BH: Okay, I'm sure he'll be happy to have that. So. . . chokecherry wine and dandelion wine that your grandfather made?
JW: Oh, he made all kinds of wine if he could get something to make it out of. He sent me up a story that somebody from the Denton bunch—went up to eat with my granddad—he fixed a meal, and the two women—I'd have to get it and read it to you, but what was of interest was that he'd served them wine, and they really enjoyed the wine, you know, and good meal. He was a pretty good cook—you know, a lot of stuff, he could cook venison as well as anybody, and of course he cooked beef all the time. But, anyway, they sat there, and one of the guys, I don't remember which one it was. . . went with him to get some more wine, and on the top of the crock—he had big ceramic crocks—five gallon crocks that he kept. Well, the flies were about two inches thick, and they came back, and told the women this, and they went and vomited. Like I put in my (?)—I said don't you know that flies help with fermentation? I wouldn't be surprised—well, I would be surprised, but they like to tell lots of stories about him, but he was usually pretty good about keeping his crocks covered. And he was. . . known far and wide. . . more so for his dandelion wine than he was for his chokecherry wine, and. . . one of the things, too, that you never hear about is that. . . at that time, probably most of the time that he lived up there, one of the first dried fruits in the country, that dried well without molding and so on. . . and then people learn to dry it, was apricots. And they used to bring him in by these—they called 'em a rack—it was a box—about maybe a twenty—
Twenty-five pounds worth, and he would sometimes make wine out of apricots. Apricot wine—dried apricots. But he had, as long as I can remember up there in the summer—you know, there was no refrigeration, we just had a little cooler outside. It was a box shack, and had the screen over it, there by the crick—and then mom would keep butter in the crock in the crick to keep it cold. And, um, we had dried apricots and peanut butter, and strawberry jam—those were the staples. Strawberry jam in a five gallon square tin—
BH: So he bought it? He didn't make it?
JW: Oh, no, he'd buy that, but um. . . Mount of the Holy Cross was printed on it. I can't remember the company.