“There’s one more good outcome, if you’re keeping score.” Lucy chuckled. “Guess who came to the picnic together this afternoon.”
“Uncle Sam and the Goddess of Liberty?” Ophelia rolled her eyes. “I’m terrible at guessing games, Lucy. Tell me.”
“Buddy Norris and Bettina Higgens, that’s who! It seems the sheriff is dating Rona Jean’s roommate.”
“Oh, my gosh!” Ophelia exclaimed. “I suppose they met during the investigation, huh? Beulah says that since Bettina works at the Beauty Bower, she doesn’t have much of a chance to meet men.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Lucy said. “Anyway, I saw them together after the parade, and then the two of them settled down over there under the big weeping willow for lunch. A little while ago, I saw them walking along the creek.” She chuckled. “They were holding hands. They both looked rather shy, I thought. And romantic.”
“How sweet,” Ophelia said, smiling. “And speaking of romance, here’s a ‘guess-who’ for you. Guess who’s getting married!”
Lucy pinched her lips together, thinking. “Getting married . . . getting married . . . Sorry, I don’t have a clue. Who?”
“Liz Lacy’s mother and Mr. Dunlap, of the Five and Dime! Liz told me about it while we were putting out the picnic food. They’re planning a big church wedding, and then they’re moving into Liz’s mother’s house.”
“Mr. Dunlap?” Lucy asked, blinking. “He’s always struck me as . . . well, sort of rabbitish. And Mrs. Lacy is—” She hesitated. “Managerial. A bossy sheepdog.”
“Too true,” Ophelia agreed with a laugh. “But Liz told me that her mother says that in private, Mr. Dunlap is a tiger.”
“Well, you can’t beat that,” Lucy said. “And speak of the devil, here comes Liz. And Verna.”
“Hello, girls,” Verna said. She was carrying a bottle of ginger ale in one hand and four paper Dixie cups in the other. “Is this a private confab, or do you have room for us?”
“There’s plenty of room,” Ophelia said, eyeing the bottle. “I see you brought refreshments. That wouldn’t be bubbly, would it?”
“Don’t I wish,” Verna said, laughing. “Just plain old ginger ale. But suitable for toasting.” She began filling cups for everybody.
“What’s the grand occasion?” Lucy asked, reaching for a cup.
Verna grinned and slid onto the picnic table bench next to Ophelia. “It’s Liz’s occasion. And it’s not just grand, it’s spectacular!”
Liz sat down beside Lucy. “It’s a miracle, is what it is,” she said, all smiles. “On Saturday, I got a letter from my literary agent, Nadine Fleming. She wrote that she liked Sabrina very much, just as it was, and planned to show it to an editor she knows. Last night, she called long-distance to tell me that she had showed it to him and he’s agreed to publish it! And Nadine says I need to begin another one, right away.” She shook her head. “I still can’t believe this is happening. Maybe I’m just dreaming it.”
“You’re not dreaming!” Lucy cried, flinging an arm around Liz’s shoulders. “It’s all real—and all wonderful!”
“Liz, that’s so exciting!” Ophelia exclaimed. “I can’t wait to read it!”
“I’ll bet it wouldn’t have happened if you had married Grady,” Verna muttered knowingly. “You’d be having babies instead of books.”
Ophelia glanced over to the swimming hole, where Sarah was executing a perfect dive. “There’s something to be said for babies, you know.”
“Of course there is,” Lucy agreed. “There’s everything to be said for babies. But we’re glad that Liz is having a book, instead. At least, this year.” She lifted her Dixie cup. “Here’s to you, Liz. And to Sabrina.”
Verna stood up. “To Liz and Sabrina,” she said.
They all rose. “To Liz and Sabrina,” they said in unison, and lifted their Dixie cups together.
Historical Note
Like the other books in the Darling Dahlias series, this sixth mystery takes place during the Depression. The previous book, The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush, was set in spring 1933, shortly after the March inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to whom the nation had turned for salvation (that isn’t too strong a word) from the disastrous economic situation in which America found itself. Banks were flat broke, people were out of work, businesses were out of customers, families were out of money for food and rent, and almost everybody in the country was out of luck. The song “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” which depicted the nation’s anger at the destruction of the American dream, was on many people’s lips.
But by the summer of 1934, things were looking up for the fictional town of Darling—and for real towns all over the United States—partly because of the impact of the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC was the New Deal’s earliest and best solution to the most baffling riddle of the Depression: how to create meaningful work for unemployed men and ensure that their wages went to support their families. A public works program, the CCC operated from 1933 to 1942, employing young unmarried men from relief families in conservation and natural resource development projects on rural land owned by federal, state, and local governments, and on some private lands. By President Roosevelt’s executive order, the CCC also employed veterans of World War I, many of whom were destitute and had joined the 1932 Bonus Army, attempting to persuade Congress to give them the promised bonuses they weren’t scheduled to receive until 1945. In return for their labor, the men received shelter, clothing, food, and a stipend of $30 a month, $25 of which was automatically sent home to their families.
