Picture of the day - January 31, 2007

Mary Greiner's Old-Fashioned "Weather Predictor"

My precious mom will be 80 years old in July, and she has enjoyed her long life on God's earth. During those eight decades (and counting), she has lived through good times and bad, compiling memories along the way and passing them on to us "kids" in the form of entertaining and insightful stories. Hopefully, today's picture will assist me in recounting a story that she recently sent to WCYB TV Chief Meteorologist Dave Dierks in the form of a letter: Dear Dave, Weather is my subject and I'm long-winded, so please bear with me. I would like to tell you the story of an old "weather predictor" for the town of Damascus, Virginia. My name is Mildred, and I want to let you know a little about my young life. When I was about 7 years old I would walk to town to buy groceries - mostly 10¢ worth of sugar, a small bag of flour for making homemade bread, or 1/2 lb. of loose pure lard which was dipped out of a large tin can with a wooden paddle and placed in a small tray. Sometimes I would even buy 10¢ worth of peanut butter which was also dipped out of a tin can with a wooden paddle. Back then those types of items were usually bought by the pound, not by the jar or can. I had to go to town because mom had to stay home and take care of my sick dad. Now Dave, don't get tired - I'm coming to my subject. In the winter, all the local farmers and town people came to the store to buy whatever they needed, and there was often one very special lady there by the name of Mary Greiner. Mary was known as a "weather predictor". The old farmers would say "Mary, how many beans are left in your jar? The reason I'm asking is because I want to plow my fields and garden spot." You see, every year during the month of August (and only in August) Mary would place a pinto bean into a quart mason jar every time we had a foggy morning. At the end of August, the number of beans in the jar "predicted" how many snows we would get the following winter. In January, every day we had a snow she would take a bean out of the jar. When they saw her at the store, the old farmers would always say "How many more snows will we have Mary?" And she could always answer their question. Mary's bean jar and the "Old Farmer's Almanac" were the only means available to the farmers for being able to tell when to work and plant their crops. Dave, I'm not sure if anyone you know lived through this back then, but being almost 80 the Lord has let me see a lot, hear a lot and learn a lot because I listened to the elders. After hearing Mary's "forecast", I'd run home and tell mom it wasn't going to snow tomorrow so she could plan on hanging clothes outside. You see, mom did laundry for the neighbors to earn a little extra money. She would scrub the clothes on an old washboard, then on snowy days she would hang them up in the house on wires, to dry. If it didn't snow she could hang them up outside on the clothesline.     This is just one of many stories that mom loves to tell about her life growing up in the tiny town of Damascus, and I cherish each and every one of them. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first one that she ever recounted to a "celebrity". Dave, many thanks for letting mom tell you this story.   "Picture of the Day" archives             Submit a photo of your own!            Why I publish the "Picture of the Day"