terms of efficiency.  It had to be done politely and quietly,  separating all the little tiny pits from each small berry, then getting it back out of our mouths onto the teaspoon, quietly accumulating The Little Pit Stack on our plate with no slurping or slopping.  Chokecherry syrup was a far greater reward and provided the chokecherries with a unique destination that June berries couldn’t share.  With an edge to the flavor and bright purple for the color farm pancakes were draped in mighty fine fashion when there was Chokecherry Syrup on the table.

Only one of the canned treasures had anything even slightly innovative in its ingredients.  Mom would cut up maraschino cherries and add them to the apricot jam.  Pretty and tasty, just slightly innovative.  Not enough to be accused of grandstanding, but enough that it said, “I like to give my family something a little pretty on the table.”  You put a tablespoon or so of that on a slab of home made bread already spread with home made butter and see if you ever go back to boughten again.  {Boughten just means that whatever you are talking about was not made at home.  Skirts might be boughten or not.  Flour was always boughten.  Bread?  Never.  Jam? Only in April when we had eaten up the last of the homemade and we were going to have company and needed jam for the table to go with the roast beef dinner.}

Carrots, potatoes and onions weren’t canned.  They just went into The Cave in the fall where they were maintained in chilled-but-not-frozen condition in that 6 X 8 X 10 foot hole in the ground that had a neat 10 step cement stairwell down into The Cave,  entered through a tidy, well-formed door off the sidewalk about 20 feet from the back door–right next to The Wash House which was where clothes were washed during months that didn’t threaten the lives of those doing the job in the years before The *REA came in.  In the spring, the remaining potatoes would be sorted and cut up with 2 or 3 eyes left on each piece to be planted for the new crop.   The Cave also served as our storm shelter when once every 15 years or so, a summer storm showed potential for dropping a tornado on our heads.

The peaches, pears and apricots would arrive over the weeks of June and July in the mail car on the night stop of the Great Northern train that blew its whistle as it pulled up by the depot platform where The Agent waited to take delivery so he could lock up and go home.  Did they come from Michigan?  Or Washington?  Or Western Montana?  I never knew.  But they came from far away and were beautiful.  Most of the farms didn’t have telephones so the mailman would leave a card in the mailbox, telling the farm women that the fruit had arrived, much as the arrival of the yellow fuzzballs of chicks had been announced in March.

Now there were three entrances to our big farm kitchen: one led outdoors, one led to the back hall and basement, and the other into the dining room and we children knew that we would not be crossing any of those boundaries when The Pressure Cooker was on the stove.  I still get a slight twinge in my midsection when I remember the threat of the old pressure cooker puffing away on the stove, sometimes with a hiss elevated to a squeal as the crucial point was reached. ”It’s  Dangerous,” one mother would say.  ”It Might Explode,” another would warn.   I don’t recall ever hearing Actual Reports of Pressure Cookers Exploding but the threatening truism “It Might Explode,” kept us all well out of harm’s way, summer after summer.

By the day, by the week, by the month, by the season, by the year, family members saw the sweat running down the faces of their mothers and sisters, and fathers and brothers, sons and daughters–with the occasional sharp word correcting a problem in the making and the more frequent mass hilarity as polished story-telling filled the time.  They didn’t know about self-esteem, but they knew about self-respect.  Didn’t talk about it. Didn’t need to.

In later years when all the girls in the family had left home, the farm wife did her canning as she had done at the beginning–efficiently and quietly and alone.  Lining the jars up.  Waiting to be sure they were all sealed.  Waiting for them to cool so they could be carefully wiped clean of every bit of sticky juice before they were carried to the basement.  In these later years, it was more likely there would be still be full rows of fruits and vegetables in the cupboards in April and May.  After a couple of years, she would redo the math. Less intentional canning.

So in the middle of a summer day in a very peaceful and normal way, with a quiet heart and practiced hand, the canning was intentionally done.

If we still did intentional canning perhaps it wouldn’t be so important to remember it.

But since canning is intentional, we could do it again.

 I believe I will.

*The REA: Rural Electric Administration, which was established in 1935 to bring electricity to rural areas.  We got electricity about 1950.

The following was my older sister’s contribution to a retirement program held for our older brother in Cedar Falls, Iowa in the late 1980′s and is reprinted here exactly as she wrote it.  She and Bill were born only 11 months apart.  They were inseparable during their growing-up years and continued to be very close all through their adult years.  This narrative relates some of their joint shenanigans as well as some of Bill’s stellar solo moments.

When Bill was about 11 years old he was already noteworthy. Returning from working with his brother Dick, he was standing in the back end of a long-bed farm wagon which was hitched, unfortunately, to a team of workhorses, known as Pete and Tony. Dick, being 15, was “in charge” of the team, and the direction thereof. Amidst great jubilation, lusty yells, hoots & hollers, Pete and Tony went completely berserk and became runaways. Nothing Dick did seemed to have any effect whatsoever on what Pete and Tony decided to do. Speed mounted. The team broke their harness; the tongue of the wagon hit the ground.

