Harman Scarpati, longtime McAdoo, PA resident, school director,
barber ...
And mushroom hunter extraordinaire.
He and my dad spent a good number of their later days hunting down these delicious woods dwellers. I got to go along on many trips. Here he's got a sack full of them and the ever-present stick for poking and turning over the leaves. He also ran the local wild huckleberry concession. This involved taking the pickers out to the good picking spots early in the morning in his canvas-backed truck, and returning for them later in the day. The pickers then sold the berries to Harman and he re-sold them to local produce centers. The wild berries beat hands down the commercially cultivated kind. They bring a light fragrance of the woods to pies, especially, and whatever else gets made from them.
For the pickers in the years after WWII it was more or less a day outdoors hobby or a way to earn spare change . During the Depression years it was the way some families survived! In my time the back of the truck held a motley crew: Usually about half the contingent were energetic, aproned babcis or nonas, grandmothers, or women approaching that age. Every one of them had a babushka on her head, as much for easy sighting in the thick Delano Mountain woods as it was for protection from the sun. These singleminded, efficient ladies were good for one, sometimes two, ten-quart buckets of clean berries in an eight to ten hour day. I never approached their speed or precision.
Some of them brought a couple of their grandchildren along, each with his or her three quart coffee can, the handle made of baling wire poked through two nail puncture holes near the can's rim. The rest of the crew was an odd lot of a few older men who just wanted a day out in the peace and quiet of the woods, and maybe several teenagers earning money in lieu of the "allowance" that never existed hereabouts. There might've been a few younger women, off from the knitting mills. No younger men: These were all working in what was left of the mines and breakers or down at "The Steel" (Bethlehem Steel in Bethlehem). During the Depression, every ablebodied family member participated.
It was a fine way to spend a day if you didn't have to do it to put food on the table. Once off the truck, out at the day's site you could range for miles over the broad plateaus of Spring (McAdoo), or Delano (Mahanoy) Mountain. The brushy paths or deer runs went off in every direction. You'd (fortunately) locate a good patch or kootch of huckleberries somewhere on the mountainside and hope that none except your immediate friends or family would discover you and it. Then it was just you, alone with the berries, immense silence, sky, and the view of the valley below and the blue shaded Appalachian mountains rolling off in all directions. All this magnificent extravagance was enhanced by the dynamic cloud-shadows swiftly running over the land and by the occasional "tweeeeeet" of a wood thrush. Occasionally a copperhead or black snake appeared, but it was usually as interested in keeping its distance from you as you were from it.
The most money I ever earned doing this was at the rate of 30 cents per quart (late 1940s early 1950s). You'd better not have too many green, unripe ones or the similar looking, sweet but tasteless, mushy Juneberries. It was also expected, required really, that you not jostle your berry can or bucket around. Shaking and jiggling the bucket removed the light blue powdery substance that coated the berries and made them look light blue. Removing this natural powder caused them to appear black, wet and unattractive for sale. (Didn't bother the taste though). Then Harman wouldn't buy them and they got taken home for pies. It was hard NOT to do this on the sometimes several mile treks back to the truck or to home. It was almost impossible in the days before Harman's truck, whole families hiking out three to five miles and back again along rocky paths.
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In the picture, from the warm clothing, it appears that Harman was hunting Stumpers or Pupinki mushrooms on a cool day in October. Jimmy Scarpati (see below), tells me that the mushrooms were called pinees, or pineys, also called Julunki [jew-loon-key] or Golunki ..... probably Polish derived; The spelling varies. This looks reasonable from the pine trees in the background, stumpers favoring oak woods. The piney mushrooms also appeared as late as October, concurrent with stumpers.
More mushroom pictures from a Shenandoah, PA resident.
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This space reserved for a
picture of the huckleberry truck.
James (Jimmy) Scarpati, Harman's son, took over the barbering
business part-time
after retiring from a 25 year job with PennDot and 5 years with the PA State
Police.
Here's a typical scene in the barbershop.