I Love Dill Pickles - Dr. Ed Iannuccilli

I Love Dill Pickles - Dr. Ed Iannuccilli

I have loved dill pickles since I was a kid. In those days, the best place for ‘The Dill’ was Madeline’s Variety Store, near our elementary school, where lived an alluring barrel of them.

Madeline’s Variety was a dark, dull, somber store much like its owner who, because she had difficulty walking, orchestrated everything from a small cloth-covered, three-legged podium behind the counter. She watched over the store, and especially her pickle barrel, with shifty, flickering eyes disguised under a narrow bandana that concealed her hair and touched her eyebrows. I wondered how many hours she spent in that hovel every day. And where did she go when she left? No matter. It was about her pickles.

The aroma of pickles was pervasive. Smells of dill and vinegar were prevalent. I scuffled to the bulky barrel, its metal straps keeping it from splitting at the seams. I peeked in and, just below the veil of foamy juice speckled with dill seeds, I spotted those floating honeys.

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I had an urge to dip my hand in, even up to my elbow, if necessary, when Madeline was not looking. But her solemn eyes never drifted.

Save for the excitement of the pickle, the damp, musty store was not a place to dwell. Once I gave her the nickel for the pickle, she nodded, a gesture that meant, “Go ahead, Kid, reach in, get your pickle and scram.”

I reached in, cautiously, sometimes to my wrist, to be sure I captured the largest. It scurried like a fish, but I won, handed it to Madeline, and she wrapped it in wax paper. I pirouetted and out the door and to the sidewalk I skipped.

I looked at the pickle, its top peeking out of the wax paper. I raised it to my lips, the smell now overtaking that of the library paste and the inkwell. How should I tackle that baby? Could I ever eat the pickle slowly? Not so easy. Slow meant patience and at ten with a pickle in my hand, I had little. I felt like a beaver about to take that first chunk out of a juicy birch. How much of a bite might I tolerate?

I snapped off that first bite. My lips puckered with the sour taste of dill, vinegar, and salty brine. I later learned in my medical years that the pickle test was one used to diagnose mumps, as even the thought of tasting a dill pickle made the pain of swollen salivary glands worse. Well, my glands didn’t hurt, but I seemed to have difficulty separating my tongue from my palate and my cheeks from my tongue. Boy, was that good!

Pickles have been around for thousands of years, dating as far back as 2030 BC when cucumbers from India were pickled in the Tigris Valley. Pickles have made appearances in The Bible and in Shakespeare’s writing.

But it was the pickle in Madeline’s Variety Store that set me on a lifelong path of appreciation.

Dr. Ed Iannuccilli is the author of three popular memoirs, “Growing up Italian; Grandfather’s Fig Tree and Other Stories”, “What Ever Happened to Sunday Dinner” and “My Story Continues: From Neighborhood to Junior High.”  Learn more here.