Posts by MaryCarol

We used to pick strawberries for the neighbors who took the day’s pickins to the train station and shipped them North. One time they wanted us to pick them with long stems, so the rich folks could hold the berries by the stem to eat them. One time they had us cap them as we picked, as those berries were headed for a jam factory. We got the princely sum of 10 cents per quart that day! As a general rule we got a nickle a quart, and picked half of the row on each side of us as we crawled down the row. Once some ‘Big boys’ were picking and one of them only picked the large berries and left the rest, of course those he shared a row with had to clean the row. We were glad he didn’t come back!
 
When my Mama was a teenager the neighborhood kids went and stayed with a family that raised a LOT of berries. I guess they stayed all the time the crop was in and made money for clothes and other needs. Mama said they had a real good time visiting with other teens. I bet she took her guitar along and entertained them. She used to play and sing at Play Parties in the neighborhood, and won prizes, such as a string of pearls and some nylons. She sang folk songs like “Beautiful brown eyes, Great Speckled Bird, Red Wing…..stuff like that…
 
You’d think I’d had enough berry picking, but I still love to head out to the patch and pick a few. One Spring I’d had some serious surgery done, but I went pickin’ anyhow. I must have been a sight, crawling, sitting down, standing up and bending over to pick….walking on my knees. When I got tired and went to pay up they told me I’d picked way yonder more than I thought I had…I was so amazed I said ” That’s got to be wrong, I can’t pick that many berries!” They had a good laugh and showed me the scales. None went to waste, I make freezer strawberry jam…and once you’ve tasted that no other strawberry jam is considered. I found a recipe that takes less sugar and I’m anxious to try it.
 
But I’ll surely make some shortcake first….While hubby shakes up the cream in a jar I make a pancake like deal…adding a dab of sugar, coffee creamer, vanilla, and butter shortening to self rising White Lily flour. While this is cooking in a ‘buttered’ skillet with a lid, I cap the berries, mash them and add sugar. Start to finish it takes just a few minutes.. The cream is thick by the time I’m done and I add sugar and a dab of vanilla and stir it up….It’s a good thing.
 
Yes, we wore those old slat bonnets when we didn’t have a straw hat….Not a breath of fresh air could get back to your face wearing one of those things! Mama made hers out of a bleached white feed sack, and I don’t know where she got the cardboard for the slats, shoe box, maybe. I understand today’s bonnet makers use slats cut from a milk jug. They’d still have to be taken out for washing, though. That’s why the back of the slat slot was unsewn…Ah, the good old days !

I picked cotton when I was a little share croppers daughter, and let me tell you…..It’s a mercy the machines do it all now. It’s picked and baled right there, and hauled away in big trucks. Cotton farming has come back in a big way in the area of Weakley County,TN where I grew up, and it makes my fingers twitch just driving by the fields! Farmers have bee hives setting out to pollinate the flowers, they look like okra or Althea/Rose of Sharon blooms. I buy honey processed over that way from cotton and soybean fields and it is delicious.
 
When you watch Sally Fields and those other movie stars picking cotton they hold the boll with one hand and tug the cotton out with the other, one lock at a time. WHO taught them how to pick cotton ? What you do is take 2 rows through the field, and you don’t straighten up except every once in awhile to see if your back still works….or go to the wagon to weigh up….toting that big sack is not easy. All day long you pull a heavy canvas cotton sack through the middles …. ‘Course the part that drags on the ground has a layer of tar on it so the cloth don’t wear out so fast. Both hands are going at once alright, but each hand picks a boll, fingers splayed out just right to go between the hard, pointed cotton boll sections. Imagine the hangnails! After your hand is full of cotton you cram it down into the slanted opening of the sack and reach for another boll. Running into a patch of cockle burrs is special torture…as it is so hard on the hands, clothes, etc….Cotton bolls pick up the burrs and you have to take time to pull them off…
 
We had plenty of experience before we had to pull those long canvas sacks… because Daddy fixed us up tow sacks with a piece of rag for a strap. Wonder what the Childrens Services folks would have said if they had seen us picking cotton, at 5 , 6, 7 or 8 years of age ? By the time we got old enough to really do any work my handsome blue eyed daddy was dead of Leukemia at age 34. Our farming days were over. .
 
After the cotton was weighed, it was dumped out into the wagon that had high sideboards added. When it was full or the fields were clean, the mules were hitched to it and it was driven to the cotton gin and sold. If it was a big field, by the time you finished picking it, the other side of the patch was ready to be picked again . Mama said the first year she and Daddy were married they planted cotton. By the time she had hoed the patch over it was ready to start again. Imagine waking up every morning knowing that after you cooked breakfast, washed the dishes, milked the cow, and put the soup beans on the back of the stove to finish cooking real slow, that you had to go hoe in that hot sun EVERY day! Arrgghh !

