Posts by MaryCarol

This is my own take on my Mama’s recipe…She didn’t write things down, but I’ve been cooking them like this for more than 50 years…..Just cook some chicken…Whole chickens you cut up yourself give the best flavor but thighs or anything is alright. Cook till tender but not falling apart…..Turn off heat..Remove chicken to a plate, cool enough to handle, take out bones, fat and skin….Skim most of the fat off the top of the broth , saving about 3 TBL for the dumplings….Add 2 or 3 Wyler’s chicken bouillon cubes…Stir fat and milk into self rising flour till like soft biscuits……Guessing 2 cups of self rising flour….Return broth to a boil, drop dough into broth in rounded TBL sized lumps…Dip the spoon in the broth as needed….Save about two dumplings worth of the dough and mix in about a half cup of the broth…Stir into a ‘slurry’, ‘then carefully pour back in the pot between the dumplins…Stir just in that spot for a second, to mix the ‘slurry’ in…..Sprinkle tops of dumplings with Salt n Spice [or black pepper, I guess.] Turn heat down till it’s barely cooking, cover tightly…Cook for 20 minutes, then remove lid  and dip out the fluffy dumplings , some chicken and pour on some of th e’gravy’ Add pepper to taste….Just remember, 20 minutes on slow simmer, tightly covered, and no ‘faih ‘ peeking ! I used to say that….back when I couldn’t pronounce my R’s and was still cute as a button…

I wouldn’t use anything but White Lily self rising unbleached flour, because I like the taste…still, after 30 years of using it. I got my Southern Living magazine today and noticed they used ‘my’ kind of flour in testing some recipes…White Lily has been around for more than 100 years, at least…..Theres an amazing difference in the taste of
flour…

Hunting Poke Salat
Poke salat is an edible green that folks looked forward to in the Spring, as it was ready to hunt out and cook way before any greens from the garden….Best thing you can do is look it up on the Internet or head for the library to see what it looks like, but one way to find it is to look for big dead stalks that are silvery gray, hollow and may have purple berries on top if the birds left any. New plants come up from the big thick roots – Poison. It’s best picked when it’s a thick plant about 6 inches tall. It’s mildly poisonous so has to be par boiled through one or two waters before finishing cooking it. Depends on how early in the Spring you pick it. I finish cooking it in a skillet with some bacon grease then scramble some eggs in it to kinda cut the twang If you want to know what it tastes like buy a little can of spinach, drain off the water and put it in a skillet with a little bacon grease, stir and cook till any water is gone then scramble in a couple eggs…..THEN you’ll
know what Poke salat tastes like…..I pick 8 or more wild greens in the Spring.

It’s about Poke Sallet time
We don’t crave green stuffs like our forefathers did after a long winter, but I’m really looking forward to cooking up a big pot of white beans , some corn pone and a mess of Poke salat ….Just in case you are city folks I’ll tell you all about this most famous of the wild greens folks have been enjoying down through the years…..Look along fence rows and in new grounds for tall silvery looking dead stalks that have fallen over….there might be fat pinkish looking stalks coming up already. The old stalks may have dried up seed that look a bit like blueberries, only black and smaller…..Just break the growing stalks off at the ground. If it’s growing a foot or more tall already just break the top out and it will keep on sprouting side shoots that you can pick later. Some folks just gather it in the Spring, but you can eat it any time it is growing quickly…like where small plants have come up in a burned pile or something….I have eaten it in the Fall , and during the summer as I found new growth, with no bad effects…..

Poke salat is mildly poisonous, so you par boil it through one or two waters before cooking with meat grease…..This also takes away some of that ‘whang’ that lets you know you’re eating Poke salat and not Spinach….Very tender stalks ? I parboil only once….Older leaves and tips later in the season I may do  twice…..I wash the greens and chop them up stalks and all . Some folks just use the leaves…..Keep in mind, it’s got a laxative effect on some folks , so eat sparingly the first time……I pour off all the brown tinged water I par boiled it in and then put it in a skillet with some bacon grease…After the waters cooked out I add a couple eggs and scramble it all up ….Sort of like spinach souffle for country folks. You CAN cheat and use canned spinach….Just put the drained greens in a skillet with some meat grease , heat, then scramble in one or two eggs to a small can of spinach….That’s the proportion I use…….If you have some Lambs quarters greens to mix in the Poke it would be good, as they are very mild tasting….

