Way Down East, or, Portraitures of Yankee Life/Chapter XIII

Chapter XIII The Pumpkin Freshet

Aunt Patty Stow is sixty-seven years old; not quite as spry as a girl of sixteen, but a great deal tougher--- she has seen tough times in her day. She can do as good a day's work as any woman within twenty miles of her, and as for walking, she can beat a regiment. General Taylor's army on the march moved about fifteen miles a day, but Aunt Patty, on a pinch, could walk twenty. She has been spending the summer with her niece in New York; for Aunt Patty has nieces, abundance of them, though she has no children; she never had any. Aunt Patty never was married, and, for the last thirty years, whenever the question has been asked her, why she did not get married, her invariable reply has been, "she would not have the best man that ever trod shoe-leather." Aunt Patty has been spending the summer in New York, but she does n't live there; not she! she would as soon live on the top of the Rocky Mountains. If you ask her where she does live, she always answers,

"On Susquehanna's side, fair Wyoming." This, to be sure, is a poetical license, and before you get the sober prose answer to your question, Aunt Patty will tell you that she is "a great hand for poetry," though the line above is the only one she has ever been known to quote, even by the oldest inhabitant. When you get at the truth of the matter, you find she does live "on Susquehanna's side," but a good ways from "fair Wyoming," that being in Pennsylvania, while her residence, for fifty-eight years, has been in the old Indian valley of Oquago, now Windsor, in Broome county, New York. There, in that beautiful bend of the Susquehanna, some miles before it receives the waters of the Chenango, Aunt Patty has been "a fixture" ever since the white inhabitants first penetrated that part of the wilderness, and sat down by the side of the red man. There, when a child, she wandered over the meadows and by the brook-side to catch trout, and clambered up the mountains to gather blueberries, and down into the valleys for wild lillies.

This valley of Oquago, before the revolutionary war, was the favorite residence of an Indian tribe, and a sort of half-way ground, a resting-place for the "six nations" at the north, and the tribes of Wyoming at the south, in visiting each other. It was to the Indians in Oquago valley, that the celebrated Dr Edwards, while a minister in Stockbridge, Mass., sent the Rev. Mr. Hawley as a missionary; and also sent with him his little son, nine years old, to learn the Indian language, with a view of preparing him for an Indian missionary. And when the French war broke out, a faithful and friendly Indian took charge of the lad, and conveyed him home to his father, carrying him a good part of the way on his back. But all this happened before Aunt Patty's time, and before any white family, except the missionary's, resided within a long distance of Oquago.

About the year of 1788, some families came in from Connecticut, and settled in the valley, and Aunt Patty's father and mother were among the first. Thus brought up to experience the hardships and privations of a pioneer life in the wilderness, no wonder Aunt Patty should be much struck on viewing for the first time the profusion and luxury and mode of life in a city. The servant girl was sent out for some bread, and in five minutes she returned with a basket of wheat loaves, fresh biscuit and French rolls. Aunt Patty rolled up her eyes and lifted up both hands.

"Dear me!" says she, "do you call that bread? And where, for massy sake, did it come from so quick now? Does bread rain down from heaven here in New York, jest as the manna in the Bible did to the children of Israel?"

"Oh, no, Aunt Patty, there's a baker only a few steps off, just round the next corner, who bakes more than a hundred bushels a day; so that we can always have hot bread and hot cakes there, half a dozen times a day if we want it."

"A hundred bushels a day!" screamed Aunt Patty, at the top of her voice; "the massy preserve us! Well, if you had only been at Oquago at the time of the great punkin freshet, you would think a good deal of having bread so handy, I can tell you."

Aunt Patty's niece took her with her to the Washington Market of a Saturday evening, and showed her the profusion of fruits and vegetables and meats, that covered an area of two or three acres.

"The Lord be praised!" said Aunt Patty, "why, here is victuals enough to feed a whole nation. Who would have thought that I should a-lived through the punkin freshet to come to see such a sight as this before I die?"

