14 - Being a Boy by Charles Dudley Warner

Dive into Warners engaging and humor-filled memoir as he shares his experiences growing up on a farm in Charlemont, Massachusetts. Narrated by Mark Penfold, this podcast will transport you back to a simpler time and place.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter fourteen of Being a Boy by Charles Dudley Warner.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by
Mark Penfold, Chapter fourteen, The Sugar Camp. I think there
is no part of farming the boy enjoys more than

(00:21):
the making of maple sugar. It is better than blackberrying,
and nearly as good as fishing. And one reason he
likes this work is that somebody else does the most
of it. It is a sort of work in which
he can appear to be very active and yet not
do much. And it exactly suits the temperament of a
real boy to be very busy about nothing. If the power,
for instance, that is expended in play by a boy

(00:43):
between the ages of eight and fourteen, could be applied
to some industry, who we should see wonderful results. But
a boy is like a galvanic battery that is not
in connection with anything. He generates electricity and plays it
off into the air with the most reckless prodigality, and I,
for one, wouldn't have it otherwise. It is as much
a boy's business to play off his energies into space

(01:05):
as it is for a flour to blow or a
cat bird to sing snatches of the tunes of all
the other birds. In my day, maple sugar making used
to be something between picnicking and being shipwrecked on a
fertile island, where one should save from the wreck tubs
and augurs and great kettles and pork and hen's eggs
and Ryean Indian bread, and begin at once to lead

(01:26):
the sweetest life in the world. I am told that
it is something different nowadays, and that there is more
desire to save the sap and make good pure sugar
and sell it for a large price than there used
to be, and that the old fun and picturesqueness of
the business are pretty much gone. I am told that
it is the custom to carefully collect the sap and
bring it to the house, where there are built brick

(01:47):
arches over which it is evaporated in shallow pans, and
that pains is taken to keep the leaves, sticks and
ashes and coals out of it, and that the sugar
is clarified, And that in short, it is a money
making business in which there is very little fun, And
that the boy is not allowed to dip his paddle
into the kettle of boiling sugar and lick off the

(02:08):
delicious syrup. The prohibition may improve the sugar, but it
is cruel to the boy. As I remember the New
England boy, and I am very intimate with one, he
used to be on the quis viva in the spring
for the sap to begin running. I think he discovered
it as soon as anybody. Perhaps he knew it by
a feeling of something starting in his own veins, a

(02:29):
sort of spring stir in his legs and arms, which
tempted him to stand on his head or throw a
handspring if he could find a spot of ground from
which the snow had melted. The sap stirs early in
the legs of a country boy and shows itself in
uneasiness in the toes, which get tired of boots and
want to come out and touch the soil. Just as
soon as the sun has warmed it a little. The

(02:50):
country boy goes barefoot, just as naturally as the trees
burst their buds, which were packed and varnished over in
the fall to keep the water and the frost out.
Perhaps the boy has been digging into the maple trees
with his jackknife. At any rate, he is pretty sure
to announce the discovery as he comes running into the
house in a great state of excitement, as if he
had heard a hen cackle in the barn, with SAPs running.

(03:14):
And then indeed the stir and excitement begin the sap
buckets which have been stored in the garret over the woodhouse,
in which the boy has occasionally climbed up to look
at with another boy, for they are full of sweet
suggestions of the annual spring frolic. The sap buckets are
brought down and set out in the south side of
the house and scalded. The snow is still a foot

(03:34):
or two deep in the woods, and the ox sled
is got out to make a road to the sugar camp,
and the campaign begins. The boy is everywhere present, superintending everything,
asking questions, and filled with a desire to help the excitement.
It is a great day when the cart is loaded
with the buckets and the procession starts into the woods.
The sun shines almost unobstructedly into the forest, for there

(03:57):
are only naked branches to bar it. The snow is
soft and beginning to sink down, leaving the young bushes
spindling up everywhere. The snow birds are twittering about, and
the noise of shouting and of the blows of the
axe echoes far and wide. This is spring, and the
boy can scarcely contain his delight that his outdoor life
is about to begin again. In the first place, the

(04:20):
men go about and tap the trees, drive in the spouts,
and hang the buckets under. The boy watches all these
operations with the greatest interest. He wishes that sometime, when
a hole is bored in a tree, the sap would
spout out in a stream, as it does when a
cider barrel is tapped. But it never does. It only drops,
sometimes almost in a stream, but on the hole slowly,

(04:41):
and the boy learns that the sweet things of the
world have to be patiently waited for, and do not
usually come otherwise than drop by drop. Then the camp
is to be cleared of snow. The shanty is recovered,
with boughs in front of it. Two enormous logs are
rolled nearly together, and a fire is built between them.
Forked sticks are set at each end, and a long

