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Lilian Jackson Braun On the appointed day the distinguished guest arrived and was duly greeted, after which I repaired to the kitchen to mix the concoction myself. As I carried the tray into the living room, Holy Terror went into one of his Siamese tizzies, flying up and down stairs and around the house at great speed, until he swooped over my shoulder and landed in the tray. Glasses catapulted into space and the Bloody Mary sprayed tomato juice over the walls, carpet, ceiling, and the august person of the Bishop.
It so happened that our guest was blessed with a con-genial sense of humor, and he has been telling the story all over creation for the last thirty years.
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22.
Those Pushy Moose
County Blueberries
They Seem to Be Saying,
“We Were Here First”
Food editor Mildred Riker of the Moose County Something is on their side. This champion of the blueberry even has a “blueberry rake” on her desk, serving as a letter-file. Here’s what she had to say for Short & Tall Tales.
—JMQ
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Long before we knew about antioxidants and bioflavo-noids, blueberries were doing their thing; Mother Na-ture had made them good-for-you as well as good-to-eat. In the seventeenth century French explorers reported that native Americans used wild blueberries as food and medicine.
In the nineteenth century my great-grandfather, Elias King, came to Moose County from Maine to work as a lumberjack and save up to buy a farm. His diary is preserved in the historical collection at the public library.
He wrote that the woods were full of wild blueberries, called bilberries. The lumberjacks ate them by the handful.
They were like candy—after the lumbercamp diet of beans and salt pork.
Eventually he had saved enough to buy farmland at the north edge of what is now Pickax. The land was well en-
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Lilian Jackson Braun dowed with wild blueberries—low-growing shrubs that crept across the property as if they owned it.
When my grandfather, Matthew King, inherited the farm, he claimed that blueberries occupied more acreage than did corn and potatoes. He said, “Wild blueberries can’t be cultivated, but they can’t be killed, either.” So he gave the berries away to anyone who cared to pick them. Grandma King said she laid awake nights thinking of ways to use them in family meals: a handful of blueberries here, a handful of blueberries there. The perfect blueberry pie recipe that she masterminded is in my security box at the bank.
By the time my father inherited the property, the family was involved in producing, packaging, marketing, and shipping blueberry products. He was jocularly called the Blueberry King, and friends launched a frivolous campaign to change the name of the area to Blueberry County. Their slogan: “When was the last time you saw a Moose?”
Finally my brothers and I were bequeathed the blueberry empire, but we were interested in careers of our own.
We sold out to the large Toodle family, who developed the property in various ways, including a supermarket with ex-tensive parking and loading facilities. They carry excellent produce from all parts of the country. Included are the large cultivated berries that I put in muffins, pancakes, soups, sal-ads, stews, and Grandma King’s blueberry pie. Considering my blueberry heritage, it seems ironic that I now buy the berries in eight-ounce boxes. No matter. There is a postscript to the tale.
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Short & Tall Tales The supermarket has had constant trouble with the parking lot. Asphalt buckled. Concrete cracked. One day Grandma Toodle showed me the latest damage. Shrubs were pushing up in the wide cracks.
“What do you think they are?” she asked.
“I know what they are!” I said. “Nothing can stop those pushy Moose County blueberries.”
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23.
The Curse on
the Apple Orchard
Based on a Taped Conversation
with Homer Tibbitt
Homer, retired educator, is now official historian for Moose County. Good choice! He soaks up local history like a sponge to be squeezed upon demand. He has written numer-ous papers on local history, all on file at the Pickax public library.
—JMQ
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Foreword: The Trevelyan apple barn will still be standing after the Rock of Gibraltar has crumbled away.
Now converted to a residence, it still exudes the aroma of Winesaps and McIntoshes in certain weather. Why it was abandoned remains a mystery. The orchard has withered; the farmhouse has burned down. All that remains is the barn and a lilac bush as big as a two-story, three-bedroom house. In this recording Homer Tibbitt tells all he knows, with only an occasional prodding by the interviewer.
“Trevelyan is a Cornish name. Many folks think it’s Welsh. Wrong! The Trevelyans came from Cornwall, En-gland, in the mid–nineteenth century, bringing with them the famous meat-and-potato pasty, which has become the official food of Moose County. The miners used to take 쑽쑽쑽
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Lilian Jackson Braun them down the mine shaft for lunch; now tourists take them to the beach for picnics. Where do you want me to start?”
“With the orchard—in its heyday.”
“It was a typical strip farm, half a mile long, but narrow.
It fronted on the back road, now called Trevelyan Road.
There was a farmhouse there. The barn was at the other end. In between: nothing but apple trees. The barn was a drive-through, with doors big enough to admit a horse-drawn wagon piled high with apples. Pickax folks considered the barn pretentious. Too big, too showy. Don’t know how they felt about the family themselves. Per-haps the Trevelyans mixed only with other Trevelyans—all of whom, I might say, seemed to be hard working and successful.
“Anyhow, the farmhouse was struck by lightning. The farmwife and her youngest child died in the fire that de-stroyed their home. Where was the farmer? Where were the older children? No one knows. They didn’t have a real newspaper in those days. That same year all the apple trees began to wither, struck by blight. Then the horses died.