The Prairie Spy

Alan “Lindy” Linda

The Widow Fistula woke me up in the middle of last night in a dream and asked me: “How come you ain’t visited me?” Meaning, I guess, that she’s feeling kind of ignored. There was a time when I visited with and wrote about all the citizens of Boatville. Her included.

One of the reasons she’s rattling my cage is probably because Lt. S. and I just got a bunch of small cucumbers from the Amish neighbors, and we’re researching how we’d like to preserve them.

Pickles. That led me to thinking about the Pickle Factory in Boatville, which has been gone now over 40 years. When first we arrived years ago, everyone around seemed to have a pickle patch. Every morning they’d religiously go out there, brave the mosquitoes, deer flies, and wood ticks to pick a tick of pickles.

You had to do it every morning because the Pickle Factory didn’t want just any old pickle. There were size specifications involved. Good pickle pickers proved themselves so because they just naturally knew what was what, as far as pickles go. What the Factory wanted was gherkin-sized ones, you know.

For you non-pickleheads, a gherkin is a type of pickle made from a small, young, and often bumpy-skinned cucumber, resulting in a smaller and crunchier product compared to larger, smoother pickles. Hence going out there every morning before the gherkins turn into pumpkins.

Back to the Widow, who is widowed on account of her husband, who everyone in Boatville knew as Pickle Pete. Pickle Pete had a drinking problem. Maybe it was all that time he spent leaning over the railroad car-sized pickle vat. Maybe it was the Widow herself, a bit hard to get along with, perhaps. Who knows.

As pickle-picking times came and went year after year, it turned out that it helped that the guy in charge of all that vinegar and dill stayed somewhat pickled himself. It sure didn’t hurt the pickles that came jarred out of that Factory. They were in big demand.

Unfortunately–and no one knows for sure–Pickle Pete took a header into the gherkin vat. No one knows for sure when or how. (Except suspicions throughout Boatville thought the Widow had something to do with it.)

The manager of the Pickle Factory refused to comment on the whole affair; refused to specify how long it was before Pete was discovered; how long it was before the gherkin vat itself was drained; how long, oh, how long, indeed.

But it was widely known that this batch of jars of pickles was hands down the very tastiest batch that had ever come out of the Pickle Factory. Matter of fact, since these jars of pickles spread across the distribution network of grocery stores across the midwest, the great taste of this batch increased future orders for more of them, to the point that the owner-manager himself took up drinking, to the point that one day on his way to work, he apparently drove his car into Big Pine Lake. Or so rumor said it.

Who knows. Boatville lost its pickle factory. Some folks said it was time–no one needed the “pickle” money for groceries, because building boats was now the real deal, and paid well, and there were no deer flies or mosquitoes.

The Widow says something else. We’ll tune in on her some more next time.

(Here’s a little known fact: The town used to be called “Pickleville” by some hardworking gherkin pickle plucking people. Or so rumor has it.)