So, Thanksgiving Day is nearly here. Pretty soon everyone will have had their fill of turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce.
My Granddaddy Pierce had a recipe of sorts for what to do with your leftovers. I would bet that Daddy, Grandmama and Ron had to eat Turkey Hash from the day after Thanksgiving until Christmas. It was a mixture of leftovers: turkey, dressing, vegetables (mostly peas), and a lot of chicken broth and hot sauce. It was soupy and I didn't like it' mostly because of the canned peas. He was always so proud of it. I ate it without complaint, but I never had seconds.
Grandmama's Polish Potato Soup, on the other hand, was an event, not just a dish. We all looked forward to it so much and she would serve it in china bowls which were actually called soup plates. She got this recipe from a friend she met in Buffalo, New York. I made it recently for my book club for our discussion of Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent. It was set in early 60's New York, so I thought it would have been a dish that Ethan would have had. It will be a good dish to serve once you're tired of holiday food.
Grandmama peeled and mashed her own potatoes, I used 3 24 oz packages of Simply Potatoes - which are already mashed. I also put the mixture through the food processor for extra silkiness, I also added a cup of cottage cheese and a cup of milk - so you can play with it and make it your own and take short cuts, but here is Grandmama's recipe:
6 large potatoes
32 oz. of chicken broth
1 package Kielbasa Sausage
One large onion
Three tablespoons of flour
Parsley and dill weed to taste
Three tablespoons Canola Oil
Boil potatoes in 2 quarts of water until tender
Drain potatoes into another pot and reserve
Mash potatoes with butter or margarine and salt, set aside
Chop onion, sausage, dill, and parsley
Heat oil in frying pan and sautee onion, sausage, dill and parsley
Stir in flour and add two cups of reserve water
Put mashed potatoes back on the stove
Add broth and simmer
put mixture through food processor for a smoother texture.
Combine all ingredients; simmer for about thirty minutes to allow flavors to blend.
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
Friday, November 22, 2019
Grandmother Moss's Cornbread Dressing
Just in time for Thanksgiving shopping, I found my grandmother's recipe for Cornbread Dressing in the family heritage album Mama helped Emily make for a school project:
Ingredients:
Six or Eight home-made biscuits
One pan of cornbread
One quart of chicken broth
One large chopped onion
One cup of finely chopped celery
One small container of pimento (if desired for color)
Four medium fresh eggs
Two tablespoons of sage
Salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper to taste
Carmelize onions
Simmer onions and celery in chicken broth for about fifteen minutes
Crumble cornbread and biscuits finely in a large pot
Add chicken broth, celery, and onion to cornbread/biscuit mixture
Add pimento if desired
Add seasonings
Mixture should be soupy
Add broth or water if mixture is too thick
Beat four eggs and fold gently into the mixture
Pour into large casserole or baking pan
Top with parsley and paprika for color if desired
Bake at 359 degrees until firm (about forty minutes)
Serve with gravy
Gravy used would have been Giblet Gravy
I prefer Redeye Gravy
Monday, November 11, 2019
Grandma West - "Gram" ©
It's been a while since I posted. Between being sick, and the length of this story, it took me a little bit to get it all typed. Plus, I kept looking at ancestry to put everything together in my own mind. For those related to me, you may remember that for a while on the ancestry tree we had a line called Whatley that went back to a bunch of Native Americans. That line was actually the line of Sallie Sides. Her mother was Native American. I took that line down and replaced it with Annie West's biological mother, Anna Foreman.
Also, Ol' Flap is a bit of a mystery to me. When I look up characters in Jude the Obscure, which I have never read, it does not come up, neither does Old Flop. Mama's A's and O's are identical. At any rate, it refers to God. This story is a little long for a blog post, but I think it is worth the read. I hope you enjoy it.
Finally, I'd like to go on the record saying that there is no proof of the illicit affair described. There is certainly no doubt that Daniel McHan West (Uncle Dock) was a West - he looked just like all of the rest of them. Was this story motivated by the fact that Mama herself had just had an affair? Was it the delusions of an old woman who had just been worked up by Thomas Hardy? Who knows? No one. At any rate, here it is, a story about Grandma West (Willie Anne Feemster Sides West), fondly referred to as Gram...
Begin Entry: Journal of Anita West Moss 1987
The summer I was fourteen years old, Gram decided it was time to get ready to die. "I'm sick of this," she said "Everybody who knows me is lying up yonder in Greenbrier. I don't aim to put up with it too much longer." And her delicately bowed mouth set itself in the thin tight line I had known all my life. Gram was no talker. She was a listener and a reader. I read Jude the Obscure to her that summer. "Durn ol' Flap," she would mutter. He never lets up, does he? Never gives poor folks a chance. Curse that Jude, a pure fool, the way most men are. Gram considered Ol' Flap a contemptuous name for the Lord, not her personal Savior, but her personal enemy. And after she got to talking about it, I couldn't help but agree with her.
Now it's deep January, and middle age has me in thrall. I need to go to the Spa Lovely and do at least two hundred stomach crunches. I need to work my body and make it hurt, just the way the lithesome Jane Fonda urges me to do, but I'm not going to, I say to myself defiantly. I'm going to finish up this shortbread and think about Gram. This Christmas I noticed for the first time that Gram's body has found its reincarnation in my older daughter. My daughter is walking around in the delicately fragile lovely bones of her great-grandmother who died years before she was born. I look at the face of a sixteen-year-old Gram. She was born in 1875 so that means that picture would have been taken in 1891. My hair is just the color of hers. It looks just plain brown but it is all tinged and burnished with red highlights and turns glorious in the sun. Hers is long but is pulled back severely into a bun. In the front, though, she has the Gibson Girl Fringe. She looks haughty and defiant and bored - stares coldly at the camera with her intense blue eyes. The bones of her face are delicate and lovely - high cheekbones and a poignant jaw - not too prominent. It is the kind of face that makes women famous; that's why Gram was voted the most beautiful girl in the county the year she turned sixteen even if she was the orphaned girl adopted by the Widow Sides who ran the Ackerman Inn to support herself and her daughter. And that's why the handsome Manley West jilted his fiance, Amy Lou, and started courting Annie Sides. Gram jilted her own sweetheart, Will, for the sake of my granddaddy's coal-black hair and tall graceful form, and yellow-gold eyes that crinkled up when he smiled.
"That was my most serious mistake in life," Gram said, "Jilting Will, who adored me and treated me like a delicate Chrystal and would have stood by me and been good to me, even when I wasn't the best-looking girl in Ackerman any longer." Then Gram clutched my hand "Never, never marry a good looking man," she said, "Women never will stop running after them - not even after they're old - old fools running after young gals." "Oh, I don't plan to marry, Gram. I plan to have lovers and dumping them first before they get a chance to dump me." I imagined myself in a black form-fitting evening gown, covered with silver sequins, my silver fox jacket tossed carelessly over my shoulder; exhaling a long drag on my cigarette, "Well, so long," I'd say to my broken-hearted, cast-off lover, "See you around." Then I disappear from his life to haunt his dreams forever. I walk off into a magical city street. I hum a Ruth Etting tune..."Love Me or Leave Me." "Well, good luck," Gram said, "but there has never been an old maid in our family. I'll be thinking about this when I watch you walk down the aisle."
But Gram had no real interest in my life. Her mind ran on her life between the paroxysms of pain that gripped her abdomen, caused her sometimes to go out of her head and hallucinate, and believe she was giving birth to one or another of her nine children.
