We Didn't Buy Much: Marion Harding

Marion Harding

We had a root cellar. You kept your carrots and parsnips in the cellar, buried in the dirt.

This post was contributed by Linsey Lee and The Martha's Vineyard Museum

My parents were Ralph and Marion Harding. My mother was a Devine and she grew up in Gay Head and Edgartown. My grandfather died before she was born and when my grandmother remarried, she moved to the Cape. So my mother moved down to Edgartown to live with her older sister Flossie -- I called her Nana -- and her husband, Jesse Jeffers.
My father was from the Long Pond Wampanoag. My father grew up in Long Pond, down in Bourne on the Cape. He came to Chappaquiddick to work at the Welch’s farm, Pimpneymouse.
My father -- I called him “Harding” -- worked seven days a week at the farm for sixty-three years. When I was little, it was a regular working farm. They had milk cows and a milk house where they processed the milk. They had horses, turkeys, guinea hens, pigs. He took care of gardens, animals, anything concerned with the farm. On Sundays, he did the chores morning and he did the chores night, because you’ve got to milk cows, you can’t let them go. It was seven days a week all the time, except for two weeks’ vacation. He loved it to death.
He made me a wheelbarrow so I could go out and be in the garden with him. I would do the things that children could do, hoeing and weeding. When it came chicken time, you went down to the post office and you heard peeping, you knew some chickens had arrived. You’d bring them home and put them in a brooder house and watch them very carefully. They picked each other and picked their feathers off. They would put glasses on the chickens so that they couldn’t see to pick. He’d catch them and I’d have to hold the chicken and we’d put on the goggles. Only certain chickens -- they wouldn’t all pick.
My father taught you at a very young age how to sow the fields. You had a thing you put over your neck, and he filled it up with seed. It had a grinder blade and as you turned it the seed sprayed out. You walked the full length of those fields, and that’s how you seeded. My mother and I both did that.
They didn’t bale hay in those days. You cut it, and then they raked it with a horse and the hay rake and cocked it. Haycocks are mounds, like a mini-haystack. And then we’d come along with the Model A and pitch it up in the truck. I learned to drive when I was about nine -- they needed someone to drive the truck, and in the field you couldn’t hit anything.
You pitchforked it, and that’s creates blisters, bad blisters. You pitched it from the truck into the barn and it was several people to get it back up into the top of the barn. The hayloft was up above where the horses were kept. He was very careful that the hay was dry enough and you layered it with salt so it didn’t catch fire.
My father would do a lot of smoking. They had the smokehouse over to the farm. He’d smoke bacon and hams, herring, everything. He would make his own rub to put on the hams and bacon. The rub was sugar, brown sugar, spices. Boy, it was lovely. In later years they would use a liquid injection for smoking, but he wouldn't use that because he didn't like the chemicals in it.
We had a root cellar. You kept your carrots and parsnips in the cellar, buried in the dirt. You hung your winter squash, onions, and potatoes in baskets down there. You preserved everything in jars -- tomatoes, beans, peas. And they taught you that if you opened a jar and didn’t hear that seal break, throw everything -- jar, everything -- away. You don’t touch it. And they would preserve fish and they’d preserve chickens in jars. They made pickles. So you didn’t buy much. Flour, salt, and pepper. And your sugar.
One time I was invited to go to a rather fancy house in Edgartown to spend the night. You could push a button on the floor and the maid would come, and I thought that was pretty good. So the woman of the house asked my mother if I ate everything. My mother said, “No problem.” Well, they called us for lunch and I went out in the kitchen and I saw the woman open a can. She said we were going to have tuna fish sandwiches.
Now, my mother and Nana would preserve fresh tuna fish in preserve jars and it was really delicious, very white and nice, and that’s the only tuna fish I ever saw to eat. I had never seen tuna fish any other way. The only time I’d ever seen tuna in a can was when my mother, at Christmastime, would buy our cat a small can of tuna fish and say that was his Christmas present. Well, in my mind, tuna in a can was for the cat, and I was not eating it. By the time my mother came back to check on me, I was crying and the woman says, “I just don’t know what happened. Everything was fine until we went to have lunch, and then she just would not eat.” So my mother took me out of the room and, of course, I explained to her I was not eating cat food. Well, I think that was the biggest laugh of all time.
On Sundays, they would pack a lunch and we would all go to Gay Head to visit. It was an unwritten thing that you would be up-Island on Sunday. Sometimes in time to go to church up there, depending on what time you could get away and what you had to do. Depended on the season, too. During haying season we didn’t go. Garden time, you didn’t go.
Growing up, you knew what you were. You were Wampanoag. When we'd visit in Gay Head, your family took you around; they showed you where your different families lived, and they were careful to explain this is where the land was divided and this was where they had lived in tepees. They would tell you about the legends. They would make food and different dishes and would explain to you this is what they ate and this is how they did it, so you became more and more aware. And we always went to Cranberry Day. We usually went in later years when they had the pageant up on the Cliffs.
They were still serving dinners at Sally Jeffers’ over here on Chappy when I was little. And clambakes over to the dinner house. You couldn’t say, “I’m just going to Sally’s for dinner tonight.” No, no. You had to call up, and she’d tell you what your choices were. She’d tell you your choices and you chose your dinner. They couldn’t be running up and downtown all the time. If it was chicken, she had to go out and kill it. Lobsters, chicken, and steak, that’s what they had.
For every organization on the Island it was famous to have their dinners -- you know, Fireman’s Dinner, anything -- over to Sally’s. I liked the chicken -- split chicken and spoon bread and riced potatoes. They would pour butter right on those riced potatoes. And their pies. You’d see them making pies; when they got their pie crust rolled, it was pies up on top of pies. And they had the scrimshaw crimpers to run around, and she had a scrimshaw rolling pin; I thought it was the best thing in the world. Sometimes Sally’s daughters, Tilly and Gladys, would let me roll out a couple of rounds. A scrimshaw rolling pin was something to see.
The clambakes were mostly on weekends. They’d light the fire the day before, and get those rocks hot, and then cover it with seaweed and cover it with a tarp. Then the next day it was fired up again and then he’d put in the food and cook it. He’d clean everything out of the boathouse and they'd eat at long tables in there. Also on Thursdays people would go there to dinner, because that was their maids’ day out, right? So they would go to Sally’s or she would cook up things for them. They didn’t cook, summer people.
Harding would trap muskrats, and he’d save the legs for a woman in town who liked fried muskrat legs. You’d send the skins away to I. J. Fox and places like that. I still have some tags and the skinning boards and everything out in the garage. He did that on the side, as well as work at the farm. And he’d go around and clean refrigerators; he collected trash for a while; whatever there was to do.
We had everything. You had more than enough. Harding made sure there was no lack of food. He had a big garden here at the house and lots of fruit trees; the farm had milk, and in later years beef animals and pigs. He would go hunting for rabbits, deer, and ducks -- black ducks, the treat of all treats. And Harding used to make root beer. You’d be sitting up here and all of a sudden you’d hear “Pow!” and you’d know one of the bottles went off. We'd have cream from the farm and when it was cold my parents would go out to the ice puddles and get ice, sprinkle it with rock salt. And my mother would put in strawberries we’d preserved or a can of pineapple and we’d mix it with the cream. And we’d all take turns at the ice cream mixer and take the ice cream with us when we went visiting. There was a lot of trading around. You know, if Harding had some vegetables or something, he took it over to Sally Jeffers, say. If she had some meat or fruitcake, whatever, Harding would say, “I’ve got some potatoes.” They’d say, “Well, I’ve got a fish.” People did that, years ago.