JOY ALONG THE WAY: PAEAN OF PRAISE FOR GREEN BEANS

Not to brag, but I know a lot about beans. That's not one of those statements that calls for a rebuttal such as, "Oh, you're full of beans."

I know that right now is the time to indulge in the gustatory delight of green beans. Fresh from the garden, still damp with morning dew and, no doubt, inspected by bees, honey and bumble, they are at their best. A bit of the dried blossom that precedes the formation of the pod might still be clinging to that pert, tuned-up "string."

Right now the pods of both pole and bush beans snap with a crisp sound that speaks of newness and tantalizing anticipation of taste to come. Cooked in a steamer, flavored with butter, served on a Blue Willow plate, along with a generous slice of Vidalia, or any old onion, and crusty cornbread, it is a dish to set before connoisseurs of good eating, yea, the Highest of the High Gastronomic Potentates. However, cook's opinions of how green beans should be cooked vary. Some like them cooked as mentioned above. Others say that long and low cooking with a few bits of bacon tossed in is better, or merely tenderized, marinated and served cold.

In earlier times we grew our green beans in the shape of American Indian teepees. Four slender poles, placed in a square just so far apart and brought together and tied at the top made this simple structure. Sitting inside such a teepee was an early attempt of privacy for me. Not that there were thousands of other places, but this seemed like a little, vine-covered elfin house. The pendant beans grew so profusely they disturbed my Buster Brown hairdo. Various birds lit on the apex of the poles to serenade as I sat making hollyhock blossom dolls, or watching ants make their precise way across the garden soil, bent on some suitable project or goal.

The American Indian grew beans here long before the white man came. But I didn't know that in my bean teepee-sitting days. The history of beans fades back into the misty shadows of pre-history.

Mama, always with an eye of beauty, insisted on saving red rag strips to tie the poles together at their tops. Looking down on the bean patch from an upstairs window, it seemed the green teepees had produced a shaggy red flower. The poles were saved from year to year. Woe to anyone who broke them up for kindling.

It never occurred to me that Mama or Grandma ever had trouble bringing green beans to the green teepee stage. In my own gardening days, I learned of the hazards -- cutworms, rabbits, beetles, weeds, blight, drought, mildew, etc.

As good as the early summer dishes of green beans are, as the season progresses, what to do with all the profligate beans becomes a problem. "It's a shame to let them go to waste," laments the gardener. "It would be an insult to provident nature to just throw them away." So the gardeners distribute them to friends, relatives, even strangers if any come around and want some.

If left to ripen on the vines, they become beans in another dimension -- lima, navy, great northern, black, red, yellow, pinto. Cooked with pieces of country ham, they rival the taste of the fresh greenie, again with cornbread and sliced onion.