Throughout the nine-year life of the program, nearly three million men lived in some 2,600 CCC work camps in every state and territory. The workers planted more than three billion trees, constructed or upgraded more than eight hundred parks nationwide, fought forest fires, built dams, and constructed service buildings and public roads. Administered by the U.S. Army and staffed by Army officers, the camps imposed a quasi-military discipline that took some getting used to. But the food was probably better—and certainly more ample—than the workers got back home. Most of the young men discovered that the daily physical labor required by the CCC projects improved their physical conditions, raised their spirits, and, best of all, taught them employable skills.
The camps also benefitted the areas around them. Camp administrators brought in some bulk supplies, but purchased butter, chickens, eggs, milk, bread, beef, pork, potatoes, and fresh vegetables from the local farmers, who were also invited to put in bids for the use of their teams and equipment to help with camp projects. Materials were purchased from local sawmills, gravel pits, and rock quarries. Local women and men supervised the camp kitchens, laundries, and repair shops and administered the educational programs that were such a vital part of the program. And while the CCC boys didn’t have a lot of spare change, they were always glad to spend whatever they had when they went to town on Saturday night for a game of pool, a movie, a milk shake, or a trinket for their best girl. The camp officers, too, were frequent town visitors, and they had more money to spend. In communities close to the camps, these purchases contributed from $5,000 to $7,000 a month to the local economies, saving many small businesses from failure and giving the towns a welcome new lease on life.
FDR had put a great deal of effort into the reforestation of his family estate in Hyde Park, and that became the first emphasis of the CCC, which quickly came to be called “Roosevelt’s Tree Army.” The enrollees were put to work planting natively adapted tree seedlings in logged-over areas and badly eroded fields. This relatively brief nine-year effort, directed by the U.S. Forest Service, was so extensive and so successful that modern conservationists believe that it was responsible for more than half the total public and private reforestation that has been achieved in the nation’s entire history.
But when the Dust Bowl hit in 1934, the need for soil conservation was on everyo
ne’s mind, and the CCC was put to work to remedy the environmental and human disaster created by fifty years of poor agricultural practice. The number of camps was dramatically expanded, most of them located in the Dust Bowl region, under the direction of the Soil Conservation Service, and the CCC set to work plowing hundreds of miles of contour terraces to reduce slope erosion (some of which I can still see on our own Central Texas homestead), building farm ponds, controlling gullies, and planting soil-holding crops. In some areas, the need was for drainage; nearly 85 million acres of agricultural land were reclaimed by CCC workers, many of them Native Americans.
In other areas, the CCC did extraordinary and heroic work during natural disasters, like the Ohio River flood of 1937, the 1938 New England hurricane, floods in Vermont and New York, and blizzards in Utah and Wyoming. The CCC also developed recreational facilities in national, state, county, and metropolitan parks. Here in Texas, 29 parks were created or improved by the CCC. Nationally, by the close of the program in 1942, the CCC had developed more than 3 million acres for park use in 854 state parks, as well as 46 recreational demonstration projects in 62 areas within 24 states. In national parks and wilderness areas, CCC work on park trails, campgrounds, and picnic areas resulted in large increases in recreational use, which in turn improved hundreds of local economies.
The CCC was not without its difficulties, of course. Early efforts to integrate white and black enrollees ran into trouble, both in the camps and in nearby local communities. Logistics—moving men, materials, and equipment through difficult terrain—presented large challenges. As the Depression waned and job opportunities increased, fewer men enrolled in the program, and desertions and disciplinary problems increased. And there was the occasional unfortunate instance of fraud. In 1937, Reno Stitely, chief of the CCC Voucher Unit, was arrested for using fake payroll vouchers to embezzle nearly $85,000. Stitely’s trial was a media sensation.
By the summer of 1940, France had fallen to Germany, and while Americans were strongly isolationist, President Roosevelt was looking ahead to the possibility of war. He permitted CCC camps to be established on military bases where enrollees built airfields, military facilities, artillery ranges, and training fields. The CCC expanded its educational program to include engineering, blueprint reading, and other skills that might be of military use, and the young men were spending up to twenty hours a week in military drills. When the first one-year military conscription took place in September 1940, enrollment in the camps sharply declined, and by Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941), many of the CCC enrollees had already entered military service. Camps that were not directly related to the war effort were ordered to be closed by May 1942. A few months later, Congress appropriated funds to close all of the camps. The program was over.
* * *
A note about language. To write about the people of the 1930s rural South requires the use of terms that may be offensive to some readers—especially “colored,” “colored folk,” and “Negro” when they are used to refer to African Americans. Thank you for understanding that I mean no offense.
Susan Wittig Albert
Bertram, Texas
Resources
Here are some books I found helpful in creating The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O’Clock Lady. You will also find numerous resources listed in the five earlier books in the series.
Cohen, Stan. The Tree Army: A Pictorial History of the Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933–1942 (1980).
Davis, Ren and Helen. Our Mark on This Land: A Guide to the Legacy of the Civilian Conservation Corps in America’s Parks (2011).
