Wild strawberries and crawfish orgies

Head family farm. Orenco. Late 'teens or '20s

Our summer days' high point was crawfishing. Grandmama had made us three big traps using rings from an old barrel with flour sacks sewed to them. We tied pieces of old meat at the bottom and went to the creek. We always looked for a place with lots of old logs or tree roots to drop our traps. Sometimes we put them in early in the morning and picked them up before dinner time so we could prepare the tails for seafood cocktails. 

When we had lot of bait we left the traps in all night and the next afternoon Grandmama had filled a washtub with water, added pickling spice and a little vinegar set it over the outside fire pit in the backyard. There was always three dozen or so 8-10 inches long in the overnight trap and a hundred or more smaller ones (we always put the very small ones back for future years). After plunging them in the water and watching them turn from brown to bright red-orange we got a jar of homemade mayonnaise and sat on the back steps equipped with nutcrackers. We spent the next hour or two cracking shells and dipping the delicious meat into the mayonnaise until the crawfish were all gone. In spite of the fact that these orgies ended with the occasional stomachaches we were always ready for the next one.

There was a wild strawberry patch at the bottom of the lane that yielded sweet little berries. We agreed to not eat one single berry while picking them. This was very difficult but afterwards a desert of hot homemade shortcake smothered with berries and topped with whipped cream courtesy of Bessie the cow made us glad we hadn't eaten them in the field.