Yep , I can just smell them cookin’, and reading about those ‘bisquits’, as some call them , sure made me hungry. And it also brought back memories of when I was a little girl growing up on a farm in West Tenn. Mama used to use a wooden dough bowl in the same way your folks used a piece of wax paper. She’d sift a mound of flour into it. Using her fist she would make a dent in that cone of flour, add a blob of lard and some milk then work it up with her fingers into dough. This was dumped out onto a biscuit board that was always kept upside down on the flour barrel .[ So she could use the back of it for a work surface…] She rolled out the dough and cut it out with a dented Pet milk can with one rim cut off…I mean it was sharp! That old can had been used so many years it was dark colored and had many dents and creases. It had cut out a many a light fluffy biscuit and delicious tea cake made with rich sweet milk from our cow and orange yolked eggs from our own hens.

Oops ! Better get back to those biscuits! Mom had some old black dented up tin pans that she baked biscuits and tea cakes in. She would put the biscuits in them in tight rows, then dip the back of a stirring spoon in lard or in the fat from frying bacon or sausage, and this was rubbed on each biscuit top before sliding them into the oven. Now,when I began cooking, I just melted a gob of lard in the pan and turned each biscuit over in it. Mama thought this was wasteful, but then she kinda resented the fact that the kids liked my biscuits better than hers. I told her I didn’t put any grease in the biscuits, so it all evened out. Don’t know how this worked but it did. One thing I couldn’t argue with though, I couldn’t stand that dough squishing up in my fingers so I stirred the dough up in a pan…and usually left that pan for her to wash! [Guess we called that pan a ‘stewer ‘ back then..or maybe I used an aluminum puddin’ pan…] After we put the pans of biscuits in the oven we would scrape the rest of the flour into the sifter and lay it, the rolling pin and the little Pet milk can in the big biscuit bowl and put it down in the flour barrel…

Touching back on those tea cakes….Mercy, were they good ! If it weren’t for the fact that I would eat too many I would keep those crispy taste treats on hand all the time. We used to sit there eating the hot cookies as fast as Mama could bake them till she’d finally run us all out of the kitchen, including my handsome blue eyed Daddy. Otherwise we wouldn’t have any for snacking on later on. Sometimes she would be in a hurry and just roll the cookies out and cut them with the big butcher knife Daddy made from part of a saw blade. When I see that knife in my kitchen drawer I am reminded of those wonderful days of long ago, when Daddy and his little stairstep children clustered around that big table he made and ate those delicious hot cookies. It’s such a treasured memory, as we were always laughing and happy at those times.

We didn’t have a radio till I was about 9…Got our first TV after I got  married at 17.  We got electricity in my area in  1947 or 8….Our minds were much clearer and ‘cleaner’ then, and one  rarely heard of meanness…NO mass killings, rapes, child molesting that  we knew of. Folks visited more back then and passed on the neighborhood  news at quilting bee’s, First Monday around the Courthouse Square,  etc…And some had battery powered radios…Daddy used to hitchhike, ride the bus or drive his team to his hometown 20 miles away sometimes on Mule Day, and he could visit with his family and pick up all sorts of news of  the world. He also swapped work with neighbors and heard news that way. Traveling salesmen were common..Watkins, Jewel Tea, etc…plus the  Peddler Man..

We had books at school, nothing but the Bible at home…which nobody but  Mom read. Sometimes she would get magazines and I remember her reading  an interesting story to Daddy after we’d gone to bed. I knew not to let  them know I was awake or they’d have fussed  at me or maybe spanked me, so I lay there in bed quiet as a mouse and listened to the story  unfold…She’d read till her throat got sore then do another segment the  next night after all was quiet. I don’t know why she didn’t read to the  entire family, but maybe she and Daddy needed a quiet time alone away  from all us goomers. When I was about 10 she subscribed to the Nashville Banner newspaper and I went from reading the comics to reading most of  the paper.

