Glenna Johnson Smith

(1920 - 2020) Born in Ashville, Maine; author of two books: Old Maine Woman and Return of Old Maine Woman, a NE Society Book Award finalist (2015); her writing has appeared in Echoes, Yankee Magazine, and others; a teacher for many years, she was heavily involved in school and community theater productions

Because Mama raised and canned her own vegetables and picked and preserved her own fruit and berries, we had few tin cans to discard. Lard and peanut butter came in little pails, which were used forever after for berry picking. She took a cloth bag to the grocery store, much like today’s shoppers are urged to do, and her own dish to the butcher and the fish man, so there were no disposable wrappings.

The few table scraps––peelings and all––went to a neighbor’s pig, or were thrown in a little pit behind the house. What the small animals and birds didn’t eat became compost. Out of that pile grew the biggest blackberries in town.

One of Mama’s recyclings bothered a few squeamish neighbors. We had no indoor plumbing, and our outhouse was behind the little barn where Papa kept the Model T. Behind the outhouse was the reddest, healthiest stand of rhubarb anywhere around.

“Why waste a good source of fertilizer?” Mama would ask.

Some hardy souls came to pick it, and even the ones who didn’t would not refuse a second piece of Mama’s creamy rhubarb pie topped with high peaks of meringue.

Although we had few of the world’s goods in the 1920s, I can’t say that I felt deprived. Once when I was very young I asked Papa if we were rich or poor. He thought before he answered, “Poor, I guess.” I would have believed “rich.”

I had good food to eat, clean clothes, a safe and quiet world for dreaming and playing, and a comfortable bed for sleep. What else could “rich” provide?

As she grew older Mama was aghast at American throwaway consumption. “It has to stop,” she’d say. “There isn’t enough for everyone forever.” But many of us of my generation in our modern wisdom looked around at the woods and empty spaces. We pointed with pride at our technology and our spewing smokestacks and said of course there’ll be enough.

If Kathleen Proctor Johnson were around today she’d be proud of her grandsons and their wives, who use their resources carefully and respect the environment. Yet, if she could see what a garbage dump many of us are making of our world, I think we’d see her pursed lips and scowly smile and she’d say, “Why didn’t you listen?”

from Old Maine Woman: Stories from The Coast to The County by Glenna Johnson Smith (Islandport Press)