Remembrances from long ago...

I can still close my eyes and see my Mamaw working in the huge flour bowl making lard biscuits in the morning. Lard may not be in your experience and if so I will pity you, since it made the most delicious biscuits. Since she had been born before the turn of the century and the world changed so much during her lifetime, you can understand that she held to some of the things familiar to her in her younger life. I suppose the use of lard was one of them. Crisco was the alternative by the time I was born but she didn't go there when it came to biscuits. She would work the dough with her hands and then flour a huge board, use a massive rolling pin that I could hardly lift as a child. I believe that my Papaw had made that rolling pin for her. 


But the most operable item in her kitchen was her big cast iron deep skillet. I loved it best when she made a vanilla pound cake in it! Believe me, the crispy crust of the cake was due to that iron skillet and much appreciated by us all. Some things come and go but cast iron is forever.

I remember in the early mornings when my father wrap me up in a quilt and take me with my sister to my grandparents house. My mother was one of the women who braved a new and changing world and went into factory work during WWII and it's aftermath. She met my father there. As they left for work each morning, we were taken to spend the days with my grandparents. So the result is that I have a childhood memories of life more like those of my mother's than that of most children of the 1950's.

Mamaw made eggs every morning and gravy for the biscuits. I assume there was sausage or bacon but they are less of the memory to me. Breakfast on a farm was no small event because it fueled the mornings work. Even though by the time I can recall these memories my grandparents were already older and doing less heavy farm work, breakfast did not change! The sights in my memory rise up from the recesses my brain like the morning fog rises off the dewy fields.

Wild blackberries grew on the mountain. Believe me there is no comparison in the taste of the wild ones to that of the tame variety. We picked a lot of them in the heat of summer days, filling large tin buckets. We had to wear long sleeves and long pants even on the hottest days but preparation for picking them meant kerosene soaked rag strips tied at your ankles and wrists to help deter chiggers. I won't pity you if you are not experienced with them! For some reason chiggers seemed to like me a lot. And then there were ticks... let's hurry back to the food. We ate lots of berries while picking them but I do remember reaching high for a huge one when you're little meant your feet got closer into the shade of the bottom of the bushes and copperhead snakes liked the shade of the bushes! But for every downside there is an upside and the Blackberry Cobbler she made in that cast iron skillet was a great upside! The aroma of blackberries cooking and the promise of cobblers and jelly. That sounds heavenly and tasted even better!

My Mamaw was a wonderful woman. Every single day she always wore an apron over her dress, and would wrap it over her arms if she were cold but it was good for carrying eggs in from the backyard as well. At a moment's notice it was a good catch all. One of my favorite memories is that she would take me on her lap and pull that apron up around me and snuggle me tight. Oh how loved, she and that apron, and all these memories make me feel!