ABOUT GRITS AND BISCUITS

 

One of the glories of the Southern table--a Black Skillet of Biscuits.   This one was for a brunch, with Red Beans and Rice, and graced with the "Tomato Slice" utensil brought out only for special occasions and cranberry sauce.

I just had a question from a friend on another continent, asking about grits and what's the difference in biscuits and Southern Biscuits, what are beaten biscuits and what about Hominy Grits. My answer in the "comment" section went on and on, as I am wont to do, so I just moved it here.

I don't know a lot about anybody else's biscuits, but almost all "Southern Biscuits" or Southern Style Biscuits are made by starting with a shortening---originally lard, and it's still used by purists and a lot of the new gourmet cooks. Now, Crisco is the one of choice mostly, and most cooks use Self Rising flour, even if they do add a little extra salt or leavening.

And Buttermilk is the Southern mixing-liquid, with or without "baking soda"---rare is the kitchen in the South which has not a box of Arm & Hammer in the cupboard, for biscuits and other baking, and for cleaning drains, freshening laundry, and keeping the fridge and freezer fresh and odor-free. Right in there beside the Argo Cornstarch and the can of Clabber Girl.   They're the Powdery Trinity of a Southern kitchen, right behind Onion-Bell Pepper-Celery sauteeing before the roux gets going.

Grits is a singular food, and I still think and say "Grits are" because of the plural sound. One would never speak of "a grit," but I know it should be followed by "IS," just as you would say, "Molasses is."

There's corn grits, white made with the white center of the corn, or yellow, with the whole kernel, ground more coarsely than cornmeal, which makes such velvety, wonderful cornbread.

And there's HOMINY grits, made with the "lye" or (dictionary word) nixtamalized corn. It's dried, ground, and can be advertised as Hominy Grits, the old fashioned kind.

OH, and beaten biscuits---I've made them. Once. Just as an experiment on a lazy Saturday morning. They're like a cross amongst a Ritz cracker and a dog biscuit and a Communion Wafer---the really hard, tough kind found in Baptist churches, which, if they weren't tiny enough to get back there and crunch between your back teeth, would do some serious dental damage. Or hang out like a mint until they melt sometime between Lord's Supper and "Just As I Am."

I had a recipe once for a cake, from way in the day before mixers. You were supposed to beat it for six hours with a wooden spoon---I cannot fathom what form or sentient life the mass must be expected to assume from all that brutal activity.   The recipe even had the audacity to urge bringing in the children, and letting them take an hour or two.   Unh unh. Not me. Just smacking that biscuit dough "til elastic" with the rolling pin one time was enough for me. And nobody would eat 'em, anyway.

Grits and how to eat them have caused more family dis-harmony than politics---butter or not; sugar or not; gravy or shrimp or syrup on top.

I cook the plain old Quaker Grits, right off the grocery shelf in the round cardboard cylinder---the cook-it kind. Those crinkly packets which dump dusty powder into the bowl and change to part-mush, part-crunch under the boiling water---not spoken of in polite company.   And a gift of the Gucci kind of grits from an Artisan Grist Mill on occasion is quite welcome, and enjoyed respectfully and with gusto. 

The pot simmers for a bit whilst the bacon and eggs cook; a big pat of butter is scraped off the knife into the pot, left to melt, and stirred in just before ladling a good hot serving onto everybody's plate. Then it's every man for himself---treat 'em as you will. No censure from me.

Be sure and run an inch or two of warm water into the empty pot and replace the lid til time to do the dishes, or you'll be chipping spackle off that thing for a week.

Jeff Foxworthy says that every single garbage can in the South has one fork with white stone between the tines, that somebody gave up on. And if the Egyptians had had grits instead of mortar, there'd be a whole townful of pyramids.

MY FUNNY VALENTINE

                                           Valentine Roses, 2017

The Fourth of this month marked FORTY YEARS since Chris and I met, one misty night at a little redneck Holiday Inn in Mississippi.  (I do it an injustice---it was the FIRST FRANCHISED Holiday Inn in the world, opened in 1954--the second one after the original MotherShip in Memphis) but it was still boots-and-jeans all the way.   I'd been a widow for fifteen years, and never considered that there might be someone special out there.   WAY before the Internet became such a Meeting Place, we met through the small-town version of that---in a much simpler way, a more innocent time---through a sweet little newspaperish magazine available in grocery stores, quick-marts and fillin' stations. Ours was called "Tradewinds" and spanned several states, I think; you could find lily bulbs, hound pups, parts for your '58 Fairlane, recipes, and nice people to chat with or meet.

