Each Friday, while delivering newspapers in Virginia City, I stop at Priscilla Pennyworth’s Old-Time Photos to drop off a few and pick up the receipts from the previous week. While there, I also take a couple of minutes to visit with Hell Betty and Samantha Blevins.
This week, last Friday, I had to stop to re-tie my shoe after having a blowout crossing C Street. When I looked up from where I was seated, I saw Sammy come around the corner from the darkroom, sipping from an enormous dill-pickle jar.
She beamed a bright smile over the top of the jar, still filled with the green delights, before taking another long sip. The juice dropped considerably each time she drank from the glassware.
Drinking pickle juice is nothing new. It is done all the time and not just on the Comstock, as it is quite a favorite action in the southern states of the U.S.
As I finished tying my laces, a family came in, and, along with Hell Betty, she began her duty of getting the folks and the kids dressed and posed for a picture or two. It is a joy to watch these two work as they seem to have the most fun of anybody under the shade of Sun Mountain.
Sammy had set her juice jar on the front counter as she started helping get everyone costumed. I was now standing at the same counter, watching the proceedings.
Splash. I heard it but had no idea where it came from.
As I was looking around, I saw the juice in the jar sloshing back and forth ever so slightly. It was from this that I heard that slap of fluid.
Then I noticed something else. The juice was returning to its original point in the container despite having been lowered by Sammy’s two large gulps.
It didn’t take me very long to figure out why the jar was refilling itself. Honesty, I had no idea that dill pickles in captivity could do what these five acidically glassed cucumbers were doing publicly.
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