The Strawberry Festival

I

THE Strawberry Festival was not so fixed an annual observance in our community as the Sunday School picnic, for instance, but it was recognized as one of those social affairs designed to further some worthy cause.

Upon one occasion which I remember as well for the calamity that nearly befell as for the luscious feast that it was, the actuating need was a suddenly disclosed but apparently overwhelming demand for new hymnbooks for the church. Mis’ Lou Esty, besides being seamstress-by-the-week for the neighborhood, sometimes went to the City to sew for more fashionable patrons, and invariably brought back some innovations for our improvement. She it was who introduced the stylish method of placing the twirled napkin in our goblets, and it was she again who came home from one of these urban visits filled with zeal for a more modern version of tuneful praise than was afforded by the old hymnbooks. She was a considerable leader in all church affairs, including the choir, where her somewhat nasal soprano soared stridently above all ot her voices, and if Mis’ Esty found the old hymnbooks wanting, there were none to argue. All the town churches, she said, had new hymnbooks with brighter, livelier tunes than the old ones, and less morbid words.

‘You take that one now,’ she was telling my mother one night in late May, as they did the dishes together in our kitchen, ‘about “Hark, from the tomb a doleful sound.” That ain’t no kind of a tune to sing where there’s children,’

Mis’ Esty had no real home of her own except a room over at Bouldrys’, where, as she sometimes said, she went between threading one needle and another. She was a sociable body, however, and did n’t favor staying long in her one room, so she often came to our house to stay a few days at a time. The most of her sewing for country families was done in February and March before women got too busy with house cleaning, gardening, and chickens, so here she was now, telling us about the new hymnbooks folks were buying in town. My mother, ever alert for signs of progress in the outside world, agreed with her.

‘1 never thought it was any kind of a hymn for anybody,’ she said, wringing out her dishcloth and hanging it to dry behind the stove. ‘What kind of tunes has this new one got?’

‘ Well, there’s one that goes —’ Mis’ Lou Esty, the ends of a linen dish towel held in her two hands like a baton, broke into a rather shrill treble, keeping time with nodding head, rhythmic towel, and the faintest suggestion of swaying hips: —

My mother stood at respectful and admiring attention, her hands folded lightly across the full gathers of her apron.

‘My!’ she said, as Mis’ Esty concluded her performance and the glow of ecstasy faded from her face, ‘that is nice. I’d like to hear the whole of it.’

My father, his paper lowered, head bent that he might peer over his steelrimmed glasses, grunted.

‘Don’t you like it, Mr. Thompson?’ asked Mis’ Esty unwisely. She never did learn that the better part of wisdom, in dealing with my father, was not to question him unless you wanted bitter truth.

‘Good enough song,’ he replied gruffly, ‘ if you ’re tryin’ to beat a thunderstorm in harvestin’. Can’t see what it’s got to do with religion, though.’

‘Why, that’s plain,’ Mis’ Esty told him fatuously. ‘ It just means if you ’re good, why — why —‘

My father snorted and raised his paper. ‘When you get a new hymnbook,’ he told her shortly, ‘that’ll beat “Rock of Ages,” you let me know.’

II

Nevertheless, Mis’ Esty found a sufficient number of adherents to further her plan, and the church voted to buy new hymnbooks. The next thing was to get the money with which to buy them. The Strawberry Festival was the final plan, and this was also Mis’ Esty’s idea.

‘ I told ’em,’ she reported at our house as we sat at supper on the evening after the meeting of the Ladies’ Aid where the decision was made, ‘’t I knew Mr. Thompson’d donate the berries. You’d do that, would n’t you, Mr. Thompson?’

Two things among a considerable number of others my father hated were familiarity or any imposition upon his dignity, and having someone else make promises for him. Few people who knew him ever ventured either trespass, but Mis’ Esty, although doubtless talented as a costumer, was a little weak in her perceptions. She now waited in smiling confidence as my father fidgeted with his knife and fork, spilled his tea, and grew dark of brow. My mother watched him with knowing apprehension.

‘ Wa-a-l,’ he drawled finally, ‘if I’d a — been asked about it, I’d a — prob’Iy looked into it.’

‘My goodness!’ exploded Mis’ Esty. ‘I told you about it. They want to get new hymnbooks.’

‘Yes,’ said my father, helping himself elaborately to a second supply of cold dandelion greens and fried potatoes, ‘I heard tell they did — some of ’em.’

