One July day, Dad, my sister Della, and I were hoeing corn. The field we had planted was not far from a little country store. Dad said he would get us something to eat at the store. At noon, he bought “viennie” sausages (only years later did I learn about a city in Austria named Vienna), a can of sardines, and saltines. He got each of us a bottle of cold pop to drink, and we carried our lunch back to the edge of the cornfield to eat. Dad ate the sardines, but Della and I preferred the sausages. Nothing in this world has ever tasted any better to me than those Vienna sausages, crackers, and orange pop.
That store was my haven. Its nooks and crannies became as familiar to me as my mother’s kitchen. We kids earned spending money by gathering bottles to return for deposit (five cents per bottle). Candy was five cents a bar, bubble gum a penny apiece. Pencils also sold for a penny each, while Blue Horse writing tablets cost a nickel. I loved paper and pencils.
Recently some out-of-state friends came for a visit. We drove from Berea several miles out into the country to the Drip Rock Fire Tower. Stopping at a country store along the way, I bought an orange pop and a can of Vienna sausages, hoping to recreate that delicious long-ago lunch in our cornfield. But they tasted nothing like what I ate in the cornfield that July day. I was disappointed.
When I am in pain or feel the world is closing in on me, just one thing will make me feel better: to cook food like Mama did when we lived on Stoney Fork. Green beans, fried corn, biscuits, fried chicken and gravy, mashed potatoes, baked ham, homemade pickles, soup beans with ham—these are foods I take out and savor in my memory, even if I am not prepared to cook foods like that for my next meal. Usually, though, when I’m feeling low I wind up cooking at least one dish like my mother did.
Dog Days of Summer
The dog days of summer runs from July until mid-August, when the Dog Star rises and sets with the sun. The dictionary definition is that dog days are the stifling hot days of summer. It is a season of mold, mildew, and the pestilence of stagnant water.
Mama and Granny Brock warned us about dog days. We children were not to wade in the creeks because the stagnant water would make “fall sores” on our legs. I remember how impossible it was to stay out of the creek during the torrid days of summer, when every bug bite and scratch turned into a sore. There would be four or five sores on our legs and arms during late summer until cooler weather set in.
We were told that dogs went mad during dog days, so we were terrified of any strange dog that happened to wander our way. The rumor that a possibly mad dog was spotted in the neighborhood was enough to send us inside, locking the doors and vigilantly guarding the windows. We were also told that snakes went blind during dog days, striking out savagely at anything that moved.
During dog days, in addition to hot, sultry days there were days of rain. I thought of rainy days as days of freedom from the sweat bees, briars, and the duty of hoeing corn in the hot sunshine. I would take a book to the corncrib or barn, where I could spend hours in another world, reading and being comforted by the sound of rain on the roof. To this day, when it rains I feel an urge to snuggle up in a dry place with a good book.
9
Transition to Harvest
Sometimes it almost seems a burden to realize
the promise of summer when red and white
clover blooms and green corn uncurls, when
butterflies come in clouds of color and a misty
rain washes the earth.
Always in early spring, Dad began clearing off new ground in preparation for a field of corn. He liked to plant a new field every year, along with the old ones. We planted corn as early as possible and by the middle of May, if the weather was good, it was ready for the first hoeing. When the rows of corn were shoulder-high, Mama would stick in half-runner beans, which would grow up and twine around the cornstalk. This kept the beans off the ground and made picking them easier. The beans never hurt the corn.
Dad said that corn must be hoed three times, the third (and last) time called “laying it by.” If it was a good growing season, the corn could be laid by before the Fourth of July. In fact, it was a matter of pride for every household to have their corn laid by before the Fourth.
When I was a child, we might have to chop the weeds from between the rows of corn after laying it by, but we’d never have to hoe it again that season. When green ears appeared on the stalks, we could hardly wait for the corn to mature so we could eat it in a variety of ways.
Jarflies
When I was young, every summer I would hear the queer, metallic whir of the jarfly in the mountains while waves of heat shimmered from the fields and pastures.
Usually jarflies start their hollering in the summer, around the last days of June. It was a signal that the plowing and hoeing of corn could be laid by. “There used to be a lot more of them,” Granny Brock said. “They hollered so loud people couldn’t hear the cowbells.’‘
Occasionally I would hear the high-pitched cry of a seventeen-year locust, or cicada, from a distant treetop. I was fascinated with the story of the seventeen-year locusts—how they lay dormant for seventeen years, then move in clouds, thousands and thousands of them devouring all the fruit, berries, and garden produce in their path. I read about them in the Farmer’s Almanac, and I asked Mama to tell me everything she had ever heard about them. I sometimes found empty shells of these insects beneath the apple trees, with a split down the backs the sign of their freedom. I thought of all the years that they lay dormant, waiting for their summer of release. One day when we heard the locusts’ shrill cry, I said to Mama, “They must be cries of victory.”
Predictions of the Weather
Of course we had all sorts of sayings about the weather. Early mornings in the mountains, tendrils of fog would often curl their way into the sky from the hilltops. When the mist rose a certain way, it was believed to be a sure sign of rain. The old mountain saying “Fog on the hills brings water to the mill” was often repeated.