Hill, Edwin G. In the Shadow of the Mountain: The Spirit of the CCC (1990).
Maher, Neil M. Nature’s New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement (2009).
Pasquill, Robert. The Civilian Conservation Corps in Alabama, 1933–1942: A Great and Lasting Good (2008).
Recipes
If there were no other reason to live in the South, Southern cookin’ would be enough.
MICHAEL A. GRISSOM, SOUTHERN BY THE GRACE OF GOD
Fried Apples
Served over waffles or with buttermilk biscuits, sausage, and gravy, fried apples are a traditional Southern breakfast dish. But they may appear as a side dish, like a vegetable, for dinner or supper—and in fact are even listed as a vegetable in old cookbooks, where they are sometimes flavored with bacon or sausage drippings. Of course, fried apples aren’t fried at all—but simply braised over low heat, in a heavy skillet. Use firm, tart pie apples, such as Granny Smiths or Gravensteins.
1½ cups apple cider plus ½ cup
5 tart apples, peeled and sliced
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon cornstarch
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon cloves
Pour 1½ cups of apple cider into a skillet over medium heat. Add apple slices and cook until tender. Add butter and remove from heat. Mix together remaining ½ cup apple cider, cornstarch, sugar, and spices in a small bowl. Pour over apples, return to low heat, and stir gently as the sauce thickens.
Jam Thumbprint Cookies
This traditional butter-cookie recipe appears in almost every cookbook after the Civil War, sometimes with pecans, sometimes without. (Pecans, of course, are a Southern favorite and are added to just about anything.) Children love to fill the “thumbprints” and drizzle the glaze—fun for grown-up cooks, too. Choose a single jam or several different jams and marmalades.
1 cup butter or margarine, softened
⅔ cup sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
½ cup finely chopped pecans
½ cup jam
GLAZE
1 cup powdered sugar
2 to 3 teaspoons water
1 teaspoons vanilla extract
Combine butter or margarine, sugar, and vanilla extract in bowl. Beat until creamy, scraping the sides of the bowl often. Add flour and chopped pecans. Beat until well mixed. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour, or until firm.
Heat oven to 350°F. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Make thumbprint indentation in center of each cookie, and fill with about ¼ teaspoon jam. Bake 14–18 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Remove to rack and cool completely. To glaze: Combine all glaze ingredients in bowl and stir until smooth. Drizzle over cookies. Makes about 3 dozen.
Ophelia’s Recipe for Cake Flour
During the Depression, specialty products like cake flour were expensive and were often not stocked in the smaller stores.
Measure out the amount of all-purpose flour called for by your recipe. For every 1 cup of flour remove 2 tablespoons of flour and replace with 2 tablespoons of cornstarch. Sift 5–6 times before using. (If you don’t have a flour sifter, use a strainer. Fill it with flour, hold or place it over a bowl, and tap a knife against it.) Be sure to measure the flour one more time, after it’s been sifted and before you use it in the recipe.
The Diner’s Special Southern Corn Pudding
Southern corn pudding is the savory, whole-kernel version of the sweeter Indian pudding made with cornmeal and molasses that was a Northeastern colonial staple. Corn pudding, also called Puddin’ Corn and Hoppy Glop, is traditionally made with fresh corn, but you can also use canned cream-style corn. Cooks developed their favorite variations, adding onions, garlic, cheese, tomatoes, and other vegetables.
2 cups fresh corn or 1 can cream-style corn
2 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
Pepper
2 eggs
1 cup milk
3 tablespoons butter, melted
Preheat oven to 350ºF. Mix together corn, flour, sugar, sa
lt, and pepper. Beat eggs with milk and melted butter, and add to corn. Pour into a greased baking dish. Bake 30 minutes. Serves 6.
Raylene’s Lemon Chess Pie
Southern cooks were famous for their sweet, egg-rich custard pies, including chess pie (also called chess cake, chess tart, and sugar pie). This recipe (which includes cornmeal for thickening) is for the popular lemon-flavored variation; if lemons weren’t available, vinegar was often substituted, or buttermilk. Food history expert Karen Hess tells us how this pie got its odd name: “Since the archaic spellings of cheese often had but one ‘e’ we have the answer to the riddle of the name of that southern favorite ‘Chess Pie’. . . (The tradition of making cheesecake without the cheese goes back to early seventeenth century and beyond . . .)”—The Virginia House-wife, by Mary Randolph, with Historical Notes and Commentaries by Karen Hess, p. 289
4 eggs
1½ cups sugar
½ cup lemon juice
¼ cup butter, melted
1 tablespoon cornmeal
2 teaspoons all-purpose flour
⅛ teaspoon salt
Pastry for 9” pie
In a large bowl, beat eggs for 3 minutes. Gradually add sugar and beat until mixture becomes thick and lemon-colored. Beat in the lemon juice, butter, cornmeal, flour, and salt. Pour into pastry shell. Bake at 350°F for 35–40 minutes or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack for 1 hour. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours before serving.
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