“Spring will come, just like it did in the years gone by” from the March 22, 1979 Door County Advocate
Spring will come, just like it did in the years gone by
By Grace Samuelson
It was a little hard, early on a Sunday morning, to think spring when I looked out, past the high snow banks, and saw a deer trotting down Joliet av., evidently lost and hunting a way to get back to familiar haunts.
Seven o’clock; luckily there wasn’t a car on the road. I ran out, past the snowdrifts, and looked to see what became of him. The poor creature had most likely been chased by dogs, and after escaping found no way to get back to his own browsing grounds. He even climbed a drift near Pfiefer’s, looking down on the frozen bay, but must have decided it inaccessible.
The sun shone on his coat as he loped along. I tried to think of a way to help him, but was at a loss. On he went, and when he was out of sight came in the house, wondering what he would do when he encountered traffic. A short time later it began to snow, big flakes coming down for an hour or so. Where was he then? Had he found protection, or was he still a stranger in a strange land? All day the thought haunted me.
When I came back in the house I turned on Charles Kuralt’s “Sunday Morning”; I watched him speak to Walter Cronkite in Jerusalem, and heard the report of President Carter’s meeting with foreign powers, and his feature on a craftsman. Then as he remarked that it was snowing in New York, he said they’d show us pictures of how spring came in Georgia that week. Lovely views, precious glimpses of baby lambs, pigs, geese, ducks and chickens, horses, cows and other farm creatures, aware that spring was in the air there. Tractors plowing the land, lovely flowers and blooming shrubs: color everywhere; a true breath of spring. You could almost smell the flowers.
Then you looked out the window and there were the same dirty snowbanks, with their dirty underwear showing underneath the new snow-white dress! Now there’s water standing on the ice in the bay, yet the promise of a big snow storm again tonight. Just what we don’t need. It’s been a long, tough winter. C’mon spring! We want you.
Someone has said that a late spring reminds one of the way little children dawdle when they don’t want to go to bed: “Just a drink of water, I forgot my prayers, I just want to see the end of that story, or, I’m hungry.” Mother Nature dawdles, too; Spring may come March 21st, by the calendar, but she’s short on promises, and winter gets in some last licks. One day the thermometer may reach the forties; we hear the call of the cardinal and see geese flying north. Then, a sleet storm or a good old fashioned blizzard comes to reminds us it’s too early to remove our heavies, and we feel our boots have grown to our feet. Spring floods; sap running in the maples; water standing on the ice of the bay. Winter-weary appetites yearn for spring vegetables, available now in the store as they never were in the “good old days”. Only now inflationary prices raise a barrier to our budget meals. Like a Pied Piper, the thought of spring leads us a merry chase. Mother Nature’s broom, the wind, is housecleaning the land. Then, after flirting with us awhile, Spring gives us the cold shoulder. We recall the giant in the fairy tale whose icy grip on the land kept the “three ice-men” (as the Germans used to say) bringing frosty coverings to the bare trees. We’ll have to wait. In time there’ll be the Spring symphony.
Take heart. St. Patrick’s Day came again. Remember how we looked forward to it when we were in school? Halfway through Lent, it was always a time for parties, a great day for the Irish. In Ireland it is a quiet time, a religious holiday, but here the descendants from the Emerald Isle celebrate in style: parades, and meals featuring corned beef and cabbage, or good old Irish stew. Shamrocks, clay pipes, shilleghies: (those blackthorn clubs), Pat and Mike jokes, talk of the “ould” country were all in evidence. We had “Mad Hatter” parties, heard a lot of the March Hare, we dressed potato lads and lassies for party decorations. Sometimes we planted grass seed on clay Irish-heads, which soon sprouted green hair. We played all our Irish records on the Victrola: “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen”, “Danny Boy”, and “Wearing of the Green.” Some brave souls wore orange ribbons to school, to show that their ancestors came from North Ireland. We welcomed the hot-cross buns, spicy and loaded with currants, with frosting crosses on the top.
