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Yes …. I read the title   …..  I know  … no  …. It wasn’t a typo … I meant to say Yeller …

NO …. It is Not yellow squash ….   It is Yeller Squash … Well, you saw the picture ….  you already know the color is actually yellow …. And It is yellow … whether it has a straight or a crooked neck.

Yeller is for the sound it makes.

I have heard it …. It yells when it sees you coming ….It yells when you pick it  … it yells things like … No, I’m too young to die … or … don’t squash me  … or … other things I can’t repeat  ….  not because they were obscene …. Yeller squash are not like that  …. summer was a long time ago and I just forgot.

… Yeller squash yells again when you cut it …. It gets scared easily ….  It calms down when it finds out that you are going to fry it in butter …. It calms down because it knows all is well  … it has that calm assurance that it is about to achieve the purpose of it’s life  …. For most vegetables being fried in butter is like being in heaven.

Now when I was a kid we always planted Yeller squash …. We also planted zucchini …. The yeller stuff was good to eat  … and the zucchini had other appropriate uses … like leaving on the neighbors porch when no one was looking … Yeller squash is edible so there was usually no reason to give it away ….

The best use for zucchini was for shoes …  the great big zucchini made fine shoes  … great big fat ones …  two or three feet long … Too make the shoe you cut a hole for your foot near the stem end  …. you hollowed out a little place to put your foot in …

You walked backwards dragging the  footwear  behind … you had to walk backwards … you couldn’t walk frontwards ….  there was no way you could lift that heavy toe …

After just a little dragging the foot hole enlarged and your feet would around on the slimy surfaces …. We called them zucchini slippers  … they were the heaviest slippers I ever did wear … they were way heavier than glass slippers, Miss Cinderella ….

It was best to walk only on the lawn … pavement wore through the zucchini slippers quickly … the sole wore out first  usually right under the heel …. Then soon after that the back end broke off …. If you were racing you had to be careful not to accelerate too fast … you could even break the end of a new  zucchini right off ….

Walking on gravel was even worse . … rocks would penetrate the zucchini hide  … once the hide was penetrated the rocks would become embedded in the zucchini flesh….. a few steps later the angry pebbles would attack your foot and cause serious injury …. This happened with any kind of pebbles …. Limestone pebbles …. Granite pebbles …. Marble pebbles  or even Flintstone, Pebbles.

After I left the family farm and had my own homestead I grew zucchini once … well possibly twice  … I decided that the yeller squash tastes so much better, there was no reason for ever growing zucchini again.    … I guess I could have provided my children with the zucchini shoe experience …. However I kind of think that hearing about my adventures was probably enough on that front. They seemed capable of inventing their own adventures.

Recently I ate at a Chinese restaurant … I noticed pieces of zucchini in the cashew chicken …. I wonder who snuck that in …  it certainly did not belong there … it was probably part of one that got left on a neighbors porch … perhaps the word was originally sneak-in-i and the pronunciation gradually changed to zucchini …. These changes occur because of the mumble principle.

We have dealt with the un-pleasantries of zucchini  …  in the next episode we can get back to the  delights of Yeller Squash.

We will be singing

“Yeller squash

Up high in banana tree

Why don’t you fly to me

Then come and fry with me

You taste better that way ”

 

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Fact checker

Ok …. I admit I don’t really know what the Yeller squash are yelling ….. I just kind of made that stuff up ….

I do believe that they enjoy being eaten …. Especially fried in butter

After all this talk about walking backwards and dragging the zucchini around it occurs to me that I could have walked frontwards  by cutting the hole a little farther from the end and pointing the toe towards the stem …. Then I could have walked frontwards and still drug the heavy part along ….. I should try it  ….  another reason that I long for summer …. Perhaps some neighbor will grow some extremely large, man size,  zucchini

Sorry to Pebbles Flintstone for making fun of her name … but she might as well get used to it  … I’m sure I won’t be the last to mock her.

The mumble principle will be explained in a future post.

If you didn’t remember the yellow bird tune, here are a few YouTube links

Mills Brothers     Kingston Trio

Pick this one for Chinese subtitles  …. It tastes better that way

The Brothers Four