Spring Ritual

 

Nine Mile Leeks

The leeks were calling this afternoon as the skies cleared. Leeks - known as ramps in West Virginia - grow in the wet areas of Potter County's woods.

It's a bit of a family tradition, gathering leeks in the spring. They are plentiful adjacent to the camp that my family owned through the early 1960s and that's where we harvested enough to make a leek dip to share with friends this evening. (I wrote here about Potter County leeks a couple of years ago.) 

Harvesting leeks was a tradition in Arthur's family too. Often we took trips to the Knox Lot, the family's woodlot on Fishing Creek Road where they grow in hollows where rivulets spring up in the spring. 

The Metzgers were among those stalwarts that served hundreds of folks for leek dinners at the nearby Hebron Grange Hall in the 1950s, continuing through the early 1960s.

Here's how my grandfather told the tale in his weekly "Golly" column.

Almost time once more for leek dinners but –

The old original event of the kind, the one that started the whole leek dinner idea, will not be peddling leeks this year.

The project was started by Hebron Grange a dozen or more years ago to augment the bank account of the organization. It went over to the public with such success that each year more and more came to dine on the odoriferous greens, plus other splendid foods, and the project became a burden.

A dozen or more Grange families might be assigned the duty of combing the woods, each digging a bushel of leeks, cleaning and washing them. It was not a small task. Each year the crowds increased.

Finally the Grangers decided to resign from leek gathering. Other organizations and public eating establishments went into the business and there are plenty of places where a leek supper may be enjoyed but –

Not served by the famous Hebron Grange.

Here's a post about the Hebron Leek Dinners that I wrote for our farm blog. 

Hippiedom

Sixteen-year-old Rowan posed the question, "Grandma, were you a hippie?" This was after he accepted my offer to put a patch on his dungarees, and after I had kidded his little sister about the long tear in her baggy blue jeans. "They're torn jeans," she told me. "They came that way." 

I heard my mother's voice in my head, "who would buy jeans with holes in them" as I took those same jeans out of the dryer and folded them.

I've always been a little uneasy about wearing the hippie badge but when Rowan asked, I said yes without a pause. My daughter was there for this exchange and I wondered exactly how she processed that answer. Our firstborn whose diapers I proudly hung on the backyard clothesline to dry in the cold Potter County sunshine, the little girl whose homemade whole wheat teething biscuits were stored in a canister labeled "Kate's cookies." That still brings a chuckle from my friend and fellow hippie, Louise. Those days of "grow your own," and homesteading and food co-ops.

The view of hippies from this generation - Gen Whatever - has none of the nuance of that time we lived. It seems there's a narrow definition of the word that marks hippies of this generation - the kids who adopt the fashions of the 60s - bell bottoms, tie dye and Indian cotton.

I was reminded as I watched to a documentary about the "The Farm" in Tennessee, hippie comes the word hip - up to date and in the know. Much like woke today, it means different things to different people.

I thought for a time during my late teenage years that I wanted to live communally - that is in a commune, much like the legendary "Farm. " Introduced to everything hippie by my elder brother and his wife, we once took refuge in a commune where I unrolled my sleeping bag on a splintery wooden floor in a second-story bedroom in an old farmhouse with no plumbing. We ate food prepared in a kitchen of sorts, an outbuilding with a giant woodstove in the middle. It was on that trip, I had my first taste of yogurt - Dutch Apple from Dannon, purchased in a food co-op in the village Woodstock, New York.

And it felt idyllic, the countryside, the garden with its whimsical artistic touches amid the long rows of  beans and kale and okra, the easels of the artists in the backyard. It was a quick visit, just overnight, and it was a long time ago.Those memories are misty, colored by the retelling from that time and that place. A stone from the driveway where Bob Dylan lived and chocolate ice cream with the clear, sweet orzata syrup.

Later on that same trip, my sister-in-law took me shopping for clothing to accompany me to college. And I bought a long, green trench coat that dragged on the ground and a very short plaid dress with a long pointed color, paired with brightly colored tights. Neither choice fit in with the starched white world of the nursing school I had chosen. And from that environment I fled back home for a time and put in motion the steps that brought me today to my daughter's home in the mountains of Arizona with the tall Ponderosa pines in the backyard and that tall young man facing his own future, asking me about hippies.

