After they harvested the crop one year they had the barns, the cribs, the sheds, the shacks, and all the cracks and corners of the farm, all filled with pop corn.
“We came out to Nebraska to raise pop corn,” said Jonas Jonas, “and I guess we got nearly enough pop corn this year for the pop corn poppers and all the friends and relations of all the pop corn poppers in these United States.”
She carried the squash into the kitchen
And this was the year Pony Pony was going to bake her first squash pie all by herself. In one corner of the corn crib, all covered over with pop corn, she had a secret, a big round squash, a fat yellow squash, a rich squash all spotted with spots of gold.
She carried the squash into the kitchen, took a long sharp shining knife, and then she cut the squash in the middle till she had two big half squashes. And inside just like outside it was rich yellow spotted with spots of gold.
And there was a shine of silver. And Pony Pony wondered why silver should be in a squash. She picked and plunged with her fingers till she pulled it out.
“It’s a buckle,” she said, “a silver buckle, a Chinese silver slipper buckle.”
She ran with it to her father and said, “Look what I found when I cut open the golden yellow squash spotted with gold spots—it is a Chinese silver slipper buckle.”
“It means our luck is going to change, and we don’t know whether it will be good luck or bad luck,” said Jonas Jonas to his daughter, Pony Pony Huckabuck.