In Search of Purple Gold

By Bob Johnson

We arrived in northern Idaho at the tail end of huckleberry season last year. Depending on the winter snowpack—which insulates the huckleberry bushes so they can survive winter’s freezing temperatures—and the overall winter and spring weather, that season can begin as early as June and continue into September.

Altitude also plays a key role in the beginning and the end of the season, but I posit there really isn’t a “huckleberry season” here. It’s a year-round phenomenon.

I’ve learned a lot about huckleberries in the past year, especially considering that my first exposure to the word came from an anthropomorphic dog. On almost every edition of The Huckleberry Hound Show he would sing about “my darling Clementine, you are lost and gone forever, and your shoes are number nine.” I was five or six at the time.

My next exposure to the word came when I was assigned by an English teacher to read Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I was in the eighth grade.

Early in 2024, while we were watching the television program On Patrol Live, someone on the scene of a police investigation said to one of the officers, “I’m not your huckleberry.” Neither my wife nor my bonus daughter could explain that comment to me. Later I realized the term goes back a long way and was popularized by the 1993 film Tombstone. 

Gunfighter Johnny Ringo expresses surprise when Doc Holliday shows up for a duel. Doc drawls, “I’m your huckleberry.” A friend who spent twenty years in law enforcement told me this essentially means, “I’m your man.”