Of Viands and Salted Codfish
A remembrance of happy, simple times
I’m climbing, at over 3,000 feet up, while softly singing and floating with a heavy load on my arms. This old man of 60 years is remembering in 2018’s winter, but it’s my teen version from the summer of 1970 who is living it, when grandma was Mamin, instead of Georgina, and my uncle was Juli because nobody called him Julio.
The black road disappeared, along with the shiny reflections from the car that brought us here, now that I’m fully embraced by shade and bright green forest. Silence is all I can hear. Huge, powerful trees rise beyond, and around me, other than a narrow path, are tightly-packed poppy shrubs with vines reaching for the sun and bushes fighting for their lives. Poppies, alien to this land and planted by Uncle Juli and helpers years ago, with their roots prevent this one-person path created by shovels, picks, and sweat to return to the mountain. They are silent sentries who follow me. Excited by a cool breeze they greet me with ruby petals and long bright yellow stamens filled with sticky pollen. Sown easily and of fast growth without thorns, their roots prevent the scourge of daily rain to erase what was so laboriously created to climb up to the house.
I continue, bent by the path’s slope and the weight on my arms, marking with my boots at wooden steps filled with stone and held by steel rods which are the only way in the most dangerous sections. The rest is bright red slippery clay and impassable when raining. It’s an upwards zigzag along the steep slope.
Another sharp turn and forest-fresh aroma, pure and unadulterated propel me forward, each step an excuse to fill my lungs with delight. It’s the first of several trips to raise all the stuff we brought from Ponce.
It was a four-door Chevrolet, whose secondary objective was transporting people. After loading everything needed, passengers followed. The only way to get here was to steal space from boxes and bags and put them on our laps.
After 15 zigzag minutes, I finally leave the thick greenery shade and I’m exposed. The morning sun strikes hard in Mamin’s house clearing.
Also known as “the country house”, it was also recognized that 40+ years old Juli, and his passion for spending vacations and holidays here, was what made Mamin, at sixty-odd years, still come. In my mom’s family, the only one I closely knew since my dad died when I was 5, saying “the country house” was synonymous with simple life and happy memories.
With an eyebrow to eyebrow smile, I straightened my back and looked up. The humble house is of moss-pale-green weathered wood and rusty zinc plates forming an “A” roof. Several more steps and I hurriedly attacked the three stairsteps to a small balcony and breathlessly put the package on the creaking floor which squeals, as if complaining. With my heavy load on the floor, I can finally appreciate a never-ending top of the forest view and dense green covered mountains admired by all who step here.
But I can’t waste time, there’ll be plenty to admire in the coming weeks. There is more stuff to bring up but I’m thirsty. From the balcony plus two boomy steps — for which I’m always admonished — I reach the small living room with a vinyl-clad sofa, a small table, and a hurricane lamp. Left is for two rooms, one with a queen bed, the other with two bunks. Almost immediately I’m in the kitchen, so I grab a glass, turn the copper tap and fill it with cold, raw, crystalline spring water from a pipeline that brings it from its rocky birth hundreds of feet above the house.
It flows, driven by gravity, from a concrete tank which corners the small and ancient thread of sweet, pure water arising from between granite stones. It’s admired for its power to keep healthy whoever drinks it, and has never been a subject of malicious gossip, unlike our modern city water in Ponce.
While slaking my thirst, I take account of the kitchen. I see two shelves with plastic curtains covering food bags, cans, and boxes, two burners connected to a clear-glass kerosene gallon, a steel sink, and a rickety table for four with two hard, wooden benches, just like last year. A door opens to a balcony in the back and a huge ceiba tree from where a short dirt track leads to the latrine.
Half of the house is pressed against the steep hillside, with the other half held in the air by wooden columns. Below is dry and dusty ground, a place to store farm tools, construction supplies, and a shelter for nesting chickens, purveyors of fresh eggs which make every breakfast a delight.
The three rugged and wooded acres of Mamin’s farm are neighbors of the great Guilarte Tropical State Forest in the Central Mountain Range, 18 kilometers from the nearest village, Adjuntas, and 54 kilometers from Ponce where Mamin, Papin, mom, Toño, my brothers, my cousins, and all my maternal uncles (less one in New York) live now. Papín can no longer come because of his health and spends his days at a small cottage in Aunt Aurea’s backyard. Those three acres are a small fraction of the many hundreds originally acquired by my great-grandfather for growing oranges and coffee.
From what little I know about that time, I know the following.
My great-grandfather had four daughters and finally a boy. Mamin and Mama (that’s how everyone would call this one of my grand-aunts) got married, and Nona and Luchi, still single, live at a nursing home in Ponce. The boy (grand-uncle Olivo) kept the big house and hundreds of acres. Among Mama, with her husband, and Olivo, married, but now living alone, they split the original farm which barely survives today. I don’t know why Mamin was left with only three, and Nona and Luchi without, but inheritance was divided fairly, as far as I know, and everyone was satisfied.
And I have nothing more to say, there are more packages to bring up.
Finished, it’s time to rest. I sit at a large rock to admire the view, while Mamin and Uncle Juli get to their tasks and walk around the house and into the forest-farm. I’m free to do as I wish during the next few weeks, alone, but never lonely. Dozens of feet away from the house clearing and it’s another magnificent world to explore. It’s an impenetrable tangle of living tropical forest; trees, vines, and shrubs, here and there dirt paths leading to farming spots sheltered by grand trees. I take pleasure from amazing insects, rare plants, exotic flowers, neverending trees, free-range chickens, singing birds I can’t see, and additions to my rock collection from the dry creeks.
Viands with salted cod.
Who doesn’t have fond memories of the food of their youth! Of all the delicacies prepared by Mamin, this is the one I miss the most. I say “delicacies” but it’s simple food, of ingredients that could be kept without refrigeration, prepared without a lot of work, and pulled from the field.
The sun was softening as the day progressed until night took his kingdom and the coqui’s started their love songs. No mosquitoes, the cold at this height keeps them away. Inside, the kerosene lamps emit their yellow flickering light as moths swarm around. It’s dinner time, and the viands have been boiling for a while in the salted water. Cod has been submerged for several hours in cold water to remove the dense salt preserving it and it’s frying pan time with Betis olive oil. The wet cod touches the oil, which splashes in anger.
Potatoes. Yautía. Green bananas. Yucca. Malanga. Sweet potato. Taro. Yam. Ripe plantains. Pumpkin. All from this blessed farm, cultivated rustically to share with family, not as an income source.
Those are the root vegetables resting in a steaming large cauldron on the table. The cod is crispy after its hot ordeal. I avoid the thicker pieces for fear of fish bones. The viands on my plate receive a generous blessing of hot olive oil and crunchy bits of fried cod.
What I miss the most is cod, Atlantic cod extinct for large-scale commercial fishing and consequently difficult to obtain and very expensive. Dry-salted cod was always one of the two animals for consumption. The other was fresh chicken, a hen that Mamin could snatch to become the main dish of the day. The trick was corn at her feet. An old hen or cock who approached was a candidate for the table. A quick hand and two or three turns by the neck, and its frantic cackling ended.
I ate to satiety, with a hunger that only vigorous exercise awakens. Thrilled by this first night, I grab a flashlight and walk past the balcony. But the adventure didn’t last long. A forest is a benevolent friend during the day, but it turns disturbing and demonic in a dark and impenetrable moonless night.
Best is to go to bed early. Tomorrow will be another day of adventure and fine dining.
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