Some years ago, I figured my first strategy for making money. I saved pennies, picking and lugging five gallon buckets of choke cherries to make wine. I made my first batch at age six. At the end of choke cherry season, I had saved fifty cents. The palms of my hands were stained black for months. I could not afford a pair of shoes, but I saved it in my only draw. My father made less than one-hundred dollars a week back then; however, my mother also worked. In fact, we rarely saw both of them together at once for the majority of my childhood. They must have met at night, as Mom’s goal was a dozen children. She did not quite get there, but came close.
The next year I figured how to turn fifty cents into five dollars. I made a deal with Dad. I offered to make wine for five dollars a barrel. Dad not only accepted, he upped the ante and offered ten for two. That worked in my favor. I bought sugar on sale, and borrowed yeast from under our sink. With as many children, Mom had to improvise. We made bread. The wine was my secret. I even hid it from, Dad. There was a vacant closet in the chicken coop. I placed the barrels beside the storage unit and covered them with a cheesecloth and an old dirty tarp. I could check it daily, with a rusty ladle that I washed in pump water, for sanitary purposes.
The first few weeks were futile , since it had to ferment. The concoction wasted away in a corner.
Weeks later, I remember sampling. I thought it tasted as bitter as the chokecherries. I added more sugar.
I completely forgot about it. By the time I’d mustered nerve to draw a sample, it was January.
Sometime in mid afternoon, New Years day, we had just finished the family feast with several aunts and uncles. Dad took my uncles into my bedroom where he kept his new 3030. They went to sight it in at the gravel pit, a short hike across the street. The moms and girls forgot about the boys for awhile and we split up.
My cousins went outside with me. There was not much to do in the cold, but shovel snow in the driveway. It was too cold to make snowballs. The girls did not want us inside, so we went to visit the chickens. My cousins saw treasures stacked into the storage area, an old wooden rake with wood dowel tines, a manure shovel, and other garden tools.
I remembered the barrels and thought I might try a sample while we were there. I dipped a ladle and we each sipped. It was cold and sweet and had a warm feeling in the throat. I did not like it. They did. In several minutes, they were rolling on the floor laughing. Suddenly our cold, dismal, snowy winter turned to summer. We were having the times of our lives. We used a manure fork and shovels to pile snow. Then we built a huge igloo that we could stand in. Life was great! I was ten dollars rich.
Dad was a man of his word. When the men came home, I suggested that he might want to try the chokecherry wine I made for him, which he did. My uncles sampled it as well, followed by my aunts. Everybody got into the act, even baby Thom. We celebrated deep into the night, before everybody left for home. I hid the money under my mattress, and it stayed there.
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