"Do you think you can wash my hair?" she asks, "I was ever particular about my hair," Yes, I know she was particular. All my life I had wanted to brush that wavy silver hair that reminded me of Sparkle Pretty in the funny paper. But now Gram was too frail to wash her own hair. One day last winter she had broken her hip. I believed her when she said she didn't fall. She said her hip broke while she was brushing her hair out in front of the mirror in the bathroom and then she fell. And then she really began to go down. She said her poor old body knew it was time to die; that's why it had give out on her like that, just let her know in no uncertain terms that she had made up her last garden, put up her last batch of crisp green watermelon pickles, crocheted her last antimacassar or lace doily. But Gram was in the mood to do some talking after she had been such a quiet pretty little thing all of her life, and it seemed she couldn't tell it all fast enough.
"First thing I remember," she said, her voice low and weak but still soft and musical the way voices from the southern part of the state are, "I woke up in my little white bed with my doll, Amanda, beside me and the house was full of strange voices and funny smells. When I stood up in the little crib, I called out for my mother, one of my aunts came and picked me up. She said my mother was not feeling so awful well and neither was my pa. She said I'd have to wait to see them. She took me in the kitchen, and Dorsey, our Negro cook, took me in her arms and sat by the big wood cook stove my mother was so proud of and fed me some ham and hot biscuit. Later that day she took me and my doll, Amanda, off to her cabin to play with her grandchildren while my mother and my pa got over the influenza. I heard her say to Queenie-Lee, her daughter, that lived there with all those little young 'uns. that the flux had already turned into the bloody flux and that old Dr. Holland said neither one of them had even a fifty-fifty chance.
So the next thing I know, my grandpa was holding me in the rain at the cemetery and the preacher was throwing dirt in on my mother and pa, and that was the last I ever knew of my fine young father, William Feemster and my beautiful young mother, Anne Foreman. But they were fine people from fine families and they both had good educations. There are doctors and lawyers in West Point today with the name of Feemster and Foreman. And why mother's and father's people didn't want a sweet little baby girl, their own flesh and blood, I never will know. But I made up my mind never to try and find out. I said Ma Sides is the only kin I have. When I was about thirty-five years old, one of my mother's sisters took a notion to find me, after she had allowed her own dead sister's only child to be raised with a stranger, but I never answered the letter. Your Aunt Rene has ever held that against me. She said the Foreman and the Feemster families were influential people in this state. I said they don't influence me, and I am to keep it that way. And then Rene was so hacked and so vexed that she just hushed about it.
The first thing I recall after that rainy time in the cemetery, I was sitting up in the buggy alongside my grandpa. I clutched Amanda close to my chest. Amanda was in my stocking at for Christmas, and I was the proudest thing of her that ever was, even if one of her eyes was gone and the tip of her china nose chipped. I sat up beside my tall grandpa and tried my hardest not to cry and I didn't. I just sat wrapped up in a big black shawl and listened to the rain falling real steady on the hood of the buggy and watched Grandpa's stern profile. It seemed like days and days that we were riding in the buggy in the falling rain. It was December and cold, too. And lots of folks were dying off the way my mother and father had. I reckon my grandpa felt like he couldn't take care of a baby girl, either, for the next thing I knew he was lifting me and Amanda down from the buggy. We had pulled up in front of the Ackerman Inn. A tall figure ran out of the front door and took me out of Grandpa's arms. "So this is that precious baby girl. I'm Sally Sides," she said "From here on out I'm going to be your Ma." And she told the truth about that because we never spent another night apart the rest of Ma Sides life. I said it and I meant it. Any man who wanted me had to make room in his home and heart for the only family I ever knew. And I'll say this for Manley West; he was good to Ma Sides. Lord, what am I saying. Manley West was good in so many ways. It wasn't his fault that the women couldn't leave him alone and would just traipse after him till he couldn't stand it. Anyway, when I was still a young woman, your Mama was maybe two years old, well, I paid it all out to Manley. I stepped out with another man. Yes, Lord, the blood rose up and beat in my breast every time I would see that man. We'd look into each other eyes and know what we both wanted. So I met him at night for one whole summer. I longed for him. Black, bottomless passion held us like that. If Manley knowed anything, he never let on. Just the way I never let on that I knew about all of those women. When that man took me I would look up over his shoulder and feel like the hot stars were so close I could touch them and I would think this is really all there is, but I reckon Ol' Flap has paid me out for that wicked pleasure in the hot night. Because then the man wanted me to leave Manley and the children and especially when I knew there would be another baby. So when I said I couldn't, he turned mean on me. He got hard-hearted and bitter, and he'd try to hurt me at night - bruised my flesh. Finally, I said I'd have to end it and he put his hands around my throat and threatened to kill me. So that was the way Daniel came into this world, from those summer nights when I left Manley's bed and fled through the darkness just to be with him. But it wasn't enough for him to hurt me and bruise me. No, I reckon he couldn't stand the sight of me and Manley and our children. So he set Manley's sawmill on fire. We lost everything in that fire. So, I reckon that was the beginning of the punishment - seems like it's just been going on like that ever since."
After Gram got done with that story, she drifted into sleep for a while. And I figured a way I could wash her hair. When she woke up, I told her we could put a chair in the bathtub and let her sit in it while I washed her hair, so that's what we did. Gram's body looked almost like a child's because it was so thin but the flesh had fallen sadly. I thought I'm glad she loved that man under the stars and felt the life all around her - all that pulsing life in the Mississippi night with the katydids murmuring and the crickets singing and the fireflies flickering. I could imagine the sweating bodies in the darkness and felt the heat sweeping washing over me as I washed Gram's body and shampooed her hair. After I had dried her small body and brushed out the wavy hair, I read some more from Jude the Obscure. Gram said Sue Bridehead was the silliest fool she ever heard of. We both said we liked Return of the Native a whole lot better.
Gram loved books and had read so much in the poor light of oil lamps that one of her blue eyes had gone askew or at least that's what her children said. Aunt Beryl often said reproachfully, "Mama let the bread burn many a time when she was reading a book." "Good," I thought"let the damn stuff burn." Once Aunt Beryl said, my grandpa got so mad that he put a stack of books in her oven and burned them. But he regretted that rash action because Gram grabbed up all of his pipes and his checkers and dominoes and stuffed them in the oven.
I tried to braid Gram's hair just the way she always did, but I couldn't get it right. The waves still fell the right way around her face, though, and I helped her into her blue nightgown; then she fell back exhausted against a stack of pillows. Gram decided she didn't want to eat anymore. "No," she would shake her head when I brought her tray into her, "Take it away. Eating is for folks that can get well. Nourishment won't help me, not no more." But I did get her to sip some cold lemonade and to taste just a little lime sherbet from the pink depression glass dish she thought was so pretty. What she needed to do was to keep talking. So she held onto my hand and talked as fast as she could, as if she knew there wasn't much time left or at least time when she wouldn't be out of her head. I sat listening to my grandmother, my mother's very own mother and grieving already because I knew when she was gone, I would never stop missing her. And I already saw the day my own mother would die and how her mind would run on Gram. "Our mother was remarkable, truly remarkable -- such a beautiful smart genteel woman just wasted in these cotton fields." And my aunts would nod their agreement.