‘Well!’ Mis’ Esty’s voice registered both impatience and indignation. ‘The Ladies’ Aid decided on it. And we all thought you’d donate the berries. You’re always givin’ away berries.’

‘Yes,’ said my father, liberally spreading freshly churned butter on freshly baked bread, ‘ that’s one reason I grow ’em. To give ’em away — when I want to.’

Always there came a certain point in the domestic relations of our family when my mother’s tolerant understanding and tactful handling would bring at least a cessation of argument.

‘Why, yes,’ she now intervened, ‘we’re always glad to share our berries — what we don’t sell — if we have plenty. How does the berry crop look, ’Lijer?’ Thus did she divert his attention from hymns to horticulture.

‘Well,’ said my father, pushing his chair back from the table and brushing a crumb from his vest, ‘they flowered good. If we don’t have a frost — but strawberries is about the reskiest crop the’ is . . .’ And the contract for donating strawberries for the Festival, while not enthusiastically given, was, nevertheless, tacitly assured. The weather was all that could be desired; the crop promised abundance. Preparations for the Festival proceeded, with no threat of halt in the performance until a committee of ladies came to our house one day in June to discuss the form of refreshments. The decision was retailed to my father at the conclusion of the evening meal.

‘You mean to tell me,’ he shouted, turning on my mother, who was clearing the table, ‘that they’re goin’ to put them berries into pies?’

‘Why, yes.’ Even my mother, who was used to his outbursts, — quite harmless except in ferocity of tone, — was surprised at the violence of his manner. ‘Strawberries make a good pie — if you make it right.’

‘Strawberries ain’t meant for pie! What in the name of Tophet’s the sense of spoiling strawberries puttin’ ’em into a pie?’

‘Well,’ expostulated my mother a little worriedly, ‘I s’pose they’ve got a right to put the strawberries into pies if they want to. They thought it’d be a change.’

‘Not my strawberries, they ain’t! Why, ’Miry,’ he took a step toward her that by a stranger might have been interpreted as threatening. To my mother and me — a little girl dressing a Maltese cat in hood and mittens — he was just Pa, making a fuss about something to eat. ‘Why, ’Miry, it’d be a crime to put the only kind of fruit on earth that’s fit for a shortcake into a pie that almost anything can be put into.’

‘You would n’t think,’ said my mother dryly, continuing now with her supper work, ‘that you could put almost anything into a pie, the fuss you make about apple and punkin — and mince.’

‘Well,’ his voice dropped to a less heated tone as he pushed a chair against the wall with his foot, turned, and paced the floor, his hands thrust severely into his overalls pockets, ‘you can make a pie out of a lot of things, and you can’t make a shortcake out of anything but strawberries.’

‘Oh, shaw! You can too!’ My mother shut the pantry door with conviction, and poured hot water over the dishes from the teakettle. ‘I’ve made shortcake out of raspberries myself, and you’ve eaten it.’

‘Yes, and you know what I thought about it, too. And anyway, them women won’t get no strawberries out of me unless they put ’em into shortcake, way they ought to.’

‘Mebbe they would n’t make good shortcakes if they did.’

‘Can’t you make ’em yourself?’

‘I can, but I won’t,’ stated my mother firmly. ‘Not and give the berries too.’

‘I’d give the berries and welcome,’ offered my father wistfully, ‘if you’d make the shortcakes.’

‘I’ll make you all the shortcakes you want,’ she promised him faithfully, ‘till strawberries is over — but you’ll have to stand what you get to this Festival or stay to home.’

He did not threaten to stay at home, having weakened after making such a threat once in the case of a church supper, and again at a Sunday School picnic; but the uncertainty of what he might do resulted, by some diplomatic manœuvre on the part of my mother, in getting the pièce de résistance of the menu changed from pie to shortcake. He merely grumbled.

III

All, then, went well to the festive day. The church lawn was mowed, its edges trimmed with sickle and shears. Rows of lanterns swung gayly from one post to another. Tables, improvised from planks and ‘horses,’ were set up and clothed. Bouquets of red and white clover ornamented the centre line. My father picked the berries — cream of the crop — in the coolness of early morning and put them in the cellar. He gloated over them as he bore great basins of them through the kitchen.

‘Berries like them,’ he boasted to my mother, holding a pan of huge crimson fragrant fruit under her nose, ‘ought to buy a tarnation good hymnbook.’ He chuckled. ‘Ought to have something in it about bringin’ in the berries, ’stead of sheaves.’

