The Republican journal., 1911-07-06
Strawberry Time.

Strawberry Time.
In the old days along the Penobscot
river, when from ten to twenty salmon
were taken from the weirs at every
tide, when the pound floors of every
weir were paved with sprawling green
Holsters; when the pink satin roses Of
the wild Rosa Blanda were in blossom
among the rocky fields; when gay bob
olinks were singing from nearly every
fence; when the great lazy cows stood
belly-deep in every running stream, and
a day in June was long enough to cut up
into two days in December, the old Bar
mum circuses used to come TO Bucksport
and all the boys and girls from the
''Doshan" shores, and the Heaths, Bow
dens, and Bridges used to plan to pick
strawbrries enough to pay their admis-
age of Hancock and Waldo counties. 1t
was then that Honorable Job Montgom-
cry, now leading citizen of Camden,
Maine, used to trudge up from Penobscot
in his bare feet for the sake of gazing
upon the bearded woman and the strong
man, who could break crow bars in two
over the bridge of his nose.
Circuses came along later than they DO
nowadays, so the boys and girls could
gather strawberries and sell them for
defraying their expenses. There We're
no cultivated or ''English" strawberries
between the North Pole and Monhegan
| Light. II the first Strawberries ever
grown in Maine were not raised on the
island of the Matinicus, they grew some
where close by, and the Maine straw
berries found their way to Rockland
hotels several years before they did to
the Boston markets.
Wild or native strawberries sold for
ten cents quart in those days, but now
you have to speak for your help year
ahead, to hire boys and girls to pick
them at a uniform price at ten cents a
pint Bangor house-keepers declare that
they can buy no field Strawberries at any
price this year, and would be glad enough
to pay rs cents a pint for the scarlet
. fruit if they could get them to can or
preserve for winter use.
All along the western shore of Han
cock county from Cape Rozier to Deer
Island, Verona, and Bucksport, and on
the eastern shore line of Waldo county,
from Belfast to Winterport, wild straw
berries were abundant among the grass
and pastures from late in June until the
4th of July or later One did not have
to look for the fruit, Or pull it tediously
from among the matted grass. The
plump berries shone like torches, or like
/ overgrown lightning bugs, so that one
might sit down on a sunny knoll and fill a
six-quart pail inside of an hour.
There were no lard pals or fruit bas-
kets then. Their sizes were ten quart
water pals or milking pals, and the two
quart tin pals with a cover, which the
children used in carrying their dinners to
school. Farming was too busy an occu-
patton near the Fourth for the older peo-
pie to think of going after strawberries.
The people who did most of the work
were boys and girls with bare feet,
tousled heads and freckles on their faces
the size of parsnip seeds.
A child Of this kind from ten to fifteen
years of age could pick and hull fully
six quarts of Strawberries day, which
were worth from 80 cents to $1.00 &C.
cordipg to the liberality of the purchaser.
If the choice were permitted, a girl
about twelve years old, with her pink
toes all yellowed over with the broken
whiteweed heads, was preferred. Though
boy with warts on his fingers and tender
stone bruises on his heels performed
good work, Such delicacies as straw
berry tarts and strawberry shortcakes,
were unknown then, although the recipe
book told how to make them. The favor
lite method was to preserve them in
sugar, at the ratio of pound of straw
berries to pound of graduated sugar.
When the winter evenings came, when
the old maids in the family cooked their
saleratus biscuits and asked the young
minister in to take tea with them, and
the strawberry preserves and hot bis
cults were brought out, it was an event
worthy of publication in the weekly
newspapers.
Such gay and reckless times have gone
now, never to return to Maine. The old
maids have either married and gone to
raising families, or have been sent to
heather lands for the conversion of the
infdels. Many Of the old homes with
the low roofs and the over-hanging
caves, are now classified among the
abandoned FARMS The swallows still
twitter in the barns and the bucket at
the end Of the we'll sweep still hangs
above the purest and sweetest water
known. If you ask for the old boys,
they are in business in New York, Bos-
ton, or Chicago, making some money and
a large show of wealth. If you seek
the old girls, you will find many of their
names chiseled on the marble headstones
close by where the ripe Strawberries
used to grow. and where the robins and
bobolinks used to sing from sun-up until
dark.
1t is the same old place, but the changes
have been many, and some of them so
sad that more than half the joy seems
to have gone out of fe.-Bangor News.
fOLEYS ORIN0LAXAIIVE
EoR S1ohAcH TRovsLE and CONSTIPATION
EORSAL. Ely All nRUGCIST1