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-degree's 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 embroidery, 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.

THE COLOURS OF THE WIND

 

Such Weather art as REDS AND GREEEEENS and all the shocking orange and yellows screeching from the screen.   I'd found a young man with the charming name of MAX (insert little exclamatory, shattery O here)  VELOCITY, on YouTube and since he was doing all warnings to Montana, I just settled to my puzzle.   And THEN I realized:   There CAN'T be another Bloomington and Mitchell and Orleans and Evansville just South there in Montana---too much coincidence.   It was for HERE---I'd been out in the morning, with a little fun shop at ALDI for Christmas leftovers and stocking stuffers for next year, and all was well when I came in lugging all the loot.  

Between then and lunch and MAX, the skies had taken a TURN and then it began to get dark  and I set a little grabbit lantern at my feet just in case.   We had one traumatic outage this past Summer whilst we were having the house re-wired---trauma enough in itself, but worse.

You know how "They Say" that a tornado sounds like a "Freight Train,"---I suppose for the greater weight of the train at the time, rather than a nice excursion or Express for commuting. At least they said that in all my Southern raising---on the Memphis NEWS Dave Brown used those exact words.   And Somehow, the winds were so gusty and the cold descending fast---I swore I could hear AMTRAK and Illinois Central and the Queen:  City of New Orleans, right here around our house.   I LOVE trains with all the love in my small-town-girls' heart, but I could see our enormous TREES waving in the yard as limber as the WeatherBush.    The Across-the-street neighbors had taken down the elaborate array of all things inflatable and lightable, or we'd have had a mylar/vinyl/plastic catastrophe right here in the street.   And dear Minnie Mouse, who we have laughed at for years for her tendency to deflate overnight, and fall sprawling with a drunken smile on her face---once up a tree, with her inebriated, goofy grin facing US, might have made it as far as I-65 before landing.  

We made it through the night, with no visible damages, and only the tiniest dust of white rime in the sidewalk cracks to show for all the rain, but that YouTube art was Scary as all get-out---like runaway Seventies graffiti in neon colors.  I have not heard of any damages or outages, and  it did allow for a couple of hours of texting with Sweetpea, with our describing the sounds and strength of the rainfall and the winds, and setting up a date or two for lunch while she's out of school.     You take BLESSIGNS where you find 'em.      Stay warm and well.  

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AT THE GOLDEN TORCHES

 

Thursday would have been the Thirty-fifth Anniversary of the Christmas Day that we moved from Alabama to Indiana. I’ve told you about our ongoing love affair with Waffle House HERE, from Christmas Day, 1990, when we were on the road to our new life here.  We’ve had countless breakfasts there since, sometimes at midnight, if the whim strikes.

So, that Saturday of 2015, the day-after-Christmas, we braved the sleety day to go and celebrate our TWENTY-FIVE years in this wonderful, adopted place.  

We walked in onto the slippery, slidey tile floors---wet with countless footsteps, and were embraced by that unmistakable aura of good coffee, sizzling bacon, and the welcoming bright waitresses and cooks.  

We were seated beneath the only PINK-painted lamp in the house, with fanciful snowflakes giving our table an unaccustomed rosy glow.

MY kind of Art.

The windows had all been painted from the inside with festive scenes---wreaths and drums and ornaments, reminding me so fondly of a nice boy from my childhood, whose great talent for chalk-drawing was amazing---he’d come into our classrooms after school, painting blackboard after blackboard with scenes of elves and Santa, or Easter bunnies on bright green hills, or hay-shocks and pumpkins.  It seemed so magical to walk in one morning to such happy pictures, like strolling into one of those Easter eggs with the tiny dioramas inside. 

Waffle Houses are always filled with a cheerful energy, with scurryings and lively banter and rushing to get that good hot food out HOT.   You might well be seated in a Scalosian restaurant, with whatever instantaneous delicacies they might boast, for all the lightning speed of the Waffle House Staff.

Our own server Brittney seemed quite interested when we told her it was our “anniversary of Waffle House," and as she sped and skidded on those continuously-mopped floors, we told her of our tradition, and then, as she went back into the cooking area, we could hear the words “anniversary” several times, including once from the booth just ahead of me, where sat a nice couple having their own breakfast.

On one of Brittney’s return trips with that ever-filled pot, she handed us our ticket.  “I told my manager Nate about your anniversary, and he’s paid your bill,” she said.  

