Susen Hunter

We all look forward to the
greening of spring, but let us go to
the grocery store while turning back
the calendar 75 years.
We go to the small produce
potatoes and yams, cabbage,
turnips, beets, and onions. All of
these staples will keep for months
without refrigeration.
There are no tomatoes, sweet
peppers, peaches, nectarines, kiwi,
celery and iceberg lettuce that have
been rushed by railroad, packed
in ice in refrigerated cars, coming
from thousands of miles away.
We have apples, bananas,
oranges, and grapefruit but high
speed refrigerated transportation
is many years down the road; still
the orchards in Florida, Rio Grande
Valley, and California are producing
great quantities of fruit in their warm
sunlit climate.
How can that fruit go to market
in Lawton, Oklahoma, without
wooden boxes-- dried fruit. Apples,
apricots, peaches, and other fruits
which can be soaked in water,
cooked, and used like fresh fruit in
cobbler, pies, or my favorite, fried
pies.
All winter we have gone without
fresh vegetables like tomatoes,
okra, corn, but now spring is
coming on and everyone is rushing
to have a garden. Small or large,
they will bring fresh vegetables,
but you need plants to start that
garden.
around the southeast corner of 8th
street and H Avenue where a large
corner lot has been covered with
wooden frames with glass doors on
top. In spite of the winter weather,
tomato, pepper, onions, and sweet
potato plants have thrived in these
Memories of Yesteryear:
The Food Chain
frames called hotbeds.
Making these hotbeds function
requires several things and the
Lawton area was unique in that
supply. Several dairies sold milk,
butter, and cream but there was
a byproduct that didn’t sell so
readily-- manure.
Each hotbed required an eight
to twelve inch layer of manure at
the bottom where the fermentation
by Arlie D. Wood
provided
heat to the
hotbed. This
was topped
with about
eight inches
of soil in
which the
seedlings
were grown.
My father
was often
paid to haul
manure from
the dairies
in his wagon
and paid to
deliver it to
this plant
operation for
preparation
of new beds. He also plowed
garden spots; sometimes for a pig
or goat which we butchered, or
even for produce from the garden.
Some people prepared their
own gardens with a garden plow
designed to be pushed by one
person. The ground was hard and
ropes were often tied to the plow
so one person could push while
another pulled. Some spaded
large areas by hand
for their garden
doing whatever they
possibly could to
get those ripe juicy
tomatoes, okra,
tomatoes, peppers,
onions, yams,
potatoes, squash into
the pot and on the
table after a winter’s
absence.
Today’s fresh
produce department
existed only in those
gardens planted in
about every available
square foot of soil.
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