STILL MANY TREATS TO BE HAD DESPITE DEPRESSION
March 13 2014
Orleans News
By Mary Cook
Goodness knows we were reminded often enough that there was a
Depression on.
Just ask for something as simple as a pair of white stockings, or
a new hair ribbon, and you were told once again of the scarcity of
money. “There is no money for such frivolities,” we were told.
And just as often were we told, “Eat every last scrap on your plate.
If you don’t, you’re taking it right out of the mouth of a starving
Armenian.” I had no idea who the starving Armenians were, but I was
pretty sure they lived in Arnprior.
Yes, wasting food was a sin, and if it cost money and wasn’t absolutely
necessary, your chances of getting what you asked for were pretty
slim indeed. Yet we had what I called treats aplenty back in the
1930’s. When the nights were bitterly cold, with the wind howling
outside, rattling the windows, Mother could always come up with
something that took the chill out of the old log house.
Often it was a popper full of corn, laced with a jug of melted butter.
Sometimes it was a treat that my sister Audrey said took the place of
a good dose of Epsom salts, but to me it was delicious. Had I stopped
to think about it, it wasn’t something handed out willy-nilly -in fact,
we only got it in the dead of winter. It was a big glass of molasses,
water and a heaping tablespoon of baking soda. It fizzed up, often
pouring out of the glass, and I considered it a real treat, which
pleased Mother.
It was never handed out on a school night, of course, because the
result of this special treat was many trips to the outhouse. Audrey
called it “our winter clean out,” but to me, it was a treat.
Then there was oven toast. How I loved oven toast. It didn’t come out
looking like the toast made on top of the stove, over hot coals. Every
one of us considered it a special treat, and when Mother asked, “Who
would like a piece of oven toast?” we all squealed with anticipation.
Only Mother could turn out oven toast the way I like it. She would
lay out slices of thick homemade bread on the bake table, lavish
butter on both sides, put a wire rack over a couple deep pie plates,
put the bread in rows on the rack, plug in another block of wood into
the stove, and put everything into the hot oven.
The butter-saturated bread would crisp to a light golden brown,
and I thought it was the most delicious treat Mother ever invented,
breaking the slices into pieces and gobbling
it up with butter running down my fingers. The trick, Mother said,
was not to take it out of the oven until it was crisp, but not letting
it brown. She knew just how to manage it all in right order, and there
wasn’t, in my mind, a more delicious before-bed treat than oven toast.
There always seemed to be lots of home-made bread at our house. Mother
baked once or twice a week, and we five kids were forever fighting
over who got the crusts at either end of the loaf. It got to the
point where Mother had us draw straws for this treat.
And a special bedtime treat was a thick slice of homemade bread,
buttered of course, and then spread with a layer of brown sugar with
cinnamon sprinkled on top. I have no idea why she did it, but Mother
always cut the slices into little squares before piling them on a
dinner plate in the middle of the table, moving the sugar bowl and
spoon holder to make room. The whole pile would vanish in minutes,
and we would head off to bed with sugar-filled stomachs and a feeling
of complete joy.
Audrey became an expert at making fudge. No one could talk to her
when she was at the job. I would sit at the table and listen to her
slap the big wood spoon around the pot which was inside another pot
of cold water. It had to be just the right consistency before she
poured it into a buttered pie plate and left to chill.
When she wasn’t looking, I would go out to the summer kitchen where
the pie plate of fudge was sitting, and press my finger into it, just
to make sure it was hardening. If Audrey noticed the finger marks,
she said nothing.
That night, when we were sitting around the old pine table, each
engrossed in their own activity, Audrey would cut the fudge into
little squares, and dole them out like they were chunks of gold.
Once the maple syrup season started, and Mother retrieved a pot of
sap from the big flat pan boiling in the bush, simmering it down
to a right thickness, we had “taffy on snow,” a special treat on a
Saturday night or Sunday afternoon. Mother of course, made sure the
snow brought in from outside was nowhere near the barn yard, and well
away from the house. Heaven forbid that a stray animal had put a foot
within a county mile of the snow my brother brought in on the big
roast pan. The hot syrup would be drizzled on the fresh snow, left
to harden, and then we lifted it off with buttered fingers and sucked
the taffy like we would a sucker bought at Briscoe’s General Store.
I shared a special treat with Audrey that no one else in the family
seemed to relish.
When a jar of preserved plums would be brought up from the dug-out
cellar for a meal, and the pits were all that were left in the little
fruit nappies around the table, Audrey would get out the breadboard,
and the little tack-hammer, and she’d break open the pits freeing the
pulp from inside. We would wait until all the pits had been smashed
open, and then Audrey and I would move to the creton couch near the
Findlay Oval, and between us, we’d devour the fruit nappy of pits as
if they were storebought candy.
Those long-ago days of the Depression years were years of the most
simple pleasures, and treats free of an outlay of money, and long
before cholesterol was part of our vocabulary.
http://www.ottawacommunitynews.com/opinion-story/4410869-still-many-treats-to-be-had-despite-depression/
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