The Festival was to be held at six o’clock; and on a June day, in the height of strawberry season, at six o’clock the sun is still lambent, though the shadows lie long upon the grass.

Now a Strawberry Festival in those days, which seem not so long ago in spite of the fifty-odd years that lie between, was, in Southern Michigan at least, an event of sufficient social importance to warrant new summer dresses, and perhaps a new straw hat. Men came in early from the fields and shaved. Some of the young men even stripped and bathed, though it was only the middle of the week — especially those who were going to take a girl. A visit to the barber on the Saturday night previous had resulted in hair cut and pomaded. Buggies had been washed, harness oiled and shined, horses curried and brushed.

Since we were to bring the berries with us, to be applied to the hot shortcake at the last moment, we went a bit early, my father demurring but little to the waste of time and what to him seemed a foolish custom of eating out of doors.

‘ Worst time in the whole year to eat outdoors,’ he grumbled. ‘Gnats and skeeters — ’

‘Too early for skeeters,’ my mother encouraged him, as she brushed his alpaca coat and worn breeches, ‘and it’s too high for gnats. Gnats stay on low land. Now for heaven’s sake don’t forget the berries. The ones for the shortcakes is in a stone crock and the others in a basket with grape leaves over ’em.’ For it had been decided that not only should there be shortcake, but strawberries and cream to follow.

‘Foolishest thing I ever heard of,’ declared my father truculently, ‘spoilin’ two o’ the best dishes in the world, crowdin’ ’em.’ But nevertheless he had scoured his vines to find the largest, ripest, finest berries for the latter dish, exulting in their fragrance and beauty.

He went to get the horse and buggy, I with him, while my mother took a last look around the house.

We arrived upon a gay and festive scene. Men dawdled upon and around the steps of the church. Boys and girls walked in the graveyard, white dresses catching on the thorny fingers of pale green eglantine that grew by the gate, clumsy, tender hands releasing. Women gathered about the table. Everybody, it would seem, was there, except the Covells. ‘Land’s sakes!’ commented my mother as we drove up. ‘What’s happened to the Coveils? They’re gen’r’lly the first!’

Mis’ Simpson, living nearest the church, had volunteered to make the shortcakes and arrived at the same moment as we did.

‘You bring along the berries, ’Lije,’ commanded my mother, hurrying off to the table. ‘Take Delly with you.’

So my father and I drove to the hitching rack and left the horse. Then, with the gray stone jar held carefully in one arm, the basket of whole berries in the other, he led the way back through smiling, welcoming groups to the improvised worktable where my mother was impatiently waiting.

Mis’ Simpson was removing the towels from the shortcakes, Mis’ Bouldry was lavishly spreading the steaming halves with butter. My mother grabbed the heavy stone jar from my father’s hands, set it on the table, and snatched off the cover. Her head and neck gave a convulsive jerk as she leaned over the crock. She bent farther over, the better to peer. A look of utter dismay overspread her face. She leaned heavily with her hands upon the table, and slowly lifted a pallid, horrified face to my father. The people around her were frozen with apprehension. My father stared at her.

‘Lard!’ she whispered. ’Lard! You got the wrong crock!’ My father took a step forward and glared unbelievingly into the jar.

‘I got it where you told me,’ he said nervously, ‘on the cellar shelf.’

My mother threw both hands to her head, knocking the hat that sat precariously on her mop of black hair to a rakish angle.

‘Oh, Lord!’ she breathed, not unpiously. ‘I brought ’em up to sweeten up and forgot.’

My father fell back, shocked and silent. No word was spoken. Alarm and consternation had spread from group to group. Without their knowing the depth of catastrophe, its shadow had fallen. Nothing, it seemed, could redeem the situation.

Our house, our kitchen, and the jar of berries in it, were two miles away. The shortcakes were cooling; the butter, in spite of the slanting rays of a June sun, was stiffening. The berries, the crimson luscious berries with their sweet juice, were far away. Sheridan with his mere twenty miles and a good fast horse to cover the distance was as a wraith of mist before the wind compared to these two miles and a spoiling crust.

Then Mis’ Bouldry came to life. ‘Well, my land!’ she exclaimed confidently. ‘It ain’t as if we did n’t have berries. We’ll just use these.’ She was stripping the leaves from the basket, to my father’s indignant dismay, when, with a clatter of hoofs and a rattle of loosened spokes, the Covells hove into view.