Gram began to talk again, "I got way down yonder ahead of myself a while ago; I had started telling about when I went to live with Ma Sides shortly after my mother and Pa died with influenza. I don't know what I thought when Sally Sides said she was my new ma. I don't know what may have been between her and my grandpa. He was a widower by then and Ma Sides had lost her husband in the War between the States. I'll tell about that directly. It could have been that Ma and my Grandpa loved each other. Maybe he gave me to her because she'd been cheated out of having children of her own. Maybe my aunts really wanted me and he wanted Sally Sides to have me to make her beautiful gray eyes light up with love whenever she'd look at me. Maybe that's how it was. But I never will know. Ma wouldn't never talk about it. My aunts never came to visit, so pretty soon I got used to living in the inn. Drummers would come through - the same ones regular - and they all looked forward to staying there because Ma Sides was the best cook I ever knew. She'd cook all day and serve a big Sunday dinner every night of the week -- ham and fried chicken and country fried steak and peach and pear pickles that she put up herself and blackberry pie from the berries we'd work so hard to put up. Her pantry looked just like a country fair with the jars all labeled. We did most of the work ourselves --- just had one Negro girl to help with the cleaning and Sam Acker would help with the outside work. Somehow in all that work and worry Ma still found time to teach me to read and write and count because she'd finished at the female academy before she had married young Captain Sides. After the war, the schools was all shut down for a long time, but Ma taught me to read from her book of Aesop's Fables. Whatever she'd teach me, why I'd memorize just that quick and tell it back to her when we'd sit down before the fire in the evening with the guests. All the men, the boarders, made over me and said what a smart pretty child I was. And Ma would smile and say "That child is from one of the finest families in this country. She would be dressed in silk if her folks hadn't died on her." But Lord, I wanted to go to school so bad I'd dream and hope I could go somehow, and finally the schools did open, and I went for a few years, but Ma's health began to go down and I had to stay home and try to keep things going seven days a week. Ma often talked about her young husband. He was from a fine family. One of his uncles had even been a general in the Confederate Army, and Ma always thought her handsome young husband was in something called the Intelligence Corps. She knew for a fact that he would go cross Union lines and gather up information and that what he did was an awful secret. Anyway, he came back home once to get a fresh horse and to tell her he had to light out for Texas but that he would come back for her or send for her whenever he could. Within the hour, Ma Sides said the Yankee soldiers came to look for him. They searched the house, but the Yankee Major was polite to her and wouldn't let the soldiers take anything. And Ma was always so thankful they didn't burn her fine house since that's how she made her living. Finally, she did have to sell off all the fine furniture, most of it from her people to pay the taxes. Ma said she stood on the veranda in the twilight and watched her young husband ride away across the pasture and not daring to think of what turned out to be true; that she never saw nor heard of him again. She didn't believe he made it to Texas. She believed the Yankees caught him and killed him, but since she never did know for sure, why of course she never did feel free to marry. I have always hoped in my heart that she and my grandpa loved one another, for there never has been a finer woman on this earth than she was with her high forehead and the widow's peak of black hair and her big gray eyes that were so full of fun and yet so full of pain. I reckon my grandpa knew that his daughters, my aunts, would never have been the mother to me that Sally Sides was. - not even my own mother could have been any better. So I reckon my grandpa knew what he was doing when he rode through the rain with Amanda and me wrapped up in my mother's black shawl. And growing up in the Ackerman Inn was truly interesting, even if it was more work than several grown men ought to have to do. But Ma Sides and I ran that Inn and made money and paid our debts and folks respected us for it, too. And Lord, the things that happened in that inn.
I mind once they was two men that made up their minds to have a duel. They had made it up to come to the inn and spend the night then meet with their seconds at dawn down by the river. We could just hear them upstairs pacing in their rooms. Ma and her guests started talking about what a pack of foolishness it all was - two grown men bound and determined to shoot each other. We didn't know what the trouble was but Ma said it was another example of the way men would do - deprive their wives and children of a husband and a father because their precious honor was offended. Finally, Ma said she had put up with that pacing long enough. She said she was going to try and talk some sense into them. So she went marching up the stairs and knocked on Mr. Irwin Lefever's door and talked for a long time. Then she went to Mr. Edward Armstrong's room and talked; then back to Mr. Lefever's room and so on till she had talked them both out of the duel. She said come down to the dining room and we'd all drink a glass of elderberry wine she'd made herself. So they came down and shook hands and we all drank elderberry wine and ate teacakes. Ma was the hero, but few people could resist that sweet southern voice that sounded like music - all lilting and lovely - but which talked such good sense. Ma Sides was some woman. Everbody in Ackerman said so, and it was the truth.
Your Granddaddy's people lived in Newberry, South Carolina for a long time - since the Revolution. I've heard how his ancestors fought with Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, against the British. They had a fine plantation and good educations, but after the war, they lost everything, because, like most folks, they couldn't pay the taxes the Yankees put on them. So the family broke up - some of them are still in South Carolina. Buddy (Gram's oldest son) always said he would go back to South Carolina when he grew up, and of course, he did, too.
(Gram was proud of that because, Eugene, Uncle Buddy's son had played football for Clemson I can see her now hovering over the radio following every play and jumping up and clapping when Clemson would score a touchdown. She was the same way when Carl Edward played for Ole Miss and after that she was just hooked on the game and could tell more about it than any of her grandsons could. If one of her favorites lost, she would sulk for days.)
Well, anyhow, that's how the Wests came to Mississippi, Lots of folks from the East came to Mississippi and lots went on to Texas or Oklahoma hoping for a new start. I reckon it was too hard to stay and see everything your folks had worked for in ruins. As I told you already, I was engaged to Willford Millsaps, but then at church one Sunday, Manley West and I kept staring at each other over our hymn books. That was the fall they voted me the prettiest girl in the county. I was just barely seventeen when I married Manley. Of course, Will didn't come to the wedding. At the reception, I noticed that Manley's younger brother stayed right beside me. A long time after that, Sam told me that your grandpa's fiance, the one he jilted for me, had sworn to kill me. Sam was scared to death she might come to the reception and do it, so he stood close to me the whole time.
Manley did real well in the sawmill business, and we prospered and the precious children kept coming one after another, but then when that man turned against me and burned Manley's sawmill, that just ruined everything. We had to leave Ackerman and come to Monroe County and Manley just never did take ahold after that. I reckon we'd both done too much hurt to one another. We both quit smiling after all that. Then when your Uncle Paul took his own life, I knew Ol' Flap had it in for me. I knew he aimed for me just to keep payin' for it all. First, it was your Grandpa's foot that was burned so bad, then that eczema that drove the life out of me and really made me crazy, and all those years when Manley was down and I waited on him. But I'm about done with it now, I reckon."
End Entry
Also, Ol' Flap is a bit of a mystery to me. When I look up characters in Jude the Obscure, which I have never read, it does not come up, neither does Old Flop. Mama's A's and O's are identical. At any rate, it refers to God. This story is a little long for a blog post, but I think it is worth the read. I hope you enjoy it.
Finally, I'd like to go on the record saying that there is no proof of the illicit affair described. There is certainly no doubt that Daniel McHan West (Uncle Dock) was a West - he looked just like all of the rest of them. Was this story motivated by the fact that Mama herself had just had an affair? Was it the delusions of an old woman who had just been worked up by Thomas Hardy? Who knows? No one. At any rate, here it is, a story about Grandma West (Willie Anne Feemster Sides West), fondly referred to as Gram...
pictured: Willie Anne Feemster Sides West "Annie"
Begin Entry: Journal of Anita West Moss 1987
The summer I was fourteen years old, Gram decided it was time to get ready to die. "I'm sick of this," she said "Everybody who knows me is lying up yonder in Greenbrier. I don't aim to put up with it too much longer." And her delicately bowed mouth set itself in the thin tight line I had known all my life. Gram was no talker. She was a listener and a reader. I read Jude the Obscure to her that summer. "Durn ol' Flap," she would mutter. He never lets up, does he? Never gives poor folks a chance. Curse that Jude, a pure fool, the way most men are. Gram considered Ol' Flap a contemptuous name for the Lord, not her personal Savior, but her personal enemy. And after she got to talking about it, I couldn't help but agree with her.
