HUCKLEBERRIES

 

My dad loved huckleberries, and apparently he came from a family that loved them, too. I’m proud of the family for carrying the camera along when they went to pick huckleberries in the Weippe (we-ipe) and Grangemont area in 1921. Unfortunately the photos were marred by a light streak, but they tell something about the times even so.

Huckleberries are difficult to find; that is, I think you have to know where to go and what to look for. Apparently they grow where the timber has burned or where the forest has been logged. Huckleberries like the sun. Yes, I remember that about picking huckleberries. We were in the sun and it was hot.

Huckleberries ripen in August, and of course, altitude affects their readiness. As the berries are picked out at lower altitudes, you can find more by climbing higher.

Mother, Daddy, and I picked huckleberries most every summer as I grew up. My dad’s method of finding them was to ask the mother of one of his Grangemont students where he might find a good patch. Even as a child, I thought it presumptuous of us to ask someone to tell us where to find the elusive berries, but Daddy seemed to get away with it. We would go to the place the lady said and find the huckleberries.

The next year, the whole scenario started all over again. Instead of returning to the patch we picked the previous year, Daddy again questioned his acquaintances. We’d go there and pick the berries. And no, I don't think we ever took the camera. 

I love huckleberries, but picking them isn’t my favorite thing. The picking is tedious; the berries are small and grow in the sun. It seemed like I picked forever just to get a few. Mother and Daddy picked quickly.

I remember one year Mother came back from huckleberrying with her legs, particularly her ankles, covered with no-see-um bites. She was in agony, but she wanted to make a pair of summer pajamas for me. So she sat at her sewing machine with her feet in a pan of water to which something had been added (Epsom salts?) in order to sew. That machine, a Domestic, was operated with a knee lever. It still gives me pause to think of her operating an electric machine with her feet in water.

Another year we set out in our 1962 Ford station wagon (very low clearance) to look for huckleberries in the national forest around Elk City. At that time, the Forest Service was involved in a project to improve the road and had installed new directional signs as a first step. Naïve as we were, we followed those new arrows, even as the condition of the road deteriorated to the point of being deeply rutted and impassable. With no way to turn around, we kept going. Daddy drove, managing to straddle the ruts by following Mother’s instructions from outside the car.  Eventually we came to paved highway – except that it was on the other side of the river. We couldn’t go back; we had to ford the river with the station wagon. Daddy determined the best spot and then gunned the car through the water, which wasn’t deep, and up the bank to the highway. We drove into Elk City, rewarded ourselves with ice cream cones, and headed home. I don’t remember whether or not we found huckleberries.

Mother made huckleberry pie, and sometimes we had huckleberry jam, jelly, or syrup. But my favorite was huckleberry ice. Daddy froze the berries in pint containers, then ran the frozen berries through the meat grinder with sugar and ice and put the product back in the freezer. He loved to eat his with ice cream. I loved it just the way it was. (But you must be careful to seal the huckleberries tightly. The flavor is so strong that the odor will contaminate your other foods.)

Those days are gone in more ways than one. In the whole of my adult life I haven’t picked huckleberries, and except for the fact that Nick and Hallie would like the experience, I’m not much interested. Competition for a good huckleberry patch is now reality, not just a questioning thought in a child’s mind, and Idahoans apparently don’t handle that well. I read that people are now territorial over the patches, and some people actually tear out the bushes and take them home so that they can pick in comfort, thereby thoughtlessly destroying or hampering the future of that patch. It’s a crime that’s hard to trace, and among the states where huckleberries are found, apparently it happens only in Idaho. KW

[Photo 1: Grandma Ina is in the center of the picture. Vance stands on the left next to an unidentified woman. Maybe she's Maud McCoy Wedlock. Shirley is on the right.

Photo 2: Just like any kid, Shirley eats something from a box. Myrtle is seated next to her, the Ina and the unknown woman.

Photo 3: The Clearwater River above Orofino in 1915. (Just posted this one for the interest.)]