The Covells were our next neighbors on the east, a thriftless crew composed of a shiftless father and a slatternly mother with four children, all girls; always borrowing, never returning; certain to be counted on where food was plentiful and good, regardless of cost. They were too poor to buy the children decent clothes, but never too poor to pay for a church supper. Never before had they been known to be late, and on the way over my father had made some caustic speculation as to whether the Covells would already be seated at the tables, tongues a-droolin’.

But here they came, Ol’ Covell ‘g’langing’ at the lean team that drew them, the girls flopping and banging about on the two improvised board seats across the box of the wagon, Mrs. Covell waving one hand violently in the air and hanging for dear life with the other — to a stone crock in her lap!

Every eye was lifted to their approach. My father stood open-mou thed, his old sweat-stained straw hat pushed back on his bald head. My mother, pale and stricken, seemed hardly to sense the agitation.

‘Hey!’ shouted Mis’ Covell as the team drew up with a lurching flourish. ‘Lookit! We got the berries!’

My mother gasped. My father lunged forward, strode, grabbed the jar from Mis’ Covell’s astonished hands, and plunked it down on the table.

‘There!’ he said, with the air of a man who has accomplished miracles, but not unwittingly.

It appeared, when anyone was sufficiently recovered from shock to listen, that Mis’ Covell had been asked to contribute sugar to the Festival as a preventive measure against having to eat any of her cooking), and finding herself short, — a customary condition of her larder, — had stopped to borrow of my mother.

Opening the unlocked door, she had helped herself to the sugar, and then, led by her nose, had found the stone jar of fragrant fruit. Suspecting the situation, she had snatched up the crock and egged her astonished spouse — accustomed to moderation in all personal activity — to speed, and here they were.

My mother bent happily to the belated inundation of flaky crust with crimson berries; my father swaggered a little from group to group, showing his basket of tempting fruit.

‘Best crop I ever had,’he said. ‘ Why, five of them berries’ll fill a cup.’ No one thought to question the size of the cup.

Mis’ Lou Esty’s voice clarioned. Long pantalooned legs slid over the rude benches at the side of the table. Modestly garmented ankles slipped in beside them. Hats were recklessly flung upon the grass. The Committee ‘waited.’ Young men properly attended their ladies, as did older men — when they remembered.

IV

The menu was simple, but plenteous, since this was a supper rather than the usual Festival fare of berries, ice cream, and cake. It consisted of a dish announced by Mis’ Esty as Chicken Cheese — another urban innovation the rule for which she had brought back with her from the Edwardses’ — and instantly denounced by my father when she had discussed it with my mother at the outset of plans.

‘Why in tunket they want to chonk up their chicken beforehand?’ he wanted to know. ‘Cold fried chicken’s good enough for anybody.’ ‘We always have fried chicken,’ declared my mother in defense of Mis’ Esty’s argument. ‘Seems good to have a change.’

My father snorted. ‘Change!‘ he barked. ‘What’s the sense in changing anything that’s good the way it is?’

In this, however, probably because she had stood in favor of shortcake as against pie, my mother arrayed herself with Mis’ Esty and her ‘Chicken Cheese.’

It was a tasty dish, as I recall it, and the rule which I find in one of my old cookbooks sounds not unappetizing, although by and large I agree with my father as to the merits of fried chicken on, as you might say, the hoof.

To make Chicken Cheese you ‘ take a chicken and cook it very tender. Cook the gravy or liquor of the chicken down to a jell. Take out all the bones and chop the meat; season with salt, pepper, and a little sage. Put it then into a mould and pour the liquor over it. When cold, take out and slice.’

My own translation of this recipe as rendered in later days calls for one small onion finely chopped and a seasoning of celery salt in addition. I also use a tablespoon of dissolved gelatin to a pint of the strong liquor to pour over the meat. And I garnish it with hard boiled egg sliced, radish roses, and parsley. It differs from the original recipe only in being more highly seasoned and dressed up a little.

There were scalloped potatoes, hot and smoking, the top of each tin basin encrusted with an amber film shading to brown and bisque, oozing, at a touch, a creamy liquid rich with the salty zest of butter.

There were riz’ biscuits, differing pleasantly from the baking-powder consistency of the shortcakes, and there was a huge bowl of young lettuce leaves dressed with mild vinegar, sugar, and salt, and served on saucers. There were tart cucumber pickles and dill pickles, but the generous impulse of some to contribute preserves and other sweets had been restrained. ‘You don’t want sweet things,’ my mother had told them, ‘just before you eat shortcake. Spoil the taste of it if you do.’

