One afternoon after the talent competition, our group of campers came back to the cabin after canoeing for an hour back and forth around the lake to find that all the beds had been short-sheeted, and the toilets had been greased with Vaseline (as we discovered when we tried to sit on them and slid off onto the floor). Trina and I decided that the unhappy cheerleader campers who lost the talent competition probably did it, so the next afternoon we all hid behind some trees a distance from our cabin during free time and kept a lookout.
Sure enough, the culprits showed themselves and sprinted into our cabin while they thought we were gone canoeing.
“Let’s run in there and catch them red-handed,” one camper demanded.
“Yeah, she’s right. Let’s get ‘em.” another girl piped in.
“Wait a minute.” I cautioned. “I have a better idea, and Trina, I bet you know what I’m thinking.”
“The vinegar. Did you bring some along with you to camp, Sarah”? Trina questioned.
“Mama let me bring a small jar of it in case I got sunburned. Why don’t we try it out in their cabin tomorrow afternoon while they’re all gone during free time”? I suggested.
We found some of our clothes and underwear hanging from the ceiling fans and bedposts as we entered our cabin. As we cleaned up the mess, Trina and I explained about the cologne vinegar to the rest of the girls from our cabin. They agreed that it might work here at camp, too. This time, however, we would sprinkle it all over the cheerleaders’ clothes and underwear so they would be all smelly when they wore the vinegar clothes.
It was hard to keep a secret that evening, and we had to make everyone in our cabin promise not to tell the plan to anybody from another cabin. The time passed so slowly we thought the following afternoon would never arrive. We watched the cheerleader campers’ cabin from a safe distance until we saw them run out of their cabin for free time. One girl from our group walked over to their cabin and knocked on the door. After no one came to answer the knock, she opened the door and scanned the cabin to make sure it was empty.
“O.K. Hurry up and get in here,” she yelled in a hoarse whisper.
“I’ll be lookout.” Trina volunteered. “The rest of you go on and pull out their clothes so Sarah can follow with the vinegar.”
We quickly ran inside, doused the clothes with vinegar, and “hid” them hanging out of the trashcans so the cheerleader campers could find them pretty easily. Then we hightailed it off to the hiking trail for a while. That evening, we were sure we could smell whiffs of vinegar through the dining hall as we ate supper, but we never said anything to anyone, and we didn’t have any more trouble in our cabin, either.
Following camp, we only had a week left before school would be starting after Labor Day weekend. The surplus cucumber family sold their house at the end of the summer and moved away right before school began. When a new family moved into the pickle house a few weeks later, the story goes that they found all those barrels standing in the basement. Not knowing what to expect, they took off the lids and passed out due to the resulting fumes from pent-up pickles and pickling juices. I don’t know how they disposed of all those pickles.
As school began, I mentally closed the vinegar files in my neighborhood, at least until next summer.
Vinegar Pie
1 stick margarine
2 teaspoons vinegar
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
2/3 cup chopped nuts
1 unbaked pie shell
Melt margarine; add sugar and eggs and beat together. Add vinegar, vanilla, and nuts. Pour into unbaked pie shell. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
A Family Treasure
by
Susan Sipal
Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present and future.
—Gail Lumet Buckley
A LONG TIME ago in a land far, far away . . . well, actually the Halifax County side of Littleton, North Carolina . . . a man buried a pot of gold beneath the end of a rainbow.
Okay, okay . . . it was actually during the Civil War and he hid the money under an old stump near a spring. Well, who knows if the stump was there at the time he buried it, but it was there when my Great-Grandpa sampled a bit too much moonshine and went hunting nearby.
See according to my father, his Grandfather (whom we all called Pa) claimed to have heard a ghostly voice revealing the location of this hidden treasure. And Daddy’s Grandma Leah, who always did like to set her husband’s tall-tales straight, never said a word contrary to this particular story.
You have to understand a bit of family history here. My family evolved from the apes in northeastern North Carolina. Either that or they came over on the Mayflower, went straight to Halifax-Warren Counties, and haven’t moved since. Because if you trace any of my four lines back, they’ve all been in the region since the mid-1600s. And they’re quite interrelated. In fact, on one side of the family tree, there’s lots of cousins who were more than just the kissing kind.
Like any good Southern Family, we’re descended from royalty (who cares that it’s five centuries ago). And we have the obligatory tale of great family wealth lost by previous generations. For ours it was the result of a lake development that passed us by.
My Myrick ancestors owned most of the land under what is now Gaston Lake. When my great-great grandfather was fixing up his will and deciding which of his twelve children to give what to, he asked each of them what parcel of his thousand acres they wanted. Pa, in his infinite wisdom, said he didn’t want any of the land that bordered the Roanoke River as it flooded too dad-burn much. He’d take his up along the highway.
And so forever after Pa worked a hundred acres of prime red clay, whereas his siblings inherited land that sold for thousands when the Army Corps of Engineers bought them out to build Gaston Lake. With what they didn’t sell, they used their strong business acumen to develop into lakeside resort homes.