Poke berries are also mildly poison, but some folks take a few per day for arthritis…..The root is VERY poison and is only used grated up in  poultices………I used to lecture on eating Indian food and this is what I remember about it…..Naturally I ate plenty of it growing up and I still hunt it out every Spring ……. and I pick about 8 different wild greens..including violet leaves….No blanching needed on those..

Polk Salat, Mama etc
My Mama had a fairly comfortable growing up period….except for her and Ma’s personality clashing ..at least till her much loved Papa got sick. He was about 30 when he and Ma got married, you see. He had a stroke the year Mom was 17 and she had to put in the crop alone except for what help she got from younger sibs. The older kids that might have been some actual help had already married and left or gone off to get public jobs. This backbreaking work made her stronger for when she would be left with a houseful of kids later in life because my handsome blue eyed Daddy died at the age of 34 from Leukemia.

I can remember Mama talking to us about the early years of their marriage….Guess Daddy moved away from his farming family with her and they sharecropped to get a start on buying their own farm. She said his relatives were surprised at the different things she canned for the winter….Polk salat , for one thing. They ate it in the Spring but had
never thought of canning it for the winter months. It was served cooked with meat grease and with eggs scrambled into it….kinda cuts the ‘whang.’ ‘Course it has to be parboiled because there is a mild poison in the leaves. I like to get it when the fat stalks are just up about 6 inches, and cut it up and cook it all…Mama just picked polk salat and ‘mouse ear ‘ but I recognize and pick about 8 edible wild plants….She sometimes mixed the polk with mustard and turnip greens…You have to remember they didn’t
have the choices we do now days, and were starved for green things to eat after the long winters diet of soup beans and such..

Mama Canned a Lot of Food!
I found an old list in my Buntin family folder that I’d copied down from my Mothers letter. This was after most of the kids had married and moved away. Am searching for a list she made of what all she canned one year back when Dad was still alive and she canned in a big way….HUNDREDS of cans of all sorts of food. Thought y’all just might be interested in what she wrote….Of the food she’d put by for winter.

4 1/2 bushels of sweet potatoes
1 1/2 bushels of white potatoes
Lots of dry peas and lima beans
85 quarts peaches
15 quarts pickled peaches
69 quarts black berries
70 quarts green beans
80 quarts tomatoes
25 quarts vegetable soup
55 quarts apples to bake
18 quarts apples for pies
35 quarts beet pickles
48 quarts cucumber pickles
10 qts mixed pickles
12 pints apple jelly
32 pints pear preserves
10 pints peach preserves
5 pints plum jelly
14 pints blackberry jelly
18 pints blackberry jam
175 lbs. vegetables in the freezer at the Food Locker in town – Lima
beans, 3 kinds of peas, okra, cut corn and several lbs. of goat meat.

Of course we killed a pig or two each Fall, had chickens for meat and for eggs and a milk cow…..Mama made big old fat dinner rolls, and had a sweet tooth that guaranteed that we had good pies, tea cakes and stuff all the time…For pore folks we ate pretty high on the hog !

Ma’s Fried Corn
Mama said Ma made the best she ever ate…it was white corn and had a faint bluish color since it was cooked in an iron  skillet..You can
thicken it a bit with flour..Some older folks insist on field corn … but I like Silver Queen .

Shuck and silk the corn and cut it off the cob, paying particular care to cut in the middle of the grain. Stand the cob on its end in a bowl or pan and then take your knife and scrape down bringing the rest of the grain into your pan which will also bring the juice or milk from the grain and cob. Place your cut corn in a large deep frying pan that has bacon grease and add pepper and salt. Some like to also add butter before taking it from the skillet. Some like it cooked to the point where it is browned slightly but I usually don’t leave it that long. I think the secret to having good tasting fried corn is being careful to cut it as I described to get all the juice or milk in with the grain. Jeannie T

I can tell you what kids played with, back when we had to find our fun where we could. Me and my sisters were ‘tomboys’, so spent more time in the tops of trees than in playhouses, but we DID  act like girls at times. We spent a lot of time climbing young saplings and riding them down as the top bent over..Even the ones on the edge of the steep bank atop Red Hill..which would give us a ride off the bank into the road. Had
to be hickories, to be THAT limber. We would use our fingers to tear out “paper dolls” from the Sears and Roebuck wish book before it went to the outhouse. Old canning lids held mud pies, and the feller made good use of sling shots they’d made from a forked branch, leather tongues cut off an old shoe and some rubber straps cut from a hard to come by bicycle inner tube.

