Hat with visor?

Check.

Long thick pants?

Check.

One work glove?

Check.

Steel-tipped work boots?

Check.

Bucket?

Check.

Bug spray?

Check.

If we were playing that old game show “$100,000 Pyramid,” you would have won the trip to Hawaii and a lifetime supply of Jiffy Pop if you had answered: “Things you need when pickin’ blackberries.”

You used to be able to count on the berry harvest reaching its fruition around the Fourth of July. Lately, with the hole in the ozone, the melting of ice caps, and all the hot air rising from the politicians in Washington, D.C., peak harvesting time can fall anywhere between the last couple of weeks in June to mid-July.

When I was a kid, blackberry picking was more than a leisure stroll along a country lane and a few random handfuls here and there; it was a family tradition carried out passionately with great zeal. Fifty-two quarts were the minimum we picked each year. Why? Because there are 52 weeks in a 365-day year which subsequently produces 52 Sundays in that year and my mother made a blackberry roll as a finale to all her Sunday chicken dinners.

A berry roll every Sunday. Isn’t that a bit monotonous? Well, you haven’t tasted my mom’s blackberry roll. We never seemed to grow tired of its taste which brought the warmth of a summer’s day to our dinner table even on cold December Sundays. In the end, all the toiling of the picking season was worth every mouthful.

And oh what toiling it was.

Preparing to pick blackberries was like preparing for hand-to-hand combat. The long-sleeved work shirts, the stiff jeans, the boots and the hats were all required armor.

“To reap the rewards of any good thing,” Aunt Beulah used to say, “one has to work hard for it. If you ask me, the Lord created blackberries, but the Devil made briars.”

Even with all the hot, confining garb, the briars always seemed to find their way through flannel and denim and finally to the soft flesh of an arm or a leg. After spending a few hours picking, I had usually given at least a pint of blood. But it was my own fault. It was easy plucking off the medium-sized berries on the perimeters of the bushes, but, inevitably, those golf ball-sized berries—which alone would create a half dozen cobblers—always hung in a sea of briars and were reachable only with the use of an all-terrain vehicle or a helicopter.

Many times, in the pursuit of juicy treasure, I’d turn my clothes to shreds and my arms to ribbons, but somehow I felt victorious as I carefully placed the over-sized berries into my bucket.

The term “kicking the bucket” must have originated from the act of someone knocking over an entire pail of blackberries into a big clump of broom straw. Why? Because the latter experience and death are both filled with the same feelings of despair and sadness. It is best to just go ahead and cry, cuss under your breath and kick a dried clump of cow manure across the field instead of trying to pick the berries out of the field grass.

My Dad was to blackberries as Ely Whitney was to cotton. Each year he would devise new and improved methods for acquiring 52 quarts of berries over the shortest period of time. His best invention was the “berry belt.” He attached the handle of a plastic bucket to his belt. The bucket would then hang at the most desirable and ergonomically correct level in comparison to your body structure. It freed your one gloved hand to hold the stem and your ungloved hand to pick the berry. With this improved technology, we put even Delmonte to shame.

Of all the blackberry pickers I have ever known, my Grandma Mason was the best. Grandma went through a field with the agility of a Russian ballerina and the ferocity of a cyclone; leaving entire bushes void of any berries. And she always remained focused. Not once, and I mean not once, did I ever see grandma eat a single berry until it was baked into a cobbler or spread on a warm biscuit in the form of her prize-winning jelly. My sister and I used to watch in awe at grandma’s technique as we sat in the shade of a cedar tree and devoured half of everything we gathered.

We used to pick in the cool of the morning when the dew glistened on the green leaves of the briar bushes, take a break during the heat of the day, and return to pick until the lightning bugs danced about the meadow like tiny torchbearers and the bobwhite and peepers began their evening symphonies. My sister and I took a few more breaks and ate the other half of everything he had picked.
By the time my dad’s clothes were soaked and grandma had hummed and sang every song from the Baptist Hymnal, another day’s picking was over and we would walk back to the house where my mother had already washed and prepared quart after quart of blackberries; closing in on the all important number “52.”

Some say that a person has got to go to college to learn what life is all about. Personally, I acquired my most important lessons in a sun-drenched field during each first week of July. Work hard, stay clear of briars, always wear the right clothes for the right occasion, emulate your elders and know some hymns to get you through tough times.

Do all these things and you will surely reap your just desserts.