Among the piles of rope, buoys, scrap iron, stainless steel sinks and other treasures bequeathed by previous owners of my home, there is a rhubarb patch.
Rhubarb. Is it electric celery or New England style sugarcane? I bet you could drive a flashlight bulb straight into the stuff and it would shine for a second and then pop with a little black smudge on the glass. But why do such a thing? You can eat it. Liability disclaimer- Do Not Eat Bulb. Eat Rhubarb.
In my advanced state of taste bud corrosion from years of over-stimulation of one kind or another, I’ve gained a tolerance and even enjoyment of things that would’ve prompted convulsions, devious camouflage of vegetables under the plate edge, or surreptitious removal in my trouser pocket when I was younger and had more intact sensory processes. Tonight I realized that asparagus or baskerigus as one of my kids called it, tastes good. When did that happen?
One taste I acquired early in life and which is still the truest sensation of early summer and life’s potential is rhubarb. Not berries or round fruit that gets into an oil painting with casually crinkled wax paper. Not rhubarb pie or cobbler or other sugar and wheat drenched versions, but the kind where you grab a stalk before school and take it with you. Maybe one end gets jammed in the sugar bowl. Maybe it goes a la carte.
At least one of my neighbors would have a piece from their own patch or from mine, and on the walk to school we’d have a contest to take a good bite and not make a face, not squinch all the muscles around our eyes and mouth. Must be a New England tradition- gratuitous, self-imposed hardship for its own sake. Maybe it’s an eastern thing, like shrieking yoga muscles helping us find sweet bliss.
Beyond the X-Games rhubarb chewing event, there are a lot of mellower applications- pie, cobbler, kuchen. There is also stewed rhubarb heated plain in a sauce pan in January. That brings summer sun or at least a low pH taste sensation of it back in a hurry.
I’ve never planted rhubarb. It’s a freebie, like new summer because it comes even you don’t renew the subscription. Thin, tender smackin’ red stalks. Green, fat bamboo fibrous ones. Big elephant ear leaves. Weird alien invader seed pod towers. Robins, cardinals and orioles singing All About the Rhubarb with the tambourine backbeat. Wet sneaker toes. Dandelions. Somebody else mowing a lawn in the distance. Me walking down the road where frost heaves probably never even happened except for the cracks and buckled asphalt. It’s rich in memory and juiciful of the present. That’s pretty good for a humble messenger of the coming of summer.
Nat Hussey lives on Matinicus Island. His woodpile is now stacked way off to the side of the yard to make way for whiffleball and other pertinent seasonally appropriate functions.
