the red currant

My grandmother felt no compunctions whatsoever about taking from the land. Hell, she came from a time when the land belonged to anyone who was willing to stay in one spot through a winter. She picked up windfall fruit off the sidewalk, berried behind the gas station, she seedheaded in garden centers and from public plantings without a second thought. In defiance of state law she transplanted rare trilliums at will, keeping twelve of them in a washtub under some pine trees behind her house. In this highly unusual setting they grew merrily in utter defiance of the common notion at the time which held that even to squint hard at a trillium would kill it.

One spring she decided that she needed a red currant bush. Now I recall that this had been a subject of some conversation for months and the conclusion was reached that none could be had from any of the nurseries around.

A red currant is a shrub native to the Pacific Northwest. It's habitat is at the forest's edge, nearby a creek or a river. In March it comes forth covered in a fountain of deep pink flowers, nearly red, and later on these are followed with clusters of berries just in time for the robins. That suited my grandma down to the ground; she loved robins.

But at that time native plants were seen as nothing special and not worth offering commercially (excepting fashionable rhododendrons, but those were so pricey that they were black marketed). People mainly wanted exotics and things they remembered from back East, or from the 'Old Country'. This was the heyday of the Hybrid Tea Rose and the petunia. Who'd pay money for something that grew wild?

Which was exactly the way my grandmother saw it.

"I want to go for a ride up in the mountains," she announced one weekend. Her word was law. The car was packed up with picnic things. My grandmother appeared with a shovel (blade polished like a diamond, handle varnished and topped with red paint) and some burlap sacking and the trunk of the Ford opened while my father dithered and sweated and grinned and turned red. "Oh for Heavens' sake Niilo, I'm not going to do nothing wrong. Anyway you never know. What if we get stuck? At least we can dig ourselves out!" she stated. She held the trunk lid open with one hand and tucked the shovel inside, while my dad's hand rested heavily on the lid, pushing the other way. I saw her elbow lock.

All the way up the mountain my father kept repeating "Now, you know we aren't going to bring anything back you know..." and my grandmother kept saying "Oh Niilo, let's just take a nice ride. I just want to see things in bloom." When things wound down my mom would stir them back up again with a provocative comment. I kept mum.

By the time we reached ZigZag, halfway up the mountain, my grandmother and my father were openly arguing, something I had never seen before. "Now, this is against the law, Mom," he announced in his 'I'm the man so I'm the boss' voice. "This is breaking the law! I don't want no part of it!"
"Oh, I'm not going to do nothing wrong! Just drive, Niilo", she said.
" I know what you're gonna do, Mom, and..."
" I am 83 years old and if I want a tree I'm going to get a tree! Now that's it!" she replied emphatically.

This cracked my mother up pretty bad. I was just astonished.

The woods were beautiful, foxglove and seafoam and alder. Rhodadendron bloomed in leggy wands tipped with ridiculous pompons of bright pink, shining between the evergreens. We passed a few 'rhodie rustlers' along the way. These were backwoods Joad families with shitty old pickup trucks loaded down with plants stolen off public land. They openly sold them by the roadside despite it's being illegal as hell. My grandmother pointed them out triumphantly. "Nope! That ain't right! They're breakin' the law!" My father groused. "Now, now don't you tell me you want one a them cause I'm not stoppin!"
" I already have some rhododendrons, Niilo" she replied. "I got them from behind Sherret's place when they moved out."
"Oh, boy" said my dad.

We turned off onto a state forest road and began to climb into the foothills. My father was red. "Look at all the people, Mom" he whined. And it was true; everyone was out enjoying the woods that fine April day.* "We can't, we don't wanna, we, we better not-"
"Keep driving, Niilo" she said.

For awhile the car was pretty silent, unless you count the sound of my father sweating #8 gravel.

"There" announced Grandma "I see one. Stop the car."

There was a brief skirmish. My grandmother finally plucked the keys from the ignition and marched back to the trunk, opened the lid, removed her gear and set out into the woods. Hairnet, dress, stockings and all.

"Go with her, Niilo" my mother nagged. " She's gonna get hurt or somethin'."

Off he trudged with my mom in tow. " You stay here!; I was warned. "I don't want you seeing this! If anyone comes by you just don't say nothin, you hear me? Even if they talk to you! Don't say a word! Nothin!"
And so I sat, and sat, and sat...while the sound of bitching and digging echoed out of the woods.

They returned with a nice little currant, reachy but glowing red. My grandmother directed it into the trunk of the car like an air traffic controller. 'Don't break it, Niilo! And don't just dump it on the ground! Wrap the burlap around the dirt! You're bending it! Just set the root ball in the trunk on the mat!"

I kept my head low and watched this in the rear view mirror. My father was very near a heart attack at this point. Breaking the law was bad enough...this was worse! This was VOLUNTARILY INTRODUCING TOPSOIL INTO THE SURGICAL CLEANLINESS OF HIS AUTOMOBILE!
"Oh come on. A little dirt isn't going to hurt anything!" my grandmother said.
This made my father laugh in sheer disbelief and outrage. It was DIRT! Dirt was DIRTY! Dirt was TOUCHING HIS CAR! AND IT WAS UNLAWFUL DIRT!!!!

It got worse. Once the thing was in the trunk, three feet of it stuck out the back. No, it COULD NOT be cut. No, it COULD NOT be bent. Just prop something up under the lid of the trunk and tie it shut, Niilo.

Everyone loaded back up and we headed off down the mountain with the currant bush waving and nodding behind us like a flag.

Which was when the forest service truck pulled out behind us and made us stop.

The ranger made my father get out of the car, show his license, open the trunk, explain his business. My poor dad could not finish a sentence, blushing and stammering, grinning like a dog, mortified way past rational thought. Finally my grandmother sighed and got out of the car.

She strode up to the ranger with her arms crossed. " This is a red currant bush. I dug it up; I wanted it. I pay taxes. This is a state forest and we own these woods, and if I want to dig up a currant bush I'm not hurting anything. I my taxes paid for it, after all."

My grandmother stood nose to nose with the ranger while my father slunk off and slid behind the wheel. The ranger tried, poor thing, insisting that they had to fine anyone who stole plants from the woods, it was against state law and she had to be written a ticket.
" See? I told you! I told you! It's against the law! my father said, feeling justified. Feeling it at a safe distance from the fray, of course.

My grandmother stood her ground, completely unconcerned. "I am NOT doing a THING wrong. I would NEVER break the law. How can you steal a tree? That's the most foolish't thing I ever heard of. Steal a tree."

And the ranger backed down.

He made her promise that she wouldn't sell it (which set off another stern lecture-"After we drove all this way? This is going in my yard! The robins like it!") wouldn't dig up anything else and that she'd go straight home, the ranger got back in his truck and drove off. Probably to the nearest tavern.

And the currant went into her back yard, and the robins nested in it.
She made my dad plant it for her, too.


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*things bloom a month later up the mountain than they do down in the warm valley.