The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1907-03-19
WR|TERMOURNS LOSS
OF THE WINSOME
FLAP JACK
Also Feels Saddened Thai
Sugar Tree Molasses
Is No More.
(American Farmer.)


entirely passed. There are many |
farms which still contain groves of |
this Incompatible wood, there is still |
sweet water running from the reeds |
and troughs or buckets to catch it ;
and there are kettles to boil it and
final Stirring Off" But alas Long
before it reaches the city consumer it
has been adulterated reduced, de
bauched and has become a sham and
a fraud. There is a deceitful resem
| blance, look like and taste like, but
the real thing has departed never to
return. Commercialism and greed
the characteristics of the age, have
got in their fell work on sugar tree
molasses, just as they have affected
everything else. Even the farmers
have yielded to the temptation and
sneak off in the corner while they
adulterate the very nectar OF the
gods with base brown sugar. Here
and there is an exception, but only in
out-of-the-way places, like the hills of
Kentucky and Virginia and the
amount produced is usually only
|
| for sale.
The buclwheat cake, inseparable
companion of tree molasses, has Jared
no better than it's disconsolate lover
Not that buckwheat is not still grown
in Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia
and other places. There is plenty OF
1t, but whoever sees the real stuff any
more. Call at the fashionable hotels
and see the white-livered abomination
they impose on you as the genuine
thing. In the older days they were
twin delicacies in the land of fairies
and honey bees. Not more inseparable
were Laura and Petrarch, Romeo and
Juliet. Heloise and Abelard, and the
tree molasses of the pioneer period
and the lovely cake that bucks. One
could not live without the other
there was no existence except in in
dissoluble union. Each sang the
praises of the other, each grew for
none other, their hearts heat in uni
son. the fairest among ten thousand
and altogether lovely. Even if a water
mill be found to grind the bucRwheat
properly the villain still pursues and
long before it has reached the table
the adulterator will have accom-
plished his vile design. AS to tree.
molasses, his lovely companion is al.
faded and gone before 1t gets out of
the kettle by the black art Of modem,
metamorphosis.
So intimate was the association of
t these two that when the former dis
appeared in the shadows of the past
the latter went along also. So tender
was their companionship that they
could not bear to be separated, and so
they went down into the halls Of
memory hand in hand, and have nev
er returned. They who have enjoyed
/ the glad companionship or these
choice spirits have some difficulty in
! imagining that what are regarded as
their successors are purely legitimate
Sometimes one gets from the water
mill up the creek bag of buckwheat
flour, in which yet fingers the clear
, note of Bob White" and from out
the bush comes a jug of syrup that
r glows with the sunlight of a broken
winter For moment then the lucky
recsnient tastes of delights such as
mortals enjoyed as long as heaven
could spare them. Soon the vision
vanishes however; 1t was only a
dream Even from the shams that
now grace the breakfast table one
may get dim idea of that ancient
flavor that recalled the honey of Hyb
: la. In the mere resemblance pro
duced by these counterfeits one expert
ences kind of melancholy Joy, like
the memory of loved one dead, like
the tender grace of a day that is gone.
There is furtive flavor that fits along
the senses like the song of bird in a
farmers meadow or the laugh of a
girl where the sugar water boils, but
they come so indistipct that they only
raise a fancy of what might have
been. Yet that fancy is precious
legacy. Rachel mourning for her chill
dren, Marius soliloquizing amid the
ruins of Carthage, King Lear heart
broken over the desertion of his daugh
ter. The fact that sugar trees still
grow and buckwheat still blooms, in
stead of affording the happiness OF
anticipation, the bliss of expectancy
are painful reminders of the grip that
greed has fastened around us. We
see them vanishing down the distant
past, a mirage Turing us on to imag
mary pleasures, will'o-the-wisp dane
ing deceitfully before our hungry eyeH
They are gone and they are not, ex
cept as phantasms of melancholy
memory. Yet:
We priced every hour that went by,
Beyond all that had pleased ui
before;
And now they are gone and we sigf
And we grieYa that we nrlzed then