Judy P's Tickle Trunk

Today’s Blog entry is brought to you by the letter B.

B is for Blog.  Attention seeking at its best. Mine is less of a log or a journal than it is, as a friend aptly described, a Blogazine.

B is for Bogside. Bogside Gallery is the best place in Halifax to buy a gift. I Used to work for Bogside when it was a weaving studio in St. John’s, Newfoundland, but that’s another story. The owner is named Barbara. B is for Barbara.

Bogs Boots

 B is for Bogs and for boot.  There is nothing in this world like a good pair of rubber boots – but I have discovered that my black Baffin boots, while perfect for boating and beach-combing (may I stop identifying B words for you now?) were making me an object of ridicule in the city. I recently purchased a pair of trendy Bogs boots at great expense and so far they have proven to be the very best. The are short enough that when driving, they don’t propel my leg forward when I bend my ankle to depress the gas pedal and make me accelerate uncontrollably. They are sufficiently ugly that no one will wish to steal them. I can wear just a sport sock inside them and they will keep my foot warm in sub-zero temperatures but they are not too warm on a hot day. (If you’re talking to the Bogs people, let them know I am waiting for my commission.)

Bakeapple

A bakeapple is a small Northern berry which grows on a single stalk in marshes or bogs. Mainlanders often thought them called “baked-apples” and wondered if it had to do with their flavour. The proper pronunciation is bake-apple though in Notre Dame Bay dialect we said “bag-appo”. If you have ever had the good fortune to travel to Scandinavia you may also know them as cloudberries. They are expensive to buy. They can be very scarce, and growing individually on a single stalk, they are labour intensive to pick. Some years, when fierce weather had destroyed the bakeapple blossoms early in the season, the berries would be extra scarce and other years there would be none at all. Even when they are plentiful it is hard going. If they are ripe you have to pick two gallons to get one, as they settle. My Uncle told the story one year of how he bought an ATV, a new thing at the time, to ride in over the bogs to berry pick. He allowed the solitary berry he found cost him nigh on five thousand dollars.

My family had a love-hate relationship with bakeapples. Many years growing up, when we got word from our Aunt Marie that the bakeapples were ripe and plentiful, we would pile aboard our blue and white station wagon and drive to Musgrave Harbour for the annual trek across the bogs of the Straight Shore in search of the elusive berry. I now realize this might be related to my Mother’s canning obsession – the winter stores were not complete without a few jars of sweet bakeapple jam.

Setting out for bakeapple picking harboured no less excitement for me than the Vikings felt when they left to cross the ocean for Vinland. There was great anticipation of fresh air and exercise and buckets filled with fruit. I remember fondly the feel of my step on the soft moss covered peat; like walking on memory foam, and the sweet smell of the wildflowers. I even liked the rotten egg smell of the marsh gas. The sky was blue, the clouds so low “you could touch them and so ….get after those bakeapples, Jean”. That was the first song in my head. I didn’t know too many songs off by heart back then but as I tripped along I felt so close to nature that I would sing to myself songs from the children’s section of our United Church hymnbook, my favourite being “This is My Father’s World”. It wasn’t too long, however, before the day  ceased to be a religious experience.

The berries close to the road were always picked over by the locals so we had to trek to the inner bog, fording a stream. It would be early in the day to get one’s feet wet. It was usually getting on in the morning and the sun was high and if there wasn’t much in the way of wind so the insects started to descend. The black fies weren’t too bad; they don’t seem to like the heat, but the nippers were out in force and eager to taste child-blood. But the worst were the stouts. They were the size of small spitfires with, I swear, three racks of teeth the size of a shark’s. They were difficult to kill but when you did get so lucky, they crunched and squished under your hand and exuded a revolting bright yellow paste. To a small child it was preferable to be bitten.

Mom's Jug

Onto the bogs we staggered like a family of refugees with nervous tics and twitches as we swatted at flies and adjusted our glasses as they slid down our sweat-slick noses and craned our necks to keep the bandanna knots off our king-corns. We were wearing the oldest of our clothing; faded pants, worn thin at the knees, and outgrown t-shirts which were so tight they served to define the more tender parts of our anatomy for the nippers. Our pails were in descending order according to the size of the picker….my mother always carried a white enamel jug and one year I carried a Halloween pumpkin.  The spring in our step would soon become a trudge and there was a constant chorus of whining from the kids when suddenly the cry go out “I sees one!” and then I would spy one and soon all were picking in earnest.

