me perfectly delectable. After these blackberrying outings I would be covered in every private area by tons of bites.
Between the bees, the mosquitoes, the ticks, and the rest, I was pretty much an insect banquet for most of the summer. We were children of nature. The woods were our wonderland and constant companion.
After bath time, Dad would dab calamine lotion on all the little itchy red spots and he would recite a little poem:
“ If a chigger were bigger, say as big as a cow,“ And his digger were bigger, as big as a plow,“ Oh where oh where would Jeffrey be now?”
Not far from our house on Hornettown Road was a huge overgrown brushy brake, at the edge of the woods, by a field. It was full of blackberry briars, huge canes of luscious, plump fruit defended only by the sharp prehistoric claws of the blackberry briars.
With the patience of age, adults usually did pretty well at getting the fruit without getting hurt. But greedy, overeager boys often paid in blood for the luscious prize.
We collected the berries in big two-and-a-half gallon galvanized pails. Between my parents and brothers and I, we picked a lot of berries. Of course, we boys were probably eating as many as we were putting in the pail. That was our rule.
Standing in the blackberry thicket as a summer morning quickly warmed to summer day, we
What a trip to the country is all about!
Fruits and Veggies
Melons, Tomatoes Sweet Corn, Green Beans Summer Apples, Peaches Blackberries, Blueberries
• Fudge Shop & Ice Cream Parlor
• Baked Goods from scratch
• Jams, Honey, and Gifts
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encountered a seemingly inexhaustible supply of big, fat, ripe blackberries— buckets and buckets of them— free for the taking.
The tangible reward for the adversities of wild berry gathering was considerable: Mom’ s blackberry cobbler.
I guess most people think their mother was the best cook ever, but I have to tell you, my mother was a real wonder in the kitchen.
A few years back on the family thread, someone posted a query,“ How did grandma make her cobbler?” This seemingly simple question exploded into a long, involved debate with many theories, including internet searches on just what exactly constitutes a cobbler.
Nobody could ever exactly duplicate that fabulous blackberry cobbler, not even me, the greatest known expert on Mom’ s cooking. Unlike her peach cobbler, it had layers of strips of pastry within the cobbler. She would dish it hot into a bowl and dribble just a bit of milk over the top.
And so, the blackberry cobbler remains, hanging in our memories; the perfect product of an earthy encounter with nature. •
July / August 2022 • Our Brown County 47