Things My Mother Told Me

You know what? I got very little.

Anon CP has great Things-My-Mother-Told-Me stories. Real southern lady things - like how to handle yourself on those tricky subjects of age and men.

Now that's not to say my mother didn't tell me how to act - I just didn't pay attention.

Here's what I do remember:
Never wear white before Easter or after Labor Day. Never mind why. No-one knows. It is THE RULE.

Ladies didn't swear. (anyone who's around me for about three seconds knows that went right over my head).

Never return a dish empty. Even though this doesn't always happen, I always think about it when I don't.

Always tell people to come back anytime - even when you're praying to sweet baby Jesus they never darken your door again.

If you can't say anything nice - don't say anything at all.

On my self esteem:
When some stupid boy told me my eyes bugged out, she told me I had bedroom eyes - like Elvis Presley.
Ha ha stupid boy!

My legs were a harder sell.
I have large calves. Knee socks and boots were out of the question. (Knee socks only came to half calf, boots needed an elastic gore the size of Texas). I didn't go to my eighth grade graduation because it meant wearing a dress, on stage, with my ham sized calves on full display to accept an award.
My mother valiantly tried to save the day by telling me they were "athletic looking". And believe me...she did some searching for the word "athletic".
(My brother inherited my mother's thin legs, while my sister and I got the Scottish peasant legs. Proof positive life is not fair.)

On comforting:
During thunderstorms in Miami, she would sit in the bathroom with all three of us with the lights off and write our names in the air with her lit cigarette. (In retrospect, this seems more along the lines of a bad idea/child abuse.)

On boys:
She didn't like me hanging around certain friends because they were "boy crazy". Confession: I am still unclear what that means and how them being that way impacted me. Good thing I didn't have girl children.

Wish I had known she wasn't going to be around to remind me of my faux pas later on. I'd have paid more attention.

Fried Corn - Start to Finish

CSA Silver Queen corn

Google "fried corn" and you'll find a lot of recipes out there that add sugar, water, and whatnot. Really not necessary.

I make it the way my mother made it (the way your mother makes it is, as everyone knows, the right way), except I substitute olive oil for bacon grease. (she used vegetable oil in the later years)

The one rule - it HAS to be done in a cast iron skillet.

Shucked and clean

Thirteen ears of  corn - off the cob

Here's the recipe: corn, salt, pepper and some kind of fat. I can't tell you how long to saute the corn, you just know when it's done.

I put a lot of pepper in mine because, well, I like pepper.

When you pull this out of the freezer in winter - it's like a summer miracle.
I could eat this all day and all night. It was one of the foods I asked for when I came to visit.

Great-grandmother's cast iron skillet

The finished product - ready for the freezer

Civil War Blog

For the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, UNC is doing a blog post every day.

"The concept of Civil War Day by Day is a simple one: every day for the next four years, we will present a document that is 150 years old to the day."

You can link to it on the left under my blog list or here: http://www.lib.unc.edu/blogs/civilwar/

While you're reading it, listen to this song Arrowhead, by Richard Shindell. 

I double dog dare you not to cry. 

It's Pajama Day

Not to be confused with The Pajama Game - my least favorite Doris Day movie. (My favorite, Pillow Talk.)

Pajama day is just what it sounds like - stay in my pj's all day, glasses (not contacts), no make-up, drink too much coffee, radio on 88.1, cinnamon rolls (Pillsbury). It's drab and gray outside, which is perfect for PJD. I'm looking forward to organizing some drawers later, (I know! the weird things some people get pleasure from); one load of laundry done, another to go. (Lillie - shut up! - you cannot have my chair!)

Friday night some of us met at Foster's Market for Sara Foster's latest book signing - conveniently right next door at Flyleaf Books. Small plates and drinks (wine, beer, Salty Dogs) were to be had. Goat cheese canapés with pepper jelly, hushpuppies with jalapeño mayo, catfish, grits and tomatoes (how my mom made them!), shortbread cookies. It was a pretty good FREE spread. :)

Yesterday afternoon a friend and I went to Craven Allen Gallery for the opening reception for Beverly McIver; nice work. Her sister, Renee, the subject of many of her paintings, was there, selling potholders and showing people the pictures that were of her. Beverly also has a documentary about her and Renee's life coming up at the Full Frame Film Festival.
Then we went down a few doors to Watts Grocery for a little nosh. The strawberry rhubarb tart was worth every penny of the $8. The crust was perfect.

I drove home in a downpour, flinching every time a pink exclamation point of lightning punctuated the grey wet. I hate lightning. In Florida, I once sat in my truck for 45 minutes waiting for a storm cell to pass, too frightened to make the dash up the stairs to my apartment.

