GATHERING A MESS OF GREENS ON A SUNNY DAY

Folks have a tendency to pick and push around and hide under their potatoes the mess of wild greens I serve, complete with cornbread, fried apples with sour cream, all on my best blue-speckled tinware.

Even kinfolks who used to go out with baskets, sunbonnets and sharp knives to help me gather them are getting picky, or maybe uppity is a better word.

I suppose greens is not a survival dish anymore and they think this trip is unnecessary with mustard greens, turnip greens, spinach and mixed greens on the pantry shelf, of which I am reminded at the first moment when we come up with something we can't agree on is edible.

"But suppose you had no money to buy those canned things?" I asked. The reply was only a grunt of the sort that says, "Well, that's the way things are."

"This whole field would be crowded with people and half of them would be using their knives on each other," I suggested.

"Not us," she replied blythly, not even bothering to look up.

"Why not?"

"Because they'd know we knew what we're doing'. They'd make of us sort of human shields. Make us go home and cook it and eat some of it first."

"You've been reading too many newspapers. But it is good to know what we're doin', isn't it?"

"I hope we do. It's been a long time since I've gathered any."

"Oh, it's like swimmin' and bicycle ridin', once you know how you never forget. Look at this handsome leaf of sour dock. See, it's curly between the veins just like it ought to be and sometimes yes sir look here. It has that reddish tinge to one side of the leaf, just like good old dock."

"You think that red tinge could be some sort of spray?"

I pushed back my bonnet in exasperation. "You think there's going to be some kind of red spray out here from nobody? No beans, no cotton, no corn, no oats, no fiddlesticks. Not even a squirrel, skunk, fox, wolf, gorilla or rabbit. They ain't nobody here but us chickens and sour dock. (It's easy for me to drift into crawdad language when necessary.)

There was another sort of extended grunt which if clarified by machines like they have in police offices might have sounded like, "Maybe they're all dead."

We worked in silence for a while. Then, not letting the subject rest, my companion said, "I hear crop spray dust drifts for miles and miles."

"Um'hum," I replied laconically, and just as laconically rummaged for my leaf of sour dock, dusted it against my smock and just as laconically began to chew a cud. Without a bit of salt and a smidgen of bacon grease, it wasn't such a good cud. It only made green spit.

We worked on in silence. At last my companion said, "Wasn't that dock that grew behind the barn."

"Oh, my heavens no. That was burdock. No good at all."

"Well," she said in a small, sheepish voice, "I think I got some in here." She indicated her basket.

We sat down immediately and emptied our baskets, spreading the contents in a wide circle.

"You sure did," I agreed, picking out and discarding all the little tidbits of burdock.

"What's that?" she asked, pointing at some of my sprangly vines.

"Pussley."

"Pussley." She shivered all over.

"Well really it is purslane but don't you remember Grandma always called it Pussley."

"Well I don't want none of it in my greens," and began picking it out and tossing it away.

We decided we had too many dandelion greens which would have made the greens bitter. And the poke, we thought, was too high and thus poisonous.

When through we sat morosely looking at our small leavenings.

"Bluebells are in bloom," she said.

"Let's get some." I was as eager to get on to something new as she.

Back home, she got down a can of mustard greens, I made some cornbread and fried apples. We had no cream, so we looked at the bluebells instead.

REJOICE