Some days it seems just like yesterday when I was a young teenager at home without a summer job away from the house, but a job unlike that of many of my friends.
As I’ve said many times our family grew all of our vegetables at home in four separate garden plots on our property. Corn, green beans, crowder peas, all varieties of peppers, beets, cucumbers, squash, onions and more tomatoes than you can imagine were a part of the summer harvest. We even tried potatoes, but our parents learned pretty quickly, buying them at the store worked well enough.
As a young adult, I learned that a person could actually buy green beans in a can at the grocery store. No joke.
I remember one morning, Mama telling us on her way out the door to her public job, there was corn to shuck under the tree at the shed. We knew exactly what she meant, but never in our wildest dreams did we imagine just exactly how much corn she was talking about. She picked it before going to her job at the Tanner Companies.
Later we were told we had shucked 100 dozen ears of corn that morning. Our main job was to shuck and silk the corn. Getting all the silk away from the corn was often challenging, but we did.
At that time in our young lives, Mama didn’t trust us to cut the corn off the cob for freezing, so that was among her jobs when she returned home. Daddy’s main job after work was to help string the green beans for canning and after his retirement, he peeled tomatoes, cleaned the beans and chopped peppers.
I thought about the corn shucking days recently at the Washburn Community Outreach Center while I spent about 30 minutes taking some of the shucks off the corn we’d later donate to clients.
I told another Washburn volunteer that when my sisters and I had to shuck 100 dozen ears of corn one morning, we made up our own word games to help pass the time. We played games, told stories and dreamed of the day we’d never have to shuck that much corn again.
When Mama told us about the corn under the tree, there was not one word of arguing. It was just a fact of life, sort of like picking green greens, tomatoes and other veggies. Although we didn’t actually do any of the caning or freezing, everything was ready for Mama when she got home. Daddy was the best green bean-stringer ever. He actually used his pocketknife to cut off the ends and even to get all the strings out. When he later retired from Stonecutter, he’d help with all the vegetables.
When Mama retired from her job away from home at age 40, she contributed to the family budget by selling much of the produce. That was the plan, all along. After all there was no way in the world we could eat all the tomatoes from 350 plants or all the corn produced from a large corn field.
Our parents had their own home produce stand at the house where customers bought whatever they wanted on the honor system. They’d weigh the vegetables and put the money in a metal box. It worked.
Mama spent her days harvesting the veggies and later prepping everything for freezing or canning. There was never, ever a dull moment during the garden season.
Although it was hard work, I look back on it now and am grateful to have learned so much about gardening and working, but most of all the sacrifices our parents made to feed their family and lots of other people, too.
Even after leaving home, my sisters and I returned to help our parents with the garden work. They didn’t have to ask for our help, we knew it was needed and what better pay than taking to our homes fresh ripe tomatoes for sandwiches, corn on the cob or bread and butter pickles.
Sometimes, don’t you wish we could go back to a time when it seemed things were a bit simpler? Comparing shucking 100 dozen ears of corn or peeling gallons of tomatoes, doesn’t begin to compare to a lot of junk teenagers face today.
I will always be grateful for the memories of growing fresh veggies at home with our family.
Jean Gordon is an award-winning newspaper journalist spending almost 49 years writing about Rutherford County for two newspapers.
