From my earliest remembrance (age 4) I had a drug problem. Momma drug me to Sunday School, she drug me to Church, she drug me to Prayer Meeting on Wednesday nights. I got drug to pot luck dinners every month at church and everywhere else she went. I loved it.
We would go to farms around Erie when they were done with most of their harvest. Like the times of Ruth from the Bible, farmers (even commercial farms) would let people come in and glean after the picking was no longer profitable to them. We would go to the pickle farm and Momma would give me a peck basket to carry. A bushell was to big for me and a peck or "splint basket" was just right. We would go thru the fields and collect a bushell or two of pickles and cucumbers take them home and "can" them.
Old song..."I love you, a bushell and a peck. A bushell and a peck, and a hug around the neck".
Remember those shelves in the basement. We had more fruit and vegetables than we would be able to use in one season, so there was always some to share with friends. Momma would cook, steam, or boil anything from apples, berries, cherries, dandelions, eggplant, fruit, grapes, honey, ijklmn....all the way to z for zucchini. She made pie fillings, jellies, jams, peaches, pickled watermelon rind, rhubarb, and on and on...
I don't think that there was anything she could not preserve in a Mason jar, and did. Corn, lima beans, peas, carrots, elderberries, mince meat, quince, strawberries, and more. If it grew, she canned it in season and we ate it all year long.
The oven and stove was gas and served many more purposes than just cooking. We will discover some of them later. For now, let's just say it was one of my favorite places in the house. Momma was always baking pies, making stew or dumplings or bacon and eggs or baking bread. The kitchen would always be remembered as a gathering place for friends who were always dropping in.
Remember that the "block" I grew up on was triangular not four sided. Starting at the eastern point (22nd and Brown Avenue) and going West on Brown Avenue we had a small ice cream store run by Vincent Manarelli, a very special Italian gentleman. At the western end of his building was my barber shop. The next house West were the Ryans. Then the Reddingers, then our house. Nest to us were the Alberstardts and then a family who's father was a commercial artist. Skip Niebauer and his mom and dad and sister were next. Skip was my best friend from four years old thru high school.
Keep in mind, he was only three houses West from me and consequently most of our adventures were initially centered in the area the size of a football field. Next to skip was Aunt Jenny Smith who was the neighborhood "historian" and my Mommas best friend. Historian is a polite way of saying that she made sure she was aware of everything and anything going on in the neighborhood. She was the reason Momma knew so much about where I was and what I did until I was about six years old. After that I learned to cover my tracks better.
Next to Aunt Jenny was an older couple who were nice yet kept pretty much to themselves. Roslind and her family lived in the last house before the alley that divided the end of the block. I am thinking that it was "Millers" furniture store that finished out Brown Avenue to Raspberry.
This was the focus of our "tactical area of responsibility" Other than Skips uncle, who lived directly behind him and whose house faced 22nd Street, the German bakery at 22nd and Raspberry was the only other point of interest for us. Until I was six years old I was not allowed to go past the alley way and for Skip and I that area might as well have been as off limits as daring to cross the street.
Over the years our range of operations would expand to include undreamed of adventures in places that were so full of wonder and history and discovery as to be worthy of their own story.
Back to adventures with Momma. In addition to visiting farms to "pick your own" we would go to the farmers market on the East side of town.
Guess this would be a good time to mention that by now Momma was 68 and I was 4. Our transportation was a 1942 Nash, four door, straight eight, vib, stick shift, black sedan with running boards and a trunk big enough to stuff at least two bodies in it. We walked two blocks to church. Everywhere else we went, Momma drove.
Momma drove to the farmers market at least twice a month during harvest, and once a month the rest of the year. They called them "the good old days" and for good reason. The United States was the breadbasket of the world. We grew not only enough to feed ourselves, but much of the free world was dependent on our surplus. There was no such thing as food stamps for the poor. Instead there was surplus food. Anyone on social security with need was eligible for "surplus food" at a distribution center, a part of the farmers market. Every month Momma would pick up 10 lbs of flour, 5lbs of dried beans, 5lbs of cheese, and what ever else the government had purchased as part of aid to farmers. The farmers were helped and the people with need were helped. Interesting concept, the idea of charity beginning at home.
I digress. The farmers market also was a wonder for the beholding. Live chickens, turkeys, and even goats as well as fresh meat and produce. Pick out a chicken and they would kill it, bleed it and take most of the feathers off with a knobby rubber belt that looked like an over sized belt sander turned upside down. The smells, the sounds and the action was like going to the circus for a four year old.
On the way home, we might go by the public dock at the foot of State Street, watch the fishing boats come in from Lake Erie and purchase some "fresh" lake perch.
What a wonderful world.
(cntd)
Heidi's mom still "cans" food.
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