It’s possible that nothin’ says summer in the south like pink eye purple hull peas.
Now, that’s a mouthful, I know. And part of the fun is just saying it. But as I sat outside teaching my sons how to shell them, telling them stories about my boyhood and the old ones who taught me how to shell peas, I got a little sentimental (you know me, right?). You see, the tradition of shelling peas, mostly lost to the supermarket these days, has much more to do with people than peas.
I remember visiting Uncle Sam and Aunt Louise as they sat in kitchen chairs beside a bushel basket of purple hulls. They each had a brown paper bag between their legs, rolled down at the top, made glossy from the repeated rolling and unrolling. The afternoon sun cast a yellow glow off the linoleum floor and avocado appliances as peas fell from Aunt Louise’s fingers like a waterfall, despite the rheumatoid.
I would sit and listen as they talked.
The type of talk that only finds comfort in the quite, repetitious tasks of life. The type of talk that we sometimes seem to be missing in our always connected, never-a-dull-moment lives. I guess that’s why I missed purple hulls, and why, despite my postage stamp sized lot I grow them every year – even if I only get one mess a season.
