I remember all those greens we used to eat when I was a lad. There was turnip-greens and mustard-greens and spinach that came from the garden. Then there was the wild greens that came from the pasture fields, they were dandelion and poke and creasy greens. Except for spinach, I haven't had any of those greens since way back then. Well anyway my neighbor came over here the other day totin' a big bag of creasy greens. He said a fellow at work gave him a bunch and he figured he would share them with us. He's like that, just a very nice fellow. Well anyway, we decided to fix them the next day. First we had to wash the mud from the plants, got about two big shovels full of mud out of them. No kiddin' they only weighed about half as much after we washed them.

Then we washed them again and carried that water outside and poured it on the ground, too dirty to put in the septic tank. Next we pulled all the leaves from the stumps and discarded the stumps. That's the butt of the plant where it is cut off durin' the gatherin' process. Even after removin' all that mud and stumps we still had about two and one-half gallons of greens. I put them into the biggest pot we had and jumped up and down on them until they all fit into the pot. Next we put in some water and started cookin' the greens. We boiled them things for about two hours and twenty minutes. All that cookin' caused them to shrink to a little less than a half gallon. Then we put in the butter-flavored margarine and salt and cooked them another twenty minutes to help set the flavor.

Then we sat down to supper and tried some of the famous creasy greens. The first thing I noticed was they had a purple taste and a dark brown smell, I mean they stunk. After a couple of bites I suggested we put a little more salt on them, it helped a little but they still had that purple taste and dark brown smell. So after a couple more bites I remembered that old folks used to put vinegar on them. Well we did that too and it helped a little but they still had that purple taste and dark brown smell. I tried to eat some with a bunch of corn and meat and cornbread but all that done was cause the good stuff to have a purple taste and dark brown smell. By the time we had tried all them different things we had already eaten a normal helpin'. That was when I told my wife that there weren't gonna to be any leftovers on the greens. She looked sorta surprised and ask if I had finally found a way that I liked them. I said no, I was gonna dump'em down a groundhog hole. So after sayin' that I got up and took them out to the pasture field and dumped them down Muddy Creek Marvin's burrow and came on back to the house.

When we went to the barn to feed the horses about five o'clock, there stood Marvin by the barnyard gate and he was mad. He was screechin' and growlin', I told my wife he was screamin' at me for givin' him those greens. He was still there as we went back to the house, screechin' or doin' whatever he was doin' and this time he was shakin' his little fist at me, so he had to be mad at me. When I went out the next mornin' he was still there leanin' against the gate post and sort of squeakin', I guess he had made his throat sore from all that screechin'.  Anyway I went back at noon and he was layin' there still tryin' to say something. As I went back to the house I noticed two other groundhogs, Haskel 2 and TriCity Traci was draggin' him back to the field. This evenin' he had recovered and was back at the gate post, he said in a weak voice, “why did you dump that stuff at my front door, I'm gonna have to move now cause I simply cannot stand those greens, they've got that awful purple taste and dark brown smell”.