“Those lazy days of summer” from the August 12, 1976 Door County Advocate
By GRACE SAMUELSON
Those lazy days of summer
By GRACE SAMUELSON
The big Bicentennial Day is over and for many of us the thrill lingers on: hours spent, through the magic of television, watching historic moments of history repeated; seeing and hearing tributes that made us truly proud of being an American. Rousing songs and drills, marching and dancing. A superlative Walter Cronkite, as enthusiastic at the close of the day as at the beginning. People participating in glorifying our two hundred years of democracy, from the Statue of Liberty to the Golden Gate bridge—“from sea to shining sea.” And the finale—the marvelous display of fireworks, and the thrill of actually being able to see 1776 new citizens sworn in, in Chicago, and over 7100 in Miami. A day never to be forgotten.
And for us the day was made perfect by that old American custom—a picnic with friends. Glorious 4th of July weather, wonderful food and surroundings; and a thankful spirit that we were able to enjoy this day of days.
It brought to mind a picnic of long ago, when disappointment turned into a happy experience. I was probably about seven that summer, and we had long planned a ride to Clark’s Lake, with a picnic dinner, and getting home in time for the band concert at Vendome Park, and the chance to light up sparklers.
That summer we had a boarder, Mrs. Mamie Jones, a widowed friend of the family. She earned her livelihood by taking orders for the White House Cook Book; an esteemed book with recipes of all the presidents’ wives, descriptions of state dinners, and correct table settings. Mrs. Jones was very personable. We girls loved to hear her tell us about her travels. She was a wonderful story teller, too, and read so beautifully we sat enthralled. She wrote many of her favorite recipes in Mama’s Sturgeon Bay cook book. We admired her appearance, too. She never went to make her calls without a hat and gloves, and usually carried a parasol.
On this particular 4th Mama was especially busy with food preparations all the day before. We were up early and all hands turned to in packing the food to take along. Papa walked down to the livery stable and came home in a surrey (I don’t remember if it had fringe on top.) The horse was beautiful—glossy black; high spirited. We looked forward to a pleasureable ride. Papa and Mama and the baby rode in the front seat; Mrs. Jones sat in the back with Vera and Verna and me. The food was packed at our feet, covered with an old bedspread, to help keep it cool, and free of dust. We sat proudly on the seat, waving at our friends, and savoring the prospect of a day in the country. Papa said “Gid-yap”, and the horse clip-clapped on his way.
But not for long. We had just turned the corner where the Sheets-Brook Clinic is today when the horse went lame. Papa got out, examined the horse’s shoes, and said, “Well, this horse can’t take us to Clark’s Lake. And he was the last horse in the livery stable, too.” Three little girls set up a wail, but Papa was adamant. No traveling with a lame horse. He turned horse and surrey around, Stopped at the house to unload all our paraphanalia, leaving us frustrated and unhappy. Mama went in the house to put on her apron. Looked like it was going to be just an ordinary day, after all.
Mrs. Jones had other ideas. She soon had us carrying the jars and bowls of food, while she spread the checkered tablecloth on the lawn, in the shade of the maple trees. Remember, this was 1911 BB. (before-barbeque) and you never saw a family eating out in the yard—picnics were for country—parks, lakes, or the fairgrounds. But this was fun! Papa walked back from the livery stable and we all sat down on the ground and surveyed the spread.
Potato salad, made with boiled salad dressing, deviled eggs, sliced boiled picnic ham, cabbage, shredded thin and dressed with vinegar and sugar and bacon bits. Two-quart Mason jars filled with lemonade, pieces of rind bobbing around in it, to insure the flavor. Homemade bread with butter and thin slices of pressed chicken loaf. Radishes and onions and lettuce from our garden. (If we had been eating inside, our meal would surely have included new potatoes with green peas in a cream sauce. Everyone had new potatoes and peas by the fourth.) Never having had pop we didn’t miss it, nor potato chips, and it was too early for watermelon.)
But the piece de resistance was the freezer of homemade ice-cream, the cannister packed in a nest of chopped bay-ice and-coarse salt, while the flavor mellowed. Rich egg custard, cooked till it coats the spoon, is cooled and then blended with the beaten whites and whipped cream, and plenty of vanilla. Mm-m-m—the creamy smoothness was scooped into oatmeal dishes, and smothered with juicy strawberries. A thing to dream on! When we helped turn the crank on the freezer till our arms ached we were all the time anticipating that frosty sweetness.
