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iat Time in the Oz^arks
BY VERNA SPRINGER
"In the Spring a young man's fancy — ." Never mind about that. Nor the scent of Ulacs, the call of the Cardinal, nor the wolf call! Til settle for that warm, sun-drenched morning when my neighbor, Liza, pokes her head in my kitchen door and calls out, "Grab your bonnet and basket, let's go pick a mess of greens."
It's green picking time in the Ozarks and God's in his heaven! Fur' thermore, the problem of what'tohave-for-dinner can now be solved. After all, what could be better than a mess of— well, I was fifteen years old before I learned to say "greens" instead of "salat." They say we Ozarkers were just too lazy to use the original word "salad."
I grab up basket and paring knife. Here and there under the bright early sunshine we see other freshly starched sunbonnets bobbing up and down in back yards and along fence comers, as our neighbors indulge in this ancient ritual — gathering greens from the grass roots.
How to cook those greens — (with big hunks of ham hock, for luscious pot likker — or boiled and dressed with sizzling fat from a slab of home cured ham) — we'll discuss later. But first, as in cooking chicken, we must "catch our hen."
Setting out to pick a mess of wild greens is something else again from
strolling down the aisles of your favorite super-market saying languidly, "I'll take a pound of spinach and a pound of mustard."
Forget about casual strolling because, lady, you walk and walk and walk! Out through the barn lot, over the meadow, up the highway, and maybe down the railroad right-of-way. Then you squat on your hunkers and pick this wild species of vitamins that nature so amply provides at this time of the year.
HOW THE WOMEN WERE JUDGED
Time was when every woman in our village was judged by two things:
1. How soon her wash swung from the line on Monday morning.
2. How many varieties of wild greens she could recognize and place on her table without having to call in the family doctor.
This trick of knowing the exact varieties of What Kind and How Much of Each to pick and what sort to let alone, was an art handed down from mother to daughter.
"Lemme see, now," Liza says, keeping a sharp eye on the long slender blades I've carefully cut and herded into my basket. "You've got enough of that sour dock," she warns me "Too much spiles the vittles. 'N I wouldn't use too much of that wild lettuce. It'll do when it's young and tender, but after it gets strong, one