A Summer Rembrance

Back during my elementary school days I usually spent each summer vacation with my Reichert grandparents in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. It was during this period that my grandmother Reichert’s younger sister, Bessie Martin became a widow without the financial resources needed to maintain her home in nearby Shenandoah.

That was a different era when family, not government, was responsible for the less fortunate among us. Offering Aunt Bess the permanent hospitality of their home was never a subject of discussion between my grandparents. The only thing they caucused on was the rearrangement of the Reichert home to best accommodate the new family member.

My Aunt Bess was a nostalgic treasure trove of folklore. She was raised in a Schuylkill Haven household of pure German ancestry. Married as a teenager she spent the next forty years in a predominantly Irish neighborhood of Shenandoah. Since she was one of those people who subliminally adapted the linguistic tones of her environment, Aunt Bess was the only member of our clan who sounded like she just got off the boat from Dublin. When she moved in with my grandparents during one of my summer vacations I knew Aunt Bess sounded different from the rest of my Pennsylvania Dutch relatives, but I didn’t know why. It wasn’t till years later when I observed friends returning from other parts of the country with newly adapted accents that I understood how Aunt Bess acquired her Irish brogue.

The anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania was, and still is, awash in phonetic nuances.

The lead male character of George Bernard Shaw’s 1912 classic play, Pygmalion, was Professor Henry Higgins who dedicated his life to the study of regional phonetics.

Pygmalion was later used as the storyline for the hit musical, My Fair Lady. Professor Higgins would have had a field day in Schuylkill County. Travel less than ten miles from downtown Pottsville in any direction of the compass and the trained ear can pickup subtle differences in speech patterns.

Aunt Bess had a medicinal panacea for whatever ailed you: A teaspoon of Epsom Salts dissolved in a small cup of hot water taken orally. It was so pungent that by comparison caster oil tasted like honey. We’d hold our noses, chug down her elixir, then gobble down a spoonful of homemade jam to ease the horrible taste. As she brewed up her cure-all she would recite folklore learned in Shenandoah: "It’ll cure the itch, the pitch, the palsy and the gout. If you’ve got seven devils in your soul, it’ll take twenty-seven out." I don’t know about the devils but it sure cleaned everything else out. One day I hurt my kneecap
playing sandlot baseball. By the time I got home the knee was swollen and sure enough Aunt Bess had the cure: A dose of salts. Between the exercise of repeatedly running to the bathroom and the resilience of youth, the knee was back to normal by the following day. Aunt Bess took full credit for the fast recovery.

When you had a house full of kids acting like wild puppies during summer vacation, a mystical Bogie-man was sometimes needed to maintain order. In the Schaeffer household it had always been the threat of calling the local uniformed policeman with his trusty nightstick and revolver or just the veiled threat of: "Just wait until your father gets home." With Aunt Bess it was a wag of her finger in our direction with the accompanied threat of: "If you boys don’t behave I’ll get the Molly Maguires after you."

Being raised in the city we didn’t have a clue as to who the Molly Maguires were but the tone of her voice conveyed the serious warning that the Mollys were something to fear or respect (depending on which side of the tracks you were living). Chalk up another juvenile behavior assist to the Shenandoah folklore surrounding a 19th century secret society of Irish coal miners.

Every cook or baker has a hallmark and Aunt Bess was no exception. Her homemade
currant bread was the talk of the neighborhood. Twice a year, starting at the kitchen table after the breakfast dishes had been washed, Aunt Bess would begin making currant bread. The raised dough process required time, making the baking event an all day affair.

As kids, my brother and I would watch her add ingredients to the mixing bowl, literally by hand, without measuring spoons or cups. It was a pinch of this and a handful of that during the entire process. The wonderful aroma of the bread baking in my grandmother’s coal fired kitchen stove that evening was a preamble to the anticipated first serving at breakfast the next morning. It made getting to sleep as difficult as Christmas Eve. The smell of the freshly baked bread wafting up to our bedroom remains in my thought locker to this day. I’d be hard pressed to think of any homemade bread, past or present,that could match her currant bread.

When a relative would ask Aunt Bess for her recipe, you might as well have been asking military intelligence for their code books. When I asked her to let me measure the ingredients before she added them to the bowl, she became noticeably agitated. I soon learned what most other cooks in the family already knew and accepted: The currant bread was her ticket to family admiration. It was the one thing she could do better than anyone else and she was not going to dilute that moment in the sun by sharing.

Years later when Aunt Bess died we had a typical funeral day for a family member. After the memorial service and interment we all gathered back at my grandparents’ home for a buffet meal. Each family member or friend brought their favorite dish to be shared as folks sat in unplanned groups throughout the afternoon playing catch up on family news.

The buffet tables beckoned my brother and me back for treats we could no longer find in the big city. We left enough room for a final trip to the dessert table where I half expected the currant bread to magically appear. As the afternoon faded I nostalgically thought of the currant bread and remarked to my brother: " I don’t know if she planned it this way but the legend of her bread will grow since she took the recipe with her." My brother nodded then added, " Yea, but I’m not going to miss the dose of salts. I’ll consider it a tie."

Stratton Schaeffer
Retired Consulting Engineer and Farmer
August, 2013