Tales of a Korean Grandmother Read Online Free PDF Page B

found that instead of the one suit he had stored in it, there were now two. Where his last string of cash had been, there were two strings. And he guessed that the secret of this amber charm was that it would double whatever it touched.
    "With this knowledge Koo became rich beyond telling. And in the gate of his fine new house he cut a doghole for his faithful friend, who had saved him from starving. There, day and night, like our own four-footed gate guard, the fat dog lay watching in peace and well-fed contentment. But all through his life he never again killed a mouse nor made a friend of a cat."

STICKS
AND
TURNIPS!
STICKS
AND
TURNIPS!

    I T WAS kimchee time once again. In the courtyard the crisp, cool autumn air was heavy with the savory smell of this good cabbage pickle, which every Korean liked so well to eat with his rice.
    When each little eating table was prepared in the kitchens of the Kims and their neighbors, the main bowl upon it was heaped high with fluffy, steaming hot rice. In the other bowls ringed about this one, there might sometimes be soy sauce or bean soup, sometimes seaweed cooked in oil, sometimes dried salted fish, or even meat stew. But there was always one bowl filled with spicy kimchee.
    Now, at kimchee time the courtyards of the Kims were carpeted with long, thin heads of Chinese cabbage. Westerners call this celery cabbage because of its white stalks topped with pale green. Huge piles of turnips and onions, strings of garlic and ginger, and bundles of strong salt fish also were there.
    Ok Cha and the other little girls of the household tagged behind their grandmother while she supervised the women who were washing and soaking the vegetables in salt water. The children liked to peer over the rim of the great kimchee jars to see how nearly full they were. It was dark on the bottoms of the jars, a full six feet below the level of the courtyard. Like the water jars, they were sunk deep in the earth to keep them from freezing.
    "Ai, take care, Ok Cha! You are not a red pepper. Nor yet a fat turnip to be mixed with the kimchee!" Halmoni cried out, seizing the rosy red skirt of the child as she almost lost her balance. She was just in time to save her from a headlong dive into the huge pottery pit.
    The old woman led the little girl away to safety on the other side of the courtyard, where Yong Tu and his cousins were carving giant turnips into little round lanterns. The boys had beside them slender rods cut from the bamboo in the Garden of Green Gems. On these little sticks they hung their turnip lanterns, when they had pasted bits of kite paper over the holes dug in their sides.
    The Korean grandmother was tired. She was glad to sit down on the nearest veranda step and watch her grandsons at their work.
    "Sticks and turnips! Sticks and turnips!" the old woman murmured, shaking her head solemnly, but with a twinkle in her dark eyes. "Take care, my sons. Take care you don't turn someone into an ox."
    "Turn someone into an ox, Halmoni?" Yong Tu asked, wondering. "How could that be? And what have sticks and turnips to do with such a strange happening?"
    "It's an old tale about a farmer, blessed boy," Halmoni replied. "A farmer who took revenge on a city official who tricked him. It all happened long, long ago. Who can tell whether it really happened at all? But the tale goes like this--
    "There was a farmer named Cho who had had years of good luck in his rice fields. Such good luck was his that he had many huge chests filled with long strings of cash. But like many another fortunate man, he was not content with his lot. Cho grew tired of plowing his fields and harvesting the good rice. He longed for the softer, easier life of the capital city of Seoul."
    "'Now if I could only buy for myself an official's hat, I could grow even richer,' Cho said to his family. Then, as now, my children, it was always the government officials who grew rich. They handled the money the people paid in taxes into the King's