We lived in a really big log house at this time..[I was about 7]…Two  big rooms with a dogtrot hall between and a lean to kitchen…Mom and dad would sit by the fireplace, lamp light helped out by the fire as it  snapped and crackled….There was two big iron bedsteads in that room  across from the fire place and us girls slept in one, Mom and Dad in the  other, usually with a baby in there with them so they could keep it  warm. The older boys slept across the hall in an unheated room..I  remember so well laying there on that feather bed, while Mama read the  story of a man lost in a wintery wilderness…..Oh no ! He fell through  the ice in a stream and was about to freeze to death.. Talk about  riveting ! The man found a cabin and broke into it and found food and  firewood so he was saved. Mom never did know that I was listening…faras I know. She loved to read…one time she said she got as hungry for  something to read at times as she got for food.. Our entire family  turned into read a holics. Course Daddy had to whip me more than once  to get me to learn to read, and I DID hide my books a few times…..[I  know now I had attention deficit, still do…but it hadn’t been invented  at that time…] Then they had to whip me to make me do my chores instead of reading….Jeannie T

We went on a rare visit to my Dad’s parents when I was a child…They had the most amazing thing , called Electricity! There were light bulbs hanging down on cords in the middle of the room, and when the string was pulled they gave so much light it just about blinded you. In the kitchen was a big white box set up on legs, called a ‘fridge’. After dinner the grownups went out to set in the cool shade of the Big Catalpha tree, and we decided we’d look around a bit in the now empty house…Ah, the FRIDGE. Opened the door and stood there enjoying the nice cold air seeping into the room…UH OH! THAT SUCKER STOPPED RUNNING! Now what?….Ah !Theres a button that says ‘push to start.” Just what we need…..We took turns pushing that butter and praying…all the time having one of the culprits peeking around the door to check on the adults. I mean, if Aunt Pearl even suspected we had broke her fridge…….Nothing on this earth could have saved us from that big laughing woman.. We pushed that button, prayed, sweated….and NOTHING HAPPENED! We looked at each other, carefully closed that door and ran out of that kitchen like our shimmies were on fire!  Now came the hardest part…waiting around all afternoon for Aunt Pearl to find out we had broke her ‘fridge’….Waited, and waited , and waited. Then it was time to go home and I just couldn’t leave without checking that fridge…Would you believe that sucker was running just fine ? That sure ruined a trip to Mammy and Papa’s ….

I’ve heard famous/rich folks say that the happiest days of their lives was when they were poor and just getting started in life. It amazes me the differences my older sister and I saw in our growing up years. She’s of the ‘Glass half empty mind set, and I’m of the ‘glass at least half full’ way of thinking. She says we never had any fun growing up. I recall playing ‘swinging statues’ or hide and seek in the dusky dark, with crickets and Whippoorwills doing their nightly thing. The game was often called for lack of ‘hiders’ because they had decided to fill a jar with lightening bugs to admire as they dropped off to sleep – scratched up feet and ankles stinging from being scrubbed clean in the wash pan before going to bed.
 
We also had enough kids to play a game of ball. Of course it seems we would have a fairly decent ball and a stick for a bat, or the other way around. Spirited games would continue till one of the big kids hit the ‘ball’ too hard and knocked it a bug hunting, as my Mother in law used to say. After halfway looking through the weeds and bushes in the edge of the cow pasture where we played sometimes the baseman would get mad and go to the house….there went the ball game! And mercy, did we roam! I would drag the kid that could barely walk and Joyce would sling the baby on her hip and away we would go to the woods, fields, gullies or pond. Any snake unlucky enough to cross our path was sent quickly to ‘Snake Heaven’. We didn’t know what the deadly stinging snake looked like that our parents warned us about, so we just killed all snakes just in case. You couldn’t have hired us to touch one of the critters. If only we knew back then that sister Reba was scared of snakes, OR that sister Joyce is scared of mice. What wonderful fun we could have had ! Oh yeah, I thought we had a fine childhood except for losing Daddy when I was nearly 10….Jeannie T

Strangely enough keeping one of those cute little Chihuahua’s does appear to help asthma sufferers.. When I was growing up they were known as ‘Asthma dogs,’ and folks swore they helped.. Went to great length’s to get them, as they were hard to come by back when most folks kept beagles or hound dogs to help put meat on the table and act as a watch dog against varmints. The 4 legged kind as well as the 2 legged ones that roamed the countryside during those hard times. Few people in our farming community had a ‘lap dog’. I don’t know the official thoughts on how this works, but whatever seems to help, I say. Have read about it but it’s forgotten..
 
