30 Days, 30 Stories

Day Two: Huckleberries

We spent every summer in Virginia. There was never any question of it. As soon as school let out, either one of my uncles would drive up from Smithfield and take us there, or my mother would take us on either the bus on the train. My father never went with us to Smithfield. Sometimes he drove down to bring us back home again, but more often than not we took the train from Newport News back to Philadelphia. I don't think my father liked being in the countryside. He was too much of a city person. He always seemed ill at ease whenever he was there. 

Though I know it isn't the case, I always remember those Virginia summers as being perpetually sunny and hot. My cousins and I explored every inch of the woods behind my grandparents' house on Scotts Factory Road. We tried to scare each other with creepy stories of axe murderers, escaped convicts and zombies. But mostly what we did was pick huckleberries. 

Every morning my grandmother would spray us with OFF! and we'd head off to the woods, searching for perfectly ripe huckleberries. Nana would tell us not to go too far into the woods, but we rarely listened. As far as we were concerned, the woods were ours. We imagined ourselves to be adventurers as we scrambled over fallen trees and ran along the bumpy paths through the trees. 

Sometimes we'd convince ourselves a bear was nearby. I don't think we ever saw one, but we were certain there surely had to be bears--and wolves too--in the wilds of Smithfield, Virginia. On occassion we spotted deer, hawks or possums. Sometimes an owl in the trees. Most of the time we heard frogs croaking in the foliage and we'd find toads and snakes and treefrogs. 

And while we sought out those sweet, juicy berries, we debated which was better: Star Trek or Star Wars, the Jeffersons or Good Times, Scooby Doo or the Flintstones, Speedracer or the Monkees... or we'd make up goofy songs while we swatted away flies and mosquitoes. 

At some point we'd realize our buckets were full to the brim with the huckleberries we loved so much. Instead of going directly back to our grandmother's house, we'd find someplace to sit or venture to a dilapidated shed we'd found and hang out there, eating handfuls of the berries while the blackish blue juice dripped down our arms and stained our t-shirts. 

We always made sure we saved enough so that our grandmother would reward us with huckleberry muffins, huckleberry pancakes or--our favorite--huckleberry ice cream. Nothing compared to our grandmother's homemade ice cream. Not even the gelato I love to eat during Italian vacations compares.

Last summer I bought a package of huckleberries while I was in the US. Now that my grandmother is dead, no one in the family seems to know the recipe for her ice cream, but eating those berries on that sticky, humid day took me back to those idyllic summers in Smithfield and it reminded me of how much I miss my grandparents. 

I wish they were still with us.