A week or so after New Year’s Eve, 1985 into 86, five of us "girls" who went out together on occasion went to dinner---one brought a copy of the little newsprint-paper magazine, and we all dared each other to answer one ad. I chose Chris, and I think it was because of the sweet way he mentioned his children, his love of reading, and his intentionally stating that he didn't watch football on TV that caught my eye, and they’ve all held true all these years.

You wrote a letter, put it in an envelope, sealed it, and wrote the number of your choice on the front. That envelope went into a bigger envelope with three dollars, and was addressed to the paper. They sorted everybody to the right place, and a few days later, he called.

We chatted for probably two hours, and suddenly it hit me---I was sitting there on my bed like a teenager, forgetting that I was WAY late to pick DS#2 up at the bus-stop. I threw down the phone and FLEW, meeting him probably three miles toward home, walking that old blacktop road. I'd said, "I'll call you BACK!!" as I dashed for the door, but when I returned, I realized HE had called ME and I didn't know his number. He called back within a few minutes, and we talked til WAY late---somebody cooked supper, but it wasn't me.

We talked on the phone for a couple of weeks, and on Feb. 4, he would be calling on some clients close to my town, so we arranged to meet. I would not let a stranger come to my home, and I didn’t want him to know where I lived, so we met at the lounge at the local Holiday Inn where I knew several of the employees.

That brave soul walked into a redneck bar where he didn’t know anyone, carrying a long-stemmed red rose.

We had been talking for maybe fifteen minutes, when in strolled my two sons, who stood towering over him at the table. They swapped the new pickup for my big old car, to go pick up some friends, and since THEY had met him, scads of people had seen us together, and I had gone to high school or football games with half the police department, I figured I was probably safe. So we went to his room and talked until four a.m.

He had arranged the two chairs so that we sat facing each other almost knee to knee, and we talked all about our families and faith and friends, our home life, our lives and what we liked to read, and all sorts of get-to-know you stuff. He even had a bottle of wine stuck in ice in the sink, and he’d been to WalMart for two pretty glasses---I didn’t have the heart to tell him I HATE wine, so I sort of held the glass and sipped at it til it was warm and even more unappetizing.

The funniest part is---he also dislikes wine, and just thought it was the nice thing to do---have a glass of wine with a lady. We both choked it down, just to impress the other, I guess. Never again.

Then, when I simply HAD to go home, he walked me to the truck, and I couldn’t crank it---had never tried; we had just bought it that Christmas, and I’d never driven it. So Chris had to drive me home anyway, after all those stranger-precautions I took. And we were married that Summer---short courtship.

One funny coincidence was that one of my friends at work, seeing how well my experience turned out, placed his own ad, and met a lovely young woman whom he brought as his date to our wedding. She had answered Chris’ ad as well, but they did not get together because we had already met.

I still get chills at the "maybe not" of the whole thing, but he says it would have happened somehow. He subscribes to the theory that he'd have stopped to fix my flat tire, or some such happenstance. And we marvel often at the people we love, and the people we’ve met and had a part in shaping THEIR lives a bit, and they ours, as well as the Grandbabies who might be totally different people had we not met on that foggy night in February.

Life pays forward, and the far-reaching things we set in motion would astound us. For example, if we had not met, I would never have moved here, DS2 would never have come here and met the lovely young woman he married, their daughter would not be graduating this May, and another daughter would not have met her husband and added three more to the Family Tree.   How many lives have been changed and influenced by that misty night that we met and talked to 4 a.m.    We had thirty-four wonderful years together, all begun because of that one little magical magazine. 