Remember rabbit tobacco? The rabbit tobacco made me think of us having ear aches when we were little. Daddy made a corncob pipe, filled it with rabbit tobacco and blew the warm smoke in our ear. No, I don’t think it worked very well, and Mama said later on it made Daddy sick. He was a nonsmoker. One of his remedies was to put one end of a green persimmon sapling in the fireplace and catch the sap that bubbled out in a spoon and pour this warm liquid in my ear. Another remedy he used was chewing goldenrod weed roots for an upset stomach. I’ve heard of that several times. One Spring he was in the house, so must have been sick…I was about 4 or 5. He told us to go get him some Goldenrod roots.. I remember they looked like white fishing worms….[I know later on in the season they get a purple tinge…] He told us where some were growing on the side of a field. We were rather bemused, as you might think, but if our parents said do it we did it…Don’t taste too bad, but until I have to resort to eating roots I intend to rely on Tums or  ‘acid’ pills.

Yep, I’m craving  new peas and potatoes. Buying my vegetables at the busy Farmer’s market is surely easier than gathering them from the garden. Much more expensive… but needs must. As I scraped and peeled plump red and white potatoes today I thought of how good they were going to taste, and of how much I used to enjoy ‘scrabbling’ under the vines to get those first new potatoes … back when we gardened a lot.

Their delicate skin slips off under your thumb as you rub away the clinging dirt…No need to pull up the entire plant, just run your fingers gently around in the loose dirt till you’ve found enough for a mess .What a beautiful red some of them are, and I love the creamy white cobblers…No wasteful peeling, just scrape the delicate skin away and use the paring knife’s tip on the ‘eyes’. Simmer in a little salted water for a few minutes then add the cup of English peas you’ve shelled out….Or use frozen ones..Taste for salt, because it is about impossible to salt them when they’re done..

A knob of butter keeps the ‘taters from boiling over, and adds a wonderful taste along with a touch of ‘gold’ to the broth….When almost tender I tip in some coffee creamer, and add milk mixed with a big spoonful of flour…Black pepper is sprinkled on top….then it’s
simmered till thickened and done….Ladle into bowls, and wait a bit for it to cool. Cornbread cooked crusty brown in the old iron skillet goes mighty good with this , and some ‘streak o lean’ bacon won’t hurt….Pour yourself a glass of iced tea outta that stoneware pitcher of Mammy’s,  and set down to some good eatin’…After you give thanks for the taters, of course !

Mama didn’t like English peas, but Daddy did, so we had a double row through the garden every Spring. They were planted with about 6 inches of space between the rows, and chicken manure was strewed up and down in the center space. When they started growing tall we stuck brushy clippings down for them to cling to, and the two rows kinda helped hold each other up. When they first started bearing there wasn’t enough for a mess for our big family, so Mama made dumplings on them. She’s would a done anything to please her handsome blue eyed husband..Douglas Matthew Winchester….R.I.P, Daddy

My Daddy was a handsome blue eyed man who delighted in his growing family, and loved being a farmer. He always planted a big old vegetable garden for Mama to can hundreds of jars of food for the winter…but put off ‘working it out’ just a long as he could. That ornery old mule delighted in stepping on the largest tomato plant…the finest green cabbage. Yep, my Pop lost his religion on garden tilling days!

Daddy met Mama when his cousin Raymond brought him along on a blind date for my Aunt Zula. My parents took one look at each other and fell in love for the rest of their lives…making Raymond and Aunt Zula very unhappy, I was told. Mom was separated from her first husband…Drinking and womanizing seemed like good enough excuses to her for a divorce, but the Baptist church didn’t, and ‘Churched ‘ her…I am sure Daddy thought it was a big joke, and I know Mama didn’t let it bother her. She was saving money to pay for her divorce, Daddy didn’t want to wait, so helped pay the $15.00 legal fees…

We were tenant farmers/share croppers, and Dad worked his way up from farm to farm, always bettering himself. Meanwhile he and Mom were saving money to buy their own place. Little kids went to the field to pick and hoe cotton and gather corn when they were 5 or 6, doing what we could..Our cotton sack wasn’t the long heavy canvas ones our parents used, but a tow sack with a strap made of an old belt or rag. Child welfare workers never came around. Guess everyone was in the same boat back in the early 40’s. I don’t think it hurt us to work hard. Good bone and muscle builders.

I can assure you they didn’t have to beg us to eat like parents do now…just put the delicious home grown food on the table and we ate it..fast but mannerly. I never heard a single child complain because they didn’t like the food.. Mama was a good cook, and we made a habit of eating whatever she felt like cooking. Custard pies for dessert made everyone happy, or a blackberry cobbler made from those berries Mama and I picked down in the edge of the new ground.