And so, yes, I was - we were, Arthur and me - hippies of a sort. And we still are I guess, my hair long and gray, and Arthur with his pony tail. We still grow a big vegetable garden and our bookshelves still hold those hippie tomes - The Owner Built House, The Tassajara Bread Book, the original hand lettered Moosewood Cookbook.

And you know, Rowan, your grandmother did go to Woodstock. 

A Few Words About Fishing

A delight this morning to look out my attic office window and see a fat-breasted robin in the scraggly white birch tree, lately populated by chickadees, juncos and starlings. Spring! Not so delightful is the thought that he/she might be eyeing the porch as a nesting site. 

Seems like I'm channeling my grandfather's writing style this morning, the first day of fishing season in Pennsylvania. Fishing season was celebrated annually in his Golly column as he enticed newspaper readers to return to the streams and rivers of his beloved Potter County.

My angler grandfather, likely in the early 1900s.
That dog, whose name is lost in history, appears in several old photographs.

From 1950:

Now that fishin' season is nearing and the question of trout limits during the years often arises, Golly may tell you that previous to 1901 there was no limit on trout in Pennsylvania – except one's ability to catch them.

In 1901 the limit was set at 50.

That was the law until 1909 when a cut to 40 was made. In 1917 another reduction was made and 25 was the legal take.

This lasted until 1933 when it was made 20, and two years later the limit was reduced to 15.

It was 11 years ago – 1939 – that the limit was dropped to 10 and there it remains at the present time.

And Golly might remark that ten six-inch trout will overfeed a large family.

FYI: Fast forward to 2026,  anglers are allowed to keep up to five fish daily as long as they are seven inches or longer.

 From 1954 – 

Opening day of fishing season will see hundreds – yes, thousands – of fishermen along the trout streams of Penn's Woods, and the 700 miles of uncontaminated brooks, creeks and rivers of Potter County will have their full share.

Woodland camps, at remote locations away back in the wilds, will be occupied once more, having been deserted since the close of the hunting season or even longer. Smoke will pour forth from many chimneys and in some instances tents will indicate that fishermen are along the streams of the vicinity.

If your sense of smell is at all acute, the olfactory cell will tell you at a distance that coffee is brewing and bacon is sizzling in the pan over the open fire.

Life can be grand.

Life can be wonderful.

And this from 1959 

Betcha all the fishermen have their rods limbered up and ready for trout fishing next week!

Fine!

Betcha there are a lot of big fat speckled trout lurking in sequestered pools, just aching to grab a lure, worm or fly or other bait – and eventually squirm in a well buttered frying pan just to make you happy.

Great sport is trout fishing.

- 30 -  

Open The Gates Of The Temple

Palm Sunday - that triumphant arrival of White Bread Jesus on a donkey, his long curly light brown hair streaming down his back, and above his carefully shaped moustache and beard , his steady, serious unsmiling eyes. Even though the people are throwing down palm branches and singing his praises, Jesus just rides along, with no worries about the poor donkey getting his feet tangled in those sharp edges of the palm fronds. And the people shout Hosanna - to this day a buzz word that says CHURCH in my vocabulary. And by Friday (Good Friday they call it though it was the day Jesus died) he would be nailed to a cross after having to carry it through those same streets. Funny the memories we carry of the traditions of the church seasons.

Pastor Warren talked about change and memories yesterday at the Presbyterian Church. And in that familiar space, my church for all these 70-plus years, I became little Janie Heimel, crowded into the front pew off to the side of the sanctuary, gazing up at the choir loft where my dad, in his dark choir robe, was hidden from my view - a different angle than from the Heimel pew.

That's the Palm Sunday I remembered. It was the day the organist had prepared our Junior Choir to sing a special song. The youngsters and the Choir - with a capital C. Choir with Daddy, Uncle Roy and Dr. George and Mrs. Gosnell, the tall, stately woman my brothers said sounded like a sick cow. 

We were robed in the starched white smocks, puffy like the maternity dresses the moms wore and I was grateful it was only Palm Sunday and my new Easter dress wouldn't be covered up.

The song was "Open The Gates of The Temple"  and we sang "Open, O - O -pen" at the beginning, softly with our children's voices, standing in a group on the steps, joined in the verses by the grownups,  the organ soaring over all of us.

