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Porterdale Mill on the Yellow
River |
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Porterdale Mill on the Yellow
River |
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DOWN
MEMORY LANE |
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How
many of you know of the Passionflower?
More commonly known as a May Pop.
They generally grow along the road sides.
These days we do not get to enjoy them like we did in the old
days. Now we are flying
by in our cars with the windows up and the air conditioning on.
The May Pop is really a beautiful flower, blue trimmed in
white. Attached to the
vine along with the flower is a fruit about the size of a lemon,
although it is green. When
you throw the fruit hard against the ground it makes a loud pop.
Hence the common name of May POP.
Now to really enjoy these beautiful flowers one needs to be
riding down a country dirt road, sitting on the rear end of a
wagon being drawn by a horse, with ones bare feet dragging in
the dirt. As you ride
along and you see these flowers, you jump off the wagon and run get
the May Pop and return to the wagon and then throw is into the back of
the wagon and watch your Grandpa Chapman, whose driving the wagon,
JUMP. Of course you are
in the wagon on your way to town to do the MONTHLY shopping.
When you get to town you hitch the horses near a water trough,
while you shop. You go
down the street and shop in the stores and then place your purchases
out in front of the store where you bought them.
Then go to the next store and do the same thing.
When you are finished shopping you hitch up the horses and
drive to the front of each store and collect your purchases and place
on the wagon. At the feed
store Grandpa picks out the material that Grandma will use to make the
dresses and blouses for the girls and the shirts for the boys.
You say the feed store? Yes.
In those days chicken feed and other animal feeds came in real
pretty sacks, some with flowers, some with stripes, etc.
When the feed was gone Grandma would take the sacks and make
clothes for all the kids. These
shopping trips would take about all day.
On the return trip
we would again look for more May Pops.
This time we would collect and save them until we got home and
POP them on the porch. This is the only way to enjoy the beauty of the
Passionflower. It is to
bad that most of you will never receive this kind of enjoyment. |