The life of my fun loving Daddy was cut short by Leukemia, just days before my 10th birthday. He was only 34 years old, and most of his siblings lived on into their 80’s. We all know theres no justice in this….Mama kept him very much alive in our minds and I think that was a wonderful thing for her to do. It may have helped her bear the terrible loss. She lived on for many years, but seemed to be just marking time until she could once again be with her Douglas. She always said his name in such a loving way….Jeannie T

Ma (my Grandmother) looked so natural in her apron. It’s bib was generous enough to protect her bodice pretty well, and it covered the front of her skirt from one side to the other and almost to the hem, which was above her ankles, but definitely below her knees. I have a picture of her standing in front of a young tree at my Aunt Clyde’s house. In one shot she is standing ‘nicely’ and in another one made seconds apart she has one foot behind her,  propped against the tree. She was over there helping to kill hogs, and had on those long brown cotton stocking females used to wear in the cold weather and her long apron to protect her dress, of course. Her hair was black as a crow’s wing, worn in braids around her head. No gray hair till she was in her late 60’s, Indian blood, you know.
 
Papa had been dead many years by this time, and she lived alone. When anyone killed hogs she went along to help and they gave her some scraps of meat as they did everyone that came in to help and maybe a sack of sausage.. Now, Ma ate everything on that pig but the squeal according to Mama, so might have gone home weighed down with parts the average family would give to the dogs. She drew the line at chitlins, but ate the ears , tail, and made a fine stew of the innards like kidney, heart, lungs, sweetbreads, etc, etc. If they gave her the heads because they didn’t want to fool with them she would make mincemeat, souse meat, something called head cheese, best I remember. She would pickle the ‘trotters’ and can meaty chunks of backbone and other scraps of lean meat. Widders didn’t get food stamps, commodities, or hubby’s pension back then, and the neighbors helped them out.
 
 
Ma even canned extra sausage, and I remember Mama (my Mother) doing that too. When we made sausage she used sacks she’d sewed up ahead of time from bleached flour or feed sacks or good pieces of well washed bed sheets. Some of this sage and pepper laced meat was hung in the smoke house alongside the hams and shoulders, and some of the sausage was fried almost done then canned. She would pour some of the hot grease into the jar of sausage cakes and prop it upside down but on it’s side a bit so the entire inner lid was coated with fat. This was then stored in a cold place until it was time to open and cook for later breakfasts. It was dug out of the jar and put in a skillet and cooked till well done. Gravy was made from the grease. I’ve read that any type of meat can be preserved that way, as long as there are no bones in it. Just cook pork steak or whatever, remove any bones and layer it in a crock with melted fat covering all sides of the meat – If the meat touches it will ruin. It has to stay in a cold place. One time Mama canned some tenderloin this way, but usually we ate all of that right away. Mama didn’t have much appetite after fooling with that meat all day, but us 9 kids were hungry. Guess folks just put extra meat in the deep freeze now days.
 
Gettin plumb off the subject here, but I must tell you that Mama would just about always cook tenderloin for supper on hog killing day, as it didn’t keep very well and we had no fridge..Or electricity to run one. She would fry big beaten slabs of tenderloin that had been dipped in flour, salt and a wee bit of pepper. Yummmmm! I can picture it today….that crust just melting off in little clumps of gravy like coating….Guess she fried it in lard then added a little water to steam it fork tender….My goodness, I wish I could set down to that old oil cloth covered table for one of those feasts again!  Mama’s cooking for God now, though ..and He’s not liable to send her back to us…….Jeannie T

Mama would season the pork sausage up with black pepper and salt, sage and a tiny bit of red hot peppers (Always had little kids) then taste a bite of that raw sausage to make sure she had it seasoned right…..YUCK!

We didn’t see how she could stand it, but no time to fire up the cook stove and fry a little cake. Most of it was stuffed into casings Mama had sewn up days ago and then hung in the smokehouse. Part of it was fried almost done then canned in quart jars for a quick breakfast when the stove wood was wet. The jars were stood upside down but on a slant
so all the meat was covered with the grease that cooked out of it and maybe a little of the fresh lard if needed. I think it was ‘sealed’ like that on a slant so there wasn’t so much fat to go through to get the sausage cakes out. I’ve heard that you can keep meat layered in lard in a cold place, just make sure none of the meat touches….

Seems like Mama canned some tenderloin that way one time, makes me hungry just to think of it. I wish I could cook tenderloin like our Mama did…seems like it had a thick crust on it, and tasted better than anything. I can’t duplicate it…but then I’d have to start with home grown tenderloin…fed the way Daddy fed his pigs. He was such a dab hand at curing ham that neighbors begged him to sell them any extra hams. Don’t know what he used to smoke them, but he was good at anything he tried.

