April 19, 1966

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By Donna Hruska

Listen to Donna narrate this story!

“Mom,” said my son as we entered the super market, “did they have grocery stores when you were a little girl?”

“Of course,” I answered, pulling myself erect and trying to walk with a more spritely gait.

“Still,” I thought as I watched him scamper on ahead of me, “providing food for a family was different then. As I wheeled my cart between the rows of brightly colored cans, I was reminded of the home canning that my mother used to do when I was a child in southern Illinois. I can still see those rows of Mason jars with their bright fruit peeking out from behind the labels lined up like sentinals guarding our basement shelves. Somehow, I doubt that any row of tin cans could give quite that sense of security today.

I don’t recall that there was ever a lot of advance planning before canning day. Either mother, grandmother, or one of the aunts would go out to the peach orchard every few days. If she found good peaches she would buy a bushel or two. When she got home she would call the others. “Hazel’s have got good peaches,” she would report, and plans would soon be underway for canning.

Everyone would gather in our basement. The women would sit with their chairs in a circle around the basket of peaches, each with a pan of fruit in her lap, peeling and gossiping. We children would run in and out the basement door, snitching as many peaches as we could get away with.

“If you kids don’t quit eating you’re going to be sick,” someone would scold and out we’d be chased until the conversation got going good again and we could slip back unnoticed.

As we girls got older we were allowed to help, usually with washing and scalding the glass jars. Sometimes we were allowed to help peel, but we usually cut the peelings too thick and ate too much and were sent in disgrace back to washing and scalding.

The peaches were packed into the jars, covered with syrup, sealed and steamed on the kitchen stove. The rewards of all this labor spiced our meals all winter long.

But as good as the home-canned peaches were, they couldn’t begin to compare with the apple butter as far as I was concerned. Making apple butter began much the same way as canning peaches–with everyone peeling in a circle. Apple peelers are “collectibles” now, but I can still remember turning the handle on one that belonged to my grandmother.

Apple butter was cooked outside in a big black iron pot over a wood fire. The women stirring the rich brown butter with their long-handled wooden spoons looked to my child’s eyes like witches stirring their brew. But the scent of the bubbling apples and cinnamon blended with the wood smoke and crisp fall air made an aroma more enticing than any witch’s brew could ever be.

Finally, after what seemed like endless hours to us children, the apple butter would “look about right” to the women. They would fill the tall glass jars, seal and label them. Then came the moment we had been waiting for. Mother would bring a bowlful of apple butter to the kitchen table where we were waiting with the bread and butter.

I’m sure that my mother, watching us eagerly spread the warm apple butter on our bread gained a great deal of satisfaction from knowing that she had provided her children with a special treat that would last all winter long.

“You can’t buy satisfaction like that at the grocery store,” I thought as I wheeled my cart into the next aisle.

Or can you? The question struck me as I came upon my son transfixed in the cereal department. By the time he is grown his wife will probably buy her groceries by closed circuit television. I can hear him now telling his own child of the happy hours he spent reading the back of the cereal boxes in the grocery store, trying to decide which one gave the best premium.

“No,” I reminded myself. “We keep forgetting–these are the olden days of tomorrow.”

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