I went looking in the music files at the church yesterday, after Pastor Warren had talked about change though I admit my thoughts strayed during the sermon, recalling that 1950s kind of church.  I wanted to see if my memories were true for we all know we cannot necessarily trust those thoughts that surface much like dreams at night. But I didn't find it, though many of the other pieces filed under Lent were familiar from later years, the years I was in the choir loft in my own long choir robe.

But then there was this published in The Potter Enterprise March 29, 1961.

How delightful to find myself in this photo - and singing as enthusiastically as I remember.

... And the editorializing in the picture tag line is likely to be a future blog post as our world today is certainly shuddering again.

Seeking The Light

It's the light I'm noticing these first days of spring. Light, never exactly the same from one moment to the next.

It's the way artists imagined and mirrored the light that struck me in a visit to the art gallery in St. Louis. I've come to leave all expectations behind when I step through the doors of these places, these carefully-curated spaces where human genius is on display. The acres of space, divided into vast rooms, the sticky tape on wooden floors warning us to stay back from the pictures, the works of art, hung at eye level on walls painted in muted colors. Lighting, the manmade kind, illuminating even the softest brush strokes.

Often in a stop along the way - as it was this time - I step back and allow myself to be surprised, delighted, stirred, troubled. Emotions in this human drawn from another - an artist who stared at a blank canvas and began.

Edward Mitchell Bannister
Woman Standing Near A Pond 1880
An African American, Bannister stated the
discrimination he experienced multiplied his
artistic struggles tenfold 

Paul Conoyer
The Plaza After The Rain - 1908

It was the light that captured me this time - from a dreamy cityscape, to the bucolic, to the gritty factory, the artist finding the light even in darkness. 

And so, back home in cold, drab brown northern Pennsylvania, I'm watching for the light all around me these days. Yesterday the morning's sunrise caught a trail left behind by a lone jet, carrying its load, humans, parcels, luggage – things moving from here to there.

Yesterday in the warmth of a day with sunshine, I needed the woods, the bare trees and ground flattened by melted snow. Spring. Carrying with me the artists' expressions of their worlds - my world. Seeing, observing bird song, puddles with globules of glistening amphibian eggs, a chorus of frogs and spring peepers, stilling as I passed by ... and the light.

A Right To Learn

Topeka, Kansas: one of the stops on our way back East last week. It was still frosty and cold when we located the Brown v. Board of Education National Park in a downtown neighborhood, not far from the state capitol building.

It's a stop Arthur put on the agenda, even though we knew the site wasn't opening for the day until later that morning.

Brown v Board Of Education National Historical Park
Displays at this site have been flagged
by the Trump administration due to mentions of "equity"

Brown v. Board of Education was a class action suit filed by 13 Topeka parents and their 20 children against Topeka's Board of Education that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It challenged the "Separate But Equal" legal doctrine. Under the doctrine, if 'equal' facilities were provided to each, services could be segregated by race. Of course, the myth that services provided to African Americans were 'equal' was just that - a myth. Almost without exception, black students went to inferior buildings, were provided outdated and inferior materials and taught by teachers who were paid much less than their white counterparts.

from the National Park Service brochure picked up at the site:

"By 1952, NAACP brought to the Supreme Court four of the five cases involving school segregation that were consolidated as Oliver L. Brown et al v. The Board of Education of Topeka et al. Arguing before the high court, Thurgood Marshall held that the racial classifications were inherently unconstitutional, as were separate educational facilities to accommodate such classifications The unanimous decision handed down on May 27, 1954, was one of the most significant in U.S. history ... it opened the modern civil rights movement for African Americans and laid the foundation for similar movements by other minority groups."

Though we didn't have time to visit the museum, our time walking the grounds and reading placards brought home the inequalities buried in our country's history.

And yet, under our current President and his team, there is a defined goal to change how Black history is presented in national park sites and museums. New federal directives ("Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History") target parks, museums and monuments. 

This mural covers a large warehouse adjacent to the park,
a colorful and moving reminder of all that has gone before

The Organization of American Museums has responded:  "The effort as outlined is divorced from the realities of an evidence-based, comprehensive telling of the U.S. past, and is part of an aggressive push to flatten American history into a narrowly conceived, unrepresentative, and simplified story... Americans consistently say they want a full, honest and unvarnished presentation of our nation's history. This White House enterprise, therefore, is an affront to individuals across a wide spectrum of the American public who treasure their right to learn and think for themselves."

