Beech Tree News Network

A few days ago, when I was picking tomatoes, I remembered an episode from my childhood.  It made me smile.  I wrote about it over 15 years ago.  I thought those of you who never read that column might enjoy it, and those of you who did read it might enjoy reading it again.

                Because I grew up with a stepmom, I inherited a whole package of step in-laws.  Luckily for me, they accepted me as if I had been born into the family.  One of my favorites of the group was my Aunt Della, my stepmom’s sister.  Every summer, my two younger sisters and I would spend a week at her house.  We didn’t do anything spectacular while there, still those are some of my favorite memories.

                I liked Della, because she let me hang around her.  She taught me things she believed I could learn, which in turn made me believe I could learn them.  I would help her in the garden, mostly with tomatoes.  She trusted me to pick the ripest ones for juice and the firmest ones for canning whole.  I learned how to blanch a tomato in hot water, just long enough so the skin would come off in one piece.  She let me press tomatoes through a sieve for juice and strain the seeds out through a mesh colander.  I learned the importance of always wiping the mouth of a canning jar before applying the lid.  It was a very heady experience for a ten-year-old.

                I’ve always heard that imitation is the highest form of flattery, so it stands to reason when my sisters and my cousins and I played together in the afternoons, we all pretended to have our own houses, complete with canning cellars, like Aunt Della’s.   Our playground was the field just outside the yard.  We used sticks to make boundaries for our pretend houses then we’d invite each other over for meals, some of which consisted of weed seeds served up on oak leaves.

                We found old bottles and tin cans that had been pitched over the hillside—this was during the days before rural trash pickup and recycling—and used them to can kraut (grass), hominy (white clover), and peas (a wild plant with long stems of  green seeds).  I decided to take the canning thing to the next level when I found some rotten tomatoes Aunt Della had dumped in a pile, just over the pasture fence.  I crammed as many as I could into an empty syrup bottle then capped it off and placed it into my “cellar” in preparation for my next social foray with my sisters and cousins.

                Do you know what happens to rotten tomatoes crammed into an empty syrup bottle on a hot July afternoon?  I didn’t.  If I had, I would have decided on an entrée other than vegetable soup for my guests.  I placed a tossed-out pan, with no handle and a dent in its side, on to my kitchen stove (a small pile of creek rocks) then added hominy and peas.

                I retrieved my bottle of canned tomatoes from the cellar and tried to loosen the cap.  I pecked the edges with a stick.  I held it upside down and shook it.  I even tried banging the flat side of the lid on the tree that served as the roof over my house, all to no avail.  I decided I needed more leverage, so I placed the bottle between my legs for a better grip then put all the pressure I could muster on the cap.

                Have you ever seen news footage of surface to air missiles or maybe even the shoulder-carried rocket launchers the terrorists use?  It is the same sort of spectacle a rotten-tomato-filled syrup bottle creates when the lid finally comes off in a ten-year-old’s hands. 

                I heard it before I saw it—the sound of tomato bits hitting the leaves in the tree overhead.  I then did the one thing you should never do in this particular situation.  I looked up.  I looked up just as the exploding tomatoes were coming down.  I was hit right between the eyes.

                I ran yelling in the direction I believed to be the house.  Aunt Della met me in the yard, and I could hear her laughter, even though I couldn’t see her.  The smell was horrendous.  Even after several shampoos with Prell, my hair still stank to high heaven.  Aunt Della put vinegar in the last rinse water, which did help a bit, although I went around for a week smelling like I had been pickled. 

                I told my granddaughter, Sabria, this story a couple of weeks ago.  It was as funny to her as it had been to Aunt Della all those years ago.  Nature always provides the best laughs.