Once upon a time I was a close cousin to a possum.
Were you to come looking for me on certain days in late spring more than 50 years ago, you might have found me high in a tree – not just any tree, but the large, native mulberry tree in the corner of our barn lot.
Clinging to a limb with one hand and snatching the succulent, black fruit with the other, I and my brothers would spend an hour or more almost every day gorging ourselves when the berries were in season. Crawling as high and as far out as we dared on every welcoming limb, we routinely stripped the tree nearly bare of everything within our reach, denying possums and bluejays, alike, a portion of their share.
Often in later years I have bemoaned the purple stains of mulberries on our automobiles and clothes hung out to dry (birds to blame), but when I was a boy the stains were on me – hands, face and clothes streaked with evidence of my ravenous pursuit.
While the barnyard tree was the most productive and convenient, it was not the only mulberry tree we climbed. Another north of the barn had berries just as sweet, but it was far too big to climb, and a younger tree in the woods bore even more succulent fruit, but it was simply to small to yield more than we could pluck from its lower limbs.
I’ve never eaten mulberries other than directly from the tree. I’m told they can be used for pies, cobblers and preserves, but Mom was never inclined to give any of those a try, and I was just too lazy or impatient, I suppose.
Truly, I was more akin to a day-feeding possum than a pie maker. Even if I had such a tree in my yard, I doubt I would be baking mulberry pie today, either. That would require climbing and clinging to treacherous limbs, a sport best left to memory today. Besides, mulberries come ripe too near strawberry time – an even sweeter fruit growing much nearer the ground.
I don’t see kids today scurrying out on the limbs of mulberry trees. Most get all their washed and sorted fruit from supermarket shelves.
But, when I was a boy on the farm, fruit of all sorts grew on vines and trees, and fresh-picked and eaten was the best. We had no cupboards nor pantry shelves stocked with store bought-sweets. But, we did have tart gooseberries in spring, followed by wild strawberries about the time school was done, then dewberries and blackberries in summer, apples, peaches and pears from summer into fall and black walnuts to crack in front of winter fires.
And, of course, we had mulberries, and gave no more thought than a possum might to washing any berry in a kitchen sink (no pesticides to fear). We carried pocket knives to cut bruises and worms from apples, peaches and pears, and sometimes had to spit out a stinkbug if too hasty while blackberry picking.
I confess I am today more spoiled and genteel than the boy who spent hours in the mulberry tree. I am thankful I don’t have to brave blackberry briars if I want a cobbler or cut worms from my apples and peaches. Grocery stores and farmers markets have more appeal than tick-infested berry patches or lofty fruit tree limbs.
But, were I yet a boy on the farm and unpolluted by city ways, I’ve no doubt I would yet be found among the possums and the jays, purple juice staining my hands and my country boy grin.
Copyright 2024, James E. Hamilton; email [email protected]. Read more of his works in Ozarks RFD 2010-2015, available online from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or from the author.
