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RHUBARB PIE
Our house was located below the road on the side of a hill. Along the left side of the house was my Mother’s fenced garden parallel to the dining room and a small porch on the backside of the house.
My sister had planted some rhubarb inside the garden fence directly across from the porch and each year that patch of rhubarb grew bigger and bigger.
My sister was in high school and was taking a course in Home Economics and to be perfectly honest she was becoming a very good cook; not as good as my Mother but she would try more exotic things.
My brother and I usually got the better part of her efforts in the culinary arts. That is until she came up with those rhubarb pies!
Way back yonder, years ago
When I was just a lad.
When FDR pushed his New Deal
And things were very bad.
My Daddy farmed a patch of land
Just below the Hootey Knob
With the help of Mom and Sister Sue
And me and Brother Tob!
We had a two-holed outhouse
Way down below the spring.
And a trip down there at the burst of dawn
Was not a pleasant thing.
Unless Tob and I got a number two call
We never used that stinking sty.
We just stood on the high back porch
Where we’d just let it fly!
Our Daddy taught us to compete
And to always do our best.
So, each morning Tob and I
Got into a good contest.
We would stand flatfooted on the porch
In our scanty skimpy garb
To see if we could wet the leaves
On Sister Sue’s rhubarb!
As time went by and the rhubarb grew
We could both dispense
Every drop in an arching curve
Across that garden fence.
Our aim was now confined
To bees and pests and flies
That crawled around on these wide leaves
And we scored them as bull’s eyes!
Our Sister Sue went to cooking school
And made pies and cakes and stuff.
She used Tob and I as guinea pigs
And we never got enough
Of all the goodies she dreamed up
And no matter what she’d bring
We sat right down and dug right in
And ate the whole darned thing!
Until that time she tried us out
On a brand new recipe!
I looked at Tob and turned real pale
And then he looked at me.
He had turned a pallid, pale, pea green
Swallowed hard and blinked his eyes
When Sister Sue walked through the kitchen door
With those two big rhubarb pies!
Dad walked in about this time,
Said that we looked as sick as sin
He grabbed a fork from Sister Sue,
Sat down and dug right in.
He polished off a half a pie,
Said "It probably ain’t your fault.
That rhubarb pie is mighty good,
But you used a little too much salt!"
Later, Tob and I made a few fast bucks
In school, at recess time.
We conned the older, bigger boys
And bet our last thin dime.
We’d set a fruit jar on the ground,
Then drink a Nehi pop,
Back off twenty paces
And fill it to the top!
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