BUTTERNUT WISDOM

The garage roof and that of our neighbors were crusted again in their generous sifting of the powdered-sugar snow overnight, like two vast teacakes awaiting a Brobdignag fete on the lawn.   We've had the last week's foot or so still unsullied on both lawns, and only dark strips down the drive for the trash bin and tire tracks of my sweet neighbor who ferried me to Kroger last week.   It's hanging on like we live in Maine, and these insulated, warm days of sweaters and Beloved Pants have reminded me so of Gladys Taber's life and writings that I've been reading again some of the books.    I still have to look out the great leather file of her columns, collected by me in my first young married life, cooking and home-keeping like a New Englander in our wee house in the HOT South.     

I've just learned today that the columns that she published in Ladies' Home Journal back in the Thirties and Forties were a popular, comforting presence to GIs overseas during World War II.   I'd never thought of that---those sturdy, stalwart soldiers seeking such a tangible taste of Home in all that strife and uncertainty.   Can't you just see a recipe for Apple Crisp or Brown Betty hanging in the barracks beside those coveted pictures of Betty Grable, or folded in a worn wallet beneath a sweetheart's photo?   It's sweet to think that their cold bodies were warmed by the apple-roasts-by-the-fire of the Taber hearth, kindling memories and thoughts of HOME when time and place held so much to fear, and no comforts in sight.     I take that into my heart as the most wonderful thing I've learned in a long time.   Stillmeadow imaginations all the way to the Eastern Front, and her small domestic ramblings set down in such evocative stories as to bring them life and warmth in the cold, stark battlefields.  

It's the BUTTERNUT WISDOM columns that I have shelved away somewhere, clipped from the back of  Family Circle for years---engendered by my childhood's great longing for at least one Summer Camp in Maine, with swimming before breakfast, after sleeping in a comfortable lattice-array of cots on a screened Sleeping Porch.   AND TO HAVE BEEN THERE FOR GETTING SNOWED INNNNN!   That would have truly iced the cake.  

She woke to birdsong or snowcover, drank her strong stove-perked coffee, and stirred up some sourdough pancakes from her own decades-old starter. Butternut Wisdom, indeed. They're country books, walking-the-woods-with-a-dog books, pot-of-beans-simmered-all-day-while-writing-her-columns books. I love her line, "I think beans in any form are elegant."

The books are dated by their devices, their appliances, the cutting of wood for the kitchen stove and the hold-your-hand-in method of judging the oven temperature, as well as the political references and topics of the day, but I still re-read them and the great three-ring of her columns I clipped for years from women's magazines. There's a great peace to the telling, day-to-day happenings small as a new-found bird nest, and the immense quiet of a snowbound week with a full larder, a woodbox to hand, and the sure knowledge that no one could break the solitude before the melt.

The hometown eloquence of Mrs. Taber's stories stands so vividly still today, that generations of readers have sought their comfortable ramblings, for the recipes or the memories or the general aura of such a gentle life, lived so simply and with vigor and exuberance in her quiet way.   And Today's just the day, after the umpteenth sifting of snow onto everything in sight, and the 27 promising to drop its trousers to unspeakable chill---a warm cup and comfortable chair will be a perfect afternoon with snow sparkling through the sheers, and a book-load of Taber stories.   

PS:  I went to Amazon to see if many are still in print---our love of them still prospers:  The first one  I saw was Butternut Stories, with a price of $470.   What a lot of Beans that would buy!

YEA OR NAY?

 

  My friend Keetha used to say "Books are somehow more personal to me than clothes."    She writes of her reluctance to part with any book, no matter how old, how read or unread---even the ones she had tried repeatedly to read and lost interest or just downright disliked. I find myself echoing her quote above, for I’ve had a lifelong Love Affair with books---all kinds.

 I grab them up and covet them and browse shelves and stacks and tables at stores and sales, charity shops, people’s curbstones of set-out discards. No yard sale goes unscanned as we pass, for the piles and boxes of books yield treasures untold. And VERY few of my own can I ever part with. I’ll share, the borrowers will forget, and only I will have a small pang (or a lingering one---re: the childhood Nancy Drews) for the losing of them. I remember about three titles in all my reading history which I’ve actually walked to the trashcan and hurled them in.

And hurl I did, for only the most disgusting or Pure-D boring bear such treatment, and then, they have to go way over the top on either front, and those certainly did, thus the fling amongst the coffee-grounds and eggshells which buried the offenders and contaminated them beyond reprieve.

I do not believe that the books vs. clothes on the popularity scale is actually CAUSED by my own dislike of shopping---whether occasioned by the stern sales-ladies tsk-tsk sympathy for my Mother’s having been saddled with such a chunky little dumpling to buy garments for, or simply that I don’t care much WHAT I wear, so long as it’s clean and comfortable and modest as well as being reasonably appropriate for the occasion.