Hollyhock blossoms, sticks, corn husks, pillowcase or hanky to make adoll… jewelry from clover blossoms. String scraps of fabric from Mama’s quilting to make a doll quilt or doll clothes or a dandy jump rope if you get enough to tie together and braid. We used paste board to make a game board for games such as Fox and Geese or Checkers made from bottle caps , beans, corn, stones or whatever we had for game pieces. Black shoe polish made the checker board .

A piece of string was used to make things on our fingers such as Jacobs ladder or for tying on a June bug.  Seems like we played something with a ring on a string but I don’t remember what it was. A big button was strung on a string and see sawed back and forth to make a loud hum. A grass sack was dandy to catch ‘top waters’/minnows in the creek for fishing bait. We made whistles from maple limbs in the Spring when the sap was up..and from the leaf stalks of the squash plants in deep summer. We occasionally lucked onto a tin can and cut strips off it’s sides to wrap in rags to make curlers.

One time Daddy set us up a seesaw using a stump, big long bolt and an old bridge plank board…We mostly just went around in circles….so might be better called a whirling dervish, or something. I can remember playing with homemade spinning tops, and on boring summer days we made ink and pretty water from different plants such as poke berries and ditch water and writing instruments from straws and feathers..We used tiny
twigs to pin together mulberry leaves to make hats and clothes. I don’t know how we missed it but we never did play hopscotch.

If you could find a piece of paper and a pin, you could make a pinwheel on a stick  Did you make paper flowers for decoration day? We learned to make crepe paper flowers from our Mama .An old quilt thrown over the clothesline made a tent or was laid on the ground to watch the clouds by day and stars by night. We ran everywhere we went, usually pushing our wheel and paddle …The wheel was a rim off an old wagon wheel’s hub…Brother Robert made us some long paddles with a slat nailed across the bottom to push it with. Happy carefree days of summer, not a cloud to mar the sky.

PLANTING TIME:
What people older Applachians call the dark night (dark of the moon) is the time from full moon to the new moon – or the shrinking of the moon.  The other half of the season from the new moon to the full is known as the “light of the moon.”

New plants that grown underground, such as potatoes, turnips, onions and so forth, must be planted in the dark of the moon.  For instance okra planted will all go to tops.  Beans, peas, tomatoes and such that have their crop above the ground should be planted in the light of the moon.  Potatoes should be harvested in the light of the moon or they will rot.

Beans shouldn’t be planted until after the first whipporwill calls, and should be planted in the morning, not the evening.  The best planting time for lettuce is about February 14th.  Cucumbers planted about May 1, watermelons about May 10th and turnips about July 25th.

Always avoid the first day of the New Moon for planting, also the days on which it changes quarters.

If you dig a hole in the ground to plant something, you will never have enough dirt to refill the hole if it is the shrinking of the moon.

In cooking, in the shrinking of the moon–watch your pot boil as you have a time keeping enough water in the pot, and you will burn your food.

Pick your apples and pears during the old moon and the bruised spots will dry up–if picked in the new moon the spots will rot.

Plant sunflowers with your pole beans.  Saves time spent in cutting poles and also protects beans from frost.

Plant radish and cucumber seeds together to keep bugs off cucumbers.

When sowing carrot seed which is very fine, mix with radish seed.  The radishes will be pulled and the carrots left to grow.

To prevent rust on garden tools, keep a thick rag soaked in kerosene handy for wiping off the tools when you come from the garden.

