My paternal grandparents had a city lot next door to their home in Richmond, Calif. that my grandpa had planted entirely with vegetables and fruit.  My grandma canned all of it except the strawberries.  She had a dry cleaning shop that she worked in all day taking in the  cleaning and doing alterations.

During the Summer months when all the vegetables were becoming ripe she would come home every night from the dry cleaning shop, eat the dinner that my school teacher aunt had prepared and then she would set into canning all of the vegetables in earnest.  She would work at this task until almost 11pm, then go to bed.

Grandma had two huge Presto Canners and she would have both of them going at the same time on her O Keeffe and Merritt gas stove.  She canned green beans, beets, corn, tomatoes, peaches, pears, peas, carrots, rhubarb, mince meat, pickles, relish, you name it grandma Ruth canned it.  Except the cabbage which she turned in to Sauerkraut in huge crocks.  All of the fruits of her labor were stored in the basement on shelves that lined the walls.  

Grandma’s canned green beans and her canned peaches were out of this world!  Every family dinner at their house there would always be great big bowls of her green beans.  

Now mind you, when my grandpa married grandma she didn’t even know how to cook at the age of 20.  She came from a very poor family.  Her father had deserted the family when she was about 5 and her mother raised her three children by herself, living over a laundry in Springfield, Missouri and working in the laundry during the day.  

Since they could afford only the most basic of food items grandma never learned to  cook.  Once they were married grandpa bought her a brand new set of Wear Ever Aluminum pans, the triangular  kind that you could fit three pans on one wood stove burner.  Then he hired a neighbor lady to teach his Ruthie how to cook.  She was a quick learner.

Eddie