Humorous stories; Washington (State) -- Fiction; Western stories
In this new war activity it wasn't so much how you canned a thing as
what you canned. Genevieve May showed 'em how to make mincemeat out of
tomatoes and beets; how to make marmalade out of turnips and orange peel;
how to make preserves out of apple peelings and carrots; and guava jelly
out of mushmelon rinds, or some such thing. She'd go into towns and rent
a storeroom and put up her canning outfit, hiring a couple of the lower
classes to do the actual work, and invite women to bring in their truck
of this kind and learn regular old rock-bottom economy. They'd come, with
their stuff that should of been fattening shotes, and Genevieve May would
lecture on how to can it. It looked through the glass like sure-enough
human food.
Then, after she'd got 'em all taught, she'd say wouldn't it be nice
of these ladies to let her sell all this canned stuff and give the
proceeds to the different war charities! And there wasn't a woman that
didn't consent readily, having tasted it in the cooking. Not a one of
'em wanted to take home these delicacies. It was right noble or cautious,
or something. And after visiting six or eight of these communities
Genevieve May had quite a stock of these magic delicacies on sale in
different stores and was looking forward to putting the war firmly on
its feet--only she couldn't get many reports of sales from this stock.
Then she got a dandy idea. She would come to the Kulanche County
Fair at Red Gap, assemble all her stock there, give one of these
here demonstrations in economic canning, and auction off the whole
lot with a glad hurrah. She thought mebbe, with her influence, she
might get Secretary Baker, or someone like that, to come out and do
the auctioning--all under the auspices of Mrs. Genevieve May Popper,
whose tireless efforts had done so much to teach the dear old Fatherland
its lesson, and so on. She now had about three hundred jars and bottles
of this stuff after her summer's work, and it looked important.
I got down to the county fair myself last year, having some sure-fire
blue-ribbon stock there, and it was then that I hear G.H. Stultz talking
about this here mother-in-law of his, he taking me aside at their home
one night, so his wife, Lucille, wouldn't hear.
"This respected lady is trying to teach her grandmother how to suck
eggs--no more, no less," he says. "Now she's coming here to pull
something off. You watch her--that's all I ask. Everything that woman
touches goes funny. Look how she poisoned those innocent people up at
that hotel. And I'll bet this canned stuff she's going to sell off will
kill even mere tasters. If she only hadn't come to my town! That woman
don't seem to realize that I'm cursed with a German name and have to be
miles above suspicion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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