When folks talk about bread pudding it reminds me of the delicious BISCUIT puddins’ Mama made when we were growing up. I’ll put the rough recipes in here in case anyone wants to try them.
 
Mama’s plain biscuit pudding
 
Crumble up leftover homemade biscuits…Make a thick slurry by adding several eggs, sweet milk or canned, more sugar than you would think because biscuits aren’t sweet, and a little vanilla. Taste. Bake at 350 till set and lightly brown – 30 minutes or more, depending on the pan. Mama used one of those deep pans we called puddin pans. Slice to serve, hot or cold…Great either way…Some folks use a lemon sauce poured on this. Just whatever you would use on bread pudding…
 
Sunday Biscuit Puddin’
 
Slice and toast leftover home made biscuits. Use like you would vanilla wafers and bananas in your favorite banana pudding recipe. Just use the toasted biscuit slices. Add meringue on top and brown. I’ve never used pudding mix in this…so don’t know about that.

MY version;
I make custard from scratch, as they say…starting out with 1 cup of sugar and 2 heaping tablespoonfuls of flour, stirred together. I then separate at least 6 eggs and add the yolks, cleared of all bits of white…Then I stir in Half and Half or regular sweet milk…but if I use milk I add some coffee creamer when it is hot…Stir and taste to see how much milk to add…At least a quart ……Put on the stove and stir till it is thick….add some vanilla to taste…{Sorry about these measurements }You don’t want it real thick, so it can soak into the biscuits…Put together like a banana pudding but using the toasted biscuit slices only. Bake long enough to brown the meringue .I add a little vanilla to the whites…..then
sugar after it gets frothy.
 
Matter of fact, we greatly prefer banana pudding made with toasted biscuits to those made with vanilla wafers or graham crackers. Now folks, I don’t know how this would taste made with canned biscuits….the mind boggles. I use self rising White Lily flour – unbleached if possible. – add about a tsp. of sugar…put plain Crisco in the mix, and melt butter shortening in the pan to roll the biscuits in….I don’t even have an approximate recipe for this, since I just dump stuff together…A biscuit recipe would be on the sack…I use plain canned milk for the liquid, maybe adding a little water…I just wing it , and 9 3/4 times out of 10 it is just right…don’t have to add more milk or flour…There must be a great ‘angel cook’ looking over my shoulder! I do cornbread that way, also…I guess the fact that I have been cooking since I was 9 years old might have something to do with it . Hope this turns out good for you…. In loving memory of my Mama…Myrtle Blanch Buntin Winchester.

Has your family got tried and true means of predicting the winter weather? One thing I remember is when you saw an old sow running back and forth with big mouthfuls of grass you knew it was going to turn off almighty cold…Cause that sow was making herself a good snug bed. All matters of ways are used to predict how cold the winter will be. The persimmon seed is only one of the ways oldsters used to predict the coming winters weather. You carefully and laboriously pry open a persimmon seed, taking care not to mess up the little shape inside. If it is a spoon shape you will have lots of bad weather and have to eat a lot of thin soup. It’s a fork this year, by the way, so we’ll have plenty of meat and stuff to eat. BUT, the birds and squirrels are fast depleting the supply of seeds, etc.

Usually the ribbon grass out front makes pretty plumes before the birds swoop in and ruin them. This year they ate the seeds and ruined the ‘plumes’ before they ever fluffed out. The big dog wood tree out back has NO seed left. Persimmon seed as a weather predictor? Don’t tell the little ones but that shape is just the new leaf ready to unfurl if the seed gets lucky and gets planted. If you feed persimmons to goats they will chomp up seeds and all,didja know that?

Other ways of predicting the weather? If squirrels have really, really bushy tails it means cold weather – if there are lots of wild fruits and nuts it will be a cold winter – if the squirrels build extra thick nests, again, cold winter. If the woolly worms have mostly black…Cold winter…If the black part in front of the brown band is wide, the ‘head’ of the winter will be cold…..Narrow brown band in the black…very cold winter….If tame rabbits grow unusually thick fur…cold winter….If corn has unusually thick shucks well out over the ends of the cob…cold winter….Seems like there is one that mentions whether hornets build their nests low to the ground or high in a  tree …. And some butterfly/moth larvae build their cocoons high or low depending on how cold the winter is going to be…Snow line, I suppose….I saw that one on TV , so it must be true !*grin*

There is some sort of rule about counting the fogs in August to predict how many snows we’ll have the next winter…I never think of counting those fogs till I read an article about predicting the winter weather and by the time anyone gets interested in that August is long gone !