Now it's deep January, and middle age has me in thrall. I need to go to the Spa Lovely and do at least two hundred stomach crunches. I need to work my body and make it hurt, just the way the lithesome Jane Fonda urges me to do, but I'm not going to, I say to myself defiantly. I'm going to finish up this shortbread and think about Gram. This Christmas I noticed for the first time that Gram's body has found its reincarnation in my older daughter. My daughter is walking around in the delicately fragile lovely bones of her great-grandmother who died years before she was born. I look at the face of a sixteen-year-old Gram. She was born in 1875 so that means that picture would have been taken in 1891. My hair is just the color of hers. It looks just plain brown but it is all tinged and burnished with red highlights and turns glorious in the sun. Hers is long but is pulled back severely into a bun. In the front, though, she has the Gibson Girl Fringe. She looks haughty and defiant and bored - stares coldly at the camera with her intense blue eyes. The bones of her face are delicate and lovely - high cheekbones and a poignant jaw - not too prominent. It is the kind of face that makes women famous; that's why Gram was voted the most beautiful girl in the county the year she turned sixteen even if she was the orphaned girl adopted by the Widow Sides who ran the Ackerman Inn to support herself and her daughter. And that's why the handsome Manley West jilted his fiance, Amy Lou, and started courting Annie Sides. Gram jilted her own sweetheart, Will, for the sake of my granddaddy's coal-black hair and tall graceful form, and yellow-gold eyes that crinkled up when he smiled.
"That was my most serious mistake in life," Gram said, "Jilting Will, who adored me and treated me like a delicate Chrystal and would have stood by me and been good to me, even when I wasn't the best-looking girl in Ackerman any longer." Then Gram clutched my hand "Never, never marry a good looking man," she said, "Women never will stop running after them - not even after they're old - old fools running after young gals." "Oh, I don't plan to marry, Gram. I plan to have lovers and dumping them first before they get a chance to dump me." I imagined myself in a black form-fitting evening gown, covered with silver sequins, my silver fox jacket tossed carelessly over my shoulder; exhaling a long drag on my cigarette, "Well, so long," I'd say to my broken-hearted, cast-off lover, "See you around." Then I disappear from his life to haunt his dreams forever. I walk off into a magical city street. I hum a Ruth Etting tune..."Love Me or Leave Me." "Well, good luck," Gram said, "but there has never been an old maid in our family. I'll be thinking about this when I watch you walk down the aisle."
But Gram had no real interest in my life. Her mind ran on her life between the paroxysms of pain that gripped her abdomen, caused her sometimes to go out of her head and hallucinate, and believe she was giving birth to one or another of her nine children.
"Do you think you can wash my hair?" she asks, "I was ever particular about my hair," Yes, I know she was particular. All my life I had wanted to brush that wavy silver hair that reminded me of Sparkle Pretty in the funny paper. But now Gram was too frail to wash her own hair. One day last winter she had broken her hip. I believed her when she said she didn't fall. She said her hip broke while she was brushing her hair out in front of the mirror in the bathroom and then she fell. And then she really began to go down. She said her poor old body knew it was time to die; that's why it had give out on her like that, just let her know in no uncertain terms that she had made up her last garden, put up her last batch of crisp green watermelon pickles, crocheted her last antimacassar or lace doily. But Gram was in the mood to do some talking after she had been such a quiet pretty little thing all of her life, and it seemed she couldn't tell it all fast enough.
"First thing I remember," she said, her voice low and weak but still soft and musical the way voices from the southern part of the state are, "I woke up in my little white bed with my doll, Amanda, beside me and the house was full of strange voices and funny smells. When I stood up in the little crib, I called out for my mother, one of my aunts came and picked me up. She said my mother was not feeling so awful well and neither was my pa. She said I'd have to wait to see them. She took me in the kitchen, and Dorsey, our Negro cook, took me in her arms and sat by the big wood cook stove my mother was so proud of and fed me some ham and hot biscuit. Later that day she took me and my doll, Amanda, off to her cabin to play with her grandchildren while my mother and my pa got over the influenza. I heard her say to Queenie-Lee, her daughter, that lived there with all those little young 'uns. that the flux had already turned into the bloody flux and that old Dr. Holland said neither one of them had even a fifty-fifty chance.
So the next thing I know, my grandpa was holding me in the rain at the cemetery and the preacher was throwing dirt in on my mother and pa, and that was the last I ever knew of my fine young father, William Feemster and my beautiful young mother, Anne Foreman. But they were fine people from fine families and they both had good educations. There are doctors and lawyers in West Point today with the name of Feemster and Foreman. And why mother's and father's people didn't want a sweet little baby girl, their own flesh and blood, I never will know. But I made up my mind never to try and find out. I said Ma Sides is the only kin I have. When I was about thirty-five years old, one of my mother's sisters took a notion to find me, after she had allowed her own dead sister's only child to be raised with a stranger, but I never answered the letter. Your Aunt Rene has ever held that against me. She said the Foreman and the Feemster families were influential people in this state. I said they don't influence me, and I am to keep it that way. And then Rene was so hacked and so vexed that she just hushed about it.
The first thing I recall after that rainy time in the cemetery, I was sitting up in the buggy alongside my grandpa. I clutched Amanda close to my chest. Amanda was in my stocking at for Christmas, and I was the proudest thing of her that ever was, even if one of her eyes was gone and the tip of her china nose chipped. I sat up beside my tall grandpa and tried my hardest not to cry and I didn't. I just sat wrapped up in a big black shawl and listened to the rain falling real steady on the hood of the buggy and watched Grandpa's stern profile. It seemed like days and days that we were riding in the buggy in the falling rain. It was December and cold, too. And lots of folks were dying off the way my mother and father had. I reckon my grandpa felt like he couldn't take care of a baby girl, either, for the next thing I knew he was lifting me and Amanda down from the buggy. We had pulled up in front of the Ackerman Inn. A tall figure ran out of the front door and took me out of Grandpa's arms. "So this is that precious baby girl. I'm Sally Sides," she said "From here on out I'm going to be your Ma." And she told the truth about that because we never spent another night apart the rest of Ma Sides life. I said it and I meant it. Any man who wanted me had to make room in his home and heart for the only family I ever knew. And I'll say this for Manley West; he was good to Ma Sides. Lord, what am I saying. Manley West was good in so many ways. It wasn't his fault that the women couldn't leave him alone and would just traipse after him till he couldn't stand it. Anyway, when I was still a young woman, your Mama was maybe two years old, well, I paid it all out to Manley. I stepped out with another man. Yes, Lord, the blood rose up and beat in my breast every time I would see that man. We'd look into each other eyes and know what we both wanted. So I met him at night for one whole summer. I longed for him. Black, bottomless passion held us like that. If Manley knowed anything, he never let on. Just the way I never let on that I knew about all of those women. When that man took me I would look up over his shoulder and feel like the hot stars were so close I could touch them and I would think this is really all there is, but I reckon Ol' Flap has paid me out for that wicked pleasure in the hot night. Because then the man wanted me to leave Manley and the children and especially when I knew there would be another baby. So when I said I couldn't, he turned mean on me. He got hard-hearted and bitter, and he'd try to hurt me at night - bruised my flesh. Finally, I said I'd have to end it and he put his hands around my throat and threatened to kill me. So that was the way Daniel came into this world, from those summer nights when I left Manley's bed and fled through the darkness just to be with him. But it wasn't enough for him to hurt me and bruise me. No, I reckon he couldn't stand the sight of me and Manley and our children. So he set Manley's sawmill on fire. We lost everything in that fire. So, I reckon that was the beginning of the punishment - seems like it's just been going on like that ever since."