(05:03):
pole is laid on them, and on this are hung
the great cauldron kettles. The huge hogsheads are turned right
side up and cleaned out to receive the sap that
is gathered. And now if there is a good sap run,
the establishment is under full headway. The great fire that
is kindled up is never let out night or day,
as long as the season lasts. Somebody is always cutting

(05:26):
wood to feed it. Somebody is busy most of the
time gathering in the sap. Somebody is required to watch
the kettles that they do not boil over, and to
fill them. It is not the boy, however, he is
too busy with things in general to be of any
use in details. He has his own little sap yoke
in small pails with which he gathers the sweet liquid.
He has a little boiling place of his own, with

(05:48):
small logs and a tiny kettle in the great kettles.
The boiling goes on slowly, and the liquid, as it thickens,
is dipped from one to another, until in the end
kettle it is reduced to syrup and is taken out
to cool and settle until enough is made to sugar.
Off to sugar off is to boil the syrup until
it is thick enough to crystallize into sugar. This is

(06:11):
the grand event, and is done only once in two
or three days. But the boy's desire is to sugar
off perpetually. He boils his kettle down as rapidly as possible.
He is not particular about chips, scum, or ashes. He
is apt to burn his sugar, but if he can
get enough to make a little wax on the snow,
or to scrape from the bottom of the kettle with

(06:31):
his wooden paddle, he is happy. A good deal is
wasted on his hands, and the outside of his face,
and on his clothes, but he does not care. He
is not stingy. To watch the operations of the big
fire gives him constant pleasure. Sometimes he is left to
watch the boiling kettles with a piece of pork tied
on the end of a stick, which he dips into
the boiling mass when it threatens to go over. He

(06:54):
is constantly tasting of it, however, to see if it
is not almost syrup. He has a long round stick,
whittled smooth at one end, which he uses for this
purpose at the constant risk of burning his tongue. The
smoke blows in his face. He is grimy with ashes.
He is altogether such a mass of dirt, stickiness, and sweetness,
that his own mother wouldn't know him. He likes to

(07:15):
boil eggs in the hot sap with a hired man.
He likes to roast potatoes in the ashes, And he
would live in the camp day and night if he
were permitted. Some of the hired men sleep in the
bow shanty and keep the fire blazing all night. To
sleep there with them, and awaken the night and hear
the wind in the trees and see the sparks fly
up to the sky is a perfect realization of all

(07:36):
the stories of adventures he has ever read. He tells
the other boys afterwards that he heard something in the
night that sounded very much like a bear. The hired
man says that he was very much scared by the
hooting of an owl. The great occasions for the boy, though,
are the times of sugaring off. Sometimes this used to
be done in the evening, and it was made the
excuse for a frolic in the camp. The neighbors were invited,

(08:00):
sometimes even the pretty girls from the village, who filled
all the woods with their sweet voices and merry laughter
and little affectations of fright. The white snow still lies
on all the ground except the warm spot about the camp.
The tree branches all show distinctly in the light of
the fire, which sends its ruddy glare far into the
darkness and lights up the bow shanty, the hogsheads, the

(08:21):
buckets on the trees, and the group about the boiling kettles,
until the scene is like something taken out of a
fairy play. If Rembrandt could have seen a sugar party
in a New England wood, he would have made, out
of its strong contrasts of light and shade, one of
the finest pictures in the world. But Rembrandt was not
born in Massachusetts. People hardly ever, do know where to

(08:42):
be born until it is too late. Being born in
the right place is a thing that has been very
much neglected. At these sugar parties, everyone was expected to
eat as much sugar as possible, and those who are
practiced in it can eat a great deal. It is
a peculiarity about eating warm maple sugar, that though you
may eat so much of it one day as to

(09:03):
be sick and loathe the thought of it, you will
want it the next day more than ever. At the
sugaring off, they used to pour the hot sugar upon
the snow where it congealed without crystallizing into a sort
of wax, which I do suppose is the most delicious
substance that was ever invented, and it takes a great
while to eat it. If one should close his teeth

(09:23):
firmly on a ball of it, he would be unable
to open his mouth until it dissolved. The sensation while
it is melting is very pleasant, but one cannot converse.
The boy used to make a big lump of it
and give it to the dog, who seized it with
great avidity and closed his jaws on it, as dogs
will on anything. It was funny the next moment to
see the expression of perfect surprise on the dog's face.

(09:45):
When he found that he could not open his jaws.
He shook his head. He sat down in despair. He
ran round in a circle, He dashed into the woods
and back again. He did everything except climb a tree
and howl. It would have been such a relief to
him if he could have howled, But that was the
one thing he could not do. End of Chapter fourteen.

(10:07):
Recording by Mark Penfold