Orange Slices in the Osage

Orange slices in the Osage

Now I don’t know about you but one thing I never liked was Orange Slices not to be confused with Osage Oranges.  You do know what that is?  It is the old hedge apples planted about everywhere during the dust bowl days to save the soil from blowing.  Back to those Orange Slices. 

Every Christmas when the Methodist Church had the Christmas program and at the end of the program Santa Claus would come and hand out a brown paper bag filled with STUFF.  That STUFF was typically and apple or orange, some hard candy (typically made in Dexter, Kansas across the state line), some chocolate drops (basically some type of cooked sugar center with chocolate around it, Dad called them something I cannot bring myself to write), and last of all Orange Slices.  I just hoped I did not get that bag with Orange Slices.  Mom loves those dang things and she would take all the Orange Slices she could get.  Sometimes Mom (Opal) would buy a bag of Orange Slices for the family as a treat.  It was not a treat to me.

On top of all that Mom made “Orange Slice Cookies” and still does today.  Now I will have to tell you my mom was one of the best cooks you could find but there is one thing I did not like back then and still do not have a taste for today, Orange Slices.  So here is something special for those who like Orange Slices:

Orange Slice Cookies

1 ½ cup brown sugar

½ cup Crisco (we need to talk about Crisco)

2 eggs

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon soda

½ cup minute oats

½ teaspoon salt

1 lb. orange slice candy cut up into small pieces

½ cup flour

½ cup chopped nuts (everything goes better with nuts)

½ cup coconut

Cream Sugar and Crisco then add eggs and beat until light

Add 2 cups flour soda and salt

Blend

Dice candy mix ½ cup flour

Stir in coconut, nuts and oats

Roll in balls-press with fork

Bake on greased cookie sheet

Bake 325 degrees 10 to 12 minutes

And that is direct from the horse’s mouth, Opal Olson.  She likes these disgusting morsels and obviously I think they are right there with celery and liver.

So what do you learn from the Osage?

·         Orange Slices are disgusting

·         Love your mom and her cooking and don’t criticize her favorite cookies

·         Dogs don’t eat Orange Slices

Thanks for your time,

gary@thepioneerman.com

                

Home on the Range: Snapping Beans

Home on the Range: Snapping Beans: "One of the things I learned to enjoy long after I had the experience was sitting under the shade tree in the back yard snapping green beans ..."

Snapping Beans

One of the things I learned to enjoy long after I had the experience was sitting under the shade tree in the back yard snapping green beans and shelling black eyed peas or preparing the rhubarb for a home made rhubarb pie.  

In our back yard was one of the biggest elm trees you could ever find.  It was so large you could not put your arms around it and the branches were so big that they covered the entire back of the house with shade and then hung over to the north side of the house about another ten feet.  On top of that with some help from my trusted pal, Eddy Harris, I had one of the largest tree houses you can imagine.  I bet you could have at least six people sitting down in it at one time.  That tree offered the coolest shade and I mean temperature wise.  Dee Johnson lives in that house now and I hope he is still taking care of that elm tree and enjoying the shade.

Anyway during the summer months our garden put off more green beans than the entire town could eat but we had to put them up for the winter.  "Putting them up" means to "can them" or to preserve them for the winter.  In the early years before "freezer bags" we put them in Ball jars and used a pressure cooker to heat the beans and liquid in the jar until the contents were hot enough to drive out the air and as the contents cooled a vacuum would be created and the lid would seal on the jar. 

Just as a side note many folks criticized us for not being environmentally friendly back then but we did not sit in the air conditioned house because we did not have an air conditioner and we recycled those jars every year and we never froze our vegetables which took electricity made with coal.  

Back to canning:  I always enjoyed watching and helping during this process and when you heard the lids pop you knew the seal was good on each jar.  After a few days we would take all the jars to the cellar (remember from earlier stories about the hole in the ground where we hid during tornadoes) and put them on the shelves until winter when we would take them out and mom would cook them for lunch or dinner (supper where we came from was dinner and dinner was lunch).  I don't know why I ever changed but it annoyed me when I moved to Chicago and folks would give me a hard time about that.  As long as we are getting out my suppressed feelings let me tell you that PICKUPS are not trucks (refer to an earlier story).

Now back to the process leading up to the canning of those beans.  The first thing that happened prior to breakfast or immediately after everyone would go to the garden to pick anything that was ripe for harvest.  Oh and I should mention that a garden was NOT a tiny little patch of vegetables but easily 1/2 an acre to 2 depending on what dad felt like doing that year.  Generally during the summer the only thing still producing was tomatoes and green beans and of course rhubarb and probably corn.  On those green beans, we would have five gallon buckets full and everyone would sit in lawn chairs or folding chairs under the tree and proceed to process the beans.  What that meant was you snapped off both ends of the bean and then stripped from the seam of the green bean what was stringy if the bean was a little too ripe and then you would break the beans into pieces about 1.5 inches long.  I am not sure why 1.5 inches was the right length but for the most part that is what our instructions were from mom.  The amazing thing to me was that dad and mom could out snap everyone else put together.  They were fast and in fact I thought I was pretty good as I learned how to snap beans in both hands at the same time.  It was work and I hated it for the most part but now that I look back I remember talking and drinking iced tea and generally having a great time with the family.  We all worked together getting ready for winter.

What did I learn from the Osage:

•  The best times were family times with no TV
• Work was really an opportunity to spend time together with a common goal
• Spending time together is where we learned our values by hearing stories from our parents about their parents and how they grew up
• I would not trade ONE TV show or one time with friends for the memories of working together with my folks

Thanks for your time,

gary@thepioneerman.com

Reunions - What are they about?

