The fox grapes and the opossum
Iwas watching television when a scene brought back a memory. This was in the early 1940s. Times were hard back then, there was no jobs to be had.
My father passed away in 1941, leaving my mother with three boys and a girl to make a living for. My mother was a seamstress and worked at a sewing room. I never knew what they sewed but remember that it was in a building that was behind the church on
West Seventh Street which is now Turner Mccall Boulevard.
Sugar, as I remember, was the one thing that was cheap back then. My mother would buy up sugar and put it away until the fruit would come in. We would pick wild plums along the railroad track that ran to Berry School. I remember that alongside the tracks was covered with wild plum trees. It wouldn’t take long to gather a basket full.
This was before Battey Hospital was built. There was a fellow who lived in that area that had a bunch of apple trees. I remember that people called him Bear. I remember calling him Mister Bear and he started in to laughing. I didn’t see anything funny, but he did. He laughed so hard he had tears in his eyes. He told my mother to come up on Sunday and he would give us some apples for her to can.
Sunday came and with a red wagon that my mother borrowed from a neighbor we started to the house where Bear lived. It was somewhere in the vicinity of where the old rock quarry is on Redmond Road. That was quite a long walk. We arrived at his house and he greeted us saying, “There they are, help yourself.” There were all kind of trees full of apples around his house. We filled the wagon full and started back. I remember thinking how heavy the wagon was.
The next week was taken up peeling and helping with the jars with plum and apple jelly to see us though the winter months. I remember telling my mother that there were some grapes growing in the trees in the woods close to the railroad track. She went with me and I showed her. She said they were called fox grapes and grew wild, and when they got ripe we would pick some and can them. I kept a close check and when they were ripe we gathered our baskets and went to pick them.
The only way to get the grapes was to climb the tree. I carried a small rope up the tree with me and when I got to where the grapes were, I lowered it to the ground. A basket was tied to it and I pulled it up in the tree to me. Once the basket was full I would lower it and an empty basket was tied to it.
In between filling the basket and eating the biggest ones, I was having fun. To be able to climb the tree was a treat since I wasn’t permitted to do so. I was having the time of my life until my brothers started to holler, “It’s coming up the tree, watch out.” I kept on picking and putting the grapes in the basket. Again, “Lonie, watch! He’s coming up the tree.” I asked, “What’s coming up the tree.” “There,” they yelled, and I looked at where they were pointing. The biggest, ugliest opossum that I had ever seen was coming up the tree toward me. “Lower the basket!” I yelled, climbing up onto the limb above me.
I sat on the limb above him and waited to see what he was going to do. I watched as he started out the limb toward me. He stopped and gave a hissing noise, showing his teeth. I moved up another limb as fast as I possibly could.
“Go away!” I yelled, making as much noise as I could. Again he hissed and started toward me. I moved out on the limb as he came toward me. My weight made the limb start to bend. I waited until he was almost to me, then I swung up on the limb above. He ran at me and I moved back behind him and began to bounce on the limb. He was having a hard time hanging on.
I tried harder, causing the limb to shake harder. He tried to turn but missed his footing and went crashing through the grape vines. They broke his fall so that he wasn’t hurt when he hit the ground. He started back toward the tree, but my mother and two brothers managed to run him down in the woods away from the tree. I wasted no time getting down. I picked up a basket of the grapes and we left the area. I looked back at the tree and there, sitting on the tree limb eating, was the opossum.
The grapes were made into grape jelly. I would get up on a cold morning and have a hot biscuit filled with grape jelly. But I don’t think that I ever have eaten grape jelly without seeing that opossum and hearing a hissing sound.