I grew up in a large family of eleven, and a vegetable garden was a necessity. Of course, all of us kids had our part to do in maintaining the garden and gathering the harvest.
Mom served pickles with almost every meal except breakfast. One spring, during my middle-school years, she decided it would be less expensive to make our own instead of buying them all the time. So cucumbers were planted. I don’t recall that cucumbers had ever been planted before, so I think Dad planted a lot of them because he wasn’t sure how well they would do and how many cucumbers to expect from each plant. It turned out they grew quite well in that spot of the garden.
Early in the season, some of my siblings and I were out weeding. Now the cucumbers weren’t trellised and were just growing all over the ground, and it was hard to avoid the vines while weeding because they were thick. For some reason, one of my fellow weeders told Mom that I was sitting on the cucumber plants. I have no idea why she was told this, and I am pretty sure I wouldn’t have done something that careless. None the less, it then became my job to take care of the cucumber plants the rest of the season.
When the cucumber harvest started coming in, Mom pulled out the pickle recipes: 21-Day Pickles, 7-Day Pickles, 3-Day Pickles, and Bread & Butter Pickles. To me the 21-Day Pickles were the hardest; they sat in a crock for so many days and then the brine had to be changed. This happened several times during the course of the 21 days. The 7-Day and 3-Day pickles stayed in their original brine during the process and the Bread & Butter pickles were pickled in the jar.
Mom was happy the day we had started our first batches of pickles. The oldest girls all helped to slice the cucumbers, make the different brines and fill the jars and crocks.
I can still see it: three 5-gallon crocks sitting side by side on the screened-in porch, covered with cheesecloth, filled with sliced cucumbers waiting for the magical solutions to do their thing. And jars of Bread & Butter Pickles sitting in rows on the table waiting be added to the pantry supply.
For some reason it was my job to keep track of the brining times for that first batch.
This was a mistake.
Mom picked a child who was not thrilled about the cucumbers. Not only did I not like cucumbers. but neither did I like pickles. The 7-Day and 3-Day pickles turned out fine, but the 21-Day, not so much. I forgot to change the brine one too many times and they went bad. Really bad. Gaggy bad. And Mom was not happy. Now, not only did I have to take care of cucumbers for the whole season – all the pickling became my responsibility. All of it.
Not only had Dad planted lots of cucumbers, but it turned out to be a bumper-crop year for those horrid things. The plants were prolific producers and I had a super abundance of cucumbers! (Some people might have said I was abundantly blessed with cucumbers, but I felt abundantly cursed. Maybe they were taking revenge on me for sitting on them?) Mom thought it was funny. I did not.
I now didn’t just dislike cucumbers and pickles – I hated them.
One Saturday, my youngest aunt came over with her relatively new husband. All my siblings were playing. But not me. I was in the kitchen making pickles. He was curious why was I the only one. Mom told him the whole sordid story and apparently, he felt sorry for me. He declared that he loved cucumbers and asked if he could eat one. We chatted a little about pickle-making and cucumbers recipes he liked, and then he did the most wonderful thing! He asked Mom if he could have some cucumbers to take home since they didn’t have a garden. She said yes and I loaded him up with all the cucumbers I could.
He came back with boxes on a regular basis for more of those despised vegetables. My aunt told me later that he supplied their neighbors and his co-workers with their cucumber needs. He not only became my favorite uncle, but a hero. He saw my plight, and in a way that did not contradict my mom, helped to relieve my burden.
I don’t recall Dad planting cucumbers again, and Mom certainly never made pickles again. She didn’t have to – jars of pickles from that summer dominated the pantry shelves for years.
I don’t have the recipes, nor do I remember them. I never grow cucumbers in my garden, and even though I inherited a couple of the crocks, I never, ever make pickles. Thank goodness, God did not give me a husband and children that love pickles. They like them, but do not eat them all the time. So buying them from the store suits us just fine.
Any time someone asks me if I would like some of the cucumbers from their garden, I politely decline and bless my uncle for his kindness during that summer of the cucumbers.
