The Brussels Post, 1976-09-22, Page 9End of summer, and it's piggytime in
most of Canada. You know what I mean.
Don't tell me you haven't laid a cob of corn,
slathered in butter, across your face
recently.
For most of the year, in this northern
clime, we must content ourselves with
produce grown either in, greenhouses or in
the States, and it's about as tasty as an old
rubber boot.
Oh, it looks great on the supermarket
stands. Sock the sprinkler to it several
times a day, and the junk looks' crisp and
fresh. But the celery tasts much like the
lettuce, the turnips much like the potatoes
the oranges, picked green, much like the
grapefruit. And those pale pink tomatoes
in their neat cellophane packages, taste
like nothing at all.
But' for one glorious, short burst,
Candians can live like gourmets,
gourmands, or gluttons, as they choose.
First come those slim green onions,
fresh out of the soil. They are so crisp and
zingy they don't even seem to be distant
relatives of the limp bunches we buy in the
winter.
Then the trickle turns to a stream as the
baby potatoes appear and the fat juicy
strawberries, and the mouth-watering
raspberries a bit later, and right along the
cruncy green and yellow beans, fresh-
picked.
And then, perhaps the greatest treasure
of them all, real tomatoes, plump and firm
and sun-kissed, with a flavor surely
designed by the gods themselves. They are
no more like that imported trash than a
sexr,kiss is like a .pat on the back.
Had I the talent, I would write an ode to
the lowly tomato. A friend of ours who has
a small farm brought a basket of his
beauties around the other day. I put them
in the kitchen, went out to his truck to chat
for a minute. Came back in and caught my
wife leaning over the kitchen sink,
slobbering as she wolfed •them down, a
tomato in one hand, salt shaker in the
other. I had to lock her in the basement for
a while, or she'd have cleaned up the whole
basket.
And then, of course, there are the
cucumbers, so fresh they almost snap back
at you when you bite into a slice.
Into August and the piece de resistance
— ear-to-ear sweet corn. It must be
fresh-picked, and not 'boiled too long.
Lather it with butter, get your head down,
nose out of the way, and go to it.
My heart goes out to those people whose
teeth are so worn down or so insecure that
they can't eat corn off the cob. The only
thing worse would be to be impo, tent.
Some of the most treasured memories
are connected with corn. When I was a kid,
we used to st eal it. Over the fence into
somebody's garden, stuff the shirts with
corn, and back over . the fence, • hearts
pounding, waiting for the shout or the
shotgun. Then off to the sand-pit, build a
Sugar and Spice
by Bill SmileyF
fire, and gorge, We didn't use a knife to
spread the butter on. One of the gang
would have' filched a pound of butter from
the family fridge. Put the butter in an
empty ,can, melt it over the fire, then just
stick the whole cob into the can.
Another memory is of swiping corn from
our own gardens, and taking it down to the
"jungle" by the railway tracks, where the
hobos lived in summer. Then a royal feast,
lying back afterwards and choking Over the
hand-rolled smokes the unemployed .rail-
riders would give us kids.
As a skinny 13-year-old, I set a family
record by going through 13 cobS of corn at
a single sitting. in those days, you didn't:
fool around with corn, using it as a
side-dish, along with cold meat, potato
salad and other nonsense. If you had corn
for supper, you had corn — until it was
coming out your ears. The only thing that
interfered with the eating was having to
come up for air once in a while.
Before this column gets too corny,
ha-ha-, let's get back to that cornucopia of
succulence the average Canadian can slurp
through for a couple of ineffably delirious
months of gluttony.
Right along with the corn come the
peaches. I just had three for breakfast,
peeled, sliced, sugared and covered with
cream. My wife worked as a peach-picker
when she was a student, and she has an
eagle eye for the best, firm, ripe,
juice-spirting.
And what is more delectable than a
fresh, ripe pear? You need a bib to eat
them, and I say "them" advisably. Anyone
who eats only one pear at a time is not a
true Canadian.
Plums. Buttered beets. Boiled' new
potatoes. Butternut squash. If you see a
few stains on the paper as. you read this,
don't be alarmed. It is just drool.
You can take your grapes and squash
them. You can take your bananas and
stuff them. Who needs meat?
Just set me down at a table, preferably
the picnic table in the backyard, with the
sun slanting in from the west. Then set
before me a plate of new potatoes, boiled in
their skins, and half a dozen cobs of
just-shucked corn, and a pound of butter.
On a side plate one ripe tomato, cut in
thick slices, half a young cucumber, cut in ,
thin slices, six or eight slim green onions,
the whole resting on a .bed of that
dark-green lettuce fresh from the garden.
Salt and pepper 'and a little vinegar within
reach.
Then stand well back. Or better still, &in
your sou'-wester. There is going to be a lot
of juice flying.
Show me a dinner of Canada's finest
produce about the end of August, and I
wouldn't trade it for the most exotic meal
in the most elegant restaurant in Paris.
Even the mind slobberS a little, in
, retrospect.
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THE BRUSSELS. POST, SEPTEMBER 22, 'Ott S.
OPP Reports
2 children killed
in accidents
During the week September 6 -
12 OPP from the Wingham
Detachment conducted thirty-two
investigations. • In addition thirty-
two char ges were laid under the
Highway Traffic Act with thirty-
three warnings issued.
Seven charges were laid under
the Liquor Control Act.
One charge was laid under the
Criminal Code.
.On Tuesday, ' September 7,
Florence E. Robertson of
Wingham -was injured as a result
of a single car accident on
Sideroad 30-31 at Concession 1-2,
Morris Township.
During the week, there were
three Motor. vehicle collisions
which caused an ' estimated
$1050.00 in property damage and
injuries to one person
r"During the past week,
Wingham Detachment
investigated two unfortunate
deaths that involved children. In
the first one, on September 8,
Heather Riley. age 6 months,
daughter of Mr. and Mrs.
Carmen Riley of Londesboro, was
at Mrs. Riley's parents residence,
Mr. and Mrs. Harm Thalen of
Moris Township, , when she
strangled after falling partially
between the springs and side of
her baby crib.
In the second death, Robert
Leishman, age 9, son of Mr. and
Mrs. James teishman of Morris
Township, was riding on a farm
tractor on September 12 when it
rolled on its side, killing him'
instantly. Provincial Constable
Ken Balzer investigated' both
accidents.