At the tea table, Mrs. Jones, for that was the name of Aunt Patty's niece, had many apologies to make about the food; the bread was too hard and the butter was too salt, and the fruit was too stale, and something else was too something or other. At the expression of each apology, Aunt Patty looked up with wonderment; she knew not how to understand Mrs. Jones; for, to her view, a most grand and rich and dainty feast was spread before her. But when Mrs. Jones summed up the whole by declaring to Aunt Patty she was afraid she would not be able to make out a supper of their poor fare, Aunt Patty laid down her knife, and sat back in her chair, and looked up at Mrs. Jones with perfect astonishment.

"Why, Sally Jones!" said she, "are you making fun of me all this time, or what is it you mean!"

"No, indeed, Aunt Patty, I only meant just what I said; we have rather a poor table to night, and I was afraid you would hardly make a comfortable tea."

Aunt Patty looked at Mrs. Jones about a minute without saying a word. At last she said, with most decided emphasis, "Well, Sally Jones, I can't tell how it is some folks get such strange notions in their heads; but I can tell you, if you had seed what I seed, and gone through what I have gone through, in the punkin freshet, when I was a child, and afterwards come to set down to sich a table as this, you'd think you was in heaven."

Here Mr. Jones burst out into a broad laugh. "Well done, Aunt Patty!" said he, shoving back his cup and shaking his sides; "the history of that pumpkin freshet we must have; you have excited my curiosity about it to the highest pitch. Let us have the whole story now, by way of seasoning for our poor supper. What was the pumpkin freshet? and when was it, and where was it, and what did you have to do with it? Let us have the whole story from first to last, will you?"

"Well, Mr. Jones, you ask me a great question," said Aunt Patty, "but if I can't answer it, I don't know who can---for I seed the punkin freshet with my own eyes, and lived on the punkins that we pulled out of the river for two months afterwards. Let me see---it was in the year 1794; that makes it sixty years ago. Bless me, how the time slips away. I was only about seven years old then. It was a woodsy place, Oquago Valley was. There was only six families in our neighborhood then, though there was some more settled away further up the river. Major Stow, my uncle, was the head man of the neighborhood. He had the best farm, and was the smartest hand to work, and was the stoutest and toughest man there was in them parts. Major Buck was the minister. They always called him Major Buck, because he'd been a major in the revolutionary war, and when the war was over he took to preaching, and come and lived in Oquago. He was a nice man; everybody sot store by Major Buck."

"Oh, well, I don't care about Major Buck, nor Major Stow," said Mr. Jones, "I want to hear about the pumpkin freshet. What was it that made the pumpkin freshet?"

"Why, the rain, I suppose," said Aunt Patty, looking up very quietly.

"The rain?" said Mr. Jones; "did it rain pumpkins in your younger days, in the Oquago Valley!"

"I guess you'd a-thought so," said Aunt Patty "if you had seen the punkins come floating down the river, and rolling along the shore, and over the meadows. It had been a great year for punkins that year. All the corn-fields and potato-fields up and down the river was spotted all over with 'em, as yallow as goold. The corn was jest beginning to turn hard, and the potatoes was ripe enough to pull. And then, one day, it begun to rain, kind of easy at first; we thought it was only going to be a shower; but it did n't hold up all day, and in the night it kept raining harder and harder, and in the morning it come down with a power. Well, it rained steady all that day. Nobody went out into the fields to work, but all staid in the house and looked out to see if it would n't hold up. When it come night, it was dark as Egypt, and the rain still poured down. Father took down the Bible and read the account about the flood, and then we went to bed. In the morning, a little after daylight, Uncle Major Stow come to the window and hollowed to us, and says he, turn out all hands, or ye'll all be in the river in a heap.

