State

Me And Ma Bell By MABEL HICKS Iras tea. Dandelion roots that arc dry roasted, ground and brewed become a coffee substitute. She sometimes serves visitors a pink "lemonade" made from red sumac berries. "It is high in Vitamin C." says Maxine, a trim 5-foot. 3-inch blonde. In almost every case, she says, wild foods are more nutritious than culti¬ vated plants. She stresses nutrition in the biology classes she teaches at Graham High School. She and her husband, a coach and teacher at Southern Alamance High School, eat jellies made from wild fruits just about every day and eat some other type of wild food about once a week. In addition to her duties at Graham High School, she also teaches a sum¬ mer school class in foraging sponsored by the Hampton Mariners Museum at Beaufort. Some Are Poisonous She cautions her students — and anybody else interested in foraging — to first buy a reliable guide to edible wild foods and study it carefully be¬ cause some wild plants are poisonous. Some varieties of sumac, for example, are toxic while others arc edible. Parts of some plants are good to eat while other parts might be deadly. I'hc roots of many wild plants be¬ come ingredients for Maxine's recipes. She uses them in stews, boils them, fries them, bakes them and prepares them in other ways people use carrots and potatoes. "These arc Jerusalem artichokes, one of the w ild sunflowers." she says as she turns over a spade of din at the base of some plants in her back yard and lifts out a cluster of roots. "You can cat them raw or cook them like new potatoes or you can pickle them. My husband likes them better raw." Jerusalem artichokes are very easy to digest and are often recommended for diabetics, she says. She puts them in casseroles with other ingredients such as cheese, milk, and butter, it is very good. Since she started attending the Tar Heel Foragers conventions, she has tasted everything from oppossum to rattlesnake. Once, deep-fried grasshoppers were on the menu. She said it didn’t bother her to eat them. "I watched him prepare it." she says, smiling. "I knew it was good, and I knew it was clean." 20 Have you bought a new phone lately? That seems to he the thing to do now. There are telephone stores where you can choose from all the beautiful shapes and colors, even gold. Maybe I w ill choose a purple phone for my den. It would bring out the purple in the drapes. Hut then I move it over to the bedrooms at night and I would need a yellow phone there. I really don't want to buy a new phone. My old black phone with a dial works just fine. In fact it is the only appliance that does work fine without a repair man standing over it. You know the telephone world is changing rapidly. Until now. the changes have been so gradual, we have hardly noticed them. The telephone was developed be¬ tween IK70- IXKO and gradually worked its way into our homes about the time I was born. The phone was a boon to rural areas. At last you had close neighbors you could call on. They had the good sense to attach the first phones to the wall about the height of an adult. That solved two problems right off. It kept children off the phone and discouraged long con¬ versations. You remember the phone company had a building centrally located with a switchboard and in many small towns only one operator. We called her (it was usually a her) "Central" or maybe by her name. She was usually a local woman who knew everybody and their business. You were careful w hat you said. We would pick up the receiver from a hook on the side and then jiggle the hook to gel the attention of the operator. We would say. "Hello. Hello." and she would answer. "Number please." If she was not too busy and recognized your voice, she might carry on a long conversation before connecting you with your party. I don’t remember when the dial phone first cut out our ’Hello' and 'Number please*, but we lost a good friend. Central could usually tell us all the news, even down to where Mom was playing bridge that afternoon. At my house the use of the phone was sort of divided up into time periods. The morning was Mom's time to call friends, exchange new s and re¬ cipes. In the afternoon as soon as school was out. the children took over the phone. It became their toy, and is even more so today, when each child has his own personal phone in the shape of Micky Mouse or a train. The teenagers claimed the phone for early evening. They had to call some one (preferably of the opposite six) to find out the lesson assignments. They would talk for hours, even working out their algebra problems together. The party line could be great fun. I remember when we were on a four party line. Our ring was four, and w hen the phone rang everyone froze and counted the rings, often answering before the fourth ring. We knew who the other three parties were and soon worked out a system of visiting, livery Wednesday night our patents went to Prayer Meeting at a church near by. That was the cue for us to all get on the line. One would call and when we heard the ring, the other three would pick up the receiver and talk. We didn’t get much homework done on Wednesday nights. One time my mother, who was also named Mabel, nearly ruined me with the new high school boy friend. The phone rang and she answered before I could get there. "Hello." she said. Then "Yes." After a few seconds pause she said. "Oh. you want to speak to LITTLE Mabel.” It took a while for me to live that down. Then came the year my parents de¬ cided to economize. I was away at college. I guess that was reason enough to economize. When I came home for the summer. I headed straight for the phone — no phone. THE STATE. FCIRUANV 19M