HOW IT USED TO BE

I was watching a TV show on my computer the other day and I actually paid attention to the commercial (embedding is disabled, hence the link). At first I was amused by it, then I was amazed, and then I was downright mad about it. It was a commercial from the US government encouraging children to get physically fit. The buzz phrase was ‘go outside for an hour a day to play’.

As I was a child, when I wasn’t working the rock pile or helping around the house, I was playing. I was too busy playing to see a television commercial to tell me to play.

In the summer, the neighbor kids, my brothers and I played horseshoes. The shoes were actually from some horse that had been re-shod. When the horse was done with them they gave them to the children to play with. Re-cycling at work again.

It was easy to set up for a game of horseshoes. We’d drive 2 pieces of pipe in the ground about 15 feet apart and we were ready. We’d decide beforehand how many points you got for a ringer, how many for a shoe that leaned on the stake, and how many for a shoe that was close enough to the stake that it could be measured with the opening of the shoe. We learned all of the ways to garner a point by watching the adults play. The goal of course was to ring the stake (pipe) with the shoe. Believe it or not, it takes some skill to make this happen. The shoe is heavy, the opening on it is small, and 15 feet can be pretty far away for a child. Sometimes the less even tempered among us could be downright dangerous during a game. One kid in particular had a hard time losing and sometimes he’d fling the shoes at his opponent instead of the stake. I’m sure this wouldn’t be allowed in government encouraged playtime. And truth is sometimes our horse shoe games lasted way more than an hour. I guess we were really physically fit.

When our own children were growing up they never needed a TV commercial to encourage them to play either. It was amazing but they seemed to take to it as naturally as I did. Maybe playing is a gene thing and my kids got it from me. They played baseball, hide n seek, put on plays in their playhouse, flew kites, and a few dozen other activities that I consider play. And they still managed to work around the house like I believe growing children should. Another generation of kids who were physically fit. And they didn’t even have a television to watch commercials on!

And now the next generation is taking up the idea of play (and work). Our granddaughter is always running, dancing, jumping, singing. She loves to play in water or sand. She thinks walking to visit her grandparents is a great way to get here. The kid just knows how to play and exercise naturally.

Knowing how to play just has to be inherited. I’m darn near convinced that if you don’t have the play gene to get physically fit you better watch TV to see how it’s accomplished. I’m so glad it came naturally to me and mine.

I know I have made fun about the physical fitness of the children of our nation but it is a serious problem as can be seen by the statistics below:

• Since 1980, the number of overweight children has doubled
• 1/3 of young people in grades 9-12 don’t regularly engage in vigorous physical activity.
• Out of overweight 5 to 10-year-olds, 61% have one risk factor for heart disease, and 26% have two or more risk factors.
• Hospital costs related to treating overweight and obese children and adolescents more than tripled from $35 million during 1979-1981 to $127 million during 1997-1999.  (http://www.adcouncil.org/default.aspx?id=389)

As my dear old dad said at nearly every evening meal, “You’ll never get fat if you go away from the table a little bit hungry.” Following this advice, along with lots of work and play has worked for my family fit for 3 generations!

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Whenever we make a change in our lives we can sometimes feel like we are in a new world. Getting married was like that for me. I not only became a wife, I moved all the way across the country to the coast of Oregon, a place I had never seen before. It was a new world for me.

A world without thermostats. A world with wood stoves. I learned quickly how to build a fire in a wood stove. Our stove was not airtight so it had a burn time of about 2 hours. That meant if you left for longer than 2 hours when you returned it would be cold. I always tried to be home in 2 hours.

It was also a world of eating fish and venison. My husband was an avid hunter and fisherman. His reason for hunting and fishing was for the food it provided. I didn’t know what to think when he informed me shortly after my arrival that all we would be eating was either salmon, trout, deer, or elk. How long would I survive was the question because I didn’t eat any of those things! But again I was amazed at how quickly I adapted to my new world. I learned to eat (and eventually love) fish and venison. The will to live trumped the taste buds.

It was a world with out television. No kidding, there was no signal. It was before satellites and the mountains that rimmed the valley were so high no antennae would work. I was glad I enjoyed reading and found the library, which I visited once a week.

It was also a world without radio after 6:00 PM. I found one radio station that came in but promptly at six o’clock it would play the national anthem and go silent. If you weren’t comfortable with yourself or your spouse there weren’t a lot of things to distract you. For entertainment the first year, Herman and I read the entire Tarzan series by Edgar Rice Burroughs together. I mean we read each page at the same time through all 24 books. He always had to wait for me because he reads faster, even Tarzan books! Talk about bonding, huh?

