The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-06-16
WILD STRAWBERRIES
From the Kansas City Star.

From the Kansas City Star
 As to the dispute as to which is sweeter, the wild strawberry or the domestic. after all. what's the use? How many people in Kansas City ever have a chance to try the wild berry? It never is offered for sale. and while en- thusiastic naturalists occasionally find patches of wild strawberries, they are few and far between.
 What has become of the wild straw berries? Early settlers in this part of the country used to say that when they drove In June over the upland prairies of west ern Missouri and eastern Kansas the rims of the wagon wheels and the hoofs of the horses would be stained red with the juice of crushed strawberries they grew in such profusion, everywhere cov- ering the ground. The upland prairie lands are here yet, just beyond the citys brick and concrete; and the wild paw paws and hazel nuts. walnuts hickory nuts and wild crabappies are there yet if you know where to look for them in se- questered nooks-there Is a thick hazel brush in a pasture just south of Swope ba'h' WHtic, dIleF lnG HTSI OcIODer IfOSt, you may gather bushel of the sweetest favored nuts in all creation-bG. the strawberries are virtually gone. Some thing-the blow, maybe, or the buls-eye daisies that came in with the first timothy seed sown. or the clover roots, has shoul- dered them out: they were delicate wild things that couldn't abide compa nionship with the hustling, crowding, aggre ssive plants of civilization. They were friends and companions of the wild bees that used to swarm in the hollow trunks of century, old sycamore trees along the creek bot toms. For ages the wild bees used to come with each returning May and nestle in the holows of their whit ebiossoms; thus the bees, going from flower to flower. pollenized and perpetuated them. and when the wild bees went the wild straw berries went, too.
 Oh those were the golden days: the days of wild strawberries and wild money. Down to as late as 10 years ago Col. Bill Mulkey, grown old then, and feeble, 1sed to sit in the dusk of June evenings on his lawn at Thirteenth and Summit streets and watch his wild bees homing Tor the night, the only colony Of id bees then in all this country, and talk or the old days when that lawn was an Indian camp, and his bride an Indian maid, and of how he used to go down over the hill into the tricky wooded Raw river bottom, where the big factories are now, and come back with tubs and bar rels filled with wild honey. There was no sugar in the settlement then, and wild strawberries were served with wild honey.
 A contributor to the New York Inde- pendent has started this strawberry con troversy by stating that strawberries of the garden, those bulky monsters all filled with white pulp, are better in flavor than their tiny ancestors of the fields whose hearts were red and juicy clear through. How far do you think that eastern con- tributor would have got in such an argu- ment with Colonel Bill Mulkey or with any other of the old settlers who knew the wild strawberry only to love it. and who knew the big berry of the grocery stores only to despise it?
 We know full we'll which of the two varieties was the sweetest 40 years ago when, on the way home from the old log schoolhouse on the hill beyond Watts mill, we used to climb over the split rail fence into the Ward pasture-dnd she never could climb over-we can see her now, hunting for a wide place between tn erails, and her speckled calico gun bonnet pushing through and her face beneath it, pink and white. like the cheek of a strawberry just beginning to ripen in the June sun.
 Surely the wild strawberries of those times of long ago were sweetest just as those days or youth and lovers Of youth were sweetest.