| Picnics play an important part in many of our family s most pleasant memories. Though she was far too young to remember them, my daughter Joan s first picnics were on the shores of pine-scented trout streams in the Black Forest, where I was stationed as liaison officer with the French occu- pation forces in the early fifties. She would sleep in the cool of the pine shade in a jerry-rigged hammock" while my wife Puck and I rested from the trout fishing and washed down culinary delights with fine and simple dry young wines from the Rhine plain. A few years later, when we lived and worked in Havana, there were the rich picnics with Joan s grandfatherErnest and his wife Miss Mary on the edge of the lush spring-fed river thatwinds down steeply from the high plateau at Gtiines to the north Cubancoast at the ancient colonial city of Matanzas. Someone would drive into theold port and fetch freshly boiled shrimp, prawns or freshwater crayfish toadd to Mary s already sumptuous and always delightful picnic fare. Thechilled red Spanish wine would make the older generation sleepy and we dnap in the shade of a ceiba tree while the girls, Muffet--that s what we callJoan--and Margot, played in the shallows of the sun-bathed stream. More recently our Fourth of July picnics have taken place on the foottrail below Steamboat on the North Umpqua River in the Oregon Cascades,under the cool shade of the big Douglas firs with vine maple and five-fingered ferns all about us. Out in Idaho there are our Silver Creek picnicsdown by our friend Dottie Teren s lower place. Before World War II theStutter Man used to live there in his shack and challenge all trespassersimagined or real with a loud "GGGGET OFF MMMMMY PPPPPLACE ! GGGGODDDDDAMIT ! " It s quiet there now. The shack is gone, and it s a fine place fora picnic. It s now a favorite site, along with many other beautiful locationsin the mountains, perfect for both summer and sunny winter days: All thesepicnics and many more were leading their inexorable way to the prepara-tion of this book./ |
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