In the quiet of the weekday morning,
echoes of footfalls on this
pathway to a brighter future

The Flying Fortress

It was on the way home from a satisfying spring break time with our family in Arizona, on routes vaguely familiar from last year, that we stopped to take in the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. In addition to the acres of aircraft on display indoors, memorials of war and its fallen soldiers have been erected here  - from markers honoring individual valiant airmen to others recognizing the service of groups in the way the Air Force organizes its bands of fighting men and women. 

The shadows were lengthening Thursday afternoon when we located this in its parklike setting, untended since groundskeepers swept away fall leaves.

It is a memorial to the 483rd Bombarbment Group (H) of the U.S. Army Air Force, my father’s group and though he’s not here to ask, I suspect he was on site as the memorial was dedicated in 1983. Standing next to newly-planted trees with others who climbed aboard a Flying Fortresses and thundered into the sky over Italy in 1944- smiling balding men with white belts buckled around thickened waists, the ones who came back.

My dad flew 50 missions as a tail gunner. As we were growing up, he didn’t talk,  much about it, like so many of the veterans of that war. There was a box of souvenirs tied with a length of sisal twine on the shelf in the closet in their bedroom. His khaki shirt, the olive drab jacket with its patches, a weathered leather jacket, and a purple heart.

There were the annual Christmas cards from far-away places like Winner, South Dakota, and California and Florida featuring black and white pictures of families that looked a little like ours, greetings from the men who flew with my dad. Johnston, Lynch, , Mallett, Nielsen.

His service is chronicled a bit in the pages of our local newspaper. Here's an excerpt from a  letter home to his parents in July 1944,:

“I got myself one today and it makes me very happy. I just couldn’t believe my eyes when he pointed his nose at our tail and I really opened up on him.”

And this, an official press release received in August of that year:

Staff Sgt. Joseph P. Heimel was one of a group honored for exploits over German, July 18. Sergeant Heimel, tail gunner on a 15th Air Force Flying Fortress, is expected home in the very near future.

 Officially from Italy, the following was received Tuesday.

"In recognition of one of the outstanding bombing missions of the war, a Distinguished Unit Citation has been awarded a B-17 Flying Fortress Group of the 15th Air Force commanded by Col. Paul L. Barton of Ludlow, Vt. 

"Presentation was made in a recent ceremony at the group’s Italian base, at which Maj. General Nathan F. Twining, Commanding General of the 15th, pinned the coveted blue citation ribbon on the group’s colors. 

"The group was cited for an action July 18 when 26 Fortresses of the group participated in a mission against the airdome and installation at Memmingen, Germany. Adverse weather scattered the bomber formations en route to the target with the result that the Fortress Group approached the objective alone and without fighter escort. 

"Shortly before reaching the airdrome the bombers were attacked by some 200 German fighter planes. The fighters bored in at the rear of the formation, and in the first sweep destroyed the last box, wiping out one entire squadron. 

"Pressing their attacks relentlessly the fighters knocked down seven more Fortresses while the remaining bombers fought on to the target and dropped their bombs with devastating effect. During the spectacular air battle the group’s gunner accounted for 65 enemy planes destroyed or damaged, many of them falling to the guns of stricken bombers before they plunged to their death. 

"In addition the group’s bombs destroyed or damaged 35 more planes parked on the enemy airdrome. In all Col. Barton’s unit lost 14 Fortresses and 143 officers and enlisted men."

And this from September of 1944:

“Mrs. Joseph P. Heimel, Coudersport, received a cablegram Tuesday morning from her husband, T. Sgt. Joseph Heimel, tail gunner of a flying fortress, that he had completed his 50 missions. He is hopeful he may soon be home from his sojourn for months in Italy."

In November that year:

"S. Sgt. Joseph P. Heimel arrived at his home here Thursday on  a richly deserved furlough. Joe was tail gunner on a flying fortress and was on fifty missions over enemy territory. He is visiting his wife and little son."

 

And finally in September 1945:

S. Sgt. Joseph Heimel returned from Indiantown Gap late Friday with his honorable discharge tucked carefully away in his pocket. Joe served as a tail gunner on a bomber for fifty missions over enemy territory, and later served as an instructor at Laredo, Texas. he is delighted to return to his home, wife and son at their place, once more a civilian.”