Deep summer’s really here, now. About this time, Mama would start making pickles. She made them every year — watermelon rind and peach pickles.

I can so clearly see her on the sidewalk at the A&P, standing in a sea of watermelons, telling the young man, very emphatically, “I want a watermelon with a thick rind. I know everyone always wants the ones with thin rinds, but I want a thick one!” So, much thumping would ensue, and eventually the right watermelon would find its way onto the back seat of the De-Soto, and then be driven home in style.

It might take a few days before the actual making would begin, and we kids would be impatiently waiting to get our usually grubby hands on that watermelon. When it was finally cut off the rind, we were sent out in the back yard with a dishpanful to eat and drip to our hearts’ content, with the added bonus of being able to spit the seeds wherever we wanted. (Did watermelons ever start to grow back there?) And Mama was busy, removing the hard skin and every bit of pink flesh from those rinds, and then cutting them into the right-sized pieces. All this was done with a fairly dull knife.

(She was married during the Depression; if you sharpened knives very often — for us, it was done only once a year, at Christmas — you’d eventually have to buy new ones. Learn how to use a dull knife, and save the money!)

One of us kids would have to go to the drugstore to buy Lilly’s Slaked Lime. I don’t know if there was ever a different brand than Lilly’s or not. Then the giant pot would come out, be filled up with rinds, water and lime, and brought to a boil. The un-air-conditioned, already hot kitchen would become unbearable, with all the steam in the air. Steam that somehow smelled like freshly-washed sheets. (Just what is slaked lime, anyway?) Eventually, the time would come to drain off all that lime water, and add vinegar and more water, mountains of sugar, and spices. More cooking, and this time the steam was worth enduring, it smelled so good!

When all was ready, those still-hot pickles would go into pint-sized Ball jars, the sterile lids and rings put on. And, as they cooled, we’d sit around the kitchen table and listen to the lids pop down. Very soon — as soon as last year’s batch of pickles was gone — we’d be able eat the new ones. They were much prettier, as the older ones had darkened with age.

Then came the peach pickles. Oh, the peach pickles! We’d stop by the orchard on a sunny afternoon after Daddy’d come home from work. We’d had an early dinner and were on our way home from the beach at Grand View. If they didn’t already have pickling peaches sorted out, then every employee in the place, as well as Mama and Daddy, was soon going through bushel baskets of peaches, trying to find the small, not very ripe ones.

Eventually, a peck of peaches would be put together, ready to go home. Mama would also buy a gallon basket of peaches for eating. One year, they had a new variety called “Shippers.” They were huge, nearly the size of a small cantaloupe. Of course, we had to eat some on the way home. Mama and Daddy would be in the front seat having a nice conversation. We’d eat our peaches, and then there would be three squirming girls in the back seat, covered with salt and sand, itchy peach fuzz and sticky juice, moaning and complaining at the discomfort, and dying to get home and wash it off!

Peach pickles didn’t require so much “hard” manual labor as the watermelon rinds. But, it’s a time-consuming, fairly unpleasant chore to pare a peck of hard peaches with that same dull knife. Happily, Mama didn’t make a fuss over the fuzz or the juice. And they were pickled whole, so the cutting-into-pieces step was out. Once those peaches started cooking, the smells were to die for! She’d make a little cheesecloth bag, holding allspice, cinnamon, ginger root, and cloves (maybe others; I was more into smelling than identifying).

Into the pot went the peaches, more mountains of sugar, vinegar, water and that bag of heavenly spices. They’d cook and cook until you could easily slip a fork into a peach, and all that was left of the liquid was a syrup that was magic to smell and taste. You could swallow your tongue over that syrup. The peaches got put into quart jars, and were a beautiful sight to see. And better still to eat at Sunday dinner, with fried chicken, home-made yeast rolls, butter beans, buttered rice, sliced tomatoes and sweating glasses of iced sweet tea. Lemon meringue pie for dessert would top it all off to perfection!

Those are dear, lovely memories, in my mind and in my heart. I’d give anything to once again be able to walk into the kitchen on Bay Avenue and watch Mama make those pickles.

Audrey Robinson is the Raines Tavern correspondent.