Opossum up a tree
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 it was in a building behind the church on West 7th Street, which is now Turner Mccall Boulevard.
Times were hard, and we had to take advantage of anything that would bring food into the house.
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 from trees along the railroad tracks that ran to Berry School. 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. A friend of my sister told us he was called Bear. I remember calling him Mister Bear, and he started into laughing 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, pulling a wagon.
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 tracks. 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 out there.
The only way to get the grapes was to climb the tree. Telling me to be careful, she gave in and let me climb it. I carried a small rope up 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. 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 grapes, 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, 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 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. He turned and headed back. I breathed a sigh of relief. He was leaving. Then I watched as he climbed up again and 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. He stood looking at me.
Again he hissed. I moved farther out on the limb and myweight made it 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 though the grapevines. They broke his fall, so 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 into the woods, away from the tree.
I wasted no time getting down out of the tree. I picked up a basket of the grapes, and we left the area. I looked back at the tree and, 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, looking back, I don’t think that I ever have eaten grape jelly without seeing that opossum and hearing a hissing sound.