Go to nature
When Del was a little girl, she and her brother “spent days along the Wawanash River, helping Uncle Benny fish”. Their task was to catch frogs for him. They “chased them, stalked them, crept up on them, along the muddy riverbank under the willow trees”. Its marshy hollows were full of “rattails and sword grass that left the most delicate, at first invisible, cuts on our bare legs”. “Old frogs knew enough to stay out of our way”, but they didn’t want them anyway. It was “the slim young green ones, the juicy adolescents” they tried to catch. This imagery helps readers to imagine how children from countryside used to spend their time 60-70 years ago.
Ill-mannered
Ada was used to Uncle Benny and that was the main reason why she put up with his ill table manners. He “stuck his gum on the end of his fork, and at the end of the meal took it off”. Then he showed children “the pattern, so nicely engraved on the pewter-colored gum it was pity to shew it”. He “poured tea in his saucer and blew on it”. He used “a piece of bread speared on a fork” to “wipe his plate as clean as cat’s”. He brought into the kitchen a smell of “fish, furred animals, swamp”. This imagery describes the manners which are not usually considered to be appropriate behavior at the table.
Countryside life
Uncle Benny was dictating a reply to an announce in the newspaper to Del. A woman was looking for a husband and he decided that he was a right type of a man for her. He had “a good house on it with stone foundation”. It was “right by the bush” so they would “never run out of firewood in winter”. There was also “a good well”. In the bush there was “more berries” than one could eat and “good fish in the river”. She even could have “a good garden” if she “could keep it off the rabbits”. Uncle Benny had “a pet fox in a pen by the house, also a ferret and two minks”. This imagery is supposed to show what was used to be valued in a countryside life: a good house, a well, a garden, something to eat and wood in order to keep warmth in the house.