Plant parsley in small pots for your window sill.  These pots of green keep spring in your kitchen all winter, will be an ever–ready garnish for meats, and you can seel the surplus at your annual church bazaar.  This is a good idea for growing chives for the kitchen also.

When planting pea seed in the spring, sow Zinna seed in the same row at the same time.  Your flowers will bloom long after the peas are gone.  This saves space and beautifies your garden at the same time.

When you plant turnip greens, mustard, etc., be sure to plant radishes, and marigolds in the garden to repel insects.  Chives are also good to act as an insect control.

Lime and wood ashes mixed sprinkled dry on squash for bugs and snails will also work.

Sprays made from marigolds, chrysanthemums, radishes will work as repellants for worms and insects.

Cat Head Biscuits, etc.

I use white half runner beans but you can use whatever type of bean you like. Pick them straight from garden when they are full, tender, nice and clean ( not after a rain) when they might be muddy.  Nub (break off ends) and string ( pull strings off the outsides of the pods) of the beans, don’t break them up, don’t wash them, just wipe off any dirt with your hands and then string or sew them up on the thread.

Get a spool of quilting thread from Wal-mart or fabric store because it is a little heavier then regular thread.  Thread a long slender sewing needle with about 2 foot of thread.  Put the needle through the center of a long bean first and tie the thread around it to make a sturdy base.  Avoid putting needle through an actual bean but just through the long bean fiber or pod. Continue until you have a long string of beans.  Leave some extra thread at top of string so you can tie it off and make a loop to hang it by. Hang over a clothes hangar and hang up in kitchen to dry or on sunny days you can take it outside and hang the clothes hanger of beans from nail on the porch or over the clothes line.  Just let them dry up and they will shrink and end up about half of what you put on the string….

Another old timey way is to break them up, put them on a clean sheet and take outside and lay them over a patio table or the like on sunny days and they will dry.  Just bring them in at night. After they are totally dried and brittle I have put mine into container
or bag and put them in freezer so no bugs can get into them.

To cook, take them off the string, wash the dried beans and then soak them overnight in water.  Drain water, wash and then cook as you would regular beans…adding a big ham hock or piece of salt bacon as seasoning.  They take awhile to cook so you must keep adding water and they do swell up to make a big pot of beans.  They do have a very unique flavor. Bake up a big pone of corn bread, fry up an iron skillet of taters and you are in business…enjoy!

Boys played at farming, and girl’s had play house, that is if they were ‘normal’ girls. Mama told me years later that she finally gave up on getting us interested in play houses…she would set them up for us, look out awhile later to see how we were doing and we would be climbing trees, etc.

An ‘elderly’,  At least 35 or 40,  neighbor lady that didn’t know about this helped us set up a playhouse near her driveway once…nice ditch , bank etc…She put dry dock seed on a hollowed out sand rock for coffee grounds – little round stones were potatoes, etc. She really got into it and had a great time but we lost interest and never played there again – ‘Miss’ Mariney Beasley – a wonderful neighbor.

We made stilts, walked on the cans when we could find them…etc ,but back then folks ate home canned foods mostly. The canned milk was left setting out on the table to pour into grownups coffee. Remember how it had 2 little holes poked in the top? Never knew of it spoiling. My thrifty ex Mother in law would pour a small can of Pet milk into a quart milk bottle then fill it up with water to use in coffee…this was refrigerated between uses.

I thought I’d write down some of my memories of Mama…..Myrtle Blanch Buntin Winchester

Mama was born to a woman who didn’t like her. They clashed from the word go. When her Ma had twins she only had enough milk for one of them, so she put the weaker one on the bottle and turned him over to Mama. Harold had asthma, and allergies, I’m sure. Mama had to tote him around a lot as he had trouble breathing, and said she had made biscuits many a morning with one foot propped up on the rung of a chair so her baby brother could sit on her knee. She had to get up and cook breakfast then go to the field and work..Come home and cook dinner, clean up the kitchen then go to the field till time to cook supper I asked if Ma had a lot of trouble when the kids were born and Mama said  no, she was just lazy! I told you they didn’t get along!
 
When Mama was 17 years old Papa had a stroke, and she put in the entire crop that Spring with a little help from her younger siblings…She was a tall woman, and said at that time she could pick up a 100 lb. sack of feed , put it on her shoulder and carry it to the barn.
 