After Gram got done with that story, she drifted into sleep for a while. And I figured a way I could wash her hair. When she woke up, I told her we could put a chair in the bathtub and let her sit in it while I washed her hair, so that's what we did. Gram's body looked almost like a child's because it was so thin but the flesh had fallen sadly. I thought I'm glad she loved that man under the stars and felt the life all around her - all that pulsing life in the Mississippi night with the katydids murmuring and the crickets singing and the fireflies flickering. I could imagine the sweating bodies in the darkness and felt the heat sweeping washing over me as I washed Gram's body and shampooed her hair. After I had dried her small body and brushed out the wavy hair, I read some more from Jude the Obscure. Gram said Sue Bridehead was the silliest fool she ever heard of. We both said we liked Return of the Native a whole lot better.
Gram loved books and had read so much in the poor light of oil lamps that one of her blue eyes had gone askew or at least that's what her children said. Aunt Beryl often said reproachfully, "Mama let the bread burn many a time when she was reading a book." "Good," I thought"let the damn stuff burn." Once Aunt Beryl said, my grandpa got so mad that he put a stack of books in her oven and burned them. But he regretted that rash action because Gram grabbed up all of his pipes and his checkers and dominoes and stuffed them in the oven.
I tried to braid Gram's hair just the way she always did, but I couldn't get it right. The waves still fell the right way around her face, though, and I helped her into her blue nightgown; then she fell back exhausted against a stack of pillows. Gram decided she didn't want to eat anymore. "No," she would shake her head when I brought her tray into her, "Take it away. Eating is for folks that can get well. Nourishment won't help me, not no more." But I did get her to sip some cold lemonade and to taste just a little lime sherbet from the pink depression glass dish she thought was so pretty. What she needed to do was to keep talking. So she held onto my hand and talked as fast as she could, as if she knew there wasn't much time left or at least time when she wouldn't be out of her head. I sat listening to my grandmother, my mother's very own mother and grieving already because I knew when she was gone, I would never stop missing her. And I already saw the day my own mother would die and how her mind would run on Gram. "Our mother was remarkable, truly remarkable -- such a beautiful smart genteel woman just wasted in these cotton fields." And my aunts would nod their agreement.
Gram began to talk again, "I got way down yonder ahead of myself a while ago; I had started telling about when I went to live with Ma Sides shortly after my mother and Pa died with influenza. I don't know what I thought when Sally Sides said she was my new ma. I don't know what may have been between her and my grandpa. He was a widower by then and Ma Sides had lost her husband in the War between the States. I'll tell about that directly. It could have been that Ma and my Grandpa loved each other. Maybe he gave me to her because she'd been cheated out of having children of her own. Maybe my aunts really wanted me and he wanted Sally Sides to have me to make her beautiful gray eyes light up with love whenever she'd look at me. Maybe that's how it was. But I never will know. Ma wouldn't never talk about it. My aunts never came to visit, so pretty soon I got used to living in the inn. Drummers would come through - the same ones regular - and they all looked forward to staying there because Ma Sides was the best cook I ever knew. She'd cook all day and serve a big Sunday dinner every night of the week -- ham and fried chicken and country fried steak and peach and pear pickles that she put up herself and blackberry pie from the berries we'd work so hard to put up. Her pantry looked just like a country fair with the jars all labeled. We did most of the work ourselves --- just had one Negro girl to help with the cleaning and Sam Acker would help with the outside work. Somehow in all that work and worry Ma still found time to teach me to read and write and count because she'd finished at the female academy before she had married young Captain Sides. After the war, the schools was all shut down for a long time, but Ma taught me to read from her book of Aesop's Fables. Whatever she'd teach me, why I'd memorize just that quick and tell it back to her when we'd sit down before the fire in the evening with the guests. All the men, the boarders, made over me and said what a smart pretty child I was. And Ma would smile and say "That child is from one of the finest families in this country. She would be dressed in silk if her folks hadn't died on her." But Lord, I wanted to go to school so bad I'd dream and hope I could go somehow, and finally the schools did open, and I went for a few years, but Ma's health began to go down and I had to stay home and try to keep things going seven days a week. Ma often talked about her young husband. He was from a fine family. One of his uncles had even been a general in the Confederate Army, and Ma always thought her handsome young husband was in something called the Intelligence Corps. She knew for a fact that he would go cross Union lines and gather up information and that what he did was an awful secret. Anyway, he came back home once to get a fresh horse and to tell her he had to light out for Texas but that he would come back for her or send for her whenever he could. Within the hour, Ma Sides said the Yankee soldiers came to look for him. They searched the house, but the Yankee Major was polite to her and wouldn't let the soldiers take anything. And Ma was always so thankful they didn't burn her fine house since that's how she made her living. Finally, she did have to sell off all the fine furniture, most of it from her people to pay the taxes. Ma said she stood on the veranda in the twilight and watched her young husband ride away across the pasture and not daring to think of what turned out to be true; that she never saw nor heard of him again. She didn't believe he made it to Texas. She believed the Yankees caught him and killed him, but since she never did know for sure, why of course she never did feel free to marry. I have always hoped in my heart that she and my grandpa loved one another, for there never has been a finer woman on this earth than she was with her high forehead and the widow's peak of black hair and her big gray eyes that were so full of fun and yet so full of pain. I reckon my grandpa knew that his daughters, my aunts, would never have been the mother to me that Sally Sides was. - not even my own mother could have been any better. So I reckon my grandpa knew what he was doing when he rode through the rain with Amanda and me wrapped up in my mother's black shawl. And growing up in the Ackerman Inn was truly interesting, even if it was more work than several grown men ought to have to do. But Ma Sides and I ran that Inn and made money and paid our debts and folks respected us for it, too. And Lord, the things that happened in that inn.
I mind once they was two men that made up their minds to have a duel. They had made it up to come to the inn and spend the night then meet with their seconds at dawn down by the river. We could just hear them upstairs pacing in their rooms. Ma and her guests started talking about what a pack of foolishness it all was - two grown men bound and determined to shoot each other. We didn't know what the trouble was but Ma said it was another example of the way men would do - deprive their wives and children of a husband and a father because their precious honor was offended. Finally, Ma said she had put up with that pacing long enough. She said she was going to try and talk some sense into them. So she went marching up the stairs and knocked on Mr. Irwin Lefever's door and talked for a long time. Then she went to Mr. Edward Armstrong's room and talked; then back to Mr. Lefever's room and so on till she had talked them both out of the duel. She said come down to the dining room and we'd all drink a glass of elderberry wine she'd made herself. So they came down and shook hands and we all drank elderberry wine and ate teacakes. Ma was the hero, but few people could resist that sweet southern voice that sounded like music - all lilting and lovely - but which talked such good sense. Ma Sides was some woman. Everbody in Ackerman said so, and it was the truth.
Your Granddaddy's people lived in Newberry, South Carolina for a long time - since the Revolution. I've heard how his ancestors fought with Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, against the British. They had a fine plantation and good educations, but after the war, they lost everything, because, like most folks, they couldn't pay the taxes the Yankees put on them. So the family broke up - some of them are still in South Carolina. Buddy (Gram's oldest son) always said he would go back to South Carolina when he grew up, and of course, he did, too.