Our own breath of spring came early this March, when our daughter Ruth and three of her children drove up to see us and brought the harbinger of spring — pussywillows, from her back yard. The rains came, but Stanley got the haircut he needed (Ruth did a good styling job) and he got out to a store for the first time since Christmas. Then Kathy, who was back home from a year as an A.F.S. student in New Zealand, showed us slides of that beautiful country, and shared some of her experiences with us. She had come from balmy summer weather down there to the worst blizzard of the season when she landed at O’Hare Field. Her plane was the last flight in, and they said the drive home to Edgerton was truly a nightmare. I thought of trips home via train, and how our schedules were set. We would arrive from Milwaukee at 2 a.m. in Green Bay, sit dozing on those wooden benches in the Northwestern depot till about six, when the Green Bay and Western left for Sturgeon Bay. We felt that the extra time this gave us for our spring vacation was worth it.
Spring vacations in the twenties! We hiked out to “the bluffs” hoping to find a bit of arbutus, those beautiful pink cup-like flowers, well hidden under the leaves; sometimes even under patches of snow. Another hike took us out to the big creek to see if the suckers were running, carrying along a sandwich and an apple, for our first picnic lunch of the year. We watched for robins and bob-o-links, red-wing blackbirds, and spied skunk cabbage, a true sign of spring. Gardeners would dig in last year’s garden to get parsnips (“Sparsnips”, one old lady used to call them.) We believed that parsnips were poison if they hadn’t stayed in the ground over winter. It was too early for dandelion greens but we carried home pussywillows and at school the primary children wrote little poems about the “pussies” and then pasted the catkins on pictures of fences or ladders for display above the blackboard. You felt like prisoners of winter set loose, and even when the Frost King took over again, you had had that interval of freedom.
Looking through old almanacs, I was impressed with the difference in the type of household hints then and now. Like rubbing a cut lemon on spots on the zinc table top. And cleaning the wall paper with a chunk of stale bread, using kerosene and turpentine and vinegar as a furniture polish. Of course, we realize that in those days everything had to start from scratch, there were no processed or ready-prepared foods in the stores. You ate root vegetables stored in the cellar to get your vitamins and took the hateful cod liver oil, or a spring tonic, if you were lack-a-daisical. Some folks found that the old time tonics made them feel so good they bought it by the case. Remember Hadicol? Even some strict temperance people never realized the high alcoholic content. They claimed it was a wonderful cure-all. Better than sulphur and molasses.
At our house, spring fever affected us in various ways. Mama cooked up a storm, only instead of soups and stews and Johnny cakes, which she turned out in blizzard weather, now she was inclined to make Jello or Dandy pudding, potato salads, boil a ham without cooking cabbage, and she experimented with various kinds of yeast. There were hops, Yeast Foam, and, finally, Baker’s yeast, which enabled her to make bread or rolls in a few hours, instead of having to set it over-night. When we learned to cook at home we were instructed to run down cellar and get eggs from the water-glass, as our chickens didn’t lay eggs in cold weather. (When my mother first heard that the poultry raisers installed electricity in the chicken houses so that the hens would lay more eggs, she was quite indignant. “Why, mercy sakes!” she scolded, “That’s tampering with nature! Can’t they even let the chickens rest?”) But the people who raised poultry didn’t ask Mother’s advice. They were concerned about making a profit.
Every self-respecting young woman learned to cook, though often it was a case of the mother standing beside her giving instructions, then taking over because she didn’t do it the way Mama did. We used recipes from the Moravian cookbook, the Congregational cookbook, and the Ephraim cookbook. Most of the recipes were sent by women our mothers knew personally. Some “receipts” were ones that Mama knew by heart: her favorites. Measurements were rather indefinite: flour enough to stiffen; a coffee cup of clabbered (sour) milk; a handful of raisins, a pinch of salt, or heaping tablespoons of lard, a scant one of soda. If your coffee cup, or tablespoon was larger or smaller than Mrs. Smith’s, the cake didn’t turn out well. Usually Mama baked a little sample cake in a jar cover. But sample or no, I never saw one of Mam’s cakes go to a church supper without a tiny corner cut out to be sure it was light enough. Great-Aunt Effie’s recipe for molasses-apple cup cakes must have been one she knew “by heart”. I never found it written, and my efforts were soggy failures.
With much snow on the ground, it was too early to start spring housecleaning; every good housewife aimed to be all through with that before Easter. Roller skates, jump ropes, marbles, coaster wagons and bikes waited until the sidewalks were dry before we took them out. No parties during Lent, (except the 17th) and time left for homework and re-reading favorite books, listening to stories our parents told about the good old days. Waiting, listening, longing. Then, suddenly it’s spring! Think spring! It’s coming sometime!
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
Articles by Grace Samuelson
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/grace-samuelson