SMALL BRIGHT MEMORIES

 

FROM EXACTLY ELEVEN YEARS AGO: 

 LAWN TEA 2-12-2015  I woke to the downstairs Party Room in full colorful array this morning; Chris takes great pleasure in keeping my love of any kind of colorful lighting fresh and new often. Thinking of Childhood Valentines:  

Wasn’t that an innocent, sweet time of our lives---before we reached even the lacy-card stage, unless we got into our Mamas’ treasured stashes of paper doilies, saved for Bridge Club sandwich trays and for displaying neat rows of Individual Iced Cakes for visits from the Exalted Grand Matron?   Those small flappy bits of three-colour primary frippery we passed around amongst ourselves were an annual treat; the buying and the making and the careful lettering and the giving were all small parts of a rite as old and as little understood as Love.   And our own childish bits of the ritual were taken as seriously as the two-handed meek offerings of any time-worn creed.

We saved, we shopped, we clipped and glued---those knobby glass bottles with the crusty rubber tops slid across edges and doilies and tabs, and the still-drying gobs and telltale smears of mucilage were a lovable part of the whole. Errant bits of paper, ribbon, lace caught up in the sticky mess have come down the years as dear additions to those eagerly-proffered, gladly-accepted creations from-and-of-the-heart.

We didn’t understand it yet---just our own little corner of the “Like” and “Looking at” world of the primary grades reflected in those three primary colours of the shoddy small Valentines we could afford.  But we were IN IT---Oh, Yes. 

We coveted those small slips of esteem as we did an Add-a-Pearl or an A on a report card---they MATTERED in some uncountable way.  They were the votes in a gaudy ballot-box of approval, though it was unheard of to leave off anyone from your list.

I’d carefully laid each little paper inside the pages of my Arithmetic book---the wider of my two textbooks, for safekeeping in my book satchel.   All the way home, we’d pause and take out a few for more admiration.   When I arrived home, Mother was out at her Missionary Society Meeting, and so I excitedly took them over to show to Mrs. P, who was sitting out on her porch.  

We walked out into the sunshine for better effect, and I laid them out, one by one, on the fenders and hood of Mr. Shug’s Jeep as we admired them again.  She'd read the front, then look at the name on the back, and now and then ask something like, "Now, is THAT Miz Eller Freeman's Grand-Boweh?"   Then, instead of stepping into my house and setting them down, I stacked them carefully, and laid them just inside the open back of the Jeep to pick up as I passed going home.

I can’t remember why we went into the house, but when I came out,  the Jeep was gone, and with it my beloved stash of Valentines.  I went running out the drive, looking everywhere, and turned onto the blacktop road which led to the big river-bend where he went fishing.   Way up ahead, I spotted a few colourful flutters on the road, and found three or four, much the worse for having been run over.  They had great punches from the rocks, and the imprints of tires, and I can remember the searching on and on with the tears running down my face, looking and picking up the few which I could find.  I went on and on, following the bayou, and could see several floating on the green water like lily pads.   I didn't dare step out into the swamp to retrieve them, and so they were lost to me as if they'd sunk. 

The next day when I came home from school, there was a brand-fresh unopened pack, just like the one I’d so carefully lettered and “sent” awaiting me, from Mr. Shug, who felt really bad about scattering my Valentines “from here to Sunday,” my Mother said.  A little balm for the loss, and every year at this time, I think of that sweet man, sputtering heedless down that bumpy road, trailing a little contrail of colourful cards like Love Propaganda---scattering my childish dreams into the wind.

And now I'm remembering another sweetest man---the one who remembered EVERY Valentine's Day, every birthday and holiday and Just Because It's Tuesday for all the thirty-four years we were blessed to have together.   He lit up my world, and I'll never stop missing his happy presence.  

SWEETHEARTS AREN'T JUST CANDY

Young and sweet and innocent as these small images are, this must have been an ADULT Valentine, or at least meant for teenagers, when I was of the send-one-to-every-person-in-your-class age.  If we first, second, third graders had come to school with such a racy message in hand, ready to stash it in the big red box covered just that week by our busy hands in construction paper and streamers of crinkly red crepe, we, as well as the object of our momentary affection, would have been teased beyond bearing.   It was absolutely NOT DONE to verge into romantic territory at our tender ages, despite the heart-strings of the holiday.  You'd have been hearing about tree-sitting and K-I-S-S-I-N-G til the cows came home.

sOur little twenty-for-a-quarter packs of the small bright die-cut sentiments were painstakingly chosen for just the right person, though the lack of variety at Leon’s Drugstore limited us all to buying identical crinkly red cellophane packages, with perhaps five designs total. They came in small swinging rectangles, hung from the neat hooks on the SUNDRIES aisle which at other seasons might have held corn pads or cards of needles, and the Valentines were cushioned in a thin grey cardboard frame, like the cut-off bottom of a small cheap box.  The whole thing was sealed in a thick, almost indestructible sheet of cellophane impervious to most fingers and even our blunt-nosed scissors, though we were not above employing a quick nip with two eye-teeth to start a little slit for tearing.

