Category: Early Stories

Flour Sack Dresses

Photo of feed sack dress from Va Voom Vintage
When Mother was a child on a small farm in Tennessee, one of five children, times were tough.  They grew most of their food, canning vegetables, preserving fruits, smoking hams and bacon.  Mother said there were days when supper was nothing but biscuits and sawmill gravy (made from leftover bacon grease, mainly.)  Cornbread and biscuits were the staples of existence.

When she told me that her mother made dresses for them out of flour sacks, I found this hard to picture or to believe.  I thought the fabric must have been rough, like a feed sack.  Recently I did a little research, and saw that the fabric was necessarily thick and tough, to protect the contents, which were basically flour or chicken feed.  But companies were marketers back then, too, so they began to use prints which looked more like something you’d want to wear, instead of advertising Martha White.

The only good part about it is that nearly everyone in their community was in the same state, so wearing a flour sack dress did not make you conspicuous.  The only halfway affluent person was the postman and his wife–and he also farmed and sold milk.  Mother was keenly aware that there were better dresses to be had, and that her family could not afford them.  And she loved her Papa so much, she would never have said anything to make him feel bad that he could not provide for more.

Nonetheless, she was thrilled when she got a new dress one fall that was actually storebought.  She set off for school with Elsie, her best friend (who married Daddy’s brother later when they were grown up. ) Elsie admired the dress, and asked Mother to switch with her.  So she did, and Elsie arrived at school in the new dress.  I can’t think why Mother did this, as badly as she wanted a new dress.  I guess she loved Aunt Elsie more.

Air Conditioner Stories

Photo from Wikimedia
It’s above 90 degrees here today and humid in proportion.  That must be what made me remember what it was like when I was small, when we had only one window unit air conditioner to cool as much of the house as possible.

For some reason, Mother and Daddy put it in the dining room, which was in the middle of the house on Ridgeway Drive.  I guess the theory was that the air would spread out and cool the living room and the bedrooms.  Unfortunately it was not powerful enough to do that, so one of my early summer memories is sleeping with a circulating fan blowing on me.  The hum of that heavy metal fan and the sweep of air as it turned from side to side soothed me to sleep many a night.

Window unit air conditioners happily left my adult life until I moved to New York in the ’80s.  I rented a fifth-floor apartment without central air, so once again I was in thrall to a window unit.  I had actually moved one with me from Atlanta which my uncle gave me–I don’t recall when I went and picked it up in Tennessee, but undeniably it moved to New York with me and was put in the window by the movers.  It was in a metal case, somewhat elderly, and extremely heavy.

It didn’t have a bracket, so I depended on the window and a few sticks of wood wedged in the sash to hold it in place.  This worked for a few weeks, but the air conditioner began to drip on the bedroom floor, which did not do the cheap wood parquet any good.  One towel per day was not enough to absorb the moisture.  Clever girl that I was, I thought I could fix this single-handed.

I took the wedges out and took hold of the air conditioner to shift it in the window.  It was much heavier than I thought and began to fall out the window.  I grabbed it.  The metal casing sliced the tips of the fingers on my left hand.  Automatically, I stomped on the air conditioner’s electric cord.  The good news was, the air conditioner hung from the window and did not fall.   The bad news was, I obviously could not pull it back in.

I looked out the window.  There were unit air conditioners in all the windows directly below mine on the fifth floor, from the fourth to the ground.  Immediately beyond the line of air conditioners was the parking lot.  I knew what I had to do.  I unplugged the air conditioner, still standing on the cord, and wrapped the damp towel around the cord.  Then I swung the cord to one side and let go.

The air conditioner fell in an arc, landing in the grass just next to the parking lot.  It did not graze any other air conditioners or take out any cars.  I was exhausted with relief.  I called the security guard and told him what I’d done.  When he stopped laughing, he said they would clean it up the next day.

Then I realized I was bleeding all over the place.  I knocked on my neighbor’s door and assured her I wasn’t dying despite the blood.  Hands and heads bleed a lot.  My neighbor took me to an emergency room.  Fortunately the cuts were not deep, although the process of cleaning them was not pleasant.  I have a little scar on my thumb to this day.

The next day I called my friend Kathy in Atlanta to report my adventure.  She laughed until she coughed for breath.  For months after that when we spoke, she would ask, “Thrown any small appliances out the window this week?  Not even a toaster?”

