Blazing Prairies and Canning Carrots

I read something the other day about our sense of smell--that the intensity of the memory is tied to the emotion you experienced at the time you first smelled it, be it fear, love, comfort, or safety.

And so it is. I get a whiff of smoke from a grass fire, and instantly I’m 10 years old again!

I grew up on the Kansas prairie, in the midst of oil fields. My father was what they called a pumper. Once an area of wells were drilled, someone was required to take care of them and keep them working. Each area would have a pump house, with an engine to run rod lines that connected to each well. These rod lines were moved back and forth by the engine in the pump house, and that motion moved the oil well structure up and down, thus pumping the oil up into pipe lines. Company housing came with the job, and our house, cow barn, garden, chicken coops, and underground tornado shelter would be surrounded by working, pumping wells. With the long dry summer months, and the ever-present wind, that waving prairie was an accident waiting to happen.

I never knew what sparked the fires. A carelessly tossed cigarette somewhere, someone’s out-of-control trash fire, sparks from vehicles perhaps.

Daddy would come racing home, in the pickup if he had gone farther afield, or on our horse Brownie (see photo with a young CJ) if he was working closer to home. He would wrestle the 55-gallon drums into the pickup bed, fill them with water from the cistern, throw in a pile of gunny sacks (from cattle feed), and off we would go to battle the conflagration.

Mother and I were in charge of the smaller creeping flames, while Daddy tackled the bigger ones. We would dunk the gunny sacks into the water, and whack the soggy material onto the blaze. Of all importance was keeping the fire from the oil wells, because if one of them went up, the house would go too.

Tho miles separated us from the closest neighbors, sight of smoke on the horizon would bring many folks to help.

Once all embers and sparks were extinguished, we headed home, dirty, ash-smudged, and coughing from smoky lungs, but in a state of euphoria for a job well done.

Another intense episode in my childhood instilled memories relating to the smell of cooked carrots.

One year we had a bumper crop of carrots from the garden, and Mother, sister Gail, and myself were up to our elbows in canning carrots when my father, all bloody and disheveled, came riding up on Brownie. Well, he wasn’t really riding, he was sort of draped across our horse, and Brownie brought him home. He had had an accident with the testing tractor, and was seriously injured. He recalls thinking he would be calm so as not to frighten us, not realizing how he looked!

Mother quickly called the boss (some distance away) for help and Daddy was transported to hospital and subsequently recovered in full. Brownie got extra special rations after that near-tragedy, as it would not have been good if Daddy had had to lay in a grassland gulley until dark, and we realized he wasn’t coming home, and would then go looking for him. My love of carrots remains, but I still get a frisson of fright when I walk by a buffet with a tub of steaming carrots.

Other smells that have impacted me include the fragrance of Mother’s cooking when I came home from school. Weather permitting I walked the couple of miles to and from the country school, and I could sniff supper before I even got to the yard. In winter it would be beef stew or ham and beans, and in summer there was chicken and homemade noodles, or veggie casseroles from the garden along with garden-fresh, just baked rhubarb pie.

I’m sure that’s why, when, during some distressing times of my life, I‘ve headed to the kitchen for a cooking frenzy, whipping up something fragrant and hearty. All it takes to make me feel comforted and safe is to encounter those wonderful aromas. I’ve come home. All is well.