Bakeapples are juicy, like raspberries but with less lobes. They are golden or amber coloured when ripe. They are often picked young, when they have a red tinge, and ripened in a dark cupboard like tomatoes, but these do not have as much flavour. When over-ripe they turn white and the take on a sour taste. My daughter describes the flavour of bakeapple as being that of a pineapple crossed with a pear. My sister June would have described it more like an apple mixed with battery acid as she despises bakeapples to this very day – adamant that she had her taste for berries turned by the hours of forced labour every summer on the Straight Shore bogs. She, usually the most contented, happy-go-lucky one amongst us, would grumble and scowl throughout the exercise. Mom would insist that she pick a full quart before she could be released from her confinement to wander about the bog, usually in the direction of the car.

I was Mom’s girl when it came to berry-picking of any kind and I worked diligently when the berries were thick, ignoring the biting flies and the smell of burning flesh as my nose broiled in the hot early afternoon sun. I didn’t know it then, but for me picking berries was the perfect zen activity. Pick a berry, then another, then another, until there were no more berries to be picked – pausing only to find another patch or have a snack of a potted meat sandwich and a Caramel Log, washed down with a bottle of Mountain Dew. We were quite protective once we found a good patch – an area of six square meters must be respected and should a sibling stray anywheres close to that a cry would go up “D’as moine, get offa my patch”. I would park my bucket nice and steady in the moss and pick into a small plastic cup and on I would go until Mom’s enamel jug was filled and she had filled the remainder of Dad’s pail for him and would, only then, declare victory.

The trudge back to the car was painful indeed. We must have looked a motley crew. We stank of Deep Woods Off, though it had mostly worn off by now,  and salt meat dinner flavoured sweat. Our pants were stained with the rich black bog dirt and everyone lugged their precious pail as we forced ourselves forward, occasionally mis-stepping and sinking thigh deep into the warm boot-sucking mud, releasing a bomb of marsh gas to add insult to injury. 

My first real experience with empathy was knowing the pain a sibling felt when they spilled their berries.

 I recall the year that, as I stumbled over the clumps of marsh grass, the handle on my pumpkin broke (hadn’t I learned anything from those Halloween nights – pumpkin straps are never to be trusted) and Mom’s sweet reassuring voice “D’as all right my love, I’ll help you pick ’em up” and I finished the march with my pumpkin clutched tightly to my chest.  When we got to the stream Mom carried my pumpkin and Dad carried me on his back, my chin resting on his sunburned pate.

The drive back to Grammy’s seemed to take forever. The dust from the rough unpaved roads permeated the car and stuck to our sweat. No one spoke. Mary, who was blessed with car sickness, always got to ride in the front. I, who was smallest, got the dreaded hump, while Peter and June stared blankly out the back windows at the barrens, like exhausted chain-gangers on their way back to lock-up. And Mom up front, with that sweet smile of satisfaction at having seen everyone’s pail filled.

Back at Grammy’s finally, where it would take two strong adults to remove my rubber boots which were cemented with bog dirt to my socks which were in turn glued to my blistered feet. Then into the bath where I would lay back and let the warm brackish water (I being the youngest, was the fourth to use the water) soothe my aching legs and I would take stock of my wounds; the raised red welts of the nipper bites, the crust of blood at my hair-line from the blackfly bites, and the purple bruised craters left by the stouts.

Restored now, in clean dry pajamas and smelling of Grammy’s floral soap, I would reap my reward: a bowl of the ripest and largest of the berries, lightly stewed with a little sugar and topped with a dollop of thick tinned cream. If I close my eyes now I can taste the acidic juice and feel the seeds crunch between my teeth. All the sun-burnt faces around the kitchen table, all but June who was much happier in the living room, as far away as she could get from bakeapples, satisfied with a bag of Adams potato chips. Then off to bed, where in that state of suspension, half way between awake and asleep, in my mind’s eye, I would have swimming visions of endless bogs and berries and buckets filled with bakeapples. B is for bounty.

Translations: Nipper = mosquito, stout = deer fly, king-corn = Adam’s apple.

(c) Judy Parsons 2011