(Gram was proud of that because, Eugene, Uncle Buddy's son had played football for Clemson I can see her now hovering over the radio following every play and jumping up and clapping when Clemson would score a touchdown. She was the same way when Carl Edward played for Ole Miss and after that she was just hooked on the game and could tell more about it than any of her grandsons could. If one of her favorites lost, she would sulk for days.)
Well, anyhow, that's how the Wests came to Mississippi, Lots of folks from the East came to Mississippi and lots went on to Texas or Oklahoma hoping for a new start. I reckon it was too hard to stay and see everything your folks had worked for in ruins. As I told you already, I was engaged to Willford Millsaps, but then at church one Sunday, Manley West and I kept staring at each other over our hymn books. That was the fall they voted me the prettiest girl in the county. I was just barely seventeen when I married Manley. Of course, Will didn't come to the wedding. At the reception, I noticed that Manley's younger brother stayed right beside me. A long time after that, Sam told me that your grandpa's fiance, the one he jilted for me, had sworn to kill me. Sam was scared to death she might come to the reception and do it, so he stood close to me the whole time.
Manley did real well in the sawmill business, and we prospered and the precious children kept coming one after another, but then when that man turned against me and burned Manley's sawmill, that just ruined everything. We had to leave Ackerman and come to Monroe County and Manley just never did take ahold after that. I reckon we'd both done too much hurt to one another. We both quit smiling after all that. Then when your Uncle Paul took his own life, I knew Ol' Flap had it in for me. I knew he aimed for me just to keep payin' for it all. First, it was your Grandpa's foot that was burned so bad, then that eczema that drove the life out of me and really made me crazy, and all those years when Manley was down and I waited on him. But I'm about done with it now, I reckon."
End Entry
Sunday, November 10, 2019
Veteran's Day
I am fortunate to have had three men who served in WWII participate in my upbringing. Granddaddy Pierce was one of those men. The generation that went through the depression when they were young and won WWII were tough people with a strong work ethic. He is pictured here at his desk in Buffalo, NY in 1950 where he served as the Reserve Advisor.
A newspaper clipping I have reads:
Lieut. Col. Erie F. Pierce Takes Charge of Army Organized Reserve
"The new senior unit instructor in charge of the Army Organized Reserve Corps office, 151 West Mohawk Street is Lt. Col. Erie F. Pierce, who took over his duties here today. He relieved Col. Robert Schmidt who has been assigned to Camp Roberts, Calif.
Lt. Col. Pierce, who also will retain his position as unit instructor in charge of medical units, lives at 34 Nevada Ave. with his wife and two children, Ricky, 10 and Ronnie, 7.
Beginning his Army career in 1935 as an enlisted man, he was commissioned in 1937, saw service in China and India during World War II and was assigned here in July 1949, A native of Steele, Mo., Lt. Col. Pierce is a graduate of Mississippi State College."
A second clipping tells more about his time in Buffalo, NY:
COL. PIERCE NAMED MEDICAL ADVISER IN N.Y. DISTRICT
"Lieut. Col. Erie F. Pierce, senior Organized Reserve Corps instructor in the Buffalo area, has been appointed medical branch adviser to the chief of the New York Military District. He will begin his duties on Monday.
In the New York City ORC office, he will advise the district chief on the qualifications of state medical units for federalization.
Col. H.A. Cooney, chief of the New York District, in announcing the transfer, commended Col. Pierce for his work during the past 2 1/2 years with medical units. Local reserve units are 50% more active than when he was assigned to Buffalo. No successor to Col. Pierce has been designated.
Meanwhile, Col. Carlton C. Proctor, commanding officer of the 9064th Volunteer Air Reserve Training Group, revealed that the group's liaison officer, Capt. Robert Fogarty, was in New York City today to get final details for the activation of the 2265th Air Force Reserve Training Center in Buffalo."
One correction I would like to add is that Granddaddy was actually a native of Marion County, Alabama. He moved his family to Steele MO in the mid-1930s. He continued his love of teaching and earned his Master's Degree in Chemistry at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts in 1959 while operating another Reserve Unit in Boston. When he retired, he took a job teaching High School Chemistry in his wife's hometown of Amory, Mississippi. There, he would give his students his definition of a kiss: "A kiss is nothing but a suck on a gut twenty feet long and half-full of shit."
Wednesday, November 6, 2019
My Daddy's Lawsuit - from the journal of Anita West Moss written in 1986 ©
The year is 1949.
Begin entry:
I'm six years old and it's an early spring morning when the pecan trees are just barely turning green and gold. On Saturday mornings, I help my daddy shell corn. When we open the corn crib we see a black snake slither out of sight underneath the stacked ears of corn.
"Daddy, did you see old Black Earl wriggle under the corn? Are you sure he isn't dangerous - it told on the radio that you can get kilt by some snakes if they was to bite you"
"Naw," he said, lifting me into the crib, "That's old Black Earl alright. He's just an old rat snake. See, he eats up the rats - swallows them whole and that way we still got plenty of corn so your mama can make some of that cracklin' bread you like so much." I settled down to try to shuck the corn. I had to grip the ear between my knees and use both hands to tear away the shucks a few leaves at a time. The shucks left little cuts on my hands that stung but I liked the corn crib even if old Black Earl did live there. Then my daddy began to tell how he'd learned to tell a lot of stories about snakes. He said his papa would whip his children if they harmed any of the Lord's good snakes - like the beautiful ribbon snakes or rat snakes or king snakes. Then he told me about a hateful old vicious cottonmouth that lived down in our cow pond that had eaten up all the fish and frogs in the pond and even swallowed several ducks that swam on the pond. But Daddy said one day by God he'd had enough of that. He took his shotgun down there and shot it full of holes and told how that ol' cottonmouth kicked upa big fuss, but once my daddy saw him he blew his head off and that was the end of that old snake's ornery old life. Then he told all about how good his old dog Boss was at killing snakes, how he'd get so mad he'd keep shaking them and tearing them into even when they were limp and dead.
"Calacie told me that if you need rain, just kill you a snake - any kind will do - and hang it over the pasture fence and in two or three days, it would start raining," I said. My daddy said that he'd heard that, too but he didn't have much luck when he tried it. The only thing was the dead snake made an awful smell, and Mama pitched a fit and said it wasn't religious to try to get rain by using Calacie's hoodoo spells. I asked my daddy if he said any words over that snake. "Naw," he said, "I just slung that big old rattlesnake over the pasture fence."
"Well," I said "Calacie explained about how you have to mumble special words and all if you want the snake to draw down the rain. I speck that's why your snake just rotted and got deader."
"You're probably right, Sister. Let's see if we can get this batch shelled before breakfast. Then I'll take it down to Mr. Sherford's grist mill and tonight we'll have some of that cracklin' bread."
I loved cracklin' bread and fried sweet potatoes. In the fall, my daddy would cut up the pork skins in little pieces and Mama would lump them into the big cast iron pot. I loved to watch the fire under the fat black pot and hear the hissing skins. Mama would take out the little crisp ones and salt them and let me eat some while they were still hot. She put up most of the skins in the pantry all crispy and golden brown to enjoy later. Sometimes we'd warm them up for a snack, but more often she would chop them up with onion and mix it in the cornbread batter and bake it in the corn stick pans. Then she would slice the sweet potatoes, fry them up, and sprinkle them with sugar. Mama and Daddy were partial to having fresh turnip greens and pot liquor when we ate cracklin' bread and fried sweet potatoes but Cabby and I hated that old horrible, stringy butter mess but lots of times we'd have to eat it. Cabby would screw her face up and choke it down and say: "I wish I was a boy. I wish I was grown. I'm getting out of this hick place and I'm never going to think of greens again."