"I guess we was out of bed about the quickest. There was father, and mother, and John, and Jacob, and Hannah, and Suzy, and Mike, and me, and Sally, and Jim, and Rachel, all running to the door as hard as we could pull. We didn't stand much about clothes. When father unbarred the door and opened it---`oh,' says Uncle Major, says he, `you may go back and dress yourselves, you'll have time enough for that; but there's no knowing how long you'll be safe, for the Susquehanna has got her head up, and is running like a race-horse. Your hen-house has gone now. At that Hannah fetched a scream that you might a heard her half a mile, for half the chickens was her'n. As soon as we got our clothes on, we all run out, and there we see a sight. It still rained a little, but not very hard. The river, that used to be away down in the holler, ten rods from the house, had now filled the holler full, and was up within two rods of our door. The chicken-house was gone, and all the hens and chickens with it, and we never seed nor heard nothin' of it afterwards.

"While we stood there talking and mourning about the loss of the chickens, father he looked off upon the river, for it begun to be so light that we could see across it now, and father spoke, and says he, `what upon airth is all them yallow spots floating along down the river?'

"At that we all turned round and looked, and Uncle Major, says he, `by King George, them's punkins! If the Susquehanna has n't been robbing the punkin fields in the upper neighborhood, there's no snakes in Oquago.'

"And sure enough, they was punkins; and they kept coming along thicker and thicker, spreading away across the river, and up and down as far as we could see. And bime-by Mr. Williams, from the upper neighborhood, come riding down a horseback as hard as he could ride, to tell us to look out, for the river was coming down like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. He said it had run over the meadows and the low grounds, and swept off the corn-fields, and washed out the potatoes, and was carrying off acres and acres of punkins on its back. The whole river, he said, was turned into a great punkin-field. He advised father to move out what he could out of the house, for he thought the water would come into it, if it did n't carry the house away. So we all went to work as tight as we could spring, and Uncle Major he put to and helped us, and we carried out what things we could, and carried them back a little ways, where the ground was so high we thought the river could n't reach 'em. And then we went home with Uncle Major Stow, and got some breakfast. Uncle Major's house was on higher ground, and we felt safe there.

"After breakfast, father went down to the house again, to see how it looked, and presently he come running back, and said the water was up to the doorsill. Then they began to think the house would go, and we all went down as quick as we could, to watch it. When we got there, the water was running into the door, and was all the time rising. `That house is a gone goose,' says Uncle Major, says he, `it's got to take a journey down the river to look after the hens and chickens.'

"At that, mother begun to cry, and took on about it as though her heart would break. But father, says he, `la, Patty,' mother's name was Patty, and I was named after her; father, says he, `la, Patty, it's no use crying for spilt milk, so you may as well wipe up your tears. The house aint gone yet, and if it should go, there's logs enough all handy here, and we can build another as good as that in a week.'

"`Yes,' says Uncle Major, says he, `if the house goes down stream, we'll all turn to and knock another one together in short order.' So mother begun to be pacified. Father went and got a couple of bed-cords and hitched on to one corner of the house, and tied it to a stump; for, he said, if the water come up only jest high enough to start the house, maybe the cords would keep it from going. The water kept a-rising, and in a little more than an hour after we got back from uncle's, it was two foot deep on the floor.

"`One foot more,' says Uncle Major, says he, `will take the house off its legs.'

"But, as good luck would have it, one foot more did n't come. We watched and watched an hour longer, and the water kept rising a little, but not so fast as it did, and at last we could n't see as it ris any more. And, as it had done raining, after we found it did n't rise any for an hour, Uncle Major he pronounced his opinion that the house would stand it. Then did n't we feel glad enough? Before noon the water begun to settle away a little, and before night it was clear of the house. But Uncle Major said it was so wet, it would never do for us to stay in it that night, without we wanted to ketch our death a-cold. So we all went up to his house, and made a great camp bed on the floor, and there we all staid till morning. That day we got our things back into the house again, and the river kept going down a little all day.

"But oh, such a melancholy sight as it was to see the fields, you don't know. All the low grounds had been washed over by the river, and everything that was growing had been washed away and carried down stream, or else covered up with sand and mud. Then in a few weeks after that, come on the starving time. Most all the crops was cut off by the freshet; and there we was in the wilderness, as it were, forty miles from any place where we could get any help, and no road only a blind footpath through the woods. Well, provisions began to grow short. We had a good many punkins that the boys pulled out of the river as they floated along the bank. And it was boiled punkins in the morning, and boiled punkins at noon, and boiled punkins at night. But that was n't very solid food, and we hankered for something else. We had some meat, though not very plenty, and we got some roots and berries in the woods. But as for bread, we did n't see any from one week's end to another.

