How a Lowcountry berry helped spark memories of hair pulling, a knight and school days

Seeing a South Carolina school bus rumble down S.C. 46 recently as I crossed the road to start my walk to the creek put me to remembering my first years in school.

How many of you senior citizens learned your ABC’s and read your primary reader “Dick and Jane” while seated at a desk with an ink well? All the beautyberry bushes loaded with purple fruit lining the rutted dirt road of Stoney Creek Drive brought this type of desk to mind. I remembered that in Mrs. Ruth Niver’s first and second grades — which were combined in 1946 and 1947 — I got acquainted with those ink well desks that are labeled antiques now. (That’s the same label folks pin on me, too.)

Those desks, which were constructed as one piece with the seat connected to the desk with a bar running along the floor, were lined up 5 or 6 in a row with the seat back butting up against the front of the desk directly behind you. The neat trick about the desk were the very narrow top held the ink well then the rest of the top lifted up for storage of tablets, pencils and books.

My hair was long past my shoulders then and would hang over the back onto the desk top behind me. That presented a “not to ignore” situation to the delight of the young boy seated directly behind me. He could not resist catching the tips of my hair in the crack created in the desk when the top was raised a little. That meant that when I leaned forward, my caught hair would yank my head back, causing me to let out a yelp.

After several such yelps of discomfort, my “knight in shining armor” came to my rescue — none other than Clark Riley, who started 1st grade with me and graduated from 12th grade with me, best buddies through 12 years of school.

He came up behind the hair-catching culprit and tussled him from his desk onto the floor, which took care of one problem but created another for Clark, who was reprimanded by Mrs. Niver and not allowed outside for recess the rest of the day.

I’m sure the ink for the wells came from a bottled supply just as I am sure the school teachers didn’t run out to gather beautyberry fruit to mash up for their purple juice to use in the ink wells.

But we children did just that. We’d gather up a bowl of them, mash them up and strain the juice from them to dip our home-made quills of sharpened turkey feathers to write with.

Callicarpa Americana is the scientific name for the ornamental shrub we call beautyberry here in the Lowcountry. Americana beautyberries produce large clusters of purple berries which white-tail deer and birds eat, thus distributing the seed.

It is often planted in landscape designs to attract wildlife because of the food source the berries provide and the cover animals get from the shrub itself. The berries are a favorite with cardinals, mockingbirds, finches and woodpeckers, among others.

The raw berries are sweet to the taste and can be eaten by humans but only in small amounts or you’re liable to end up with a stomach ache since the fruit has astringent properties. They also can be used to make jelly and wine.

But for myself I’ll just stick to crushing them for ink.

Now where did I put my turkey feather quill?