"Mama won't let you not eat greens," I said, "but Gram said if you kiss your elbow you'll turn into a boy, but f you do I'll hate you because I hate boys."
"Lies, all lies" Cabby snapped. "Not a word of that mess is true - but you listen to that durn old superstitious woman if you want to."
"Gram's not superstitious, either. Keep it up and I'll tell Mama." I said.
So the greens would make us in such a bad mood that we'd usually have a fuss like that but we both loved each other over cracklin' bread.
My daddy and I started shelling the corn then. We turned the feed bucket upside down I stand on it and feed golden ears of corn into the sheller while my daddy turns the handle. Grains of corn pour out the shoot in a little golden stream. I like the fast rhythmic click-click-click sound the sheller makes. I like to hear the rushing kernels fall into the wooden box.
The breakfast we eat is Mama's fig preserves with slices of lemon on Mama's biscuits with country fried steak. "Well, Miss Daisy, I thank you for that fine meal." Daddy said as he grinned at Mama.
"Mama, please, please let me go to the grist mill with Daddy. Please." Mama said yes if I'd put on my headscarf because she did not want me to get another acute attack of sinus to scare her to death because earlier that spring I woke up one morning with a raging fever and I couldn't walk. My daddy was gone off that day but I heard her crying to Aunt Jessie and saying I had polio, whatever that was, but I felt too bad to worry about it. Dr. Stockton said the child has a terrible infection that has spread over her whole body - even in her knees. So I wore the scarf because I didn't want to feel that bad ever again.
I go back out to the barn and watch my daddy hitch Dixie-Jane and Pat, our two mules to the wagon. I pet the mules; Pat smarts at me. I wrinkle my nose at the hot smell of the animals. They're old mules, my daddy said we'd had them since my brother, Jim, was a little boy. Pat and Dixie-Jane toss their heads 'cause they're ready to go. My daddy swings me up into the seat beside him. This is a treat because most of the time we use my daddy's tractor now, but Mr. Turman has borrowed the new Farmall to plow up the cucumber patch.
We set out down the long, pebbled driveway. I watch the rhythm of the mules behinds and begin to feel sleepy listening to the creak creak of the wagon wheels on the gravel. We go by the cemetery where Aunt Rene's Mimosa trees are just beginning to leaf and where some scraggly remnants of yellow Forsythia remain but it's too early for tulips and hyacinths yet. I think about the tiny white star flowers already blooming near our rose bushes and I figure I'll go play with my fairy friend and my doll, Betsy McColl when we get back from the grist mill. But just as we are going over Greenbrier Creek bridge, we see a big truck tearing down the road. "That fool!" I hear my daddy say "He's not going to let us get across." So daddy pulls as near to the side of the road as he can, and the truck keeps coming. Daddy holds the reins tight. I hide my face on my daddy's arm. I'm really scared now. The truck is pounding and roaring over the bridge. I feel it swoosh by. Pat seems to be trembling. I hear my daddy say: "Jesus Christ! goddam everything to hell! That goddam saw on Ernest Aims' truck has cut poor old Pat wide open." I hear him try to comfort Pat as he strokes his muzzle. Then I see Pat's knees buckle down between the traces and I see Pat's guts slowly oozing out. Pat is moaning so pitifully and I start to scream.
My daddy lifts me down. "Run," he says "Run back to the house and tell Mama to get in the car and bring me the rifle. I can't let Pat suffer this way. Goddam that Aims bunch to hell anyway." Daddy is unhitching Dixie-Jane who is still wild-eyed and rearing and kicking. Pat still moans.
I run as fast as I can. I run right across the cotton field still lushly green from the cover crop my daddy plants to keep the soil rich and so the earth won't wash away when the heavy spring rains come. I run as fast as I can, crying and scared and breathless.
The back screen door slams behind me as I run through the house. "What is it? What is it?!" Mama's face is terrified. Even Gram and Cabby look scared. "It's that goddam Aims. Pat's goddam guts are all in the road," I sob to Mama. Usually, when I repeat exactly what my daddy says like that, Mama threatens to switch me or wash my mouth out with soap, but this time she just mutters: "Oh, Lord, Oh, Mercy, poor ol' Pat." Then I told Mama to take the rifle to my daddy and Mama says for Cabby to go down the road and get Uncle Dock and Mr. Turman.
Gram is listening to the radio. Pretty soon it will be time for Uncle Bob's Gang. He has good stories on his show and talks about strange animals like porpoises and a magic porpoise land. But today I can't even think about Uncle Bob. I can't even worry about whether my Gang Busters flashlight will come in the mail from Battle Creek. All I can see is ol' Pat trembling and about to fall and all of his guts in the road. When Mama gets back she says my daddy has gone to find my cousin, Carl Edward, the county sheriff, who used to play football at Ole Miss, he's going to swear something to put Ernest Aims in jail for killing our mule. Daddy says it's like losing a member of your own family. He says Ernest deserves to have his guts splattered all over the road.
I can see my daddy's cigarette glowing in the dark long after Mama, Cabby, and I have gone to bed. Mama lets me sleep with them because I am so upset that I couldn't eat supper or listen to Gene Autry and Gang Busters. My daddy was listening to the Grand Old Opry, but I didn't like Minnie Pearl's voice. Sometimes Ernest Tubb sings with her, he is Daddy's first cousin, they played together a lot when they were little. Tonight, Rod Brasfield is on with her. I did not like the way he talked, either. I wanted to talk the way Wendy Warren did when she gave the news. And I did not like the music on the Opry, either. So finally, I stared at a glowing coal in the fireplace until I went to sleep snuggled in Mama's arms.
Some time later we get all dressed up and go to Aberdeen. Mama says that big building is the courthouse. I wonder if a castle looks about like that. I like the smooth marble steps, the brass railings, and the wine-velvet draperies. When a man comes out in black robes and sits on his throne, I am scared. But then, I notice it is Judge Ashley. Ernest Aims is on one side of the room, and my daddy is on the other. Judge Ashley looks mad. But people just get up and talk. My daddy tells what happened and Ernest Aims' lawyer tries to make out it's my daddy's fault. Judge Ashley is frowning more and more. His hair is white and wavy.
Finally, he says to Ernest Aims, "Now, Ernest, you know what it means to kill a man's mule. That's a man's livelihood. So you know I'm gon' find against you. Mr. Moss has lost a lot of time and lost his mule, plus, he says his baby girl there has been sick ever since witnessing this deplorable accident. And now, Ernest, you know damn well you wrong to have that big saw exposed like that in the first place. You'll pay Mr. Moss one-thousand dollars to compensate for the loss of his mule." So then, Judge Ashley banged his hammer and said we should all go home to dinner.
After we all leave the courtroom, my daddy asks Ernest if he has a thousand dollars. Ernest looks worried and confesses that he does not. Daddy says he'll go with him to the bank tomorrow and sign a note with him to borrow the thousand dollars. Ernest looks relieved. After that, my daddy says we might as well all go on and eat at Greek's cafe since it was nearly dinner time. So Ernest went with us to eat, and Judge Ashley joined us at our table and we had big hamburgers with great big slices of onion on them. A nice lady gave me extra chocolate milk to drink.
