Sweet Remembrances of a Simpler Time

"I could run like the wind and ride my bike like there was no tomorrow. Oh, I loved to ride my bike."

Matilda smiled, brown eyes twinkling under lavender plastic-rimmed glasses and cotton-white hair as she remembered herself as a young girl in the 1930s. Quickly I looked for something to write with, something to write on. When she started out this way, there would be a story erupting soon. If not a cogent story, then wisps of memories - names, places, events - that I could weave together later through both gentle urging and more pointed questions. This was family history, and she was the last of that generation to tell it.

Matilda was the fastest runner in her one-room schoolhouse. Faster than all of the boys. Faster than her older brother. That earned her the respect of the boys and the admiration of the girls. Being fast helped when she and her siblings walked home for lunch. They could run around outside and play if they were back before Mrs. Clabber rang the school bell.

It was different back then, in the country. They lived on Route 29, but it wasn't a big highway like today, it was one lane each direction, and the cars were much slower. Although her sister Regina was a year younger than she, and often was glued to her side, Regina wasn't much for riding bikes. Down the road, her best friend Louisa wasn't always able to join her, as she needed to stay with her bratty sister Geneva. So when the urge to ride her bike was upon her, Matilda was on her own. She would take off on an adventure.

"It wasn't like it is now. Kids could go out. It was safe. My mother didn't worry about us kids, she knew we were around and we had our wits about us. I would go out about, we were in the country. We had to go together if we were going down to the creek for a swim. There were a few leeches, we wanted somebody in case we got one on us!" She drew her mouth down at the revolting memory. "I bet you've never had to pull off a leech." She was right about that.

"Most days, Daddy was out in the garden in the afternoon. It was big, down behind the house. The garden was serious business, that was our food. The plant where he worked didn't get rid of the workers during the Depression. The men all worked half a day. With the ration tickets and his pay from the plant, we were able to get enough for us. There was never a lot, but with Daddy's garden full of potatoes and squash, we had food for the winter. He did not grow cabbages, he bought those and made saurkraut, the barrel was in the corner of the cellar." Her hand went to her chin, remembering. "Serious business. He didn't let us kids help him in the garden. He couldn't risk having one of us step on a beanstalk or a tomato plant, that would mean we would be a couple of jars of food short that year. My mother would put up the vegetables, it was so hot in the kitchen, I don't know how she did it, boiling all the jars."

"My mother made the best pickles around. She won prizes for her pickles. None of us girls ever learned to make pickles, and that was a mistake." She closed her eyes and dreamt of the crunch of a dill pickle, the tangy flavor of a gherkin, licking her lips ever so slightly. Mmm, so nice to taste the sweet memories.

"Mom fed everyone. There wasn't much, but she made it stretch. She fed the hobos. I read that the hobos would mark houses, our house must have been marked. We didn't know about that back then. We had a back kitchen where she did the canning. She would give them some food in the back kitchen. There were always some of us kids around, Daddy was in the garden, it wasn't scary. These poor men were down on their luck. Mom fed the hungry." A wistful look out of the window accompanied by a slight sigh. "Maybe that's where I got it from. How about a nice grilled cheese sandwich? I can put a slice of tomato on it?" she offered. Oh, she made such good grilled cheese sandwiches!

Passing on the sandwich and instead getting her a drink of water, we got back on track with her story. I gently nudged, "what did you do when you went out alone?"

With a mischievous glint in her eye, she told about sometimes sneaking into the Bergstraesser's barn and climbing into the hayloft. But she usually went there with Louisa, as that was more fun.

"I'd wander around, sometimes. My bike had big tires, not the skinny ones that those ten-speeds they used to have, that you have to bend over to ride. Fat tires, more like those jumping bikes that go on the trails now in the dirt. My bike was better on the road, but it could go across a field if the grass wasn't too high. I had strong legs. There were some of the roads that were tough to ride. One time I was riding home with Regina, and she had a melon in her basket. We went on the road where the cables were all dug up, and we went bumpity-bumpity-bump over those cables, and the melon popped right out! We picked it up and took it home. That was part of our pay at Higgins' Farm. We would get 5 cents a day helping to pick beans, and we would bring beans home and whatever else they gave us. Oh! That melon," she chuckled, "I haven't thought about that in quite awhile!"

"I was an active kid, and I got hungry. When I got home from school, there would be a snack. Either two cookies if mom made cookies that day. Cookies didn't last long at our house. Or an apple. Those New York apples are the best, you can't get apples like that out here in the west. I hope you get to try some good apples from the Empire State, then you will know what I say is true." A little smacking of the lips in fond remembrance.

"I liked to go out exploring. I remember one day I was gone for awhile, I took the road along the creek and down aways, not as far as the river. We didn't go to the river. I saw a deer and a little deer down under a tree. I suppose I thought I could sneak up on it because my bike was quiet in the grass. I suppose you know what happened. The deer heard me and they ran away when I wasn't even close yet. It was curious to me though, what were they doing by that tree, maybe they lived there? I didn't know, so I investigated. When I got closer, I saw that it was a pear tree, and it was full of pears! That was a lucky find - ripe pears when I was hungry! Oh they were pretty, turning green to gold. I helped myself to those pears, I think I ate 4 or 5 right there! I put two in my pockets. I couldn't take any more, because the basket was on Regina's bike and not mine. She wasn't a good rider like I was, she didn't want to come with me, and later she was sorry to hear that I found the pears. It was exciting to find that pear tree out there, just growing wild in the country!"

Matilda had a big grin and looked at me, brown eyes still twinkling.

"When I think about it now, that pear tree wasn't so far from a farmhouse, maybe it would be half a block away if you were measuring by our street outside here. It had to be their tree, of course. I wonder what they thought about that, some little girl charging to their tree on a bike and eating their pears!"

We both sat quietly, wondering if she had been seen that day. Perhaps by a woman gazing out her kitchen window, wearing her apron, caring for her family, feeling happy that her pear tree could bring such joy to a little girl.

"They were probably like my mother, and knew that kids get hungry. That's why I'm always trying to feed people." Folding her hands on the table, she leaned forward.

"Now. Can I get you a little snack? I have a few cookies in the tin. Or a nice tuna sandwich."