The neatly wrapped packages of deep purple blackberries in my local grocery store tantalized my taste buds – and took me three-quarters of a century back in time to the 1940s and my grandmother’s home in the community of Fruitdale on the outskirts of Dallas, Texas
The home was a square, white frame two-bedroom dwelling with a large backyard, behind which was a fenced off area for the rabbits, pigs and chickens my grandmother raised for the dinner table. My parents and I moved in with my grandmother after her husband died when I was just three-years old. Two younger brothers soon were added to the household, but as I remember, the small house never felt crowded, even though I shared my grandmother’s bed or was put to sleep on the living room couch.
On one side of the house was a large garden, mostly tended by my mother, in which each year was grown potatoes, peas, cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans, okra, onions, beets, green peppers, carrots and corn. My short. petite mother, whose weight never exceeded a hundred pounds, and my grandmother, a tall, plump woman, spent hours in the kitchen canning the garden’s bounty.
Images of these two women whose genes I inherited were suddenly as clear in my mind as the blackberries stacked in front of me. As was the dark dirt-floor cellar where the canned goods and things like potatoes and onions were stored. The cellar was assessed only by an outside entrance next to the steep cement steps leading from the kitchen down to the backyard. I hated being sent down there for something, but quickly learned it was useless to resist. I grew up when children did as they were told, and if they complained, they usually were given additional tasks.
When we first moved into my grandmother’s home, our ice box was just that. A man driving a horse cart came around twice a week with big blocks of ice for it. I was usually given slivers of the frozen water to suck on, a treat during Texas’ hot summers. The icebox, however, was soon replaced by an electric refrigerator. I missed the iceman, but enjoyed the frozen Cool Aid pops my grandmother made for me when she thought I had been good.
Good to her meant things like bringing home a bucket full of the blackberries she had sent me to gather. The huge wild patch lay behind my grandmother’s animal enclosure and the railroad tracks. Knowing what I know now about such places, I’m surprised I didn’t get bit by a rattlesnake hiding out in the thicket, especially since such snakes were occasionally found in our backyard. But that thought never entered my mind.
I knew that if I picked enough my grandmother would give me a bowl of blackberries sprinkled with sugar and milk before she made pies from the rest. The berries always turned the milk purple.
Another bonus of picking blackberries was that sometimes I used to get a good look at the Texas Zephyr, which roared just beyond the blackberry patch once a day. I always waved at the train, wishing I was on it going off on an adventure. I think that might have been the beginning of the wanderlust that has kept me on the move for much of my life.
All these memories flooded through my head in the few seconds I stared at that package of blackberries – before I added it to my grocery cart.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
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