Mama married to get away from home, I think, but found herself having to live with her in laws, and her new husband drank and ran around with other women. When their unborn baby had to be taken from her and she got milk fever and almost died hubby was out drinking and carrying on. She never lived with him again, and started  saving up hard earned money to pay for a divorce while living at home…She never forgave him.
 
A cousin she had dated as part of a group brought Daddy with him to date her younger sister Zula, and my parents fell in love instantly …. much to the disgust of Raymond Patterson, the cousin! They started courting, and after 3 months, Daddy put his arm around her. – A very respectful way to treat a divorced woman!. He sent her a lovely watch in the mail which she later gave me, and they wrote back and forth when Dad couldn’t come courting. One night they went to a ‘play party,’  Mama played guitar and sang  and Dad was stabling the horse just as the sun was coming up. The horse got to spend the day resting. Daddy had to go right to the field! Now that’s true love! They got married sitting in the buggy out in front of the Squires house, which was apparently the fad of the  moment. Oh yes, Daddy helped her get the money together to pay for the divorce when they got impatient to marry. Mom said it cost $15.00, which was a princely sum back then.
 
The first years of their marriage were hard, as they were sharecropping.  Dad was ambitious, moving up from each farm  to a better one over the years, and saving money for their own place.  Mom said she hoed their cotton while Daddy farmed, and by the time she got to the end of the field, it was time to start over again! Can you imagine that ?  Dad would hook up a horse and run the ‘scraper’ up and down each side of every cotton  row…surely nerve wracking labor! She would hoe alone if he didn’t have time to help her, then he would go back and plow the middles to kill the wilted grass and weeds hoed from around the cotton stalks…
 
After a short while the babies started coming along…Robert, Joyce, Me, Jerry, Reba, Betty, Gerald, and Janice….Just like stair steps…When we were 5 or 6 years old we went to the fields to hoe cotton, corn, etc., and to pick cotton in a grass sack with a rag strap. My goodness, I don’t see how Dad had the patience, but needs must, and we were all healthy eaters…
 
Sorghum had to be stripped, cut down and piled to the side to wait for the wagon to haul it to the sorghum mill on a neighbors farm. I was one of the kids who had to cut the tops off…using the old butcher knife Dad made from a saw blade…Nicks on my bony  knees and the cold made for a very sad little scrawny girl, I remember. We loved the ‘lasses Dad brought home, though. I can just picture it rolling slowly over the lip of the jar, bubbles trapped in the thick amber liquid stretching into nothing as it was poured over a chunk of butter from our Jersey cow…Stirred together and slathered on a hot biscuit….Ummmm, good !
 
Mama was a tall reserved English sort of woman with lovely ash blonde hair worn in a crown of braids, and Daddy loved her so much. His family had a very raucous type of humor, and I think this love for Mom kept him sorta calmed down. A scary bout with “Kidney colic ” one Fall day while we were picking cotton in a field over across the Big Ditch was the first hint of the dread Leukemia that was to take the life of this handsome blue eyed man at the age of 34.
 
They had 8 kids in their ‘short ‘ marriage , and Mom was 3 months pregnant when Daddy  left us…She didn’t tell him, as she thought he had enough to worry about…I know he went to Heaven, because he was shown a wonderful vision of it  just before he died. He was a ‘storytelling’ man, and I remember him describing everything he saw because Mama just couldn’t seem to see what he was pointing out to her so excitedly…
 
Ma kindly allowed us to move in with her in that big log house, and we stayed there till brother Paul was born, then Mama used the money left over after Dad’s year long stay in hospitals and in Dr’s offices to buy a 5 acre farm with a nearly new house. Needless to say she was suffering terribly from losing the love of her life, but she knew she had to keep on for our sakes…and Dad’s image was kept so perfect and alive that it seemed like a natural way to live for us little ones…
 