But oh, BOOKS!!! I like them---heavy, thin, wordy, spare, old and tattered, filled with margin-notes and highlighting, inscribed, autographed, well-read, or with that enticing smell of fresh pages, untouched before my hands, like a new morning brimming with promise. And so I’m with Keetha---with a small addition or two: Books are somehow way more personal (important, valuable, interesting, vital to my well-being) than clothes.

How do you feel about keeping/tossing/donating/sharing/parting with books? Are there some you’ve actually tossed in the trash?

DELIVER ME!!

I think we two ladies could get accustomed to all this stuff available for delivery to the porch.   We seldom order food, but other supplies are vastly welcome when the snow lingers for a week.    We have been  so accustomed to having to do all our own shopping and gathering, even though we have been in this city for exactly thirty-five years.   

Reminiscing from a long ago post back when LAWN TEA was new and I was just scattering thoughts to the inter-winds every day, it seems:  FROM EXACTLY TEN YEARS AGO:   

We had newspaper delivery when I was growing up, and after Sis was born, our milk was delivered by a milk-man in a snazzy little white truck.   And besides all the garden produce we planted and picked and canned and froze ourselves every Summer, and the "spoken for" quarter of beef, received from Mr. Neighbors' Meat Market in neat white parcels, all smoothed and creased with the artistry of those exquisite Japanese gift-wraps, we did belong for several years to the "RICH PLAN."   It was a sort of precursor to Schwann's and such, for they brought you frozen meats and vegetables, and oh, those frozen peach slices in deep cold January, rattling into a pie crust for a taste of Summer!

 





I loved looking at the crisp colourful pages of the thin "catalog" which pictured all that little toy food---the brightest peas in the history of peadom, the berries, each frozen whole in its little crust of ice, and filling your mouth with its popsicle Summer flavor, and all sorts of "made" stuff.   We'd always made every single item in our own kitchen---salmon patties and all our own pasta dishes and casseroles and breaded chicken, and there they were, each and every one more vivid and enticing than anything in the Betty Crocker book with its stylized outlines of fish and chops in their wee frilly toques and pictures of anemic pastel desserts less alluring than the spread at a Heckle and Jeckle picnic.

 

  Just the variety of Rich's shapes of pineapple, like little kitchen Legos, fascinated me with their infinite possibilities. 

 
   And those exotic Stuffed Crabs---our only exposure to the taste of crab was on occasional trips to the coast or Pensacola, and a day's "fishing" off the pier with a bit of chicken liver on a string, as the determined little crabs hung on to their catch long enough to be pulled up into the small dip-nets.   We'd have one night with a "crab dinner" in our motel kitchenette, cooking the little fellows in a huge pot Mother had brought from home (stuffed full of Sis's clothes and toys for economy of space in the trunk).  Those were messy affairs, with little hammers and the brought-along nut-picks and wet dishrags and bedtime showers for everyone after, especially after a day in the sun and 
sand---and the luxury of all that hot water at that beachside little motel, with nobody having to wait for the water heater to regroup and refill.

But The Rich Stuffed Crab, now---those were special, and Mother doled them out like ortolans, precious and rare.  They were probably a ratio of twenty parts bread crumbs to one part crabmeat, stuffed back into the strange little bony shells and baked til golden on top.  Those were my dreams of what Movie Stars probably ate, and I helped Mother make great occasions of the special dish---homemade tartar sauce and cocktail sauce and moon-smiles of lemon, and it seemed quite a grand affair, there at our little kitchen table so far removed from the ocean.  And no, I didn't eat them, but I was piqued by such fiddly, interesting ways to "do" food, even at that young age.  

What a silly morning, reminiscing about such far-ago things as crab shells and frilly little panties for lamb chops.  I'm sure that's partially where I got this odd tendency to gussy up food.  Oh. Well.  

Happy FEBRUARY to everybody!

CATCHING UP WATER

With all the dire weathercasts for us, then not us, then everybody maybe---I do note the prophesied nine days of Below Tens that show for our future.   And I've done quite an odd thing---age-old thing, and certainly quite familiar to our Deep South days in the fickle HOTTTT  Delta-that-got-ICE STORMS. 

I Caught Up Water.   That's what you called it, if a pump had a problem or you feared for the pipes---sure as the schoolbuses rolled for the first two snowflakes past a window, the whole populace seemed to break out the Colemans and buckets and pans and CATCH UP a reasonable amount.   I had bought five new food-grade clear 16-gallon tubs with snap lids for all the cleanup and extra storage after the Summer House-Wiring Fiasco, and I just now filled one upstairs and one down, just in case.   And OHHH, the Memories flooded in.

We shared a pump on the farm---four houses of us, all kin, and at one time there, we had five generations right there around one big lawn.   My first Mother-in-Law was an Angel on this Earth, and Taking Care was her middle name.   She was stringently dedicated to all the "power" supplies---the electricity, the big silver gas tanks which sat beside each house, and our wonderful water----hundreds-of-feet-deep icy fresh water, serving us all, with ONE Golden Rule:   When the thermometer was to reach 33 in the night, the pump power was turned off to prevent any kind of mishap with frozen pipes at any house, or at the pump itself.

