Dandelions have this added zest. You pick them in your own back yard, in everybody's back yards. You don't have to buy them. That is another great virtue of them. You don't even have to pick them if you have a lot of spry-thighed boys around. And I always plan on having a lot of them. I served my apprenticeship as a dandelion-gatherer for hankering uncles, and under their watchful eyes, Now it is other boys' turn. So I give each boy a case knife, encouragement, a big basket, and a smack on his overalls to start him off smartly, as my uncles used to start me, and then I get out the biggest old black iron kettle and put it on. It's that kettle that sits down deep through the stovehole and rests its bottom right on the hot coals of the fire and boils contemplatively. I sit back philosophically and cheer the boys on through the back kitchen window.
I don't know of any handsomer sight than a greening field starred over with little suns of dandelions and little sons in overalls going on all fours, digging me my first mess of dandelion greens in the high tide of the year. It is a sight that makes me glow and start boiling along with the water in my waiting big kettle deep in the stove.
When the boys come in, I dump the baskets of Spring's green little octopi out into a pan and wash the grit out of them in cold water. Then I go down cellar—or head a smart boy down that direction—for the salt pork. I take a great hunk of it, about enough to fill my kettle one sixth full, Say, three pounds to a peck of greens. Dandelions are heaven, all right, and full of heaven's chlorophyll, but they need assistance. They need the assistance of something stout. And pig is your stoutest meat. He is also, salted down as he has been all winter through in a barrel, all the seasoning you need.
I crown the boiling kettle halfway up with the greens. Then I put in the pork, lacerated into cubes and rhomboids, nesting the pieces on the foundation of Spring. I stow in the rest of the dandelions right up to the kettle's top, smack the lid on, breeze up my beechwood fire, sit back, and let her steam. I let her steam for three hours. Four sometimes, if it is late in dandelion week. I steam the dandelions first with the kettle set down on the coals, then up on top of the cover, and last on the buck of the stove, where she can simmer quietly by herself to her heart's content.
I let the dandelions cook until every last vitamin is gone out of them. Vitamins are for pills and pale people. I am for rejuvenation, chlorophyll, love, and my lost youth. I cook the greens until the essence of salt pork and the essence of the sun's green power have married indissolubly. It is matrimony made in heaven and a marriage that is a miracle of sweet harmony.
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