I remember the huge wood and coal range in my grandmother’s kitchen. The fellow who sells gleaming household appliances has a picture of one in a book. “To think that women had to slave over a thing like that. Primitive,” he snorted. Not really a primitive weight of cast iron, smart butt, I thought; it was her altar and she was the priestess who made miracles happen.
There were many like her in the village then. When the horse-drawn binders were being made ready to cut a sparse crop, Grandmother took beets from the garden and transformed them into sweet pickles. Then I was given 15 cents and sent to the local butcher to purchase beef tongue. In due time Grandmother’s ministrations over her altar produced succulent slices of meat. Between two slices of fresh buttered bread, beet pickles and beef tongue became a gastronomic miracle. I can’t buy a beef tongue now, but I know cows still have tongues and somewhere there are somebodies dining on them. That this should be is either a horrendous mistake or a devilish conspiracy. This is unfair. If I could afford to buy a truffle, I would be happy to trade it for a beef tongue.
As the first days of autumn drew near crews began to assemble with threshing machines and big, belching tractors. Then ladies of the village began to make cucumber pickles and relishes of every description. The air was full of sweet, spicy smells. I swear it was so thick you could cut it into pieces and eat it.
It warms my heart to see sealers and rings for sale in a grocery store. It means somebody is canning something edible. The arts of the rural past have not disappeared. Whenever I see processed food imprisoned in untearable plastic, I wonder where it came from, and what regulations applied to its growing and processing. And what chemical mixes were added to it. My grandmother’s pickles and relishes were the essence of purity, even though she had a primitive cook stove and the water she used was brought in pails from the village well.
Processed foods and tough plastic wrappers are symbols of globalization. Globalization, whatever its benefits, produces uniformity, a dreadful sameness. I prefer places which keep their own distinctive character. A healthy world needs places where people preserve their own diets, customs and values.
Women no longer have to serve the wants and whims of lordly males. They are equal – or better than equal. This does not mean that women of my grandmother’s time were servile. They had skills, strength and wisdom. They cooked; they cared, they comforted. When modern pirates try to control food production, water and agricultural lands, modern women – even those who have never boiled an egg—will oppose them.
If I were forced to live on a desert isle with only one companion, I would not choose a lady lawyer or accountant or strip-tease artiste. I would chose a woman like any one in the brave band of grandmas I knew so long ago.