It was a world without a lot of sunshine. The months of November through March are when it rains more. I arrived in very early October so I saw more rain and less sun the first six months. I learned to do everything in the rain because it doesn’t quit. I bought a rain coat and read more books.

It was a world with party line telephones. A party line telephone was like having all of your neighbors on your telephone line. I grew up with that in Pennsylvania but by the time I had reached my teens we had a private line. Nowadays every line is private. Being on a party line meant I had to be courteous and careful all at the same time. I learned to pick up the receiver and quickly determine if the line was free to make a call, in other words if I didn’t hear a conversation. I also had to be careful to never leave it off the hook. This would effectively render every telephone on the line useless. The careful part was I listened through my own conversations for that telltale sound of someone picking up. Nosy people stayed on the line to listen to what was talked about. It was a great tool for gossipers. I guess they were disappointed progress brought privacy to the phone system.

It was a world with nice, friendly people. I can honestly say I never met anyone who wasn’t friendly except maybe my neighbor Hannah.

I met Hannah one day when I was baking a pie. My hands were covered in flour and dough when I heard a pounding on the front door. Not a polite knock but an angry pounding. I quickly went to the door and as soon as I turned the knob it was pushed in by a rather stout woman. She stood about 4 and a half feet tall and was about 3 feet wide. She did not introduce herself but with hands on her hips she demanded to know where our telephone was. I didn’t understand but meekly pointed to the corner where our black desk phone sat on a little table. In spite of her girth she moved quick to look closely at the phone. What she saw took all the wind from her sails. She turned to face me and what I saw was a different woman. Her angry countenance was gone. She looked ashamed and contrite. She immediately began to apologize for her behavior. She explained that she needed to use the telephone. Every time she tried to use it, it was busy. The logical conclusion was someone had left their phone off the hook. Since I was the new to the neighborhood she made the leap that I was the guilty party. Since she couldn’t call me and ask, she had to come in person. By the time she actually got to our house she was whopping mad!

I accepted Hannah’s apology. We introduced ourselves and began anew. She was now part of my new world and I wanted all the friends I could get.

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My father grew up on a farm and for some reason disliked a lot of things that are part of farming. One of those things was a garden that grew vegetables. This meant I did not grow up with a vegetable garden in the yard. The funny thing is that 3 out of dad’s 4 children as adults have all become gardeners.

I was 18 years old and wanted to try my hand at growing something to eat. Anything would do. I went to my uncle who was a big time (in my mind) vegetable grower. I asked him for help and he agreed. Knowing what I know now, I realize he did not expend much thought or effort but I was so excited and grateful. He came to our house with his rototiller and prepared a little patch of earth for me to plant. At his suggestion I planted onions!

My growing onions gave me a wonderful sense  of accomplishment. I checked their growth every day and could not wait till I could put one in my mouth. I know it was only onions but for a girl who wanted to grow something I was completely delighted. I also learned that sharing your produce was nearly as rewarding as growing it.

The first place my husband and I lived had about 12 acres. With this much space I eagerly awaited spring so  I could have my first honest to goodness garden. I purchased seeds in the late winter, carefully planning what we would plant. What I didn’t realize was I had married a man who did not share my enthusiasm for gardening. So spring and summer passed and the seeds remained in their packets. I thought, O well! I did plant onions once.

Little did I know that my gardening fortunes were about to change. It was probably the economics of it, after all you can save a lot of money if you produce your own food. At any rate, after waiting nearly 5 years my husband decided a garden was a really good idea. I have never done a cartwheel but I wanted to! We were going to grow stuff we could eat. My husband comes from a long line of farming and gardening folk. His paternal grandfather had a truck farm, his maternal grandfather a dairy farm. His father had a degree in Horticultural and loved to garden (both food and flowers). So I guess it was inevitable that my man would wake up one day and say, “Let’s plant a garden.” And I thank God he did!

Our first garden was not big but quite adequate. We decided on the usual things- tomatoes, lettuce, onions, peppers, beans, and corn. A trip to the feed and seed store was exciting. So many varieties to choose from and I knew so little! What I never knew was the knowledge that this man I married had on the subject. It was amazing and comforting to know that only one half of the garden team was a greenhorn. He walked up and down the aisles like a pro. He picked out bush beans, not pole. He wanted a butter and sugar corn.  He didn’t forget the fertilizer either and he knew what kind to get. O Yeah, this guy was a gardener after all!