There is an old rhyme about St. Swithin’s Day, July 15: if it rains on St. Swithin’s Day, it will rain for the next forty days; if it is fair on July 15, it will be fair for forty days.
Another saying was “Rain before seven, quit before eleven.” There was also an old Indian saying, “Cloudy all around, pouring down in the middle.”
I was taught to believe in signs, sayings, and predictions, and when it came to the weather, I believed them all.
Heritage Seeds
Dead leaves, stems of dry plants, and yellow and brown grass all told of cycles and seasons. I am glad when the time of mold, mildew, and stagnant water has passed. Even if I hold a thread of regret that summer’s promise is almost over, I look forward to gathering and storing in preparation for the winter months. Each season of the year brings blessings and gifts.
I always long to hold on to the crisp, refreshing air of early fall, the white morning mist, and the golden dust of fall evenings. I wish I could hoard those days in a treasure chest so that in the dead of winter I could take them out and enjoy a day of sunshine and blue skies. Part of the melancholy we feel in autumn is knowing that summer has gone; and when autumn ends then come the gray days and cold rain of November and December.
My mother always saved seed from each year’s crop to plant the next year. She would plant some “seed hills,” let the beans dry on the plant, and save them for seed. She grew “greasy-back” beans, which we loved. They grew six or more beans to a pod. Mama kept her own seed from year to year from the tender plants, and never took a chance on store-bought seed because, as she said, “they might have tough seed mixed in with the tender seed.”
Mama and Dad raised bushels of potatoes and onions to store. They had turnips and mustard greens and pumpkins and cushaws ready just after the first frost. And sometime around the middle of the growing season, Mama would plant several rows of late beans. I love green fall beans when they first come out of the kettle, especially if they have been seasoned with a piece of well-cured, dried-out, pr
operly aged fatback. But they are even better when they have been warmed over a time or two until the cooking water gets good and thick. If you pour some of that thick “pot likker” over a chunk of cornbread and let it soak in a bit, you have a wonderful accompaniment to the beans. These late beans Mama simply called “fall beans.” She kept the seed for them alive year after year. I depended on Mama to save seed for me.
Mama would also save a few of the biggest, most perfect tomatoes. When they were fully ripe, she scraped out the seed, which she dried in the sun and then stored in a jar until early spring. She planted the tomato seed in a galvanized washtub, which could easily be covered during frosty nights, and set out the transplants when the ground got warm.
Every year we would find tomatoes growing in the places where a tomato had rotted, or tomato peel and seeds had been dumped. These we called “Tommy Toes,” and it was incredible how strong and vigorous the plants were and how the small, round tomatoes would be bursting with flavor. Today at the farmers market, I buy cherry tomatoes. But they never taste as good as the sweet, sound flesh of the Tommy Toes in our garden, and the skins of the cherry tomatoes are tougher.
Canned tomatoes were a beautiful sight on the pantry shelves. But they took a lot of peeling, coring, seeding, cooking, stirring, sterilizing, and processing. It is much easier to freeze tomatoes. But frozen tomatoes are watery by comparison with canned, and they are not as tasty or versatile. However, when we got electricity on Stoney Fork and purchased a freezer, I began freezing most of my tomatoes. I like having tomatoes for soups, catsup, and juice in the winter, and the steam that’s generated from making catsup and juice is always more welcome in the house at that time of the year than it is in the summer.
I am glad that there are gardeners today who continue to preserve specimens and seeds of many of the old plants our forebears loved—delphiniums strong enough to stand alone, dianthus that smell of cloves, and tomatoes that taste like Tommy Toes. Tommy Toes are probably growing in somebody’s garden or field even as I write.
The last few years when I have bought half-runner beans, I have been disappointed with how tough they are. They must have been from altered seed—not heritage seed like Mama’s.
Rachel Saylor (1909-1986)
My mother died in 1986 at seventy-seven years of age. She never remarried after Dad died and cherished memories of him all of her life. For a long while she suffered with congestive heart disease, but the day she died was one of the best days she had had in years.
Brother Jeems said she cooked a good dinner that Sunday. She was cheerful, laughing and talking with him. She told him she would like to go to church that night. Jeems drove her to the little Holiness Church on Stoney Fork, which they attended when they were able.
During the service Mama gave her testimony, and asked for special prayers for her children. When Jeems and Mama got back home, she began having an attack of shortness of breath. Immediately Jeems took her to the kitchen door near where the car was parked. At the door, she put her hands on the doorframe and wouldn’t go outside. Jeems asked her if she wanted to go to the hospital; she shook her head no. He half-carried her to her bedroom and put a blanket over her. He called Della, who lived only a few doors up from them. Della came immediately, and Mama died in her arms. When Jeems called me to tell me what had happened, I said, “I’m glad she won’t suffer anymore.” I felt at peace about her transition.
Brother Jeems’s Green Thumb
My brothers Fred and Lee Roy both married young, but Jeems did not marry until he was older, and then, after the birth of a daughter, got a divorce.
