Early candlelight stories

by Stella C. Shetter

“And so I will,” answered Grandma. “I’ll tell you about that this very evening. Where’s my knitting? I can talk so much better when I knit. There now, are you all ready?”

Bobby and Alice and Pink drew their stools closer and Grandma began:

“On my father’s farm, about half a mile from our house, was a grove of maple trees. We always called them sugar trees. In the spring, you know, the sweet juice or sap comes up from the roots into the trees, and it is from this sap that maple sirup and sugar are made. In the spring Father and the boys would tap our sugar trees. They would take elder branches and make spouts by removing the pithy centers. Then they would bore holes in the trees and put the spouts in the holes and place buckets underneath to catch the sap. These buckets would have to be emptied several times a day into the big brass kettle, where it was boiled down into sirup and sugar.

“Truman tended to the sap buckets and kept a supply of firewood on hand, and Stanley watched the boiling of the sap. He knew just when it was thick enough and sweet enough to take off for sirup and how much longer to cook it for sugar. One of the girls was always there to help, and Father or Mother would oversee it all.

“There was a one-roomed log cabin with a great fireplace in the maple grove. It had been built years and years before by some early settler and was never occupied except during sugar-making time. The girls would go up the week before and clean it out, and Mother would send dishes and bedclothes for the two rough beds built against the wall. The ones making and tending the sirup would camp up there.

“Mother would send butter and bread and pies, and the girls would boil meat or beans in a black iron pot that hung over the fire. In the evenings they would have lots of fun sitting in front of the fire, telling stories and popping corn. Sister Aggie could make the best popcorn balls that were put together with maple sirup. They would often have visitors, too, neighboring boys and girls who would come in to stay until bedtime. And there would be songs and games.

“And they would make the sugar eggs for Easter. Before sugar time came we would blow the contents out of eggs by making little holes in each end. Then we would dry the shells and put them away. When they were taking off the maple sugar, Mother or Belle or Aggie would fill the egg shells and set them aside for the sugar to cool and harden. They would fill goose-egg shells with the maple sugar, too, and when the sugar hardened they would pick the shell off, and by and by the girls would paste pretty pictures of birds or flowers on them and tie them with gay-colored ribbons for Easter.

“Neither Charlie nor I had ever been allowed to stay all night at the sugar camp, and when Mother said we could stay one night with Stanley and Truman and Belle we were wild with joy.

“Truman had shot and cleaned three squirrels that morning, and Belle cooked them in the big black pot with a piece of fat pork until the water boiled off and they sizzled and browned in the bottom of the pot. We had little flat corn cakes baked on the hearth and maple sirup, and, my, but that supper tasted good to me!

“I dried the dishes for Belle, and we had just settled down for the evening when one of the Strang boys came in. He didn’t know we children were there, and he had come up to see if Stanley and Truman and Belle would go home with him to a little frolic. His sister Esther had been married a few days before and had come home that afternoon, and they were going to have a serenade for them. Belle and the boys wanted Charlie and me to go down to the house so they could go, but we wouldn’t do it. We declared we were not afraid to stay by ourselves and told them to go on. Finally they did.