P          r          o          s          e                   

Berry Picking

     the brown vinyl seats in the van were always hot, hot enough to burn our sweaty legs as we went to pick black berries one summer.

 dad had discovered a patch of wild black berry vines on his way home from work Friday afternoon and mom didn't waste any time getting rid of some of us for most of Saturday morning. me, dad and Bernt headed out in the the big brown at about nine thirty a.m..

 the bushes dad had spotted ran along the edge of a woods, given the fact that the most ferocious inhabitant of highly treed areas in southern Minnesota is the wood tick , dad gave us each an old ice cream pail and told us we were free to pick on our own as long as we kept picking until our buckets were full. whether he believed we were capable of collecting two gallons of blackberries in mosquito infested woods without his guidance and encouragement or not i don't know, he did however give us a brief tutorial on the finer points of berry harvesting.

-you see, he said slipping a few berries from one of the plants, through his beard, "the best way to fill up your bucket fast is to go plant by plant, making sure you get all the good ones off the plant you're working on before you move on to the next one.

 it didn't take him long at all to strip the three or four demonstration plants. however what the technique had in efficiency it lacked in pest control, mosquitoes, still lazy in the cool of the morning had the strength to feed on the Norwegian blood of a plant by plant berry picker. for some reason dad, whose summer work clothes consisted of cut-off-jeans and old white tank-tops, never seemed too affected by the skeeters.

 he tied two pails together with some string he had found in the glove compartment of the van and draped them over his shoulder, nodded to us, and disappeared into the berry patch.

 twenty minutes later Bernt had three layers of blackberries covering the bottom of his pail, exactly two and a half layers more than i had on the bottom of mine. we headed back to the van to rest. dad had left the back door open so we climbed in and sat in back on the rear wheel wells.

 -do you think we'll go to Nicollet church tomorrow?

 -yeah, then we could go over to john's afterward and watch wrestling.

 before we moved to Mankato we went to a small Lutheran church in the even smaller town of Nicollet. dad's brother Keith was the pastor and after church while the adults talked about weddings and hip replacement surgery, we would go with Keith's youngest son to their house to watch the Iron Sheik fight Hulk Hogan, we would act out the body slams and figure fours during commercials.

 -let's go find dad

 -why?

 -cause i have to go to the bathroom

 -just use nature's bathroom

 dad tried his best to educate us in the ways of the outdoorsman, at least once every vacation he would pull over to the side of the road way out in the boonies and yell 'potty stop'. we would all pile out, except for mom, and find our own tree to pee on. occasionally dad would have to have a talk with ole after had been home for a few days, trees in backwoods Montana- o.k., next-door neighbor's fence- not o.k..

 -i have to go number two

 -oh

to be continued...

        Justin Olmanson

P     o     s     s     i     b     i     l     i     t     y  

H     o     m     e