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 Nature Provides 

A Table Topped with Color

From Picayune, Mississippi, we moved “up” in the world: a little over a degree in latitude and 350 feet more in elevation. It is 103 miles farther off the coast, as the crow flies, and 115 miles if the crow is pushing a sedan holding a family of four and all their earthly goods. We were fortunate upon moving to Bay Springs, MS, to find a large, and clean, apartment, almost the entire lower floor of a comfortable older home that was available to accommodate a family of four, and the landlady, a widow, was willing to rent to a couple with two boys under the age of seven. She shared the rest of the house with her school-teacher daughter. The location, on the edge of town, provided a pleasant, almost country setting on an unpaved road that was bordered by wild berry vines, below the hill on which the house stood.

I had reached the age and stage that I was envious of my brother’s school activities, especially his departure every day on the big yellow and black bus. My mind could only imagine the mysterious voyage to destinations I could imagine but not describe. but I was too young to be invited, or to participate. Just recently his class had taken what I considered a magical  bus ride called a “field trip”, to which they had to bring a special and interesting sack lunch. I knew what fields were, but none of this could I fit comfortably into the pictures in my mind. I didn’t understand any of it, but just observing from an outsider’s perspective, as the preparations were made, was enough to bring me almost to tears as he went out the door. When they arrived at the grounds where the activities were to take place, there was a  shallow “wishing pond” that had a low, circular stonework enclosure about the height of a bench. He decided to see how far around the top of this he could walk, but, showing off, he lost his balance and fell in! He had to be brought home for a change of dry clothes. That kind of excitement would make any five-year-old wish to be in school!

With Easter approaching, Mother was making plans for a big get-together on Easter day, the first Sunday in April. My dad’s boss, the one who had met our train in Wyoming, and his wife, had become good friends with my parents over the past several months, and the whole crew had become like a family as we were transferred from one oil prospect to another. The war-time need for petroleum was still critical and most of the crew were single men with draft deferments. With our continual moving to meet the client’s needs, they were being drawn farther and farther from home with almost every relocation, and being home for the holiday was out of the question. The two ladies decided the occasion called for a home-cooked meal that would feed everybody. So, on a rainy April 1, 1945, we had a houseful of guests for Easter Sunday Dinner.  

Mom had grown up in a large family, and with drop-in friends and relatives, and hired men to feed, it meant two long dinning tables and a “kids’ table” had to be pressed into service for Sunday dinner. She was no newcomer to this scene, but when some of the fellows had asked what they could contribute to the effort, and offered to take over Easter egg duty, the ladies gladly accepted the offer. These resourceful young guys, left to their own devices, had been on  a Saturday spree, buying eggs from local farms where their surveying had made them and their vehicles familiar sights, and they showed up with over 150 eggs, hard-boiled and colored.

There were four of us kids present; my brother had just turned seven, I had recently turned five. The bosses daughter was four-and-a-half and her brother was three. We were all kept busy in the rear of the house while the Easter egg “hiding” was taking place by the men. Even in a big old house, there are not 150 quality hiding places! Some of the gentlemen had removed their boots because of the rain and mud outside. One of the boots had been filled completely to the top with eggs, The ceiling light fixture was like a porcelain bowl suspended on chains. The bowl had been filled with eggs. Some of the eggs had been propped behind chair legs, table legs, and floor lamps, in plain sight, a boon to Jimmy, the three year old. Everyone was enthusiastically involved as if there was no one there above the age of ten! Mild pandemonium ensued and eventually all the eggs had  been found and each youngster had a big grin, some with egg yolk crumbs at the corners. Everyone had hard boiled eggs to take home for their lunches, and we were determined that none should go to waste, as they were not readily available everywhere.

The landlady had hired a laundress / domestic worker to stop by weekly and help catch up household and wash-day chores. As she would begin operating the Maytag washing machine on the back porch, she and I would have extensive visits, so it was, that we became buddies. I asked if she liked hard boiled eggs, and upon finding that she did. I produced salt and pepper shakers and a cowboy hat full of eggs. We proceeded to feast upon them, starting with the “ugliest” ones first. As a social event, it was a total success!