"There was but very little corn or grain in the neighborhood, and what little there was could n't be ground, for the hand-mill had been carried away by the freshet. At last, when we had toughed it out five or six weeks, one day Uncle Major Stow, says he, `well, I aint agoing to stand this starving operation any longer. I am going to have some bread and flour cake, let it cost what 'twill.'

"We all stared and wondered what he meant.

"`I tell ye,' says he, `I'm a-going to have some bread and flour cake before the week's out, or else there's no snakes in Oquago.'

"`Well, I should like to know how you are a-going to get it,' says father, says he.

"`I'm a-going to mill,' says Uncle Major, says he. `I've got a half bushel of wheat thrashed out, and if any of the neighbors will put in enough to make up another half bushel, I'll shoulder it and carry it down to Wattle's ferry to mill, and we'll have one feast before we starve to death. It's only about forty miles, and I can go and get back again in three or four days.'

"They tried to persuade him off the notion of it, 'twould be such a long tiresome journey; but he said it was no use; his half bushel of wheat had got to go, and he could as well carry a bushel as a half bushel, for it would only jest make a clever weight to balance him. So Major Buck and three other neighbors, who had a little wheat, put in half a peck apiece, and that made up the bushel. And the next morning at daylight, Uncle Major shouldered the bushel of wheat, and started for Wattle's ferry, forty miles, to mill.

"Every night and morning while he was gone, Major Buck used to mention him in his prayers, and pray for his safe return. The fourth day, about noon, we see Uncle Major coming out of the woods with a bag on his shoulder; and then, if there was n't a jumping and running all over the neighborhood, I won't guess again. They all sot out and run for Uncle Major's house, as tight as they could leg it, and the whole neighborhood got there about as soon as he did. In come Uncle Major, all of a puff, and rolled the bag off his shoulder on to the bench.

"`There, Molly,' says he; that was his wife, his wife's name was Molly; `there, Molly, is as good a bushel of flour meal as you ever put your hands into. Now go to work and try your skill at a short cake. If we don't have a regular feast this afternoon, there's no snakes in Oquago. Bake two milk-pans full, so as to have enough for the whole neighborhood.'

"`A short cake, Mr. Stow,' says Aunt Molly, says she, `why what are you a thinking about? Don't you know we have n't got a bit of shortnin' in the house; not a mite of butter, nor hog's fat, nor nothin'? How can we make a short cake?'

"`Well, maybe some of the neighbors has got some,' says Uncle Major, says he.

"`No,' says Aunt Molly, `I don't believe there's a bit in the neighborhood.'

"Then they asked Major Buck, and father, and all round, and there wasn't one that had a bit of butter or hog's fat.

"`So your short cake is all dough agin,' says Aunt Molly, says she.

"`No taint, nother,' says Uncle Major, `I never got agin a stump yet, but what I got round it some way or other. There's some of that bear's grease left yet, and there's no better shortnin' in the world. Do let us have the short cake as soon as you can make it. Come, boys, stir round and have a good fire ready to bake it.'

"Then Aunt Molly stripped up her sleeves, and went at it, and the boys knocked round and made up a fire, and there was a brisk business carried on there for awhile, I can tell you. While Aunt was going on with the short cakes, Uncle Major was uncommon lively. He went along and whispered to Major Buck, and Major Buck looked up at him with a wild kind of a stare, and says he, `you don't say so!'

"Then Uncle Major whispered to mother, and mother says she, `why, Brother Stow, I don't believe you.'

"`You may believe it or not,' says Uncle Major, says he, `but 'tis true as Major Buck's preachin'.'

"Then Uncle Major walked up and down the room, whistlin' and snappin' his fingers, and sometimes strikin' up into Yankee Doodle.

