There's an old saying which goes: "If winter comes, can spring be far behind?" Well, we've had winter, and spring is here. Let's hope this nice spring weather will continue.
Today, spring usually means housecleaning time. In the old days, spring always meant housecleaning time, and without all of the modern conveniences. (Some folks didn't even own a sweeper.)
Years ago, when it came to cleaning house, much hard work was involved. I recall how my mother and I would drag the living room rug out to the side yard where I grasped the wire carpet beater, and, due to Mom's insistence, beat that blasted rug until every speck of dirt was out of it. I beat that rug until the muscles in my arms became so sore that they felt like someone had pounded them with a sledge hammer.
Then there was the process of cleaning wallpaper. So many families in olden days used coal burning stoves, and, during winter, the wallpaper collected a heavy coat of pitch-black coal smoke. To clean the wallpaper, one had to use a pink, putty-like substance which one swiped across the paper, and if the cleaner did a good job of kneading the dirt into the putty, the paper generally turned out to look almost brand new.
Spring in the old days was also a time for planting a big truck patch, and a time for mushroom hunting. We kids about town grouped together, and trekked to some dense, spacious woods in the country to gather mushrooms. (We used to call them "musharoons.") In earlier days, mushrooms seemed to be quite abundant. I recall that it was nothing to gather enough mushrooms to fill a bucket, and what a thrill it was to find those big, fat, "sponge" mushrooms, not only around the trees, but lurking beneath the tall, dead grass! (My mother told me that, when she was a girl, she once found a mushroom in the cellarway the size of a pint jar.) One rule I remember regarding mushroom hunting was to always pinch off the stem at the bottom, and not pull up mushrooms by the roots, or, in time, mushrooms would become extinct. Nowadays, I think of the old times and how good eating was derived from mushrooms, and for free. In days of yore, we didn't have to fork over $30, or more, for a nice big batch of mushrooms.
And, dandelion greens! Who, in this day and age, gathers dandelion greens? What a delicious concoction they made. To gather them, one took a butcher knife, pried them up from the ground, and put them through at least three waters to remove the dirt, and other debris; then, they were put in a pot to boil, after which they were dumped into a skillet with a blend of eggs, bacon and vinegar. What a delectable treat!
We older generation can appreciate what a savory, appetizing dish dandelion greens can be, but if you offered them to the young adolescents of today, I can just imagine what they would say - "Yuk!" I guess, in former years, we older folks were pretty "Yukky." We didn't have pizza, hamburgers or French fries for every meal, but what we did consume made mighty good eating, to say the least.