Oh, well.
My family fortune lost before my father was even a twinkle in my grandfather’s eye.
But that family wealth was always truly lost. We knew there was no way to recover it.
There was, however, another family treasure that tantalized me as a child, bewitching me with its possibilities. Its allure was part archaeological and part treasure hunter. For it was a buried fortune, stashed underground since Civil War times.
Once again, I reckon I ought to be like Grandma Leah and set my story straight too. It was not actually during the War Between the States that this hoard was buried—it was during Reconstruction, and it wasn’t treasure, but gold and silver coins, and lots of them. Or so we’d always liked to believe.
It was rumored that an old miser who’d sharecropped land on Pa’s farm (when it still belonged to his father as part of the great plantation) had buried his gold coins on Pa’s property. During that uncertain era, many people in the South hid their money. No one trusted a bank, and certainly no one trusted the Yankees not to tax and steal it.
Unfortunately, the tenant farmer not only didn’t trust the bank or the Yankees; he didn’t trust his family either. He told no one where he buried his coins. Of course, being a sharecropper, it probably wasn’t much to it, but at that time it would have been real gold and silver, not this fake stuff we have now.
After his death, it was rumored his wife and kids went crazy digging up the land, looking for his stash of wealth.
It was never found.
Or if it was, no one ever made it known.
But many years later, Pa was out hunting and chased a rabbit into a thicket. As he neared a spring, near that miser’s long abandoned house, the rabbit disappeared. Pa, tired, plopped down on a stump near a spring to rest.
And that’s when he heard The Voice.
“This be where I buried my gold.”
Pa looked around him, but no one was about. He searched behind a tree, under a bush, and even inside a hollow log.
No one.
“This is where I buried my coins,” the voice said again.
Well, not being a fool, Pa instantly noted where he was and later showed my father the site.
I ate this story up as a child, never questioning why having been told the exact location of an immense fortune, Pa didn’t instantly go dig it up and live a life of wealth and privilege the rest of his days instead of barely scraping to get by. Nor my father, who did better than just scrape to get by, but certainly didn’t live the life of someone who knows the where-abouts of a long buried fortune.
Perhaps the wealth did not matter to them. What mattered was knowing a treasure was out there, and having the secret key to finding it.
If one were to go look, and find nothing, perhaps one would lose that special key.
And wouldn’t that be disappointing?
No, it was much better to recount the tale for a new generation, and leave the hoard exactly where it lay buried. Secure in the knowledge that only we knew where to find it.
Prosaically, Pa probably never bothered digging those coins up because he didn’t have a shiny new metal detector like we did, or maybe he didn’t want to disturb the tranquil beauty of the area, or maybe it was just that he preferred a good, rich story to tons of gold.
‘Cause he was a storyteller. My father after him.
And I’m a lot like them both.
Don’t matter if the story’s 100% proof or not, what matters is that it’s smooth going down, warms your gut, and has just a wee kernel of truth . . . just who knows where.
So sit back, take a load off, and let me tell you about the day Daddy, Mama, my brother, sister and I decided to find the old family treasure.
One Father’s Day afternoon many (I’m not telling how many) years ago, my family set off from church in our station wagon, fake wood running down the sides, with Daddy’s new gift. We kids had devised the purely unselfish idea to buy him a metal detector to finally find and dig up this fortune we’d been hearing about for years (Mama chipping in the largest contribution, of course).
And that’s when the fun started, driving down state route 58 toward my great-grandparents’ homeplace.
Mama was giving Daddy driving lessons, again. “David, slow down, don’t get so near that car, can’t you see?”
While my brother and I played in the backseat. “Mama, he pulled my hair.”
“Did not. Besides she punched me in the stomach.”
“Why do we have to go to Grandma Leah’s today?” I sulked deeper in my seat. “No one’s there, and I wanted to play with Katie.”
Bill scrunched in the foot of the car, tying our sister’s shoelaces together without her notice. “Well, I’m missing Batman on TV, then Scooby, then . . .”
Sharon tried her hardest to get away from us brats, squeezing into a corner of the seat, twisting her finger around her hair. “Can’t you two please grow up?” she said in her oh-so-mature voice, then burrowed deeper behind her Teen Magazine. At thirteen, she was four years older than me, and six older than Bill.
I stuck my tongue out at her hidden face, then poked my brother again. “Butt-head,” I whispered, but not low enough.
“Susan, don’t call your brother names.” Mama twisted in the front seat to give me the look. “Now you two calm down and do something fun together. We’re almost there. Why don’t you count cows?”
“They smell like poop.”
“You can’t smell them from here.”
“How much longer . . . ?” Bill let the end drawl out into a long, aggravating whine, which he’d perfected.
“Almost there.” Daddy’s voice was low, his jaw clenched as if he couldn’t wait to arrive either. “Who’ll be the first to see Grandma Leah’s house?”
