Winter Huckleberries

The school bus route when I was in elementary school was a strange one. In the mornings, it went north first, and thus we were the first students to get on in the morning. In the afternoon, however, the driver reversed the route and went east first, and we were the last students to get off in the afternoons. It never seemed fair to me, but that was the way it was.

Because of this convoluted process, my brother and I very often would get off the bus in the afternoons and walk home from where the veterinary clinic sits. It was about a mile, and we could beat the bus by a good bit.

Our road was then dirt, and it went up the ridge just east of where Plum Street now runs. At the point where our land intersected the road, we would crawl up the bank, through the fence, and proceed past the pond and up the hill to the house.

In the southwestern-most corner of our land there stood a winter huckleberry bush, and every school year it would be loaded with berries. If you have never tasted a winter huckleberry, it is not nearly as tasty as the usual variety. It is not very juicy and the taste is nowhere near as good – a little on the pasty side.

However, since we had just hiked a mile up the side of a ridge carrying schoolbooks and other paraphernalia, and since it was beginning to get along toward the middle of the afternoon, and since the winter huckleberries were free for the taking, we generally would stop at the bush and stuff our bellies full of the wild fruit.

So what if it was not the best food in the world? It was free and we were hungry, and hungry grade school boys generally eat first and ask questions later. The danger, of course, was that if we ate too many of the huckleberries, they would tend to have a pronounced laxative effect, which could be somewhat inconvenient at a later hour.

There is an old saying that says, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” If the product is free, then don’t be too picky about the quality. No, wild winter huckleberries were not nearly as good as the cultivated variety, but they were not all that bad – and they were free. And a free price covers a multitude of defects.