On an entirely different note: if you ever come upon a funeral procession down here in Dixie - pull over! Even if you're on the opposite side of the street.
Yesterday on my way to the walk at Bolin Creek, I was behind such a procession for most of the way and was appalled (okay - judgmental. Whatever.) at how many people didn't do that. WHAT?! Some [completely rude] jerks even had the nerve to take advantage of the people that did pull over and pass them. Wow. The police car in front should have alerted even the most oblivious driver that something was up.
Now you can't say you didn't know.

This video is Breathe Owl Breathe - Dog Walkers of the New Age. I heard it on the way home last week and loved it.
I'm off to organize - appropriately enough -  my pajama drawer.

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While we're on the food topic: after our Saturday walk we replace all (and then some) of the calories we might have walked off by having breakfast/lunch at Foster's or Weaver Street Market, depending on where we perambulate.
So yesterday - Foster's had mac & cheese + pepperoni.
Shut. Your. Piehole.
That was not my selection, (bacon, spinach and avocado sandwich on sunflower bread), but I did get a bite. Man, was it good!

Angry People

The book for April book club is Outliers, The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell.

Mr. Gladwell says that success is not a fluke in most cases. Some of the things that have contributed to the success of Bill Gates, The Beatles, a bunch of New York law firms, and professional hockey players are practicing for 10,000 hours, being the grandson of a Jewish immigrant who worked in the garment district of New York, and being born in January.

Now, I've never wanted to do anything enough to practice it for 10,000 hours, I'm not Jewish or from New York, I wasn't born in January. And even though I'm smarter than the average bear, I was not taught that I was entitled to a good education or anything at all actually.
So after discovering that I am apparently resigned to a life of mediocrity, I found the book kind of depressing, albeit in an interesting way, until I got the Chapter on the Culture of Honor.

Ah, my people.

You can listen to the entire chapter here:
Outliers - Culture of Honor by Malcolm Gladwell - Why I Hate The Joneses Audio track

Skip to 10:00 or even 15:00 to hear the [to me] interesting bits.

I'll sum up: Basically Southerners are angry sums a' bitches.
Most of the people who settled in the South came from clannish areas such as Scotland, Ireland, the midlands of England, and Wales. Life was hard, people tried to steal your sheep, and your clan had your back. Because the part of the country we settled in was a lot like where we left, we kept our clannish ways and still act this way even now - though many of us haven't seen the "home country" in two-three hundred years.

These are people who can recite their genealogy back generations (it's part of knowing your clan) and even suggesting there's a y*ankee, (as CP says), or an Englishman in the woodpile is fightin' words.
Remember, we're angry people, so watch your mouth. Plus for some reason, we tend to have a long ass memory, not necessarily a good thing. Elephants got nothin' on us, baby.

Most crimes in the South are personal in nature - in a culture of honor, we don't want your stuff - we're settling a score. The Hatfields and McCoys are a classic example. Mr. Gladwell calls it a "cultural legacy".

I'll add my own theory here - as to the pissed off bit.
Here were these crazy warrior folk - all mixed up with Vikings, Picts, and other blood curdling berserker types, but then something happened (what? religion?) and most of those countries or sections of those countries were kept oppressed, poor and exploited. The Irish were beat down for centuries by the English. Not a couple of years or decades - centuries.They were not allowed to practice moneymaking professions, their religion, own property, speak their language, or be educated. The Welsh and the Scots also suffered under the rule of the English.

Then over to America we trot, bringing our centuries of oppressed anger with us (Southerners are masters of the passive-aggressive. I think we invented it.). Yeah, we're still pissed. So what?

Anyhoo, that chapter was extra interesting and made me proud. I'm sure I was meant to take it another way, but cultural legacy won out.

As an aside: the Angles and the Saxons had themselves some cajones and managed to do what the Romans did not, which is a little bit amazing.
The Italians didn't conquer the Picts in Caledonia so much as corral them with their nice wall. Keep those woad covered barbarian bastards on the other side, thank you.
They didn't mess with Ireland at all http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibernia

Cooking - Southern Style

My father was not demonstrative as a whole; his Scots-Irish DNA prohibited it. He was a man of walk the talk, not talk the walk. If he was there, he loved us. The end.
When he wasn't at sea or didn't have duty, he was home every night for supper and he contributed, like the rest of us. He made the salad, I peeled the potatoes, my brother and sister set the table, and Mom did the rest.

