Some Midwest things come and go, while some become icons. Mandatory Midwest is all about the latter. This week: PEAS!
My sister-in-law tells the story of the first road trip she took with my brother. They were driving through the Wisconsin countryside, on their way to my parents’ house, when my brother suddenly pulled over. He dashed out of the car and jumped into a farmer’s field. Thirty seconds later he emerged with a grin on his face and his arms full of…something. He tossed that something into the trunk, hopped back into the car, and drove off.
“What was that?” my baffled sister-in-law asked.
“Peas!” my brother replied.
Yes, picking pea pod vines directly from a field, tossing them in the back of a vehicle, and driving home and eating the peas has been a Thing in my family for generations. My grandfather did it. My father did it. I’ve done it. My kid has done it. Whether sanctioned by a landowner or done illicitly under the cover of night, it’s a blast. (More on that second method in a bit.)
Is it a Midwest thing? A Wisconsin thing? A small-town Wisconsin thing? Or just a family thing? The sound of crickets I hear every time I ask folks if they’re familiar with this summertime tradition suggests it’s small-town Wisconsin at best. So be it.
Oh, but what a tradition it is! There’s the timing: finding a pea field that’s mere days away from being harvested, usually in early or mid-July. There’s the visceral fun: rooting around in a field and pulling up the vines. There’s the aftermath: taking them home, dumping them on the driveway or back porch, gathering around the pile, picking individual pods off the vines, and tossing them into a plastic bucket or something. And then there’s the reward: rinsing off the pods, then cracking them open and eating the peas inside. They’re really good!
Most of my personal pea runs in the past few years have been done with the blessing of a farmer. (Shout-out to the B. family!) But back in the day, half the fun was doing it without permission. (Shout-out to the B. family!) There’s nothing quite like driving through the country at 11 p.m., killing your headlights, and sneaking into a pea field. Does my father have stories about farmers pulling shotguns on him and his childhood friends during such nighttime raids? Of course he does.
I don’t have any such encounters, though I do remember sitting around a pile of freshly picked pea vines with my friends in the wee hours of the morning, laughing about what the cops might say when they discovered our rustic crime.
“Some kids stole some peas, and we’re gonna get ’em!” one of my friends said. “And I don’t mean the kids. I mean the peas.”
So is this just a family thing, or has anyone else in Wisconsin (or elsewhere) done this? Let me know in the comments! Or let me know about YOUR oddball summer tradition. If it involves walking away with a bag of fresh peas, all the better.
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