Dave Wood

I grew up leery about pickles, especially the storebought types. I liked my mom’s always done at home and packed in Ball Jars, but she died when I was in third grade and I moved to town to live with my grandparents near the Green Bay & Westen RR and the Onalaska pickle “factory,” if you could call it a factory. The open aired shed housed six wooden stave vats each full of a salty brine, waiting for the pickle harvest. The owner, Mr. Seller, drove a 1925 two-ton Maxwell touring car. He’d grade and weigh the cukes, dumping them into the appropriate saline-filled vat where they would languish in the bubbling foam until a railroad tank car would pump them into the tanker and head for the Onalaska factory where they would be seasoned with turmeric and other exotic spices.

What I knew about these store-bought pickles and my grandmother didn’t was the unlocked and wide-open facility was a common stopping place for my friends and me on the way to school to pee into the foamy vat of our choice, flavoring the pickles with abandon. Though we knew this wasn’t “kosher,” so to speak, we justified the practice as no different than the practice of Erickson Store adult personnel stacking cords of dried lutefisk on the outside of the storefront where packs of dogs (“That’s the process that gives the bland fish some flavor,” Grandma Wood always explained.) But in spite of this justification, I figured the process lacked proper hygienic properties, so I stopped ingesting Onalaska products as soon as I reached my majority.

But my connection to pickles didn’t end there. The Meilman Brothers, a kosher meatpacking company from New York City, purchased our town’s Peters Meats processing plant. With them came a colorful Gentile employee, Geno McDivitt, who soon left the Meilmans to open a popular saloon in downtown Whitehall, where, as a novelty he served New York style Frankfurters instead of the ubiquitous Wisconsin overcooked burgers. 

I quickly became a Frankfurter Fiend. Geno served them on poppyseed buns with a vegetable side, called a “kosher half dill,” a garlicky cucumber pickled in vinegar or salt and oodles of dill and garlic. And No Urine.

 When I told Geno about our abundant crop of giant cukes, he gave me a gallon jar and said, “Davey fill this jar with big cukes and a bundle of dill once a week and you can eat free hot dogs all summer.” Geno’s work with Jewish bosses who plied the Art of The Deal, led to better success than our current negotiator’s. Geno is sadly gone from Whitehall and overcooked burgers are, sadly, back. But in his memory, I’m sharing Geno’s recipe because we have a bumper crop of giant cukes this year:

Geno’s recipe for one-plus quart of kosher half dills, which must be refrigerated and will last for several weeks, unless you eat them all two days after preparation!

12 pickling cukes sliced in half

1 large clove of garlic smashed

6 to 8 sprigs of fresh dill (or ¼ tsp dill seeds)

1 tsp. of pickling spices

1/3 cup of kosher salt

1/3 cup white vinegar

2 quarts of water.

Place all the cukes (which you have sliced in half) and spices in a large bowl, boil the water, vinegar and salt for 2 minutes. Pour this brine over the bowl of cukes, cover so liquid comes an inch above the highest cukes. Place a weighted plate to submerge cukes. Leave at room temperature overnight. Store in jars in fridge. If you want a livelier pickle, the more salt and vinegar to your taste. Don’t go too far or you’ll end up with my grandma’s very salty, very sour pickles. If you’re wannabe Jewish do the same to quartered green tomatoes. Delish! Like martinis without olives? Make it with brined string beans.