Last Sunday was delightful as some of the old time folks got together:  Sally (Shumate) Stinchcomb, Debbie (Olson) Schaefer, Larry Olson and Bill Snyder (son of Aunt Gladys) plus a plethora of other folks, mainly family, including the young, Opal Olson (her birthday is July 19th and she says she is 37).

Since I brought up her age I would like to remind you Larry, her oldest son, is 61 and Debbie, her only daughter, is 59 and her favorite son, me, is 58.  So you go figure out how she can be 37.

As a side note and major update, Sally and Darrell are recovering from the tornado damage.  Just last Friday they hauled off 20 loads of debris.  Can you explain to me why we don't spell debris - debree?  Anyway, there is still a bunch of stuff to haul off and that did not include the trees which are piled high all over the place.  And another note which I got from Darrell that just gets me POed (Put Out) is that Darrell was talking to FEMA and they basically don't do anything for his family because Darrell and Sally were responsible enough to purchase insurance.  If they did not have insurance and filled out all the paperwork and qualified financially they could get a loan from the tax payers at 6% interest but if they did not have insurance and did not qualify they could get a loan from the tax payers (the government) for 4% interest.  Now the way Darrell tells it and I agree is that if you are not responsible enough to purchase insurance and not good at your finances so that you do not qualify financially due to bad credit you can get a subsidized loan from the government.  Kind of reminds me of Robin Hood, steel from the middle class and give to the poor.  Notice I did not say the rich.  WOW, no wonder we have so much problems.

Well again back to the story.  It was a delight to see Larry (newly retired) along with Sally (newly retired) and Bill (newly retired) and Mom (not so newly retired) all in one location.  Debbie and I were the only ones not retired not to include the other younger relatives.  We sat around eating too much and telling stories all day.  That is what you do at reunions, tell stories.  The good and bad of that is you find that what you thought was the story was wrong.  For example: Sally was riding a horse and someone threw a fire cracker under the horse which got spooked.  Sally blamed it on me and of course I was innocent but Bill admitted that it was probably him.  Another story that was different, depending on who was telling it, was about Paul Kelly and Paul Jones working for the Mullendors and all of us hauling hay.  As it turned out there were a lot more people who went to high school with all of us that worked on those hay crews and worked for one of the two Pauls.  I really did not remember that Paul Kelly was one of the managers at the ranch but I read the book and Paul was mentioned and Bill Snyder told how Paul Jones scarred him to death flying him to one of the fields only to intentionally put the plane in a power stall and then just as the rocks started getting really large got the plane started and pulled out before hitting the ground.  Now you may not believe it but I am confident that Paul liked scarring people as he did the same thing to me.  Paul Jones has ADHD times two would be my medical opinion which I am not qualified to give but he was a heck of a lot of fun to work with.

Just one side note on Paul Jones.  I remember him having what I think was a Bronco pickup that he souped up the engine and it went over 136 miles an hour.  The reason  I remember that is, it was told, that a Highway Patrolman was clocking it between Pawhuska and Shidler and he verified the speed.  Weren't those days great!

Does anyone recall Johnny Payne outrunning a cop?  Surely not?

So what do you learn from the Osage:

• People and friendships are forever
• What we remember is the good and as we get older we make it gooder (yes that is a word)
• We don't need the government to bail out everyone who does not take responsibility
• But there are those who do need help and as a personal citizen with free choice let's always help our neighbor rebuild - do the right thing because it is the right thing to do
• Get together often and let's see everyone at the reunion Sept 30 and Oct 1 this year

Thanks for your time,

gary@thepioneerman.com

Dog Days of Summer in the Osage

Believe it or not there were advantages to having hot days of summer in the Osage particularly when you were younger and not old enough to haul hay.  Now what I mean by that is there was never a break from hauling hay when you worked for Don Kelsey as we hauled every day 7 days a week unless it rained and it better be enough to make the fields muddy and the hay wet.  I do remember that during those extremely hot times working in the sun WITHOUT A SHIRT and WITHOUT SUN SCREEN a cloud in the sky was a gift from God.  If you worked in the fields you know what I mean because you watched the sky closely and hoped for the cloud to come in front of the sun and block the burning heat.

OK, back to the advantages of a hot summer. 

• First off:  things slowed down because the hay did not need cutting as often
• Second:  the cows would lay around looking for shade because they did not want to work either and in fact they would hang around the pond or creeks.  It was not uncommon for the cows to stand out in the pond with  water up to their bellies so they could stay cool.
• Third:  Even Dad and Mom would slow down which meant that I could which would allow me to go to the creek!  Aha moment!  Yes, time to go fishing.
• Fourth:  Even the muddiest of ponds was great to swim in except for the occasional water moccasin and a few turtles (not to be confused with chocolate turtles which I love)
• Fifth:  I would slip off to Beaver Creek behind the house and find the shallow running water and just lay in it.  The perch would come up and nibble on my toes but I did not care.  I always said we never had air conditioning but I guess we did, a water cooler in the creek.
• Sixth:  As we got older baseball games and the Dixie Dog were favorites and again it was totally a function of Mom and Dad slowing down due to the heat.
• Seventh:  Ice Cream makers
• Eighth:  Remember when Nestea came out and you could have iced tea during those hot days in an instant.  Instant Nestea was a much better invention than the microwave.
• Ninth:  Did you ever lay underneath the truck bed and take a nap especially when there was a slight breeze that cooled the sweat on your body?

I know there are more but that summer heat could ware you down but the greatest thing was what you learned from the Osage:

• Enjoy everything even a few seconds from a refreshing cloud
• Be thankful for those few moments in summer where you can get away and relax and rejuvenate
• Get it done, work like crazy, then smell the roses (that means relax and have an iced tea)
• It is much easier to appreciate what you have if you work for what you got

Thanks for your time,
garythepioneerman.com