Sometimes he was the cook, usually when we had "vegetable" dinner or breakfast for dinner.
Vegetable dinner consisted of pure carbs: black-eyed peas, rice for Hopping John, cornbread, sliced tomatoes with mayonnaise slathered all over them, turnip greens (for Mom) and my favorite - what my father jokingly referred to as Potatoes A La Patton.
Recipe: roughly mash potatoes with milk and butter, plop them on your plate and make a hole. In the hole, place raw chopped onions and mayonnaise, then mix.
The crunch of the onion, the tangy creaminess of the mayo all mixed in with the carrier potatoes - shut your pie hole! To this day they are one of my all time favorite comfort foods.

My dad fried eggs by ladling hot bacon grease over the top of them, no flipping involved.
I am convinced that a Southerner's blood is part bacon fat. We actually owned a canister set that included one for bacon grease. In my house, pouring a precious commodity like bacon grease down the drain was a first degree felony.
Fried corn, another one of my favorites, involved bacon grease.
Recipe: remove the kernels from a bunch of fresh corn. Saute in bacon grease (sub olive oil now) in a cast iron skillet (that is important). Ta da! Fried corn. Freezes well.

Not sure why it's called fried, batter was not involved.

The Other Side

Way, way back the first of the year I talked about my father's side of the family. My mother's side is much more documented, not sure why.
Some came over from the north of England in the early 1700's to Virginia and for reason unknown, migrated to Georgia, trickled down into Florida, when it was owned by the Brits, then back to Georgia (some of them), when it became Spanish territory in 1783, and then back again.

There are even streets named after her family in J'ville - but don't get too excited - they have trailers on them. Single wide.

My mother's people have lived in Jacksonville even before it was called Cowford (there's a nice romantic name).

Both my great and great great grandfathers were loggers.

When my mother dies, she'll be buried in the family cemetery, next to my father, her mother, her grandmother and great great grandfather, several Confederate veterans, and very near the slave cemetery, that we just (finally) included in the property.

Southern Living

Both my parents are from the South, from the early 1700's on my mom's side; my father's side of the family is proving to be a bit more elusive.

My father's family were sharecroppers in Georgia.
He's the baby in the picture, the "young'un" as he'd say. He would be the baby of the family until thirteen years later when Billy came along. He was the first one in the family to graduate from high school.

My grandmother was very short, 4'9" and my grandfather was very tall, about 6'7". The Mutt and Jeff of grandparents. Neither one of them talked very much; they weren't squeezers or pinchers, but we got that they LOVED us.


When I found out they didn't own the house my father had lived in since he was about three months old, I was heartbroken, I was hoping it would be my inheritance. It had no indoor plumbing, no A/C. My grandmother lived in that house for over fifty years and didn't have indoor plumbing until sometime in the seventies. We thought using an outhouse and chamber pots was great fun, but then we didn't have to empty them!

Water came from the well and it was the sweetest, coldest water I've ever tasted. There was a bucket with a gourd dipper next to the sink on the screened in porch. That's where you washed your hands/face, brushed your teeth, got a drink of water. Baths were in the pantry in the galvanized tub, and all three of us children used the same water; water was heated on the wood burning stove.

That wood burning stove could turn out the most amazing food in my grandmother's capable hands. Ham, biscuits, peach cobbler, fresh coconut cake, (where in the world did she get fresh coconuts in rural Georgia?!), squirrel and rabbit stews, all manner of deliciousness came from that stove. She was also a consummate canner, as most women had to be back then. The pantry was full of beautiful jewel like jars of vegetables and fruits; her pickled peaches were my favorite. Once when I was very young, my mother, grandmother and I picked blackberries for pies. My grandmother made my doll her very own real pie in the pie tin from a set of play dishes.

They grew cotton and had a truck garden. My grandmother had her kitchen garden and chickens. I can remember being about three years old and watching her kill a chicken for supper. She had her chopping stump with the axe stuck in the top of it, so it was handy. They had two or three cows, mules, (my dad said he'd spent more time than he cared to remember looking at the rear end of a mule as he plowed fields), and a pig who met its demise every fall ("so fat he'd be blind").
Plenty of feral cats in the barn and one brown hound dog named, appropriately enough, Brownie. I remember him when I was three and he was still alive sixteen years later. Ate nothing but table scraps his whole life and never set foot in the house. Animals are to be outside was my grandmother's philosophy.

You did not lallygag at my grandmother's house, even little hands could do something; snap beans, shell peas, cut out biscuits, weed, pick tomatoes, feed animals. But there was still plenty of time to play with the toy grocery store, run around with Brownie, or stand in the barn wishing the feral cats weren't so I could play with the kittens.

It was a beautiful place, this sharecroppers house sitting on the red Georgia clay, with no indoor plumbing, a bed in the living room (my parents slept there), and a bed under the stairs (where I slept - until my dad told me a story about a snake coming up through a hole in the floor right under that bed).

I miss it and my grandparents.