When I was in grade school I belonged to the local Brownie Troop. They are the group you go to if you aren’t old enough to go into Girl Scouts. We would meet at a different mother’s house every other Saturday to learn crafts and how to be a good citizen. About once a month we would get together for a backyard supper. Sometimes it was to cook hot dogs and s’mores or biscuits on a stick and meals cooked in foil, but our favorite was pocket stew.
We would meet at one of the member’s houses and the leader would have a big cooking pot of water boiling over a campfire. We were told it didn’t taste as good cooked indoors or on a grill. Each girl would bring her assigned vegetable in her uniform pocket; an ear of corn, a couple of carrots, a handful of green beans, a potato, an onion, a stalk of celery, maybe some peas. We didn’t usually have meat but one of the mothers would send some beef bouillon cubes for added flavor. We would put everything together and prepare it for the pot.
While it was cooking we would do a craft project that the leader had prepared for us to make, or play games. After the soup was finished, we sat around the campfire to eat soup. It was the best we had ever tasted because we made it and it didn’t taste like pockets at all. After we were done and helped the leader clean up which is what all good brownies knew to do. We would sit around the fire and the leader would tell a story while we waited for our parents to come and get us because it was usually after dark.
One story I remember was called Stone Soup. Here is how it went, you might have heard it differently but this was the version we heard.
Long, long ago a small village on the banks of a creek was going through a rough drought. It hadn’t rained much that year and food was in short supply. The men of the village carried water from the creek to water the gardens. Children fished and women stretched their supplies. Everyone did what they could to provide food for the entire village, no one was left out.
One day a traveling minister arrived. He would stay a few days, work with the men and pray with the village for rain. The women clustered together worried about how to feed even one more person. Granny Faith hushed the fretting group and announced. “We’ll make stone soup. That will feed us all for a few days”. She turned and hobbled into her small home muttering “where did I put that stone?”
The ladies of the town shook their heads at each other, stone soup? The old woman returned with a smooth, flat stone. “Get that great big kettle out here and I’ll get this soup going” she commanded. Looking at the disbelieving faces around her she said, “This is a powerful stone. It has fed many people through the years. I’m surprised none of you have one.”
She dropped the stone in the boiling pot saying, “Here is a little salt to help the flavor. She added it to the pot and began stirring. A lady whispered, “Granny, I’ve only one carrot would that help?” “That would be wonderful”. Someone put in a dry onion, another a wrinkled potato. Another had a few lentils, a spoon of flour, a bit of bacon, each lady scoured her pantry to help flavor the soup. They watched and stirred the soup all day, each adding any little bit they could.
They were excited to taste this new soup. That evening the minister blessed the food and thanked God for people who cared and shared what they had to the benefit of all. After all, had eaten and the left over’s divided among the villagers Granny Faith smiled and tucked the stone back in her knitting box.
It is an age-old story told in many ways and in many places. Have you told this story to your grandchildren? It never grows old.
Many folk tales have been adapted from other cultures and countries. These stories handed down from generation to generation were the only means of passing on the history in many societies. Dig up your family’s stories, keep them alive, it is a legacy to hand down to futures generations. Come back again and hear another story from a simpler time.