The man that owned the tenant farm set it up for us to get a check each month from the country, and Mama made it last so we always had just about everything we needed. When electricity came to our area she got the house wired and bought the fridge and other appliances one at a time on the payment plan. Since she never got even $100.00 a month for us 9 kids –nothing for herself–that took some planning. Maybe money from each year’s calf she always sold as veal, working for others hoeing, etc helped her get them. She canned every single thing that was edible, from Poke sallet to soup mix, and we always had plenty to eat. It was not unusual for her to can 2 or 3 hundred quarts each of snap beans ,tomatoes…and even blackberries. I remember me and her picking those big swamp blackberries around the edge of the new ground while big sister Joyce took care of the little ‘uns  on a quilt in the shade. Yes, she canned everything for the cold winter months including the best ripe tomato relish in the world, and all sorts of jam and jellies .

Eating ‘soup beans’ was not a problem with  her delicious skillet of cornbread and some tomato relish or chow chow to go with it. All the canning was done in a cold pack canner until she managed to save up enough money to buy a pressure cooker. Having heard tales of them blowing up, she sent all of us outside for safekeeping. Said she looked up later and every one of us kids was peeking around the doorways. Guess we wanted to see the mess if it blew up!
 
Since Mama had a ” Sweet tooth ‘, we never wanted for cakes, pies, biscuit pudding, or delicious fried pies. One of my favorite memories is walking up the hill on cold winter evenings after school – We rode the 3 rd bus –  and going in through the kitchen so I could find out what we were having for supper. The windows would be fogged over from the supper simmering on the stove, and Mom would be sitting there by the coal oil lamp , reading while she waited for us. On favored days the table would be centered by the biscuit plate piled high with fried apple pies. I can just taste them, they were so good! Each pie covered half of the chipped old plate, and there was enough for every one of us to have a whole pie…
 
Oh yes, I remember Mama, and how very hard she struggled to keep her bunch of kids together. Church and doses of ‘peach tree tea ‘ kept us on the straight and narrow, and if I do say so myself, there aint a bad’un in the bunch! Well, some of us have a bit of Daddy’s ‘meanness’ in us !*grin*  All of us own our homes, and we’ve raised a bunch of smart grandchildren. Counting in laws and outlaws there are about 125 descendents from that one couple!
 
Mama lived on for many years after Dad died, but she never got over grieving for him  and I think she was just marking time till she could join him …When she died, it was just one day’s date later, and in the same month that Dad died…I think he came for her, because she had a little smile on her face, even as she lay in her coffin…R.I.P…..Myrtle Blanch Buntin Winchester

I woke up this morning and looked out the window to a gray day…makes me wish I’d appreciated Sunday’s sunshine more than what I did. Oh well, when life hands you dreary Fall days…make soup! Plenty of beef in the freezer to simmer tender, then mix in some potatoes – cut like short french fries for some reason –  a couple beef bouillon cubes for extra richness, some stir fry veggies , a pinch of dried carrot tops for fun, a few of my Ma’s white multiplying onions and we’ve eatin’ fine enough for the Squire! If hubby doesn’t object I add a can of diced tomatoes…then when I eat MY soup I add coffee creamer and a little milk, like my Mama did…Crusty cornbread goes mighty good with this, or soda crackers….

The Grand kids purely love my homemade soup, but they thought I’d flipped the time I served the soup and there was a big soup bone in it. Johnny said ” GANNY! You give me and Amber Sammy’s bone ?” I explained that it was a soup bone and gave it extra good flavor ..AND Sammy loved cooked bones. Then I ladled the soup stone out and he really began to wonder about my cooking! “Ganny! You feed me and Amber ROCKS ?” I told them it was an ancient Indian soup stone sent to me by a really old man in Utah.

While I ladled out the soup to cool a bit I told them the story as it was told to me….Old Fred’s granddaughter found this and other soup stones in an Indian cave high up on a cliff side out West. They just happened to notice the opening one afternoon late when they were hiking and the setting sun shone on the mouth of the cave. They went back the next day with ropes and climbed down into the cave. Found all sorts of seed sealed up in clay pots, etc….just like the owners walked off one day and didn’t come back…..And I told them how my elderly friend was still growing vegetables from these seed… including some HUGE dark red beans that vine almost like the one Jack climbed to get to the Giant’s castle. Yep…Eating soup at Granny’s house can be quite an adventure….Too bad they won’t remember stuff like this when they are grown. Guess I’ll have to write it all down, huh ?