I assume there was an unwritten law that you HAD to write out your Valentines the night before, for I cannot remember any earlier contact save for the buying, though I was known to lay them out like a gaudy game of Solitaire on my bed in the days before, choosing the receivers by pattern or poem or whim.   I was also not above putting an unobtrusive small penciled number on the back, with a corresponding name on a line in my notebook, until I could make that final important decision.  I hope that I remembered to erase all those furtive numbers, for I fear that more than one of us knew that trick.

We’d carry our carefully-lettered little flaps of colour up to that big fancy box, inserting them one or two at a time into the slot in the top with everyone avidly looking on, hoping for a flash of their own names to appear as a card was slid into the box, or for the glimpse of a secret crush, revealed to all as the card disappeared between the ruffly overlay of the mail-slot.

Occasionally one or two of us would have had a splurge at the Ben Franklin two towns over, and might just have lucked onto a little cardboard platter from another company, with quite different pictures and quotes inside the red cello cover.  But most usually, when the giver-outer of the Valentines stood reading off the names, and we’d go forward and receive our mail, it was more like dealing out a big stack from a four-card deck, as the little sailor dog and the bird in the tree appeared over and over, interspersed with small Shirley Temple clones and windmills and mice.   But oh, the heart-pounding moments as you waited, heard your name, stepped forward with a trembly hand outstretched, and received another of the showy little slips.  I never looked at mine til the calling had finished and the teacher took off the lid to see if any errant Valentines might still be caught inside.   I’d made sure that every single one of mine was safely clutched to my front like a nervous gambler, with the white side hidden so no one could see who did and didn’t send me one. 

Being limited to twenty when there were sometimes twenty-five people in our class was no problem either, for quite a few of us girls would make special ones for a few good friends, all festooned in hand-cut little hearts still bearing the center-crease from the folding-to-cut, and with perhaps a little slip of a ribbon bow or some of that squiggle-ribbon which curled when you pulled the scissors blade down the length of it.   So we never truly left out anyone, despite the limit on “bought” cards, and I can remember only perhaps two girls who went around the room asking cattily, “And how many did YOU get” or crowing “Eye got Twenty-NINE!” when we all know perfectly well there were not even that many people in the class, and the handwriting looked mighty similar on at least five of them (and similar to HERS, at that).

Oh, for something so anticipated and pleasurable and fraught with delighted dread as those little cheap, primary-colored bits of childhood. Weren’t we innocent?  Weren’t we small?   I know I’m smiling.

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!

WHO REMEMBERS HOME EC?

 

Who remembers Home Ec?    

 WHO REMEMBERS HOME EC?  That Rite of Passage subject which, if you attended and learned all the finest points of Homemaking---you were almost guaranteed to find the Right Someone With Whom To.

Our Home Ec classes were in a charming smaller brick building, much like the wealthier folks’ homes in town, and with all the requisite rooms, but larger, and with purposes.    First and foremost was the kitchen---long counters with sinks every eight feet or so, almost like the chemistry lab, but ours were the outdoor-faucet types---those squat-nosed coppery screw-a-hose-onto faucets like for washing your car, rather than the tall swan upsweeps for filling all those science beakers and such.    There were cupboards and cabinets and a rank of four stoves, six burners each, and when all of us got going stirring Seven Minute or White Sauce---the already-tropical air became hotter.    We’d never heard of air conditioning yet, except for maybe at the picture show in Clarksdale, and that was a treat, indeed.

The kitchen had an air of past hot Summer cannings, with the shelves of the pantries filed with long lines of Ball and Mason jars of tomatoes and unsnapped beans and pickles.   There was a certain scent to that area, possibly because of the many jars which had merely a little calico circle secured with a string, to dust-guard the white layer of paraffin poured onto the boiling contents below to prevent any bacteria.   Wax and sugar the lasting tang of simmering home-fruit, for the countryside was then still so rural, you could stop out in the country and pick you a whole apronful of apples or peaches or fat rosy plums, with the grand prize being those thumb-size golden plums, my Mammaw’s favorite preserve, and gathered early of a morning way out in the hills toward her Home Place.   They DID make a marvelous concoction, and the round, translucent whole ones suspended in that thick golden syrup glowed with a magic of their own, as if being jewels was enough, and the sumptuous taste merely lagniappe.