What a lovely thing!  We were simply overflowing with thanks, and as we prepared to leave, we asked to meet Nate and thank him.   He came out and stood behind the register as we repeated the story, with all the staff gathered round.   I don’t talk very loud, but I could hear “AWWWW,”   from several places around the room, and as we headed for the door, I waved and said Bye, and it seemed that the whole room chimed in, waving and calling out.

And that was our Anniversary visit to the Golden Torches, ten years ago. Yesterday would have been exactly thirty-five years since that memorable visit, and I wish that I could be there THIS MINUTE, bathed in that bright golden atmosphere of hustle and hum, smelling those delicious scents of BREAKFAST, and re-living those precious days.   Y'all need to stop in sometime, for scattered, smothered, covered and topped.   

GRAPENUTS CHICKEN

 

Years ago, a recipe went round the South for a tasty chicken dish, marinated in Wishbone Italian, rolled in crushed cornflakes, baked til tender and golden. It turned up at church suppers, funeral feasts, potlucks, pitch-ins, and Tupperware gatherings.

We were invited to the home of friends for dinner (we knew the husband well, as he and the men of our family were members of several organizations and all were farmers. I had met the wife briefly on occasion). Now, for the life of me, I cannot imagine what prompted the invitation, except possibly the husband's urging of a social occasion amongst us four.

And I was delighted for an evening which entailed real shoes, a dining room, and someone else's cooking. The idea of sitting down for an entire meal, without jumping up for the salt, refilling glasses, or wiping up spilt ones---that had its charms, as well. And though I did not know these people well, it was going out for the evening, an unusual and lovely thing, indeed.

Living-room-served Appetizer was rumaki, but not bacon-wrapped. The livers and whole water chestnuts had been marinated in the soy mixture, dumped in a baking dish, marinade and all, topped with slices of bacon, and baked til the bacon was brown around the edges.

The whole panful was poured into a clear glass dish, which then resembled some science experiment gone awry---graybrown chunks of boiled liver, long flappy strands of ecru boiled bacon, the whole floating in a brownish fluid flecked with liver crumbs and congealed lumps of blood. We were given toothpicks and told how much easier this recipe was than wrapping all those yucky, bloody livers. And there we stood, all dressed for special, probing our toothpicks into the brothy clumps with the enthusiasm of folks poking a bear with a stick. We emerged with a dripping bit, held our tiny plates beneath on the way to our mouths, and hoped for the best.

But you know, if you could get past appearances, they weren't so bad; the crispy chestnuts had taken on the hue of the sauce as well, so you weren't sure which you might be putting into your mouth, and would be surprised that the soft unctuousness you were expecting might turn out to be a not-unpleasant crunch.

But then came the True Crunch: the famed Cornflake Chicken. But they were out of cornflakes, it seems, so the hostess made do with the next best thing in the cereal cupboard: Grape-Nuts. Now, Grape-Nuts, on a good day and in its natural state, perhaps with a little pool of milk and a scatter of blueberries, is a passably pleasant breakfast. But those hard little nuggets, already baked into a shelf-life of ninety-nine years---well, baking them further still---that was not a good idea.

After the surprise of the first bite, we cut and scraped and managed to eat the INSIDE of the chicken pieces---the outsides resembled wallpaper flocked with BB's. Hoping to avoid a trip to the dentist for repair work, we did some meticulous carving and managed to carry on a conversation, all at the same time. Even after all this time, I can remember trying to separate those little stone crumbs from the tender chicken, corral them in my cheek, then swallow them like aspirin with a few sips of tea, whilst maintaining a conversation.

Side dish was a lovely platter of baked sweet potato surprise, another favorite au courant on the hairdryer circuit. The recipe included mashing the potatoes, then forming them into a ball around a marshmallow, then rolling the balls in: (developing a theme here) TADAAAAAAAA!!! Cornflakes.

Repeat chicken chorus ad lib, with a nice gravelly coating of Grape-Nuts around those mooshy sweet potatoes---like a mouthful of sweet aquarium rocks. How anyone could have thought TWO dishes rolled in cereal would make a balanced meal is beyond me, but the Grape-Nuts carried both recipes to heights undreamed of by the original cooks.

I think of that nice lady occasionally, how she opened her home to us, set her table nicely and cooked us dinner, and how ungratefully snarky my memories are. And I don't think I ever told the story from that day to this---it just seemed so ungrateful, somehow, after all that effort, and not befitting the hospitality.

But I still can't pass the cereal aisle without thinking of that chicken.