STRAWBERRIES! THE SWEET JEWELS OF MERRY MAY

My fling with strawberries began long ago when my sister and I, on our way from school, found some growing along the railroad bank. Wild strawberries they were. Not these little, picayunish, wild strawberries one sometimes finds in his yard. They taste somewhat like chewed toothpicks. These railroad bank strawberries were sweet and juicy, seeds of which must have drifted across the ocean from Mt. Olympus so out-of-this-world good they were.

I'm sure we had encountered strawberries somewhere, sometime before that, else we wouldn't have been so bold as to sit right down and eat all the ripe ones in the small patch.

However, we were fairly reckless when it came to eating wild fruit without first checking it out. Maybe knowledge of its properties had been absorbed by some strange familial osmosis. We ate the May apple when ripe, if we could find them again after the green foliage had died. We ate the blackberries, huckleberries, elder berries, and dew berries. We relished the ground cherries, those little round, orange-red berries inside what we called a Japanese lantern. Pawpaws, grapes, persimmons, wild plums! Oh, we could have "wilderness" survived on our own.

But, back to the railroad bank strawberries. I don't remember who spied them first. Anyway, it was on our way home from school which lasted until four o'clock, long enough for little stomachs to begin longing for food. Never since has any strawberry tasted so good, no matter how they have been up bred. Who can say how that little patch of strawberries got there? And what gave them that special taste, rising up out of the dirt and limestone chat of the railroad bank? They were more pink than the luscious red ones we see today. Maybe fruit that is allowed to revert to beginnings by lack of care and culture recaptures some taste that is lost along the "educated" way.

We were very protective of our find, although we knew not many, except an occasional hobo, walked the same way. We left no discarded green stems around and tried to arrange the strawberry leaves so as to cover the as yet unripe ones. We even brushed out our tracks that had veered slightly from the railroad bed.

My next encounter with strawberries were those that grew in Mrs. Schmidt's garden. Mrs. Schmidt lived about two miles away, and we went there occasionally to borrow a book for she had a larger collection than ours and unfamiliar ones too.

Along the path to her summer kitchen, where we usually found her, grew big, big strawberries, behind a fence, their red sides peeping out from the foliage, glistening in the sunshine. "Oh, what big, beautiful strawberries you have, Mrs. Schmidt," Lou and I would compliment. If this brought no response, such as, "Here, I have some already picked, Have some," we might even add, "I bet they're good." Sometimes children, out of their mother's earshot, will say unmannerly things.

Never once did Mrs. Schmidt offer us any strawberries, although she would seat us at the table and give us huge slices of still-warm yeast bread, well buttered, or a big piece of freshly-baked, cinnamon-smelling coffee cake. I think maybe we were being repaid in some unknown way for never sharing the taste or knowledge of our wild strawberry patch.

Many, many years later I set out one hundred strawberry plants in one day, right here on my present diggings. I can't ever remember being so tired at the end of one day. Sometimes I think it takes a little of the edge off my love of strawberries. That old tired feeling seems to be unintentionally called up and for three seconds I skip a mouthful, but only three seconds, maybe two.

My strawberry patch lasted a couple of years. No one told me those old plants "retired", put out runners and the runners had to be attended to, almost as carefully as setting out new plants. My urge to pick sun-warmed strawberries right out of the patch I had planted myself "retired" also.

I celebrate the season though. I make strawberry shortcake the old-fashioned way--sweetened, rich, biscuit dough, almost pie crust. While still warm, I split the "big biscuit" spread it with butter, spoon on the cut-up strawberries that have been lingering in sugar, put on the top and repeat the red juicy application. It is almost, but not quite as good, as those pinky-red, railroad bank strawberries.

It made my heart merry the other day when I read an article by some nutritionist who said people, especially those with a few wrinkles, quite often became malnourished because they had become so frightened by cholesterol. I think of that as I take a generous helping of warm strawberry shortcake out to the swing and watch the world go by. If a hummingbird sees something red and comes close to investigate, that's more icing on the cake. Even though not so dramatic, robins splashing in the nearby bird bath will do.

REJOICE!