My grandmother, Ma, used to keep her money in a tobacco sack pinned to her slip. One from Lane Bryant or more likely homemade out of flour sacks with built up shoulders. She went barefoot all summer  She had a lot of Indian blood/Melungeon, whatever, and her hair was black as a crow’s wing when she finally remarried at about 65 years of age. Not a single gray hair that I recall.
 
Ma wore dresses year round, as ladies never wore slacks, or heaven forbid…jeans ! She was never seen without that long apron that she wore pinned to her dress at the bib..’Less she was going to town to do her trading. I always thought she wore her apron this way maybe because she couldn’t stand that strap hanging around her neck, but have found out since then that other folks pinned the bib of their aprons on also at around that time. The white [or for everyday or hard working, denim, ] apron came down almost to the bottom of her dress and was used to carry chips from the woodpile to the kindling box, a few spears of wild asparagus she knew just where to find in the Spring. Apples from her Golden Delicious trees when she wanted to fry a few in early summer. And it was always handy to gather the eggs from her few hens, especially if she found a nest one of the wily hens had hid out in the bushes. I’ve seen her take the baby chicks from just such a nest and drop them gently into the pouch made from that long apron, and toll the loudly complaining mother to the safety of the hen house where a few grains of corn would make her content to give up her roaming ways…
 
Ma read the Bible a lot, but seldom went to church as she had no way. On Sunday she cooked very little and spent the day reading the Bible. Sis and I walked over there one time to see if she would teach us to crochet. I remember she was sitting there reading the Bible. Was quite surprised that we thought she would ‘sew’ on a Sunday! Said ” Every stitch you put in with your fingers on the Sabbath you will take out with your nose! ” We weren’t sure just how that would work, but it sounded pretty painful, so we visited awhile and went home. No fun around that place on Sunday! Visiting was alright, and sometimes her friend ‘Miss’ Daisy Brasfield walked up the shady lane to sit in the swing and talk quietly of neighborhood happenings. One time Mama sent us to visit the neighbor and sent along a dozen eggs to trade for different eggs to set. That way folks could try out other kinds of chickens and it wouldn’t cost them a penny in hard money..
 
Quilting was a way of life, and Ma ussd paper patterns to piece her quilts. Mama didn’t do it that way, so we were fascinated. One time Ma saved all the tobacco sacks my twin Uncles used up, dyed them red and made a quilt top out of them ! I remember it was rather pretty as the tobbaco pouches unraveled and ironed were rather oblong shaped. She loved to try new or unusual things.
 
Another thing folks did on Sunday afternoon was talk on the old wall phone, if they were lucky enough to have one. Ma spent a lot of time talking to her friend across the field – ‘Miss’ Annie Bell Culver – They talked just about every day and I’m sure they could hear the little clicks as others on the party line picked up their receivers to listen in. Oh yes, those party lines were something else. Everyone had a distinctive ring, and when it rang everyone would listen and someone could say, ‘Hmmmm, 2 longs and 1 short Miss Annie Bell is getting a call. ‘Of course you weren’t supposed to eavesdrop on your neighbors, but lots of folks did. Sometimes there would be so many snoops on the party line that folks would just go do their business dealings in person! Jeannie T, Ma’s ‘ pet ‘

Our favorite grocery store had the counter up front.  You told one of the men what you wanted and he would go get it and make a pile of stuff on the counter. The boxes of Kotex, the only available sanitary pad, were pre wrapped in newspaper and tied with string, probably by a wife, and put in the corner of the store on a top shelf, handy for shy ladies to just come in and point to what they wanted.- of course this wrapped box would have been put in a brown bag. Along one end of the counter stood big grass sacks full of coffee beans and other things I can’t remember, probably potatoes and dry beans.. A skimpy collection of fresh vegetables in the front window tempted those walking by. In summer, those sticky fly trap deals hung down here and there.
 
In the back of the store was the meat counter and you could get some crackers, bologna and hoop cheese set out on a piece of butcher paper. You could move over in the corner to eat or take it out to the hitch yard. Seems like a good lunch was a dime, then you could get a big RC cola for a nickle, and if you wanted a sweet you could get several different things that cost a nickle each…Moon Pie, big candy bar, potato chips, bag of peanuts ,etc…Yes , we sometimes poured peanuts down in the soda…Try it sometime !
 
