Gold Country Memories # 2 by Madeline

Every Fall as I watch the leaves start changing colors it brings back fond memories of the fun things I did as a child with my father and friends in my home town of Nevada City Ca...http://www.nevadacitychamber.com/
My dad made extra money by selling dried wild mushrooms to the fine Italian restaurants in San Francisco and I enjoyed going with him to help gather them and of course he taught me how to tell the good ones from the bad. We sure didn't want to poison some rich person on Knob Hill. My dad made sure we scraped them right on the spot we found them so as to leave the "seeds" so another would grow. Sometimes my best friend, Rosemary would come with us and we would have a contest to see who would find the biggest and best as we scampered on our hands and knees under the manzanita bushes looking for a raised bunch of leaves or straw indicating where one might be hiding. We got a lot of exercise along with the fun and actually found our share of fine mushrooms. My dad built an unique multilayer screen wire racks that he would place over our oil stove to dry them after we cleaned and sliced them thin. The aroma was wonderful as it filled the house and even today as I remember it, it seems as if I can still smell it. It took 10 pounds of fresh mushrooms to make 1 pound dried and we would sack it after it was good and dry and wait on the buyer to bring us some hard earned cash.
Even after I was married, Karl and I would go with him just for the fun of it. He didn't get rich doing this but did earn some Christmas money which really came in handy. Dad was the champion mushroom hunter I suppose because he found a 100 pound tree mushroom and got his picture, with the mushroom, in the town paper.