Eventually, the blossoms began to wither and fall from the Dewberry vines under the hill, and tiny green berries began to form. I learned that there are other things “slower than Christmas”, and one of them is waiting on Dewberries to mature and ripen. I learned that there is no way to hasten the process, and a Dewberry picked before its time is a shameful travesty, and waiting for a berry to fill out and ripen into its sweet, tender purplish black color is worth the wait!

If someone had not already used a line similar to, ”it was the worst of times, it was the best of times”, it would have been the perfect way to describe our arrival in Magee, Mississippi, two counties to the west. For housing, after a couple of temporary “make-do”s,  we finally settled on a cramped  and overrun property in which we had no privacy and the youngsters of another family ran through “our side” as readily as they did their own. We shared the kitchen and bath facilities with that family, and anything left out on 

the table would quickly disapear, but it was no safer in the refrigerator or even in our bedrooms! We planned on it being a temporary arrangement but it took much longer to find other housing than usual. It just was not to be had!

Mom had been told by the surveyors of a thicket of wild plums that were ripe and ready for picking, or else they would spoil and go to waste. Sugar was rationed and in short supply, but the plums should be sweet enough not to require anything but some pectin to make a tart but flavorful batch of jam, jelly, and a cobler or two. If some of it got pilfered, it would still be worth the risk. A picking party was organized, and in the cool of the morning, armed with pans and buckets, we invaded the roadside patch of small wild plum trees, laden and golden and fragrant with ripe fruit. a harvest of more than enough to fill every jar available was placed on the table and covered with a cloth; the preparation would begin in the cool of the  following morning. Mom did not have the heart to deny a reasonable portion to the neighboring little raiders, because. “ they always look hungry; my kids are well fed”. The jelly and jam got made, and a cobler in the biggest pan she had that was suitable. I can still picture the fruit-laden trees, golden with ripe plums, and the jars, looking like amber gems with the sunlight shining through them, and the cobler where the fruit juice had bubbled over the crust, and the aroma that lingered in the kitchen!

Better times, as the song tells us, were, hopefully. “just around the corner”! Dad had been informed of a farm couple who had two sons, enlisted and deployed, in the U. S. Navy. That meant that two of the bedrooms of their large country home were not occupied, and they were considering renting them out. The house had running water in the large kitchen.  The renters would share use of the dining room and kitchen, on a schedule to fit with the couple and their daughter, a Sophomore in high school. All other facilities, or conveniences, or necessities would be typical of the type rural families had depended upon for decades. Under the circumstances, despite the three-mile distance from town, it would bear looking-into! Yes, Dad would check it out.

I'm having a good time following your early years, Ron. Are we going to learn in the next chapter if the cobbler and preserves were found by your roommates?

Thanks for your fun contributions!

A.J.

A.J., I think Dad boxed-up the jars of jelly and preserves and put them in the trunk of the company car and stored them at the office, some was probably distributed to the surveyors, (the ones that did their own cooking) that informed Mom about the location of the plum thicket. As for that big ol' cobbler. we pigged-out on it, leaving just enough to make a neighborly gesture to our co-renters. Our line of Smiths are notorious for having a sweet tooth. Grandpa Smith was an expert at spying on bees at the shady spring watering hole, watching them circle.for altitude,and following them as they made their "bee-line" back to their "bee tree". He would "rob" only enough to replenish the household supply, and he made his own sorghum molasses. He liked to embellish his breakfast biscuits. As a last resort, he would whip butter into white Karo syrup to top his biscuits! Soon after the plum-fest (or feast) we moved to the country to the Kennedy farm! Life was never better! Acres of water melon, cantaloupe. Ribbon Cane molasses, parched (roasted) peanuts, half a dozen varieties of peaches...shall I go on?

Yes, please go on, Ron!