"March the outlaw month which provides love-hate relationship" from the March 14, 1978 Door County Advocate
By GRACE SAMUELSON
March the outlaw month which provides love-hate relationship
By GRACE SAMUELSON
March is such a capricious month that we have a love-hate relationship with it. The elusive signs of spring one day, then turnabout, a blizzard and ice storm the next. Gentle breezes cancelled out by violent winds. The mercury plays yo-yo, and we don't know whether to zip on our boots, or put on tennis shoes. Such a lingering month, March is — 31 days, of "will it, or won't it?" Still there are highlights. Remember when March 4 was Inauguration Day? That is, until Roosevelt had it changed to Jan. 20. The papers tell us that the week of March 6 through the 11 is designated as "National Procrastination Week", which should give many of us an extra alibi. The Big Day in every March is the 17th — St. Patrick's Day. And we've always heard that the swallows come back to Capistrano on March 19. The buzzards also come back to Hinckley, Ohio on March 19. The first day of spring pops up March 20, and this year Palm Sunday comes on the 19th, Good Friday on the 24th, and Easter the 26th. The Eastern Orthodox Lent begins on March 13 this year, while our Jewish friends celebrate Purim, (the defeat of Haman) on the 23rd. This year their Passover comes in April. We observe our own special days. Eventually the month passes and folks will be coming back from the south, or west, and we'll tune in to spring.
Back in the "old days" (my sister Marian's kids once asked her if she'd come west in a covered wagon — all depends on your point of view as to age), but back then we'd gauge the weather by the spirals of smoke coming up from neighbors' chimneys. Few furnaces in our neighborhood those days, and everyone stocked up for the winter with several cords of hardwood, or with coal in the shed. We used hard coal in our base burner. We loved to watch the tiny colored flame behind the isin glass. The flames were flickering brightly after Papa had shaken down the stove, and poured in a scuttle full of the shiny black pieces. We'd grab our clothes and come running down stairs, to dress behind the stove, then scoot into the bathroom to pour warm water into the basin and wash, before we pulled our wool dresses over our outing flannel petticoats.
Papa would clear the frost off the window to read the thermometer. "Two above", he'd tell us, "Bundle up good when you go to school." We could come to the breakfast table before we combed our hair, provided it wasn't just hanging — and while I was in the lower grades I was required to wear an apron over my school dress. I never could keep the immaculate look the way Vera and Verna did. Before we sat down we'd peer through the window cleared of frost, and report: "Smoke's coming straight up" from Reynold's and Scofield's chimneys; it's going to be a nice day." Then we'd sit down to our bowls of oatmeal or Cream of Wheat, and bacon, with our boiled eggs in little egg cups, to eat along with oven toast. No radio or T.V. to provide news or music, but the teakettle sang on the old range, and we vied with each other to tell news we'd heard at school the day before. When Papa left to walk across the bridge to the branch bank, we got our hair braided, washed up breakfast dishes, and ran up into the cold bedrooms to make our beds before we left for school. Always in March we looked to see the first robin.
Other signs of spring appeared around town in March. The snow melted; more snow came — often we had a big blizzard around St. Patrick's Day — but usually by the end of the month we could take our roller skates, jump ropes, kites, marbles and look forward to the days we could go out without our overshoes — even rubbers didn't seem as bad. We'd get green hair ribbons to wear on St. Pat's, beg to have a party, with cup cakes frosted in green, and Irish scones, with lots of currants. We wore green shamrocks, and went down to Washburn's for the clay pipes some men used for smoking, but which were bubble pipes to us, with Ivory soap and a drop or two of glycerine in the water.
When my own children were small, Miss Scofield asked her kindergarten class one day if they knew anyone who was Irish. Ruth raised her hand and said, "Yes, my mother and I are Irish." By that time we had radio, and were sure to hear the Irish songs, "Danny Boy", "My Wild Irish Rose"; "Kathleen Mavourneen" and "Gallway Bay." Then, at home we had corned beef and cabbage, green jello, and Marguerites, like Mama used to make, boiled frosting tinted green, spread on crackers and sprinkled with chopped nuts, then baked a few minutes to puffiness. Green candles on the supper table gave it a party air. And Ruth and Mary used to cut out shamrocks to paste on our paper napkins. My clover [false shamrock] plant made a nice centerpiece: the only problem there was that the blossoms closed at night, but the green clover leaves were pretty. When I was young we'd sometimes see a clay head, which when seeded with grass seed, sprouted to form green hair. During the depression years sometimes we'd seed a wet sponge, in the same way. Or grow a little dish garden of oats, and set in mirrors to resemble ponds, and a few of the children's farm animals for fun.