So that's how we done the lawsuit, but Dixie-Jane looked sad and lonesome without ol' Pat, who was buried underneath the clump of oak trees where he had loved to wallow in the dust on a summer afternoon. And somehow, I never did want to help Daddy shell corn, and the cracklin' bread never tasted so good to me anymore after all that happened.
Sunday, November 3, 2019
Grandmama's Sandwiches
Today is National Sandwich Day. Grandmama told me that sandwiches were named for the Earl of Sandwich who needed to reach his armed forces quickly and didn't have time to sit for dinner, so he asked the servant to just put a piece of meat between two slices of bread and he would take it with him. Thus, the sandwich was born. To my understanding, there are many variations of this legend, but they all agree that the sandwich was named for the 4th Earl of Sandwich.
Grandmama enjoyed making sandwiches for lunch. She had some unusual but crazy tasty combinations. Here are my favorites:
The Tomato Sandwich:
Peeled, ripe tomatoes, toasted white bread, salt and pepper, and mayonnaise (actually, I think she used Miracle Whip, but I don't recommend it)
The Pineapple Sandwich:
4 slices of canned pineapple rings, 1 slice of American Cheese, toasted white bread, and mayonnaise
And my favorite... The Peanut Butter and Bacon Sandwich - which was just as it sounds
Enjoy National Sandwich Day!
Friday, November 1, 2019
Erie F. Pierce - Post-War Germany Assignment
In 1953 my grandfather, Erie Pierce, received an assignment to be in Germany for three years. He went on ahead to prepare the household for the family, and to begin his duties as the Commander of the Independent Medical Batallion which served the First Infantry Division. My dad says that in addition to setting up house for his wife and children, he also kept an apartment for his mistress. I have the romantic notion that he only had the one mistress - he told my mother before he died that he really only ever loved one woman. A half British and half East Indian nurse that he met in the war. He even asked his sisters to sponsor her so she could move to the US. They declined. Of course, it broke my grandmother's heart when a letter from this woman beat him home. So, I suspect this was the same woman if he was willing to get her an apartment - as he was a very frugal person. He also told me once that the best vacation he ever had was to Havana sometime just before Americans were not allowed to go there anymore. Grandmama never went to Cuba, so I suspect this was also with this woman. Daddy says he was just a womanizer and he had multiple ladies on the side. That's not as romantic. At any rate, Granddaddy went on to Germany sometime early in 1953 to begin his duties.
My dad had to leave Crewe, VA. A place they had lived for about three years, and his favorite place that he ever lived. He had a best friend there which is not easy for an Army Brat to acquire. They drove from VA to Brooklyn to a hotel on Clark Street - The George Washington Hotel where he and his brother enjoyed the saltwater swimming pool. The next morning they had to drive their car to Pier 91 for the car to be transported to Germany.
On September 16, 1953, Daddy, "Rick" Pierce, his brother, Ron, and my grandmother, Virginia Pierce set sail for Germany aboard the USNS PVT Elden H Johnson, an old victory ship from WWII bound for Bremerhaven, Germany from NY, NY. Rick had to stay below deck with the junior officers because he was already 13. Ron and Grandmama stayed above deck. Daddy made friends with the ship's chaplain who taught him how to play chess and gave him the traveling chess set they used, which I now possess. Some of the crew gave Ron and Rick German lessons which they took to very well. One of the men Rick met below deck was a CIA officer who had a briefcase that would just fall away and a gun would be in its place. The handle of the case concealed a roll of gold coins.
They lived in Wurzburg in the Bergermeister's house. It had 17 rooms and a garden. They had two maids, a chauffeur, and a gardener with servant quarters on the grounds. Rick attended Benjamin Franklin Junior High and one of his teachers was Miss Halliburton, whose brother, Richard Halliburton was a renowned writer. The Complete Book of Marvels is still available on Amazon. Rick had made friends and even had a girlfriend there. Ron, Rick, and Virginia were all very happy to have this adventure. They frequented the fancy officer's club, which had been a Nazi club. Daddy says there was an eagle holding a swastika on the outside of it. Chilling. But they enjoyed the events and dinners nonetheless.
Granddaddy's affair was discovered by his superiors. This was and continues to be a big deal in the Army. He was stripped of his rank and busted back down to Master Sergeant. It must have been one hell of a Christmas. They departed Rhein-Main in Frankfurt, Germany en route to Idlewild, NY on December 27, 1953, on Seaboard and Western Airlines. There were 28 passengers aboard. The plane caught fire! They made an emergency landing in Ireland. The plane was quickly repaired and the trip resumed. Somewhere above Canada, the plane caught fire, again and began to dive! The family thought this was it. Fortunately, the pilot managed to regain control of the plane and they landed safely in Newfoundland. They were there for three days before their arrival back in NY on Dec. 30, 1953. Because Granddaddy was the highest ranked officer on the plane, he had to go before a Congressional Committee regarding the crash. He spent the rest of his military career as a Reserve Advisor at Boston Army Base. He regained his rank before he retired in 1959, and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel.
My dad had to leave Crewe, VA. A place they had lived for about three years, and his favorite place that he ever lived. He had a best friend there which is not easy for an Army Brat to acquire. They drove from VA to Brooklyn to a hotel on Clark Street - The George Washington Hotel where he and his brother enjoyed the saltwater swimming pool. The next morning they had to drive their car to Pier 91 for the car to be transported to Germany.
On September 16, 1953, Daddy, "Rick" Pierce, his brother, Ron, and my grandmother, Virginia Pierce set sail for Germany aboard the USNS PVT Elden H Johnson, an old victory ship from WWII bound for Bremerhaven, Germany from NY, NY. Rick had to stay below deck with the junior officers because he was already 13. Ron and Grandmama stayed above deck. Daddy made friends with the ship's chaplain who taught him how to play chess and gave him the traveling chess set they used, which I now possess. Some of the crew gave Ron and Rick German lessons which they took to very well. One of the men Rick met below deck was a CIA officer who had a briefcase that would just fall away and a gun would be in its place. The handle of the case concealed a roll of gold coins.
They lived in Wurzburg in the Bergermeister's house. It had 17 rooms and a garden. They had two maids, a chauffeur, and a gardener with servant quarters on the grounds. Rick attended Benjamin Franklin Junior High and one of his teachers was Miss Halliburton, whose brother, Richard Halliburton was a renowned writer. The Complete Book of Marvels is still available on Amazon. Rick had made friends and even had a girlfriend there. Ron, Rick, and Virginia were all very happy to have this adventure. They frequented the fancy officer's club, which had been a Nazi club. Daddy says there was an eagle holding a swastika on the outside of it. Chilling. But they enjoyed the events and dinners nonetheless.
Granddaddy's affair was discovered by his superiors. This was and continues to be a big deal in the Army. He was stripped of his rank and busted back down to Master Sergeant. It must have been one hell of a Christmas. They departed Rhein-Main in Frankfurt, Germany en route to Idlewild, NY on December 27, 1953, on Seaboard and Western Airlines. There were 28 passengers aboard. The plane caught fire! They made an emergency landing in Ireland. The plane was quickly repaired and the trip resumed. Somewhere above Canada, the plane caught fire, again and began to dive! The family thought this was it. Fortunately, the pilot managed to regain control of the plane and they landed safely in Newfoundland. They were there for three days before their arrival back in NY on Dec. 30, 1953. Because Granddaddy was the highest ranked officer on the plane, he had to go before a Congressional Committee regarding the crash. He spent the rest of his military career as a Reserve Advisor at Boston Army Base. He regained his rank before he retired in 1959, and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel.
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