That One Time, When We Made Raisins In the Back Yard

Mom and Dad were industrious types, like their Irish-English ancestors before them. (Unfortunately, they became the end of the family line in that trait.) So it didn’t surprise me that they spent half a day picking grapes at a pick-your-own-grapes place shortly before I arrived for a visit. It didn’t even surprise me that they had picked a few 5-gallon buckets full, even though it was just the two of them at home then. Ten cents a pound! What more do you need to know?

Clearly, though, something had to be done with all those grapes before they went bad. So Dad and I embarked on our Make Your Own Raisins In the Back Yard project. The back yard in question was in Arizona, where it was well over 100 degrees, dry and sunny, so that was in our favor. All we had to do was figure out where we were going to put all the grapes while they turned into raisins.

We rummaged around in a metal shed, where the temperature was somewhere in the 200′s, until we spied an old screen door. Aha! The perfect surface for spreading the grapes! Now, what to set it on? Of course, as if we were in some kind of crazy challenge TV show, we had to only use what we could find in the Death Shed of Hellish Heat. Anything else would be cheating.

We each had a few brain cells left that weren’t burned up by the oppressive heat, so we figured out that we only needed to find two leg-like objects, because we could hook the other side of the screen door to the wooden fence with some hinges that we found in a Mason jar. We found a couple of 1x2s and were well on our way.

In less than an hour we had the screen door hinged to the fence and legs attached on the outer edge. We fetched the buckets of grapes and laid them out evenly across the door. Finally we were able to mop our red-hot brows and get back into the sanctuary of the cool house. Jubilantly we called out to Mom to come and see the fruit of our labors. Oh, we were the Proud Birds.

We were all gazing out the kitchen window when it happened. Slowly at first, and then accelerating faster and faster, the screen began to pull out of the door frame under the weight of all those grapes. Dad and I stood gaping as we watched the last three sweaty hours’ work fall to the ground. For a moment, we were all quiet.

And then Mom began to laugh. Not a quiet little girly laugh either, but a big whooping, gasping, bend over and fall to your knees kind of laugh. In another minute we were all dissolving into fits of laughing, wiping tears from our eyes, and struggling not to wet ourselves. I don’t remember how long we laughed in real time, but looking back now, it feels like we laughed for hours. And then Dad went out and gathered up all those grapes, and washed them, and laid them on the roof of the god-awfully hot shed.

And only a few days later, we had homemade raisins. Almost a whole one-pound coffee can’s worth. And all it took was three or four days hard labor, and three buckets full of ten cents-a-pound grapes.

Another bargain. It was Family Night at the ball game. Adults 25 cents each and children under 12 free. This photo ran in the local paper with the caption,
“All for 50 cents”