Purple words get quick attention

Editor's note: This column originally was published Oct. 29, 2000.

Early one recent morning there was a timid knock at the door. When I opened the door, there was the lady with the pokeberries. We had talked about them over the telephone a few days earlier, swapping tales about our experience with pokeberries. She remembered how she and her sister had made polka dot spots all over their arms, legs and faces with the lovely magenta juice of the pokeberries -- just before their mother told them to get ready to attend an important public meeting they had forgotten about. The arms could be covered with long sleeves, the legs with stockings, but their faces! They tried to scrub, rub and bleach the spots out, but the almost indelible juice of the pokeberry is a challenge to obliterate. No doubt the observers at the meeting thought that some horrible strain of measles or chickenpox had hit them hard.

I spoke of how my sister and I chose to paint redish/purple ballet slippers on our feet, lacing them all the way to our knees. Pokeberries ripen at barefoot time and our feet and legs were the perfect canvas for our art work which relieved the samness of late summer days. As we grow older, it was hard for us to abstain from using the lovely purple juice in such a manner, so we took a more adult manner of using the juice. We made ink! And with this ink we wrote letters to faraway cousins and aunts in California and Texas.

I still use this ink for letter writing when I can find the makings for it and muster the challenge of squeezing the juice. My friend at the door knew about my ink making, so there she was at the door with a two pound coffee can half full of shiny berries, which grew in Egypt Mills.

In another coffee can I use for just the purpose, I added a smidgen of water and heated the berries 'til they cried purple tears. An old brickbat mashed out additional tears.

Although I wouldn't have minded purple hands what with Halloween coming up and other festive days. I did turn sissy and donned rubber gloves to make the last processing of the ink, pressing the juice from the berries through a cloth.

The whole process resulted in less than a half cup of ink. What to store it in? Old pickle or jelly jars? Plastic containers formerly holding some dairy product? Medicine bottle? Finally I had the happy thought of storing it in an empty perfume bottle. Perfumed pokeberry ink!

Now came the hunt for the ink pen. This took about as long as the ink making. Eventually it was found and I was off on my letter writing, sample of which reads thus:

Dear Elaine, I know you've had a severely hot, dry summer down there in Texas. I have thought about you often and worried about your longhorns. Our summer was dry too, but not so bad. The tree foliage and grass stayed green. And the pokeberries ripened on schedule. This letter is written with the lovely ink I made from pokeberry juice.

The xxxx's and oooo's are my kisses and hugs for all the Texas clan.

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.