When he was twenty, Jeems was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. Every day thereafter, he had to inject himself with insulin. He did a poor job of controlling his sugar, and by the time he was in his late thirties he had eye damage. This forced him to give up his job as a county school bus driver, and it was almost impossible for him to find another job.
His health kept failing; he developed heart trouble and suffered a series of prostate infections. Jeems lived with Mama and helped care for her until her death. She took care of him when he had bad spells, and he did the same for her. Eventually he was entitled to receive Social Security payments.
After Mama’s death in 1986, Jeems lived alone. He could not see well enough to drive and was dependent on others to take him where he needed to go. Mostly he just stayed home alone.
At first he continued to live in the little house Mama had left him, but the mortgage payments got to be more than he could handle. Eventually Jeems sold the house and was able to move into a government-subsidized high-rise apartment complex near Pineville, Kentucky. His apartment was tiny, consisting of a galley kitchen, a living room, a bedroom, and a bathroom. There were sliding glass doors in the living room and bedroom.
Mama had a green thumb; anything she stuck in the ground grew vigorously in her care. When Jeems moved to the apartment, he brought with him some of Mama’s houseplants. He took delight in and cared for the plants just as she had. Every plant stayed healthy and proliferated.
Jeems and I both took after Mama when it came to plants. I grow plants and trees in every room of my house. In my kitchen window I have pots of geraniums and petunias, which are in full bloom as I write. During the recent snow and ice, I would stand and look at the pink and white petunias and the red geraniums and marvel at the fresh beauty of the delicate flowers. I love each plant, and I’m glad to have them in my home.
I started taking Jeems any extra plants I had on hand. Other women in our extended family would bring their puny, sick plants to him, and invariably Jeems would coax them back to health. Sometimes their owners would take them back home, but every once in a while they would tell Jeems to keep the plants. Soon his apartment was crowded with plants. The plants were his family, his children. He loved each one and spent many hours working with them. People who visited him for the first time were always surprised when they came into his living room, because it looked like a greenhouse.
I was proud that Jeems had found a love for trees and plants and kept busy caring for and loving them. Lord knows he had little else. He could not read or watch much television because of his eyesight. He was not able to go places and do things physically, but he kept his mental health.
Meanwhile I kept adding to his collection. Anytime I found a particular type of plant that Jeems did not have, I got it for him. Other family members would smile indulgently at Jeems and all his plants, and said they could never get plants to grow that way. Jeems just grinned at them; he would not even try to verbalize his love and commitment to his plants and trees.
I once gave him a deep pink hibiscus that had eight to ten blooms at a time all summer long on my front steps. I really did not have a good place to keep it over the winter, so I offered it to Jeems and he readily accepted it.
Several weeks later in a phone conversation he told me all the leaves were falling off the hibiscus. I reassured him as best I could, suggesting that the climate change may have been a shock.
The next time we talked, he told me sadly that he thought the plant was going to die. I said rather flippantly that he should start talking to it. He should tell it to live and bloom or he would throw it into the trashcan. Jeems had never heard about talking to plants, and I know he thought it was a weird suggestion. A couple of weeks later I asked if the hibiscus plant had died. He was silent for a moment, then said, “I reckon I’ve been talking to it, telling it what you said.”
“Can you tell any difference ?”
“It put out green shoots and now it’s full of buds!”
When still in his fifties, Jeems moved like a much older man. He talked about his impending death. His dearest wish was that people take his plants and care for them as he had.
When Brother Jeems died in 2001, in a way his going was a relief to us. He had suffered so much and lived such a lonely life for so many years. He had told me on several occasions of his wish to die. He really had no quality of life because of hi
s illness and handicaps.
My youngest sister, Sharon Rose, took most of his plants home to Indianapolis with her after the funeral. The remainder his former wife shared with her friends.
I used to call Jeems every Sunday. I miss those talks. But I believe that he is at peace and happy to be home with the family members who left before him.
10
Sweet and Meat
Making molasses is a ritual of autumn as old as
any civilization that has endured in the hills.
We always had molasses at our house because almost every year Dad and some of his brothers, along with Grandpa, planted a cooperative crop of cane. From this one patch they would get enough molasses to supply their families for the entire year. And, like other of their reciprocal understandings, if they did not plant cane one year, they helped their neighbors cut, gather, and process their crops through the stir-off process and received gallons of molasses in return.
Molasses: Amber Magic
Early in the fall when the cane was ripe, Dad and his brothers cut it and separated the stalks from the blades. Sometimes they cut a piece of cane into joints and gave them to us children to chew for juice. The juice was wonderfully sweet and satisfying, but we had to be careful not to cut our lips on the sharp and biting edges of the bark.
When the cane was harvested, the men dug a trench, built up low rock ledges on each side, and set in place the long cane press vat they used to boil the juice. Not everyone could afford a cane press; usually one man in the community would buy one and loan it out for use.
A toll of a quart of molasses was the fee in Stoney Fork for using the cane press. When the vat was in place, Dad cleaned the cane mill and got it ready for use the next day. Last of all, the helpers cut enough wood to feed the fire several hours. Word would already have gone out that a big stir-off was taking place the next day, and everyone in the neighborhood felt free to drop by.
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