Not long after my friend Barbara returned to her native New England to marry John, she sent me a book with this inscription written on the flyleaf: …wanted to send a bit of our New England… The book, by Mary Mason Campbell, is called The New England Butt’ry Shelf Almanac and, in its subtitle, is described thus: being a collation of observations on New England people, birds, flowers, herbs, weather, customs and cookery of yesterday and today. To top it off, it is illustrated by Tasha Tudor, perhaps best known for illustrating Wind in the Willows.
It’s a small, hardcover book, easy to tuck into a purse or under a pillow for late-night reading. Though Barbara sent it to me in 1984 and I have read through it many times, I still enjoy a ramble through its pages now and again. It’s another of those books that I wish I had written myself, and I still toy with the idea of doing something like it centered on Oysterville.
Yesterday I happened to turn to a piece written for the month of July describing the old way of mowing: How beautifully quiet it must have been when mowing was done by hand. Only the rhythmic whetting of the scythes disturbed the midsummer air then. Now the scythe is used only for trimming, and few know the skill, the grace, and the beauty of mowing by hand.
One of my own treasured memories is of my grandfather using his scythe to mow the grass around the house. (I don’t think we called it a ‘lawn’ in those days.) I remember thinking that he looked like he was dancing with his arms – a beautiful and hypnotic rhythm even to a little girl. Ms. Campbell went on to say:
There was a storied man who lived in our town who could mow by hand six acres a day, giving nine tons of hay; his strong, long arms cut a swath twelve feet wide. This man had other early New England capabilities, for during his lifetime he made by hand and sold one million shingles. He had cleared three hundred acres of land for his farm, tapped for twenty years at least six hundred maple trees, and made as much as four thousand pounds of sugar a year. In his spare time he worked as a cooper and he was a famous drum-maker as well. Where could be found such industry in a man now?
Where indeed?
I have a copy of the Tasha Tudor-illustrated “A Little Princess” (sorry, can’t underline or do italics here!), and it is simply lovely.
I believe, in today’s service–particularly financial services–economy, the industrious man is the one out acquiring companies by hostile takeovers by the dozen each day (ha ha ha ha!).
I remember my grandfather, a New Englander, using a scythe to trim the “rough” edges of the woods. He used an old, push mower to cut the grass. If we were good, we were allowed to help him rake the grass afterwards. When he was older, he had trouble raking up all the leaves (his yard was quite large), so he created this leave picker-upper. There were two front wheels with a rotating brush in between the wheels. A canvas sack was attached in the correct spot to catch the leaves as they were brushed up. the handle came up from each wheel with a bar across to hold as you pushed. He was an inventive man who made the tool needed when he could not afford to buy it. His best creative efforts were his hot milk cake, pecan pie and baked beans from scratch. Thank you for bringing back old memories.