Blackberries, Smelt and Wonder Bread

Part 3

In the Pacific Northwest blackberries grow wild.  The blackberry patch behind our home high above Washougal, Washington stretched for about 60 to 70 feet along Mt. Norway road and was about 10 to 15 feet wide.   (Looking at a satellite view of that home on Google a few minutes ago, it appears that the huge blackberry patch has been removed and replaced with a border of trees of some kind.  Well, I hope the trees produce edible fruit or nuts.)

This patch naturally produced blackberries in abundance, assisted only by Mother Nature.  We kids could eat all we wanted.  My mother, Cora, would fashion buckets out of used 2 pound coffee tins by adding a handle made from metal coat hangers.  In the late summer we filled the buckets again and again, then Cora would cook up a year’s supply of blackberry jam.

The blackberry bushes contained more than luscious sweet berries–according to the two boys who lived on the far side of the berry patch.    They had me convinced–I must have been about 6 years old–that trolls and other monsters lived deep in it.  One evening I came home a bit late from playing with a friend and it began to grow dark.  When I approached the blackberry patch, I began to cry for my parents.  I was afraid that the trolls would get me.  Someone (I don’t remember who) took me home.  After that I was always home before dark.

My parents were both ahead and behind the times.  Ahead of the return-to- the- land movement of the ’70s.  And behind because much of our food during the 5 years we lived in Washougal came from the land, the great forests behind us, and the Columbia River below — as food had for generations of people living on the frontier.   

My father Harry would go hunting every Fall and what he shot–elk or deer–would be cut up and stored in a frozen food locker down in Washougal.  Then during the year the meat would be taken from the locker and brought home to our refrigerator.  Some years the elk was tender.  Some years it wasn’t.   Harry fished in the Columbia and I remember wooden boxes on the porch one year filled with delicious smoked smelt.  I didn’t like salmon roe at all.

Other people living off the land nearby were the Indians who fished at the Celilo Falls, a series of rapids in the Columbia River.  My parents took us up to see them fishing for salmon the last year before the Falls were destroyed by construction of the Bonneville Dam.   The Indians (I’m not sure which tribe) had built seemingly flimsy structures over the rushing water.  Using big nets, they scooped up salmon as they jumped out of the water to swim up the Falls.

Every morning the school bus picked up me and other children nearby.  We all carried bag lunches.  The peanut butter and jelly or bologna sandwiches in my bag lunch were always made with Cora’s home-baked potato bread.  I remember wishing I could have Wonder Bread sandwiches like most of the other children at school.  Wonder Bread was soft and had a light crust and the slices were thin.  Cora’s bread was thick-sliced and substantial.  I’m sorry I don’t have the recipe.

Cora’s contributions to the family larder went beyond blackberry jam and potato bread.   She planted a south-facing kitchen garden with corn, beans, beets, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and potatoes.  To this day I love a dinner of fresh corn on the cob dripping with butter and thick sliced tomatoes with a dollop of mayonnaise, salt and pepper.  What we did not eat fresh, got canned or pickled.

I also remember the sharp scent of powdered DDT which Cora sprinkled liberally on the tomato plants.  The dangers of DDT were not revealed until 20 years later.  DDT was not the only toxic food we ate.

More about food poisons later…

(This post is part of an experimental memoir.  I teach memoir writing and will edit your memoir to make it better.  Learn more at www.onedaymemoir.com)