Bodines – Whipped Feta Dip with Pesto
Most of my memories from Bodines, a tiny village in central Pennsylvania about 20 miles north of Williamsport, are only fleeting: talk of rattlesnakes in the field behind the house after the hay was harvested; walking on railroad tracks abandoned after Hurricane Agnes and its resulting flood washed them out somewhere down the line; strolls to Mrs. Vote’s general store to get the mail and more importantly, penny candy; a moth flying into my father’s ear as he read in bed one night causing excruciating pain and a drive to the emergency room where they dabbed in alcohol to kill it; jumping up and down on a bed while Captain Beefheart’s “Yellow Brick Road” blasted on the stereo; driving to the swimming hole down a dirt road with a swamp on one side, being terrified the car was going to fall down the embankment into the water.
It was 1972 and ‘73 when we went to Bodines. I turned five and six years old during the two summers we were there.
My parents rented a big old farmhouse with a handful of other families for those summers. It was surrounded by fields and secluded from the majority of other nearby homes by a mile-long loop road that we walked every day. The population of the house varied between five and six couples and a total of somewhere between eight and a dozen kids. Each set of parents had a room upstairs. But the kids all slept in one large room on the primary level. Our parents had laid mattresses all over the floor.
Other memories of our rural summers are more ingrained in my head. For example, the house had a bat problem. The attic was infested and we would watch each night at dusk as they exited, flying in irregular zig zag patterns in search of their evening meal. Occasionally a bat would get into the kids’ room. The parents would herd us out, practically still asleep, and a couple of the adults would go in with blankets and a broom to capture the beast. Once the all-clear was sounded, they shuffled us back in to sleep.
After putting the kids to bed, the adults stayed up late doing who knows what. The only exception was my father who could never keep his eyes open past nine o’clock at the latest. That meant when the band of offspring woke at dawn each morning, he was the only conscious adult and therefore responsible for us all.
Many of the adults smoked, one even rolled his own cigarettes. I remember an aqua blue tin of Bugler brand tobacco and a little cigarette roller. One early morning activity was to search the ashtrays from the previous evening’s festivities for used cigarettes that had not burned all the way to the end. We would salvage any remaining tobacco, placing it on a rolling paper set on the plastic flap between the two rollers and roll cigarettes for the adults when they finally woke up. I’m sure the adults never smoked our rancid recycled cigarettes and why my parents let us do this, I will never understand. Perhaps they thought it was harmless and kept us quiet and busy while most of them slept.
My clearest memory is of the huge old wooden barn where we would roller-skate for hours going in circles around the spacious floor and columns. In its past, it had been used for square dances, and we played among the remnants: a small, raised stage for a band, an old rotting piano with keys falling out, and dozens of paired folding chairs. On the lower level were bathrooms, no longer in service, with what would now be antique lamps labeled “men” and “women” hanging on the wall. Unbeknownst to us or our parents, the barn had been condemned, and we should never have entered the premises, let alone played inside for hours.
Behind the barn the adults cultivated a garden in a portion of an old farm field. They tried to grow our summer vegetables. I don’t remember much about the garden, even though I’m sure the kids were all volunteered to help, with the exception of lots and lots of zucchini.
My vivid Bodines memories are the exciting and momentous events. However, most of the time they were simply ordinary summer days spent in the country filled with hikes, swimming, roller-skating, crafts, picking blueberries, and playing with the other kids. Despite the dangers, real and perceived, some of which I was conscience about and others not, to me it was an idyllic time of innocence and youth.
Whipped Feta Dip with Pesto
I have virtually no memory of who cooked and the foods we ate at Bodines. The adults likely took turns cooking for the crowd, using at least in part what they grew in the garden, and we ate communally.
I can only imagine that this whipped feta dip with pesto might be the sort of dish someone would have prepared a) had we been able to get feta cheese in rural Pennsylvania in the early 1970s and b) had the food processor been invented at that time. It’s certainly tasty and is perfect with cut fresh vegetables, pretzels, crackers, or pita. It would be an excellent start to a meal if you have a pile of hungry kids to feed.
makes about 1½ cups, about 5 minutes
8 oz. feta cheese, roughly crumbled
¾ cup Greek yogurt
3 Tbsp. fresh pesto or thawed if frozen
¼ tsp. kosher salt
¼ tsp. fresh ground black pepper
juice of half a lemon
1 Tbsp. olive oil
cut fresh vegetables, pretzels, crackers, or pita for serving
- Place all ingredients (except those for dipping) in the food processor. Process until a dippable, smooth paste forms and all ingredients are well combined, adding more olive oil if needed to achieve an appropriate consistency.
- Sample and adjust seasonings, adding more pesto, salt, or lemon juice to meet your tastes.
- Scrape into a bowl and serve with cut fresh vegetables, pretzels, crackers, or pita.
Another great read , Max. Thank you. I too often think, “what were our parents thinking” with some of the things we got into as kids!
Thanks Anne! I wonder if our kids will think the same of our parenting.
Loved being able to enjoy this dip just recently! And Max, your mention of roller skating could be a potential future Fireballs activity! 🙂
Ooh. Roller-skating? It’s been a long time.
Our first summer at Bodines was right after Hurricane Agnes. Central Pennsylvania was hit hard by the storm. Our well had been contaminated and so we had to drive to an old one-room schoolhouse that had a clean well and a hand pump on its porch. That’s where we pumped to get our water until our well was sanitized. The two summers at Bodines were preceded by a summer with the same group of people in a gorgeous house – Butternut Farm – in Bellows Falls VT. That property was a bit more tame than Bodines. You probably don’t remember much about it because you turned 5 that summer. In fact, the story you told about making cigarettes actually happened in Vermont, not Pennsylvania. Certainly there were no rattlesnakes or a garden in Vermont – only a field with cows and tiny wild blueberries. As for the garden in Bodines, it was actually quite successful if excessive, since we city folks didn’t know much about gardening. In addition to that large number of zucchini, I remember that at the height of the cucumber season – the largest number of cucumbers we harvested was 22 in one day. We must have had hundreds! That part of Pennsylvania (Central PA) is truly beautiful.
I remember nothing about pumping water from a well. And I may be mixing up Vermont and Bodines. After all, I was only a little kid!!