I Love Dill Pickles. Don’t You?

Have you ever been in a pickle . . . jar?

I love looking at a Kosher Dill Pickle jar. Why? Well, I love to see the pickles in brine standing at attention, pausing to be plucked. I enjoy reading the label: Zero calories. Zero cholesterol. How healthy.

I love the expectation as my mouth waters and my jaws tingle awaiting the crunchy, crisp zest. It snaps at the bite. It’s dilly, sour, salty, garlicky, mustardy, musky and peppery.

Do you remember the pickle test for mumps?

Mumps is a viral infection that has a predilection for the parotid glands.

The pickle test is an informal and unreliable method that parents and doctors sometimes used to check for mumps. With the infection, the parotid glands at the jaw angle become swollen and tender. Eating a pickle stimulates saliva production, which can exacerbate the pain in these inflamed glands.

A painless pickle made mumps less likely. Though outdated, it’s fun to consider.

Do I love pickles from the days of Peter Piper, who

Picked a peck of pickled peppers,

A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;

If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,

Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked

I have loved dill pickles since I was a kid. In those days, the best place for ‘The Dill’ was Madeline’s Variety Store, near our elementary school, where an alluring barrel of them lived.

Madeline’s was a dark, somber store, much like its owner, who, due to her difficulty walking, orchestrated everything from a small cloth-covered, three-legged podium behind the counter. She looked over the store, and especially her pickle barrel, with shifty, flickering eyes concealed beneath a narrow bandana that hid her hair and brushed against her eyebrows. I wondered how many hours she spent in that hovel each day. And where did she go when she left? No matter. It was about her pickles.

(I learned years later from a friend that Madeline was a kind and gentle lady who, because of her handicap, was an introvert).

The aroma of pickles wafted through the air. Scents of dill and vinegar were abundant. I shuffled over to the bulky barrel, its metal straps preventing it from splitting at the seams. I peeked inside and, just below the layer of foamy juice speckled with dill seeds, I spotted those floating honeys.

I had an urge to dip my hand in, even up to my elbow, if necessary, when Madeline was not looking. But her solemn eyes never drifted.

Save for the excitement of the pickle, the damp, musty store was not a place to dwell. Once I gave her the nickel for the pickle, she nodded, a gesture that meant, “Go ahead, Kid, reach in, get your pickle, drop the nickel on the counter and scram.”

I reached in, cautiously, sometimes to my wrist, to be sure I captured the largest. It scurried like a fish, but I won, shuffled across the warped, oily wooden floor and handed it to Madeline. She wrapped it in wax paper. I pirouetted and went out the door, and along the sidewalk I skipped.

I stopped to look at the pickle, its top peeking out of the wax paper. I raised it to my lips, the smell now overtaking that of the library paste and the inkwell on my fingers. How should I tackle that baby? Could I ever eat the pickle slowly? Not so easy. Slow meant patience, and at ten with a pickle in my hand and the school bell about to ring, I had little. I felt like a beaver about to take that first chunk out of a juicy birch. How much of a bite might I tolerate?

I snapped off that first bite. My lips puckered with the sour taste of dill, vinegar, and salty brine. I later learned in my medical years that the pickle test was for mumps. Well, my glands didn’t hurt, but I seemed to have difficulty separating my tongue from my palate and my cheeks from my tongue. Boy, was that good!

Pickles have been around for thousands of years, dating as far back as 2030 BC when cucumbers from India were pickled in the Tigris Valley. Pickles (cucumbers) have made appearances in the Bible and in Shakespeare’s writing.

In The Tempest, King Alonso asks Trinculo, ‘How came’st thou in this pickle?’ Trinculo replies: ‘I have been in such a pickle since I saw you last that, I fear me, I will never out of my bones.’

But it was the pickle in Madeline’s Variety Store that set me on a lifelong path of appreciation.

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