I am reading old YANKEE magazines and throwing them away as I go. Most of them don't have much in them that I want to save, but a few do. Edie Clark always writes an entertaining column, and I really liked this ending:
YANKEE magazine, September 1993, “The Garden at Chesham Depot” by Edie Clark, p. 104
(she is writing about canning tomatoes on a September day):
“The day passes this way, me the clerk, an assembly line of one, transferring tomatoes from bushel to pot to jar to the newspaper-covered kitchen table, where they cool. One by one, they give that reassuring sound: familiar, comforting – a tongue-clucking tock! – that tells me, for sure, that the jar is sealed, that it is safe. Throughout the day, as I pass these jars to the table, they talk like this – tock! tock! – and then wind down, as I do. After dark, the windows steamed solid, I climb the stairs and fall into bed, tired, happy – and downstairs, I hear one last distant tock! before falling asleep.”
