“Hurry and change clothes, we’re going wild-flower hunting,” Mother called out to us the minute we arrived home from school. Depending on the weather and the calendar, it could have been any time from late April through the first two weeks of May. My sisters and I anticipated a springtime stroll through a patch of timber, picking violets and Sweet Williams; our mother had a more ambitious agenda.
Long before the Red Rock Reservoir was created, the Des Moines River rushed past Pella, east of Knoxville and on to regularly devastate the little town of Eddyville. Its journey had, in the distant past, carved out shallow caves in the limestone that underlay the hills rising to the east of the river’s channel. Ancient creeks had cut deep ravines through the surrounding landscape, creating hazardous overlooks with breathtaking views.
Scattered among virgin timber were, during several weeks each spring, a vast array of wildflowers native to the area and an abundance of morel mushrooms. I’ve no idea why Mother insisted that our excursions were for the purpose of gathering wildflowers; looking back, it’s obvious to me that she was after the prized morels. (It has been my experience that children, being close to the ground, make excellent mushroom spotters.) It’s possible that she, like today’s mushroomers, feared too many people learning about her “secret” spot and thought we girls might mention it to someone who would take advantage of that knowledge.
If the excursion happened to take place during the few days before May, we would put some of the fragrant and colorful blossoms in the May-baskets we delivered to friends and neighbors. Otherwise, they might be incorporated into corsages we wore to Sunday school and church or simply arranged in small vases to grace the table at mealtime or the dressing tables in our bedrooms.
The variety of wildflowers we found included the familiar violets and Sweet Williams along with more exotic bloodroot, Dutchman’s-britches, Lady-slippers, bluebells, larkspur and a few others that many might call weeds. I remember my maternal grandmother telling me that God didn’t make weeds, only flowering plants and that it had been mean-spirited people who decided some of them weren’t worthy of being called flowers.
Mother had filled several quart jars with water, added lids to keep them from spilling on the rough drive through the timber and put them, along with a number of empty bread wrappers, in the trunk of the car. When we arrived home, the bread wrappers would be bulging with tan and gray morels (known to us as sponge mushrooms) and the jars, crammed with our harvest of wildflowers, carefully cradled in our laps to prevent major spillage, though we never arrived home completely dry.
Supper that night would consist mainly of mushrooms and, perhaps baloney sandwiches or leftovers from the noon meal. A great platter of mushrooms were the main event. Submerged in salted water to drive out any bugs, trimmed and split open, they were dipped in beaten egg and shaken in a paper bag of seasoned cracker crumbs, then fried in butter until soft with a crisp golden crust. If the hunt had been exceptionally successful, or if she managed to return to the timber for additional goodies, Mother would clean the mushrooms and place them in an old, thin pillowcase and hang them on the clothesline for several days if the weather was dry and sunny. She would give them a good shake several times a day to make sure the all were drying equally. When they rattled like a bag of paper mâché, she stored them in covered jars in the cupboard and reconstituted them later in warm water as needed for cooking.
I added my own touch by using dry onion-ring mix as a coating after dipping the mushrooms in beaten egg. Less doughy, more flavor.