Now this doesn’t do a lot for the occupants of the wagon; as a matter of fact, it doesn’t do a lot for the wagon. Uncle Willie, who was in an adjoining field watching this amazing sight, was waving back to the exuberant boys, as they suddenly were not following procedure. Uncle Willie saw Bill sailing through the clear blue sky, as the horses disappeared in the distance; at least Bill was sailing towards his own field, and not his uncle’s. This proves that even then, his guidance system was in perfect working order. At this point, Bill’s parents and sister were coming upon the scene, returning from town. There wasn’t much of a scene. Only a wagon upside down in the ditch, wheels spinning. No boys. No horses. After some searching, it was discovered that Dick was under the wagon, inside of it. Considering he was the official driver, this is appropriate. He was only dazed.

A search was mounted in the cornfield, according to Uncle Willie’s direction. He advised not bothering to look nearer than the 40^th row away, due to Bill’s trajectory and speed. It’s difficult to find an 11-year old boy in corn 6-7 feet high, and the kid isn’t making any noise! After the allotted length of time for an exercise of this sort, Bill was found. He was brought around fairly quickly. Claimed he was absolutely fine and didn’t feel a thing. After he and Dick were both taken home in the car, he proceeded to open the gate (in a fence surrounding the house to keep out leopards) with his head. His Dad asked him why he used his head to open the gate. Bill said in a disgusted tone, “Well, my hands don’t work.” Both arms were broken; his nose was severely misshapen. Other than that, he figured he’d had a fine ride. The horses were found in a straw stack 2 miles away with a strange look in their eyes.

High school opened up new vistas for a person of Bill’s imagination and talent. The author of this tribute and several collaborators can all attest to the fact that never before, never since, was there such a great turnover of teachers. It is a fact that from September to December in one of the better years, there were three different teachers successively hired to teach the same bunch of star students, one of whom—of course—was Bill.

There are varying accounts of the circumstances causing such sudden departures. Considering the fact that in those days teachers were hired from distant states and had moved many hundreds of miles just to teach those star students, it is amazing they’d leave; or be asked to leave, so often. Those who were there don’t understand it to this day.

“BUGS” Miller was one who did not leave. He hung in there. Bugs was the shop teacher. Bugs had a green “Kaiser” car. Bugs like his green Kaiser a whole lot. To this day, it’s not clear why Bugs asked Bill to BACK his green Kaiser UP the ramp, out of the shop, which was located in the basement of the high school. The most probable explanation is that Bill had a temporary lapse in his excellent judgment—when on the way up the rather steep ramp in reverse, somehow he took the side off of Bugs’ nice green Kaiser. Bugs was never the same. Bill’s absence from shop class was duly noted during the following weeks.

Now, George Cooper had an absolutely paranoid suspicion of Bill and his cousin. No matter HOW often it happened that somebody put gunny sacks in the vents of the old hand-cranked forges down in the shop and then lit a match to the gunny sacks (which in turn very quickly smoked up the entire school building, all 3 floors)—Cooper always immediately looked for Bill. And his cousin. That’s what I call discrimination of the vilest sort. Anyone who knows Bill knows that he would have been studying his U.S. History and his Economics, which was always his favorite subject. He certainly didn’t have time for gunny sacks in vents…..

Halloween was always one of the big points of the year in Montana. There’s no absolute proof that could hold up in court, mind you, but there WAS that big wooden farm wagon on TOP of the neighbor’s house….(Could Bill have been around?)….and of course, all their chickens WERE inside of their house, transported with loving care from the chicken coop—(how often do chickens get to go anywhere, after all?) (Could Bill have been around??) Sightings were made in the general area, but it is a public road, you know.

Of course, the hay bales stacked to the eves of the roof ALL the way around that house up there on the hill—THAT was a touch of genius—the genius we’ve seen here at work. You’ve just got to believe it is a whole heap of work to re-locate an entire stack of hay bales from their original location to the location mentioned. Of course, at the entrances of the house in question, they had to be stacked at least 4 deep. Otherwise, when the owners of the house returned from an extended vacation in the middle of November, it could be they wouldn’t even notice anyone had been there. (Conservatively figuring, the energy expended that night by about 8 or 9 dedicated workers would have been enough to run their respective farms and ranches for the following 2 months…)

Bill has always been a diligent worker. There was one very long night in Montana. Bill was about 15; it was July. Single-handed, Bill cultivated nigh unto 70-80 acres of corn with a 2-bottom cultivator. Of course, the idea of the whole exercise was to cultivate the corn, not THIN it! But it’s amazing how easily that can happen when it’s 4 in the morning and you’ve been on that ever-lovin’ tractor since the day before. The fact that he had fooled around for 2 weeks doing nothing, and had to finish the work before his parents returned from vacation, does nothing to diminish Bill’s sterling performance and the fact that he does take pride in seeing a job well done. (Sure could have used an 8-bottom cultivator, though!!)

Note from Sharon: the “vacation” she mentions that Dad and Mom were on was a trip to the annual UELC (Danish Lutheran Church) convention to which they were delegates.  It was definitely not a “go off and have a good time just because you feel like it and you need a break from farming” actual fer real vacation. Those were not part of the family tradition and taking that kind of vacation in 1952 would just be a real good way to git yerself talked about around the area.