I made a mincemeat pie to take to the family dinner and I made the mincemeat for it plus I canned several pints. I ‘m the only one I know of that makes it from scratch, and since I don’t have a recipe there is a LOT of tasting involved to get it just right. Basically you cook a lot of dried prunes, raisins, apricots, apples and peaches, and mash all but the raisins and mix it together then add some fatty type of pork that has had the fat and bones removed…I used neck bones. Also I added oranges and grated peel plus some juice. You cook it awhile then sweet sour it and add some allspice…Simple….NOT! I have to taste and taste and taste to get it right. I finally let the pan cool and refrigerated it overnight because all that tasting had sundered my taste buds! Verdict was that it tasted just like Mamas did…which is good enough for me…but then they don’t remember how hers tasted exactly. One man who’s 73 said he remembered tasting home made mincemeat once when he was a little boy. Guess it’s just one of those dying arts that is simple to make if you know how.

No family dinner is complete without a big bowl of soup beans in memory of the ones Mom did and some crusty cornbread to sop them up with…and the turnips Joyce brought were seasoned just right, and tasted great to someone who seldom thinks to cook these now expensive roots. Did you ever think you’d see plain old turnips selling for more than a dollar a pound? Sis was given these by a gardening friend, luckily. Oh we had meat too – chicken fixed a couple of ways….AND more desserts, AND baguettes of hot french bread….Sweet tea….coffee. I can assure you, nobody went home hungry. Matter of fact, theres a tiny dab of biscuit pudding left in my fridge and some of that fine coconut cake.

I was talking to some folks about swinging on grapevines back in the good old days when we made our own fun instead of depending on a Game Boy to keep us occupied. For some reason I didn’t get into grapevine swinging too much. Think I was too little when we lived in that big log house at the edge of the woods where the vines grew. Brother Robert had a really good one but wouldn’t let us little ones use it because he could swing out over a real deep ‘ditch’. He made the mistake of talking about it at the one room school we went to and some of the big boys followed us home to see it. When Robert insisted on taking his turn swinging on it they pushed him off and he fell so hard he lost his breath. When he got able to come home he told Mom and Dad about it…..Did Daddy ever get mad! He took the chopping axe over there and cut it off so high up they couldn’t reach it any more….He tore up ‘the playhouse’, so to speak, but may have saved a life….

I CAN remember shinnying up young hickory trees and bending them over …When that got ‘old’ we rode them down off a steep bank into the road….on Red Hill….For some reason there was a very  teep hill near the end of our driveway that was just as red as could be.  Mama said it sure was hard to get that red clay out of our clothes……On the scrub board with lye soap, of course. We moved from there when I was 8 or 9 so I didn’t get into that scrub board routine too much…just washed out baby diapers as needed after Betty was born….Sis and I set the pan we used on a chair.

We were sitting around talking about the old days one time after we had grown up and Mother let slip that she used to climb the big pecan tree in their front yard {It’s still there but Mama died in 1984 }, climb off on the roof of their big log house and into the upstairs window! I was shocked of course, and asked her why she fussed at us kids for doing stuff like that if SHE had done it! She got a loving look on her face and said ” I was afraid you would get hurt.” Awwww…..

Ma’s  ‘Mr Buntin” as she called him bought that farm in 1900 and built the finest log house I ever saw for his first wife…Susie Boaz. He dug a well, but it had minerals in it, so he dug a big cistern. He nailed planks into a vee and made gutters to catch water off the huge shingled roof. I never knew of it going dry, and the farmer that bought the land after the family left said he thought he never would get that cistern filled in! I have SO many fond memories of that cistern, and how Ma kept a syrup bucket down in there on a thin rope that held sweet milk and a pat of butter in the hot summer time….
 
Not long ago I read a history of the county, and back in the old days there were some famous spa’s build  there because of the mineral water. That’s my Grandpa alright….fillin’ in the mineral well instead of building a spa, and selling the herd of fainting goats he traded for just because his kids were about to give them a nervous breakdown! NOW folks want those weird old goats.