Gooseberries

More about my big brother

Aunt T had a huge vegetable garden and even a vineyard. She always shared the crops with mom—“The green beans (or whatever) are ready to pick. Come and get all you want.” Mom would pack up us kids in the car and we’d go spend the day picking whatever was ripe.

It didn’t end there. We’d get the stuff home and have to “nub” the dumb things. She’d set us up on the screened-in back porch with baskets and pans and all the stuff needed to do the job of picking off the ends of beans or shelling peas.

One job in particular has forever-memories: The gooseberry. We were nubbing gooseberries on the back porch. Sticky. Nasty tasting (there was very little I didn’t like to eat, but gooseberries were near the top of my very short list of dislikes). I had taken a bathroom break (always a good diversion) and when I came back through the dining room Bud hollered, “Open your mouth!” as he prepared to throw a gooseberry at me. Between the back porch and the dining room was the kitchen. So I knew this was a nearly impossible feat because I was standing in the far end of the dining room.

So I opened my mouth and suddenly I heard a plop sound and felt my throat clogged with something. He had hit the target. I gagged and coughed and spit it out and tore into him with a vengeance. He turned on his big old horselaugh which made all of us laugh.

It turned into a bragging point for years.