Another large room held a couple of bedsteads, a few ironing boards, and wide flat counters for learning to fold everything from diapers to bedsheets.  Hospital corners on the beds, (no fitted sheets for a decade or so, but we welcomed those when they came) those line-dried sheets flipped just so, the top sheet with the wider cuff-end turned down a foot so as to display any monogram or fancy stitching, and the furry chenille bedspread spread neatly tucked around and over the two pillows, with any design military straight. 

The claggy smell of Faultless starch is unforgettable, with the few times we were required to mix our own dishpan of the grey goo, plunge in our hands and the pillowslips or dresser-scarves or aprons, and wring the whole mass neatly for hanging to dry.   Each piece was “sprinkled down”  with a nifty little pierced bottle-top inserted into a Pepsi bottle of cold water.  (We never mentioned the small snug rubber nipples sold for a nickel in the NOTIONS case---they fit over the lip of a Coke or Pepsi bottle for a lot of babies' milk, and nice folks didn't take notice of good folks using what they could afford). Those damp rolls were packed with all the others into a pillow case or big spread towel to go into a cool place (or into the freezer, which we finally got in about 1954) for best results.   And the ironing---I could get with that---I was thumping that heavy Westinghouse iron onto all the pillowslips and smaller items when I was eight and had to wrestle the board down onto its lowest notch---even Daddy’s boxers got a good pressing and folding.

I had had a small lifetime of all those tasks when I started Home Ec in eighth grade, but the big room with the dozen Singers all lined up beside the LONG cutting table with yardsticks nailed around the top edges like a back-stitched embroidered hem, and the three “dress forms”---big wire body shapes in three sizes S-M-L---Sadie, Maud and Bertha, probably named in the farback days when those names were popular---who stood in the shadows, haunting the far end of the room until they were called to duty---THAT was not my favorite area.   I’d tried to learn a seam on Mother’s and Mammaw’s machines, but my hands just would not learn a straight stitch, and my feet on Mammaw’s treadle would stray from the neat line quicker than you could say scat to a cat, into and out of time with whatever little black .45 Elvis record I had going.   Even hems and Rock‘n’Roll are not happy companions.  And Mammaw’s steadfast thumps hand on the crank and flying feet in rhythm to “Redwing” and Eddy Arnold were perfection I could never get the hang of.  Still haven’t, and even though I spent many a free afternoon with Mother and OTHER Mammaw over their crochet and embroidery, my best effort became a tight little cone by the fourth row.   If ever you need a Barbie hat, I’m your girl. 

And I would have been happy with that.   Those foldings and cleanings and cannings and recipes and bed-changings, on up to caring for an infant---on my part, up close---my only sister was born the year I turned twelve, and I spent my succeeding six years totally immersed in family life---Demi-Mom when school was not in session. I could have traveled the world as an au pair at sixteen, had we ever heard of such a thing.  

   We learned all the ins and outs of Homemaking of those times in the usual four years of Mrs. Ward’s tutelage and example.  I clipped out a comic strip decades ago---little girl musing to herself, “All I want to do is have a family and be a good wife and mother---WHY do I have to go to Kindergarten?”   And I really, until that senior year, expected that to be my life.    Despite my parent’s drive and eagle eyes on my grades and excelling in all things I could, I really never gave a thought to college---those Home Ec years instilled a love for cooking and homekeeping and all things to do with family, and that was what my Hope Chest was for.  

But, there was an entirely different path set for me, outside the home, and I’m grateful that I could experience both worlds.   And both were enhanced by my years in that big brick house that room-by-room, taught us girls (and quite a few boys, calling it Singles Survival) to take care of the simple and important things of everyday life. 

My Graduation Dance dress, in pale blue brocade.   Mrs. Baker made three of them, exactly alike, in different colors, and didn't say a word to any of us.    We took a look at each other at the dance, and all fell out laughing.   I wore it for years.