An excerpt from my "Mimmie book" that I wrote in 2003, ten years after she died:
Mimmie didn’t like to go many places, but she did enjoy strawberries
picking; in fact, she even liked it more than she feared snakes. In my
mind’s eye I can see her, wearing sneakers and a house dress, carefully
navigating the rows, carting quarts of perfect berries, making sure that
she didn’t step on any plants. She looked frail, but somehow strong at
the same time. Mimmie never gave into temptation as the rest of us did,
by sampling the berries while out in the field. That was due more to the
fact that insects may have been on them at some point, than to a
concern about pesticides. And if she discovered later that a bug had
gotten into one of her quarts, she’s have to throw the whole thing out.
“Next spring, if I’m alive,” she’d say afterwards, her blue eyes
sparkling as she looked off into the distance, as if she could see all
the way until the following June, “I’m only going to pick medium sized
red-orange ones, instead of ripe ones. They’re rotten by the time you
get them home. And the big ones look nice but they’re tasteless.”
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