Read Online Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gregg Gilmore - Free Book Online Page A

always covered with at least two inches of water. She said this was the most important step because we were killing all the germs that might otherwise make our customers sick. And that, she said, would not be good for business.
    After about half an hour or so, we took the jars out of the water to cool once and for all. And there, sitting on the counter, was our first batch of jam. Gloria Jean said we were turning out to be real entrepreneurs just like our great-granddaddy, William Floyd, except that what we were doing was legal in all fifty states.
    She pulled some paper out of a drawer and handed it to us. “These here are labels that you girls can decorate and then glue to the jars, right here, you see,” she said, pointing to a smooth, rectangular space on each jar. “You're going to need to come up with a name for your jam.”
    Martha Ann and I looked at each other. We'd been so busy picking berries that we never gave a minute's thought to a name for our jam.
    “Well, start coloring those labels, something will come to you.”
    We sat at Gloria Jean's kitchen table for an hour or more decorating labels and gluing them onto the jars. And she was right, the name just came to me. I called it
Preacher's Strawberry Jam,
in honor of our grandfather. I looked at Martha Ann, holding a jar of jam in my hands, and said, “You know, getting grounded may have been the best thing that ever happened to me.”
    “Honey, the Lord works in mysterious ways,” added Gloria Jean with a smile on her face as she stood at the kitchen sink washing the big, black kettle.
    By the end of the week, Mr. Tucker had sold every jar of jam we had given him, and he was asking for more. So Martha Ann and I happily spent the next month picking berries and making jam, and I think even Daddy realized that his punishment had turned into a lucrative opportunity. Ida Belle ordered a dozen jars to serve at church suppers. Lankford Bostleman said his aunt was wanting some for friends over in LaFayette. Even Mrs. Roberta Huckstep was seen picking up a jar or two. We had made almost two hundred jars when all was said and done. But our business came to an abrupt end one morning when I woke up with bright red blotches all over my body. I started screaming, thinking for sure I had scarlet fever. I had no idea what scarlet fever looked like, but since I was red, I figured I had to have it.
    Daddy heard me crying and came rushing into my room. He took one look at me and picked me up in his arms and carried me out to the car. He sped into town, almost driving poor Brother Fulmer off the road. He thought I had scarlet fever, too, I knew he did.
    But Doctor Brother Bowden took one look at me and started laughing. He said he and his wife had been enjoying my strawberry jam on their biscuits every morning, and he had a feeling that I had been eating my fair share of berries this summer. “I imagine quality control is an important part of the job,” he said.
    “Yes, sir. Kind of.”
    “Catherine Grace, I hate to tell you this but you have a severe case of strawberry rash, known to afflict ambitious young women who consume more strawberries than their growing bodies can handle. The cure is simple, no more strawberries, at least for a while.”
    It didn't take Daddy long after that to decide that it was time for my going-out-of-business sale. He said I had surely made enough money for one summer and that I should enjoy what little bit of vacation was left before school started. He also decided that I could go back to the Dairy Queen, probably figuring that Dilly Bars and daydreaming were a heck of a lot safer than strawberries.
    After tending to all my financial obligations, which included reimbursing Gloria Jean her initial investment and paying Martha Ann the twenty-eight dollars and fifty cents in wages I owed her, I ended up with almost one hundred and forty dollars in the shoebox under my bed.
    I agreed with my daddy. I didn't need to make any more jam this