The Rural Voice, 2006-10, Page 36=Mk
Exploding
Pickles
How could three little girls create such a big stink
from an innocent game of plaging house
By Anne Duke Judd
Jt was in the fall of 1953, when I
was 11, that a girlish experiment
went wrong.
An exciting year: the year of
getting a two -wheeled bike—new,
shipped from Eaton's and delivered
by transport truck to the shop, where
my dad assembled it. Exciting on
June 3 when we sat blinking in the
early -morning living room, as radio
voices from Westminster Abbey
described "our" Princess Elizabeth's
coronation. We remembered driving
one chill November day a couple of
years before to see her in North Bay,
the tiny Princess in a fur coat; the
handsome Duke besidd her; our view
nearly blocked by last -minute -
arriving Girl Guides. When our
32 THE RURAL VOICE
mother said, "We drove three hours
so these girls could see Princess
Elizabeth," the Guide leader had
replied, "C'mon up with us."
Eleven: old enough to ride my
bike two miles to explore sideroads,
young enough to "play" after school.
The next year, I joined other girls
who went to one another's homes to
merely sit and talk. For now, kids in
our neighbourhood gathered to play
House, Store, School, marbles or
skipping games.
My younger sister, Linda, our
neighbour Margaret, and I played
House in Margaret's yard on sunny
days. An old fridge by the back door
and an oilcloth -covered table made
our setting. In rain, we used our shed,
They call them "cucumbers". Who
knew they could be explosive
weapons?
called "the henhouse" from its former
incarnation. A modest, white -painted
building with one small window
fa' ing our house. it had a privy
attached to its other side—useful in
emergencies.
Furnished with some folding
wood -and -canvas chairs, a rough
table, and a wall cupboard partly full
of flower pots and Mother's
gardening tools, it provided all we
needed. We held meetings of our
clubs or imagined the roof as the
slanting deck of a sailing ship from
which we jumped all six feet into
deep snow.
Up the pine trees beside the
henhouse, wild cucumber vines
climbed, flowering in early summer
and bearing their round, prickly fruits
in fall. Across the driveway, two
honeysuckle bushes drooped over the
birdbath, heavy with bright red
berries that robins loved and we were
warned not to eat.
Maybe we made the pickles the
day we refused to play Ranch with
Don and his sister, Kerry. Living
with their grandmother while their
parents divorced, they attended our