Most of the time when we had ice-cream Mama made a devil’s food, or a burnt leather cake. (She loved to give out the recipe by starting—“First you take an old pair of shoes—”; then hastened to add that the caramel color came from searching sugar over the fire, then adding a couple of tablespoons of water, to make a thin sauce.) She added a bit of the caramel sauce, too, to her fluffy boiled frosting. Sometimes, when the egg whites beat up to large quantity, there’d be extra frosting, and that would be spread on saltines, sprinkled with finely chopped nuts, and toasted in the oven till lightly brown. That went well with ice-cream too.
We were so full we rolled on the grass, than lay on our backs and watched the cloud pictures in the sky. What a day to remember! I can remember Mama asking Mrs. Jones, “Weren’t you disappointed?” “No,” she answered, “I’ve had so many disappointments in my life just missing a buggy ride wasn’t hard. There was still dinner, and we were all well, and safe and sound.”
We all walked down to the Park in the evening, enjoyed visiting, listening to the band, eating crackerjack and Poulos Bros. cake-ice-cream cones. And there were fireworks, and sparklers to wave around. Sleepy little girls—almost too tired and too full to walk home. But our dreams were rosy—of a glorious fourth.
Sometimes Papa would take the two older girls down to the Yard to watch a launching. And often Chief Frank Stroh would take his family and ours in his launch—Papa steering, and Mr. Stroh at the engine. We got to see Chambers Island, Gull Island; all the way up the Bay side of the peninsula. What fun! No far away adventures for us.
Around the Fourth we girls would go out to Larkin’s every other morning to pick strawberries. Picking usually lasted till noon but by ten o’clock we’d have our lunch eaten—sandwiches of home-made bread, and leaf lettuce and sliced radishes. Mama’s oatmeal cookies always filled out our lunch. There was a pail of cool water and a big dipper in the crating shed, so we were refreshed every time we brought a carrier in.
Plenty of the berries found their way to our mouths, too, especially if we were lucky enough to have a “fertilizer row” to pick. Hot, tired, and sunburned, we got a ride back to town at noon. Papa never allowed us to go swimming unless he was along, so we spent the afternoon in the shade, often taking turns pumping cold water on our feet. We rubbed our fiery skin with cucumber peel, then smeared buttermilk on our arms and faces to help fade the freckles. Nobody, but nobody wore shorts in those days, but we were allowed to wear overalls when we picked strawberries or cherries.
We considered ourselves so lucky, as we usually got to spend a week or two on Uncle Sam’s farm in Jacksonport. How much help we were in their busy season is a question—we did do dishes and peel potatoes and help pod peas and snap beans. One chore we thoroughly enjoyed was grazing the cows down the “Lane,” often finding wild raspberries or black-berries at the wayside; Aunt Bertha used to send along a jar of raspberry vinegar, and I doubt if anything could be more refreshing.
We thought we were pretty smart, anyway, to have an uncle who had a shetland pony farm, we didn’t have to go to the Fair for pony rides. At the close of a hot working day in the fields the whole family rode down to Lake Michigan in Uncle Sam’s model T which he used on his mail route. No bathing suits—we wore our overalls, and although the lake water was cold we romped and paddled through waves or ripples and were rejuvenated.
July afternoons were wonderful for reading in the dappled shade of the maples, watching ant hills, caterpillars, knocking potato bugs into a can of kerosene—(a penny for every fifty bugs brought us spending money for the 4th—some of our strawberry and cherry earnings went for treats at the Fair.)
And then the Chautauqua came to town, and weren’t we privileged, in a day before radio or television, to be able to hear and see nationally famous concert artists, lecturers, and others. The great tent might have been stifling, but at least our source of culture wasn’t. Americans all, with equal opportunities. And the right to be proud of it.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
[“pleasureable” and “paraphanalia” are alternate spellings.
A recipe for raspberry vinegar: https://gunstonhall.org/learn/learning-from-home/cooking-and-drinking/drinking-vinegar-or-shrub/
Traveling Culture: Circuit Chautauqua in the Twentieth Century: https://www.lib.uiowa.edu/sc/tc/ ]
Articles by Grace Samuelson
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/grace-samuelson