Next came the soil preparation. We borrowed a rototiller and worked the ground. Back and forth, tearing up the grass and weeds and softening the earth to lay our seeds in. It was hard work because it was a new garden spot.  We had to rake out the clods of grass, rocks, and roots. Once it was clear of these things we smoothed it all over. Our next big decision was what went where. Again this guy I married happily surprised me. I was just going to take the hoe and carve out a line in the soil but he showed me the way real gardeners accomplish this task. We took string and tied it between two stakes. Then we positioned the stakes where we wanted the row to be. We pulled the string tight and that created a nice straight line to follow. I was impressed.

We dropped our seeds in, spaced according to package directions. Next we put fertilizer right down the side of the rows after the seeds were covered with soil. We were busy as can be.

Meanwhile our children were right beside us. Not only were they helping, they were learning how to garden. That is how my husband learned so much. He was with his own father from the time he was a child and now he was the father.

Our children thought it was a great adventure. They understood clearly that we were going to get the things we wanted to eat from planting the seeds of those things. To make it more special we set aside a little space for our daughter and son to plant their own seeds. They were allowed to choose what seeds they wanted to put in their little patch. Our daughter wanted to plant beans. We found the bean seeds and she carefully placed them in the ground, gently covering them with dirt. She was the oldest and had already put some of the seeds in for our garden.

Meanwhile, our son was busy going through all the seed packages trying to find the one he wanted. He was not able to read but he was looking at all the pictures.  When we asked him what he was going to plant he looked at us with exasperation asking, “Where are the hamburger seeds?” I think he understood the concept of having a garden to feed your family better than we did.

He never did find hamburger seeds.

Since that first little garden we have had many more. And my husband has worked very hard in every one of them. All of our children have gardens of their own. Our granddaughter (age 2) helped her mom and dad plant theirs this year. And so it goes.

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Early this morning my husband and daughter went out behind our house to go blackberry picking. One of the blackberries favorite places to grow is along the perimeter of a field. You can pretty much always find some nice picking if you look in a place like this. They were gone about 2 hours and came home with 4 gallons. Considering that’s enough for 12 blackberry pies it’s not a bad return for the time and effort spent.

I grew up picking berries in the summer. First there were the wild strawberries. We picked them in the field beside the small airport that was up the road from our house. There were always enough for 3 or 4 strawberry shortcakes. When they would quit bearing we would move to the huckleberries.

Huckleberries are the wild cousin of the domesticated blueberry. Most of the time they are smaller and     black. The taste is pretty much the same but they grow on bushes that are low to the ground. (perfectly suited for children to pick) We would pick our huckleberries at a place we called “The Cuts” it was an old strip mining area not too far from our house. It had hundreds of bushes and my brother and I and other neighborhood kids would pick gallons of these berries. My mom would make up pies in aluminum pie pans and freeze them. Then all through the fall and winter we would have huckleberry pies. It was a great feeling knowing there were pies waiting to be baked. When these berries played out we moved on to blackberry picking.

Blackberries were picked at a place called “The Pits.” It was a very large area with a huge, deep hole in the middle of it. A factory used the place to dump garbage in when I was a kid. I don’t know what the original purpose was. It had tons of blackberry bushes. The berries were usually big and juicy. We would pick gallon after gallon of blackberries. My mom would repeat the pie process with these berries but she would also make jam. I still love blackberry jam but with less seeds than my mom made. The last berry to ripen was the elderberry.

Elderberries grow on small trees or large bushes. You can find elderberry bushes just about anywhere. They have a very sour taste on their own. (No problem getting all you picked home with these berries.) My mother used the elderberry exclusively for jelly. They are easy to make juice from and the jelly has a wonderful taste.

All of these berries have a limited time to be picked before they dried up or critters would eat them. That meant when the berry picking season began you could not procrastinate. I guess as kids we felt like it was our responsibility to get the berries while we could. And it felt good to know we had contributed to the food supply. Especially the one that answered the sweet tooth cravings.

Berry picking continued to be a big part of our children’s lives as well. While my husband was at work, I and our children would often go blackberry picking. Because my husband loves to use jelly on hotdogs, hamburgers, and other sandwiches, this meant using every available berry around for making jelly. One year we managed to pick enough berries of various kinds to make 100 jars of jelly. Now that’s some serious berry picking!

No matter where we have lived we have managed to find berries to pick, and with those berries make wonderful desserts, jellies, or pies.

Berry picking is not only how it used to be but how it still is.

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