" `Here,' says Uncle Major, says he, pulling out a little paper bundle out of his pocket, and holding it up to Aunt Molly's face: here, smell of that says he.



"Aunt Molly she dropped her work, and took her hands out of the dough, and says she, `Mr. Stow, I wonder what's got into you; it must be something more than the short cakes I'm sure, that's put such life into you.'

"`To be sure 'tis,' says Uncle, `for the short cakes hain't got into me yet.' And then he turned round and give a wink to mother and Major Buck.

"`Well, there now,' says Aunt Molly, says she, `I know you've got some kind of a secret that you've been telling these folks here, and I declare I won't touch the short cakes again till I know what 'tis.'

"When Aunt Molly put her foot down, there 'twas, and nobody could move her. So Uncle Major knew he might as well come to it first as last; and says he, `well, Molly, it's no use keeping a secret from you; but I've got something will make you stare worse than the short cakes.'

"`Well, what is it, Mr. Stow?' says Aunt Molly, `out with it, and let us know the worst of it.'

"`Here,' says Uncle Major, says he, pulling out a little paper bundle out of his pocket, and holding it up to Aunt Molly's face; `here, smell of that,' says he.

"As soon as Aunt Molly smelt of it, she jumped right up and kissed Uncle Major right before the whole company, and says she, `it's tea! as true as I'm alive, it's the real bohea. I have n't smelt any before for three years, but I knew it in a moment.

"`Yes,' says Uncle Major, `it's tea; there's a quarter of a pound of the real stuff. While my grist was grinding, I went into the store, and there I found they had some tea; and, thinks I, we'll have one dish for all hands, to go with the short cakes, if it takes the last copper I've got. So I knocked up a bargain with the man, and bought a quarter of a pound; and here 'tis. Now, Molly, set your wits to work, and give us a good dish of tea with the short cakes, and we'll have a real thanksgiving; we'll make it seem like old Connecticut times again.'

"`Well, now, Mr. Stow, what shall we do?' says Aunt Molly, `for there isn't a tea-kettle, nor a tea-pot, nor no cups and sarcers in the neighborhood.'

"And that was true enough; they had n't had any tea since they moved from Connecticut, so they had n't got any tea-dishes.

"`Well, I don't care,' says Uncle Major, says he, `we'll have the tea, any how. There's the dish-kettle, you can boil the water in that, and you can steep the tea in the same, and when it's done I guess we'll contrive some way or other to drink it.'

"So Aunt Molly dashed round and drove on with the work, and got the short-cakes made, and the boys got the fire made, and they got the cakes down to baking, and about four quarts of water hung on in the dish-kettle to boil for tea, and when it began to boil, the whole quarter of a pound of tea was put into it to steep. Bime-by they had the table set out, and a long bench on one side, and chairs on the other side, and there was two milk-pans set on the table filled up heaping full of short-cakes, and the old folks all sot down, and fell to eating, and we children stood behind them with our hands full, eating tu. And oh, them short-cakes, seems to me, I never shall forget how good they tasted the longest day I live.

"After they eat a little while, Uncle Major called for the tea; and what do you think they did for teacups? Why, they took a two quart wooden bowl, and turned off tea enough to fill it, and sot it on to the table. They handed it up to Major Buck first, as he was the minister, and sot to the head of the table, and he took a drink, and handed it to Uncle Major Stow, and he took a drink, and then they passed it all round the table, from one to t'other, and they all took a drink; and when that was gone, they turned out the rest of the tea, and filled the bowl up, and drinked round again. Then they poured some more water into the dish-kettle, and steeped the tea over again a few minutes, and turned out a bowlful, and passed it round for us children to taste of. But if it want for the name of tea, we had a good deal rather have water, for it was such bitter, miserable stuff, it spoilt the taste of the short-cakes. But the old folks said if we did n't love it, we need n't drink it; so they took it and drinkt up the rest of it.

"And there they sot all the afternoon, eating short-cakes, and drinking tea, and telling stories, and having a merry thanksgiving of it. And that's the way we lived at the time of the punkin freshet in the valley of Oquago."