The butcher cut off the amount of bologna you wanted from a big stick of it, then weighed it up, but one day Mama came home from town very well pleased. Seems the store had a contest, if you guessed correctly the amount of bologna the butcher had cut off for you it was free. Well, she guessed correctly and we had free sandwiches that night. I have always thought he let her win because he knew our financial deal, she said ‘no’ when I asked her about it, but if Mama had caught him cheating because he felt sorry for us he would have been in trouble! Nothing made her madder than having someone tell her they were sorry for us… Ah, the good old days.

Do you remember  the pride we had in a new oilcloth for the eating table ?…Much care was taken in choosing a pattern, and newspapers folded into pads or ‘pot lifters’ went under  hot dishes that were set on the table…Sooner or later someone would forget then Mama would sigh….She’d known it couldn’t stay perfect forever….The main reason for getting a new oil cloth though was that the pattern just got plumb wore off , plus there would be stains here and there …. Sometimes the sorghum molasses or  jelly jar would stick to it and when pulled off it took the top of the oilcloth with it…I doubt it cost very much to replace, but pennies were scarce back then..
 
My favorite memory of that big old table Daddy made for his growing family is what went on it…It was kept bare except for a few things like salt and pepper, but desserts and other things made ahead would be setting on it when we came home from school…We went in through the kitchen door and I was always happy when there was a big plate of fried pies setting on that table waiting for us..We got through with chores in record time on those nights

I think folks used any excuse to have a party back in the days before TV and other easy to come by entertainment, and I wish we could get back to that. In Mama’s day they had what was called “Play Parties , and they’d meet at someones house and play music and have a good old time. One time Mama won a pearl necklace for her guitar playing and singing, and another time a pair of nylons, back in the day when things like that were precious. We used to love it when she told us stories about the things that went on.

Our favorite was the time they went to a play party and stayed later than usual. Daddy took Mama home in the buggy then drove back to their farm. He was putting the horse in the barn when the sun came up. Papa didn’t raise no sissies. Daddy went to the field as usual but the horse got the day off. Papa had more sons than he did horses.

Mom’s blue eyes would sparkle and she’d laugh when she told how one neighbor ‘boy’ played the fiddle, but everything sounded like “Soldiers Joy”. As tales are won’t to do she went on to tell us how he got to thinking seriously about getting married, but was afraid he couldn’t afford it…So one month anytime he ate something he put a like amount in a barrel to see how much this mythical wife would cost him. He was unmarried till the day he died. an old man when first I saw him…Geez..he must have been 30 years old !

Yes, he WAS a mite pixilated. Decided he liked the name Sherman Carson, so just changed his name. Lived  alone in an old house stuck way back in the woods, no way to get to it but an old woods/farm road. We used to walk by there going to the one room country school..especially on days when the road was muddy, as walking through the woods and along the edge of the fields was easier.

On mornings when the stove wood was wet Mama made up biscuits as usual but she fried them in an iron skillet. She would take the stove lid off and set the skillet in the hole so it could get any heat the wet smoking wood produced. It’s easy to cook biscuits that quick and simple way. You put them in the melted butter shortening/grease and turn them over. Turn the heat down real low and cook, covered, about 10 minutes, or till brown on the bottom. I use the lowest possible heat. Use a fork to turn them over and put the lid on, cook on low for 5 to 10 minutes, or till brown and done. Sometimes I will turn them up on edge  and cook a bit longer if they are a little thick and don’t seem cooked through. Hubby calls them ‘stove tops,’ and  prefers them to baked ones. Uses more shortening, but surely doesn’t heat up the house like an oven does.

I cook corn bread that way too year around. Just mix as usual and pour into the melted shortening, turn heat down, cover, cook for about 10 minutes or till it is mostly ‘set’ on top. Flip with a spatula, or be a sissy and turn it out on a buttered plate then slide it back in the skillet. Cook another 10 minutes or till it is brown on top. You can flip it out on a plate to check. I use two eggs in mine instead of the usual one, and add about a level Tbl. of sugar. For milk I use straight canned milk or sometimes add a little water. I also put melted butter shortening in the mix, maybe a bit more than a recipe would call for. If you make it too thick the bread will be kinda dry and crumbly. Thick pancake mix texture is good, You can experiment, bake a little ‘hoecake’.

Cornbread and milk was all the supper Ma – Cora Barker Buntin –  ever ate. She had big goblets to drink from and that’s what she used for the milk and crumbled up cornbread. I think I saw her eat a regular supper one time, but she always cooked for us kids. I eat the bread and sweet milk as a snack lots of times, and always warm the cornbread first. It is also good heated, split and buttered and spread with peach preserves, hone, etc.