Sassafras tea, sheep sour wine, rabbit tobacco, and possum grapes

With the absence of such distractions as television, electronic games, and for the most part even telephones ( and certainly not cell phones) my friends and I who lived on the far SW corner of Heavener (as opposed to the other west siders such as KB-D and JI) seldom lacked for activities to keep our fertile minds occupied. Much of our free time was spent playing, exploring, and competing in all manner of athletic endeavors, but on occasion we deferred to more dignified interests such as developing our culinary skills. Everyone has heard of Sassafras tea, but who among you ever tried to make some. Well we did. On one of our trips exploring regions outside of our neighborhood territory we discovered that along the lane that extended north of where Mrs. Stewart (the school teacher) lived sassafras plants grew in abundance. After harvesting enough of the fragrant roots which we initially intended to just chew we decided to make up a batch of sassafras tea. Our favorite "hideout" back then was located in the woods just to the west of Homer’s house not far from the Hill cemetery. There we made us a small campfire and using a gallon coffee can we boiled some of the twigs for some time then after having strained out the scraps of wood we added a good quantity of sugar pilfered from mother’s cannister and all tried a sip. It wasn’t bad (thanks mostly to the ample amount of sugar) but not near as good as the regular tea our mothers could make so it was concluded that we could find better things to do with our time than manufacture more sassafras tea. Ever being the connoisseurs of the finer things of life and since our part of Oklahoma had not yet emerged from the great prohibition experiment we ventured into the unlawful spirits industry by fixing up a batch of what we had heard called "sheep sour wine" ( it was not until I was a college graduate that I learned that the term was really "sheep sorrel"). Our "still" consisted of the same aforementioned coffee can and sugar supply, but a major difference in the procedure was this time we would pour the completed product into a mason jar and bury it for a considerable time thereby allowing it to age which is what we did. Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately when we returned to the " hide out "a couple of days later our stash was nowhere to be found. We never did find out what happened to it and the world will never know how our contribution to the "moonshiner" craft turned out. Also among our group of buddies were those of us who were aficionados of the "rabbit tobacco" weed. For the few of you out there that are not familiar of what this particular plant is, "rabbit tobacco" is quite common in the fields and meadows around Heavener. It is easily identified when you know what you are looking far. It is a pale green in color and produces clumps of small fairly thick leaves which when chewed produces a "juice" which when expelled from ones mouth resembles a tobacco stain on whatever it lands on. The other wild delicacy that we enjoyed was the wild grape commonly know as the possum grape a.k.a. muscadine. Our source for this delight was the vines that grew down past the creek that flowed across what we called "Roberts Pasture". It was about this time of the year that the grapes would start to be edible. I don’t suppose the vines are there anymore since "Roberts Pasture" was obliterated by the strip mining operations that destroyed where my friends and I spent much of our child hood back in the fifties. Oh sure we also enjoyed our share of the more common treats such as the ocaisional watermelon (Mr. Roberts wouldn’t miss just one) and then there was those delicious pears from the little orchard across the street from Melenda Meeh’s house - shucks there wasn’t even a fence around those trees so whoever the pears belonged to didn’t care if we enjoyed our fill of them. Well all the work it took to do all this writin has worked me up put a craving on me so I’ll sign off and fix me a PB&J sandwich.