Do you remember family stories or do you remember everyone else telling you the family stories? I think I remember.
The assembly line was working well. Mother had washed the cans and was now scalding golden jubilee peaches. Little Brother was gleefully slipping the skins off. Daddy was removing seeds. Sister was arranging luscious peach halves in the cans.
Sister laid each piece in carefully. She overlapped each piece so the cut side was turned down. Her finished cans were beautiful to behold.
Mother then poured in the hot syrup and processed the fruit in her big blue canner.
It was a good year. Each peach was perfect. The skins slipped off so easily, Little Brother didn’t even know he was working. Each bushel made 30 quarts. A total of six bushels was put up before the season ended. Of course, some were made into fresh peach pie or sliced to eat with cereal or ice cream.
Peaches were Grandpa Howard’s favorite fruit so several quarts went to him every fall. (Usually at least a bushel.)
One evening the work had gone smoothly. However, before the day’s canning was finished the clock said 9 p.m. These peaches were at the peak of perfection. It really was time to get them canned.
But little children who stay up too late tend not to be happy the next day. Little Brother was obviously tired. It was already half an hour past his bedtime. He made no protest when Mother pointed to the clock and said, “Bedtime.”
A peach half made a nighttime snack. Then he was ready for a bath.
Sister looked at the unfilled cans and the peaches yet in the basket. Her blue eyes filled with tears as she protested.
“Mama, who will can the peaches if I go to bed?”
When I hear of latchkey children, children on drugs, children saturated with television violence, children turned loose in cars as soon as they reached 16, children having children, then I wonder, too.
Who will can the peaches?
(I wasn’t in school; sister Verna was in first or second grade.)