Bill and I perked up at that, struggling to get in the opening near the front seat (this being the days before seat belts). My sister merely sniffed and turned another page. Beneath her dignity once again.
“I see it.”
“I saw it first!”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did.”
“But I said so first, so I win.”
“Will you two shut up?” Mama yelled.
We were so used to hearing these words that we continued on. Actually, aggravating each other was our prime source of entertainment, when we were denied the company of our friends or TV, until the rare occasion when we joined forces to terrorize Sharon. Now that was a blast.
But unfortunately we arrived at Grandma and Pa’s before we had her shrieking.
We tumbled out of the car, Bill and I each trying to be first, and ran for the farmhouse, deserted now, the windows boarded up as if she were asleep with eyes closed. Great-Grandma Leah had died a couple of years ago, Pa several years before that, and the place stood empty, lonely, as if waiting for us to come, open her up to the sun, run through the old rooms built by long ago family, and fill it once again with sunshine and laughter.
“Hey, Daddy, the door’s locked,” I shouted, rattling the front door, trying to force it open.
“Bill, Susan, come on. Don’t mess around there.” Mama waived to us from underneath the worm-eaten pecan tree. “We’re heading down the path.”
Daddy was pulling his new metal detector out of the back of the station wagon. “Yes, Sharon, you have to come, too. You’re not sitting in the car all day listening to the radio and running down the battery like last time. We’re doing this as a family. And you’re going to enjoy yourself.”
A shovel fell out, slamming against his foot, ending his explanation in a bad word (one which Mama threatened to wash out of my brother’s mouth with soap when he repeated it a week ago). “Now get out and be quiet,” he barked.
Sharon sniffed. “But Mary Jane invited me to go roller skating today. And there’s a boy-girl party tonight at Brandy’s. I don’t understan-”
“Because I said so.”
The logic that was supposed to end all arguments. Problem was, it never did.
Sharon continued to whine about the missed opportunities with her friends, her oh-so-mature and sophisticated friends, while Bill and I tore down the path like a couple of wild chimps on the loose, shrieking and carrying on, as Mama liked to say.
A bright, Carolina-blue sky blazed overhead as we raced up the dirt path skirting the peanut field (still worked by share-croppers who now-a-days lived on their own farm) toward the woods at the far end. We didn’t know exactly where to go, but we knew it was in that general direction, and each of us determined to reach it first.
Treasure.
Images of a pirate’s chest filled with gold and jewels, my hands burrowing deep, jewels sliding between my fingers, rushed through my imagination. I’d buy that Shawn Cassidy album I’d been wanting, along with an 8-track player, some new bell-bottom jeans—
“I get first dibs.” My brother’s claim burst my bubble.
“Do not!”
“Do too.”
“It was my idea—”
“Susan, Bill, hush.” Mama shouted to us from further behind. “We’re probably not going to find anything, but what we do will have to be split equally, with your uncles as well.”
“I’m keeping whatever I find,” I whispered to Bill out of the corner of my mouth.”
“Me too.”
A glint of reflected sunlight at the side of the path caught my eye.
“Hey, look at that.” I bent to dig my fingers around a pretty rock. “I think it’s gold.”
“Oh, you’re so immature,” Sharon said over my shoulder, obviously having rushed to catch up with us. “That’s just a piece of fool’s go
ld.”
“Is not.” I turned to Daddy, who panted a bit as he wrestled with the metal detector, 2 shovels and a rake. “Is it, Daddy?”
He took the palm-sized, shiny gold rock out of my hand, turning it over as he studied it. “Looks like mica to me.”
“Mica? What’s that?”
“A type of rock common in this area.” He broke off a section of it, coming off in sheets. “See how it flakes. It’s used a lot in electronics. Here.” He passed it back to me.
I stuffed it in the pocket of my jeans. It might not be gold, but it sure was pretty. Maybe I could put it in my fish tank.
“Now, come on, kids,” Daddy called. “We’re heading this way.”
He led us down a path that was so overgrown with weeds, it was hard to tell it was a path anymore.
“Where does this go?” Sharon asked.
“Toward the homeplace of that miser. Bill,” he shouted, grabbing my brother’s arm, stopping him before he headed into a clump of shiny leaves. “That’s poison ivy.”
“Poison what? How can you tell? I wanted to add some to my leaf collection.”
Daddy explained how to tell poison ivy, then showed us some poison oak climbing up a nearby pine. I scratched myself just remembering the rash I’d had last spring after playing near the old well at Grandma’s farm.
As we hiked, Daddy pointed out the differences between white oaks and red oaks, while Mama showed us where some blackberry bushes grew.
“Now, don’t pick the red ones,” she said. “The black ones are ripe.”
I’d already figured that out, my mouth crammed with the tart, seedy fruit. Bill had blackberry juice running down his chin. I laughed at him.
“Just a bit further.” Daddy directed us down the path.
More Sweet Tea Page 12
