Auntie Marys pickles

Auntie Mary made the best pickled turnips.  Every year she would wash and sterilize her huge glass jars that she pickled her turnips in.  Viva and I were recruted to wash trim and cut the turnips into quarters.  We sat on a cardboard in the back room with knives, bowls and a waste basket cutting and trimming lots of turnips while Auntie made volumes of brine to make the pickles with.  Once she had the brine ready she would place a piece of beet at the bottom of the jars and then pack the cut turnips into the jars..........and pour the brine over them.  She left the jars in the windowsill of the kitchen.  Viva and I would go mad just watching the jars of pickles sit there in the shaded window.  Often we would debate how we could get some without Auntie noticing us. We could hardly wait til the pink color from the beats would infuse all the turnips to the top, the signal that the beets had ripened and were ready to eat. 
Usually we would scale the wall on the side of the house, holding onto the concrete ridges to get to the window..........or I would hang onto the exterior drain pipe to give viva room to manuver the jar so we could get some of the pickles.  We would work as fast as we could, listening for the clipclopping of Aunies slippers on the stone floor signally us to get the heck out of there.
The stolen pickles tasted so good