Recently we had a letter from Ken Dreaves, from Florida, commenting on winter storms he recalled. When Ken was a freshman, he said we had such a severe blizzard that they were snowbound for a week, until Burt Bingham made a wooden snow plow and attached it to his tractor, then plowed the road down to Pleck's corner. Remember memorizing "Snow Bound" in school? I don't recall if that particular blizzard was in March, but generally we were sure to get real "blockbuster" right around St. Pat's day.
One St. Patrick party during the depression I remember well. It was before our Mary was born, and I had been given money for a maternity dress. Lane Bryant hadn't been in business very long then, and specialized in maternity clothes, and so I sent for a dress. I was happy that it came in time for the St. Patrick's party the Priscillas of‘ our church were giving, since the dress was a green printed rayon. It was a Mother Hubbard style — as all of "those" dresses were then, made with ties for expansion. I was very happy about the dress, until one woman (who was also "expecting") told me: "You know, I was going to send for a dress from Lane Bryant until I saw yours — I'm going to make myself one, not that wrap-around style." Well, so much for being humbled! In my mother's day she wouldn't have ever appeared in public when she was "that way".
So many things we heard or did then, you never hear of or do now. Like having milk delivered to your house in a tin pail, putting it away in the cellar in big crocks; skimming the thick yellow cream for our cereal, our parents' coffee or tea, and for the fresh strawberries in July? Remember seeing sap flow down the trunks of the maples and trying to catch enough in little pails to cook down for maple syrup? How Mama said it takes too much of that sweet sticky juice to make even a little syrup, let alone be able to have a sugaring off party as she did when she was young. Remember how sometimes we'd have a bread and milk or popcorn and milk supper, or corn meal mush? Aunt Emma told me that when they were six motherless girls growing up in Valders they had a meat and potato meal every noon, and always corn meal mush at night. Grandpa Samuelson liked corn meal mush too. But the way he liked it was to have a crock of milk that soured, and after eating the delicately soured cream from the top, he'd take a cup of sour milk, dip his spoon first into the mush (that had a big glob of butter on top) and then into the cup of sour milk. Stanley likes mush that way, too. He has it occasionally, but with buttermilk. When we lived in Greendale, a farmer nearby had a pasteurization plant, and the neighbors on our street had a car pool arrangement to pick up those big half-gallon bottles for the families. The cream came halfway down the bottle, so thick you could whip it. During World War II I used to use cream to make my white sauce, since butter was rationed. No concern then about cholesterol. I guess the Irish were more fond of oatmeal than corn meal — Irish oats are supposed to have super flavor.
With spring on the way and the specter of that housecleaning bugbear to live through, we made the most of our time getting ready for Easter. Easter bonnets were a must, and spring coats something to yearn for. Clotheslines held the pieces of old wool coats that were ripped, washed, turned and pressed to be made over into "like new" finery. That "make do" custom helped us in the depression. The little boy we lost had a tailored overcoat made from an old suit coat, and a hat to match. When the girls were young Aunt Emma came and spent two weeks with us at Greendale, making coats for them and Bob — all three ready for the Easter Parade.
We colored eggs for Easter and Mama would hide a basket for each of us. Ours always held one of her delicious chocolate covered fondant eggs, too. We drooled as we saw the caramel rolls, coffee cakes and cinnamon rolls turned out on the "bread clothes" — nobody used racks for cooling then. When we heard about Campbell's alphabet soup we begged Mama to get some but she made chicken soup and added rice; then told us to notice how rice cooked in soup forms its own alphabet. The ham was cooking in the big Wear-ever aluminum pail, down on the oilstove in the basement, and we knew we'd have lemon jell cake for dessert on Easter. Pancakes or french toast on Saturday noon — strawberry sauce on my toast. And why did plain fried potatoes taste so very good? Leftover baked potatoes sliced thick and fried in bacon fat the way Papa liked them, or boiled potatoes fried with a bit of onion and made to stretch with bread cubes. The smell of spring was in the air, Easter on the way, with its promise of a new world. Easter Joy!
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
[One definition of isin glass is a transparent sheet of mica: https://www.definitions.net/definition/ISINGLASS
John McCormack - Kathleen Mavourneen (1927)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7XZAJexbIY
"Snow Bound" by John Greenleaf Whittier
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Snow_bound/We0-AAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PP29&printsec=frontcover
A description of the Priscillas
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Church_School_Journal/SIAzAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA732&printsec=frontcover ]
Articles by Grace Samuelson
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/grace-samuelson