And the shortcake! With all due allowance made for the lapse of time between the uncovering of Mis’ Simpson’s cakes and the arrival of the berries for their rosy thatch, there could not have been much wrong, it seems to me, with that shortcake, judging by the manner in which it disappeared. And yet, on our way home, my father acidly remarked that so far as he was concerned ‘they might just as well have kept their shortcake to home. The berries was all right, but it was a pity to waste ’em on a shortcake like that.’

‘Why, ’Lije,’ differed my mother, ‘that was good shortcake; it was n’t made with sour milk the way I do, that’s all.’

‘Well,’ he grumbled as we jogged homeward, ‘we’ll have to wait couple days now ’fore we can have any shortcake.’ Then he chuckled rumblingly into his stubby beard. ‘Had n’t been for them danged snoopin’ Covells,’ he muttered, ‘we might a had plenty shortcake to-morrow.’

v

For the rule by which my mother made her sour-milk shortcake — or one similar to it — I have had to search through such old ‘receipt books’ as are treasured by the daughters of her contemporaries, since she left no record of her own. What I have found contains all the ingredients, and in proper proportions, as nearly as we can judge. Of course I am giving you modern, level measurements where the old books call for ‘heaping’ teaspoonfuls and ‘cups’ of this and that, heaven only knowing what size the cups were. But here it is, according to our translation, and you must do the best you can with it. For by what necromancy my mother welded these ingredients together I do not know, but try as I may I cannot persuade my palate that a shortcake made to-day, using exactly the same component parts, tastes quite as did those so inextricably mingled in memory with the rare, sweet Junes of my childhood’s memory. Perhaps it was the berries — my father was a master hand at raising berries. None nowadays taste nearly so sweet or have such strawberry flavor. Perhaps it was the butter. There is no such butter now as that which enriched — both outside and in — my mother’s shortcake. Perhaps it was because my father said it was good — for when my father said a thing was good you could take his word for it. It was good. And — perhaps it was because my mother made it!

At any rate, here are the things she put in it, and, so far as I can tell, the way she put them together (according to this old dog-eared book lent me by the daughter of the first owner, who cooked by practically the same rules). And I can only hope that you will have the skill (or luck) to bring forth something that will give you half the epicurean pleasure that my mother’s shortcakes gave us.

To two cups of flour take one teaspoonful of baking soda, one teaspoonful of salt, four tablespoonfuls of shortening (half butter), and about a cup and a half of sour milk, ‘lobbered.’ Sift the flour, salt, and soda together into a bowl, and work in the shortening. Then pour in the milk, stirring the flour into it from the sides with a wooden spoon. The dough should be just as soft as it can be handled, so the amount of milk is indefinite. Pour it out on to a floured board and then pat it out or roll it gently — handling it just as little as possible — to a cake about three quarters of an inch thick. Put this into a buttered baking tin either square or oblong and bake it in a hot oven (450 degrees) for fifteen minutes.

The amount of soda depends somewhat on the sourness of the milk. Do not try to sour pasteurized milk, for it cannot be done. It will get ’old’ but it will not ‘lobber.’ And if you don’t know what ‘lobbered’ means, it means thick — the dictionary stylishly calls it ‘clabbered.’ If you use too much soda, the cake will be yellow and taste like lye. Of course you may be safer in making a baking-powder dough, in which case you take your regular recipe for biscuits but add another tablespoon of shortening (using half butter, at least, for the shortening) and bake it the same way.

When your cake is done (and ‘shortcake’ in my kind of recipe does n’t mean ‘biscuits’), proceed after this fashion: have your strawberries (dead ripe) washed, hulled, mashed, and sweetened, in a bowl (my mother used a blue bowl and I am reasonably sure it was Staffordshire, but it was not prized and she used it because the berries looked so pretty in it). And be sure there are plenty of them.

Turn your hot cake out on a platter and split it in two, laying the top half aside while you give your undivided attention to the lower. Spread this most generously with butter just softened enough (but never melted) to spread nicely, and be sure to lay it on clear up to the very eaves. Now slosh your berries on, spoonful after spoonful — all it will take. Over this put the top layer, and give it the same treatment, butter and berries, and let them drool off the edges — a rich, red, luscious, slowly oozing cascade of ambrosia. On the top place a few whole berries — if you want to — and get it to the table as quickly as you can. It should be eaten just off the warm, and if anybody wants to deluge it with cream, let him do so. But the memory of a strawberry shortcake like this lies with the cake and not with cream.