Amanuensis Monday--Elsie Crocker’s Manuscript, Part 13: Of fruit and Olive

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On this orchard we had all kinds of fruit trees, apples, six or seven variaties, petite plums, peaches, and pears.

Grandma Aileen in peach orchard, age 3 (1918)

We had all kinds of berries, especially strawberries The ever bearing kind and raspberries also some gooseberries. Dad liked gooseberry pie, but was sour without sugar.

We would pick them right off the vines for breakfast with sugar and thick cream they were sure good!

We had lots of melons watermellons, cantaloupe, musk melons These were pink inside. When these melons were ripe them would fall off the vine. We were taught that any kind of fruit had to be ripe before you ate it or you would have a stomachacke.

This proved, when my sister was small got into the gooseberry patch. She ate them when they were green and was she sick. They had the doctor for her, she had convulsions We were real scared. This was my sister Aileen. No more green fruit.

Dad had a big melon patch in between his rows of corn. One day when the Dorr’s were there. I tried to find a ripe watermelon for their son. So I proceeded to plug most of the large melons. Not one of them were ripe.

To plug a melon, you cut a small triangle in the melon. The cut has to be fairly deep and then pull the plug out If it is real red on the tip, it would be ripe.

Dad was upset for me to cut so many melons, he was afraid they would spoil, I don’t think they did, that was the last I heard about the watermelons. However I never plugged watermelons again.

My sister Olive was very quite, she staied around the house a lot. She had some curl in her hair and Mother would put her hair up in strips of news paper. Her hair was short and easy to curl.

Mine was different It was longer and put up in braids. I had pigtails with ribbons on the back of my head or one on each side. My mom braided my hair every morning, when I went to school. We walked a long way home, and on the way I would unbraid my hair and let it hang doun my back. It would be wavy after it was undone. After being braided all day. My friends liked. Mother would always wonder why it would come undone, she never knew and my brothers never told her.

Olive loved the water, she would get in the irrgation ditch close to the house, with all her clothes on. Aunt Sadie said she could stop this, she made Olive a pretty crocheted bead necklace. She instructed Olive to never go in the water and get them wet, or wear them in the water. Olive went in the water again but this time she wasn’t wearing them but had them in her hand trying to keep them dry.

Olive vowed she never had worn these beads in the water. Sadie was furious, that her plan hadn’t worked.

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