And she turned it off herself and drained it.   Every time.  At six o'clock on those nights, you could see her out there in the floodlight, robe flying and house-shoes planted in the gravel, getting that thing all safe for another cold night.   She just didn't trust it if she couldn't see it, so she drained it and clicked that switch.   And since they'd had their suppers and baths before six most nights in the Big House, we of the other houses had to scramble through homework and hot water levels and whose-turn-is-it right about the time our Lasagna came out of the oven, or the dishes were half washed.  I love a morning bath, but six-thirty school buses wait for no one to bathe.   

Some awkward and unnecessary hurry-ups in those days, but we wouldn't take anything for the snug, comforting reliance on everything running smoothly because Ma had things in hand.   I hit the Family Lottery with that one.  She also called me every time there was a thunderstorm, to turn off the stove, because "heat draws Lightning."   And such were the tiny quirks and sayings that made her the beloved Grandmother fondly remembered and with three generations already named after her.  

And the story of the Ice Storm when four neighbors appeared at our door with a "Can you take us in?" and stayed six days, with our guys going back to their house to their only building with a warm bathroom to shower at night, picking up barrels of water for all our group, and we ladies going to Aunt's house by twos, and all of us nine sleeping cozily SOMEWHERE in that crowded house.

And the Great Mystery of how OUR house was the only one on that country road that the lights stayed on.   We could SEE the drooping cables and downed power-poles all the way to Clarksdale, and all our family around us was living by lamplight, but our LIGHTS DID NOT GO OUT.   I was even catering a wedding that weekend, with all the company in the house.    Those are stories for another time.  

WHO WILL REMEMBER?

Yesterday was a lovely sunbeam-filled day, with the bright-off-the-snow beams through the sheers onto our Birthday Table for Sweetpea's Mom.    We'd ordered some of her preferred dishes from our favorite Chinese place, and they picked it up on their way over.

Sweetpea came in wearing a favorite old camo shirt of her Ganner's---one she'd worn many times dragging the floor for sleepovers, and now just right for her grown-up self.   It set the conversation to family and who was who, and names---her sweet first Granddad, gone from us way to soon at thirty, decades before she was born.   And it all just spread to name after name in that big group back in Mississippi, and one charming coincidence that both my Mothers-in-law had practically the same name---Blanche White and Clara White---and so Sweetpea had two Grandmothers literally named "White White."

We just kept bringing up the names, and I had a little frisson of how Davidge must have felt reeling off the Jeriba line for Zammis' acceptance to the Holy Council of Draco. 

And so, this still-frosty eight-degrees morning, and especially after reading MISS MERRY'S  post of her own research, and her entreaties for Identifying-them-while-you-still-can,   I went back and read over a post here, from exactly fifteen years ago, hoping that it would inspire folks to identify and give names and life to their own Ancestors.  

From LAWN TEA,   January 4, 2011: 

My Sis in San Antonio has done a wonderful research into our family's genealogy, even going to Salt Lake City to that biggest-trove-of-info-in-the-country for a week and barricading herself with files and wills and pictures and transcripts and TREES. And their trip to Ireland was a trove of information fromall the "Murphree side" of Daddy's family.    We have boxes and boxes of pictures of our own, from both sides, though not nearly as many from Daddy's side. What there are of his go back only to those more recent Kodak moments of sepia or black-and-white, with folks squinting into the sun as a long shadow reaches from camera to their feet. Most of those little rectangles have a tiny black-and-white checkery border, and lots in the boxes attest their having been ripped from their life-in-scrapbooks, for many corners still bear the tiny pointed black ears of the wee stick-on brackets which affixed many a picture to a blotter-black page.

We marvel at the facial expressions, the clothes, the fading draperies and tattered flowers of the stage-set of the early photos, and also think that perhaps this might be the only picture of those people that there is. In this day when our Grands have developed a permanent flinch-and-blink when Ganner approaches with the camera, and our own archives of holidays and vacations and just plain Tuesday have reached thousands in number---it's sad that our forebears in their one fading black-and-white, struck still and motionless by the gravity and the luxury of the thing, are fading as people, as well, for after our generation---who will know their names?

We're into doing a lot of picture-identifying, and I wish previous generations had done so. We've been writing names on the back of all the pics we can identify. I wish also that everybody with boxes and albums and framed pictures---I'm talkin' even that great huge family portrait from 1888 that's in the flaky old frame over the mantel, and might collapse in your hands if you take it apart---I WISH you'd write the names on the back of your pictures, or at least on a piece of paper adhered to the picture. Or even stuck in an envelope WITH the picture.

Y'ALL!   Let's name some names!