Visiting Aunt Lou and Uncle Floyd

Uncle Floyd
What follows is an exercise I wrote for a class several years ago.  We were to remember a time and place that was lost to us, and write all we could remember.  So I did:

We drive up the blacktop road toward  sunset, my parents and I, the old Ford pickup laboring up the hill.  Turning into my uncle’s gravel driveway kicks up a small cloud of dust.  The truck wheezes to a halt, and the dust settles as we climb out and walk to the house.

Across the blacktop road from the house is a tree-lined field  with cattle grazing quietly in the dusk.  They are a motley bunch, a mix of  Herefords and Holstein crosses, too bony for good beef cattle, too stocky for good dairy cattle.  My aunt’s little Jersey is the only princess, with her fawn-colored coat, her delicate hooves, her big brown eyes.  Aunt Lou keeps the milk cow so she can churn her own butter; she thinks it’s better than store bought.

At the side of the yard is my aunt’s garden.  Honeysuckle spills over the woven wire fence, scenting the humid air.  The first two rows of the garden are flowers:  zinnias, marigolds, snapdragons, daisies.  The rest is food for the summer, and for preserving:  beans, corn, squash, tomatoes, cucumbers for pickles, canteloupes, watermelons.

In the shade of the back yard, past the chicken coop, is her mother-in-law’s wildflower garden.  Miss Blanche transplants sweet william, violets, and trillium from the woods, watering them faithfully. Their colors are paler and more delicate than the sunny flowers in the other garden.

Tall, old oak trees and maples shade the back yard and the front yard during the day.  Now that the sun is slouching down below the hill, birds rustle the branches as they settle in for the night.  They fuss and squabble in the trees.

The old clapboard house is painted white; the tin roof is shiny.  There’s a dogtrot hall running through the middle, with a couple of large rooms on either side and a kitchen in the back.  For many years there wasn’t a bathroom.

On a summer night the most important room is the front porch.  This is where we all sit and talk while night falls.   There is a porch swing, where I sit with Miss Blanche, and two wooden rocking chairs for the two men, tired from a long day in the fields.  My mother and Aunt Lou sit on metal chairs in the front yard, hoping for a breeze.

The women’s voices are low and even.  The men rumble in baritone, punctuated by my father’s laugh.  Miss Blanche and I are quiet as it grows dark, waiting for the tree frogs to begin their high piping.  Lightning bugs blink erratically  in the yard.  The humidity settles in the hollow like a ground fog.

“Look,” Miss Blanche says.  A deer broaches the mist in the hollow, sights us, and floats away into the dark.

Soon, the moon will rise above the hills.  It is time to go home.

My Mother’s Shadow

Mother
Several years ago my niece Judy found an old camera with film in it at my sister Glenda’s house in Ohio.   My brother-in-law John bought it in Japan while he was in the Navy during the Korean War.  It took color photos, which wasn’t common at the time among amateurs—this was some time before Instamatics and Kodachrome.

Judy took the camera to a camera shop, where they removed the film safely and developed it.  She gave me a framed 5×7 print of one photo for Christmas that year.  (I wanted to scan it for this blog post, but the print has stuck to the glass of the frame, so I can’t remove it without damage.)  It’s the only color picture I have of myself as a small child.  I look about two years old, still a bit babyish, in a dress and white baby shoes, with pudgy arms and legs and a round face.  I am wearing an expression my friends all recognize to this day as, “I’m playing along with you because I have to, but you are trying my patience severely.”

This must have been a family outing of some sort since John and Glenda were there, and at that point we all lived in Clarksville, Tennessee, 40 miles away.  I’m standing alone on the steps of the Confederate Memorial in Centennial Park in Nashville.  It’s summer, and I will be three years old in the fall.

At the corner of the photo is my mother’s shadow, stretching over the steps close to my feet.   She has a middle-aged figure, stout around the waist, and is wearing a bucket-shaped hat with a brim.  Her shadow leans toward me.  Mother is not reaching out to keep me from falling, but one feels that the moment the picture is taken she will sweep me off the stairs to safety.

Mother was afraid of many things, I learned as I grew older.  Glenda said Mother was terrified that I would die as a baby, because she had had a miscarriage between my brother and me and because she was an “older mother”—all of 38 years old when I was born, the last of five children over a span of 19 years.  She hardly let me out of her sight.  Glenda said at one point I broke out in a rash, and Mother took me to the pediatrician.  He said, “There’s nothing wrong with her.  You’re making her so nervous she broke out.”

I spent most of my life convinced I was utterly unlike my mother in every way.  I was rational, she was emotional.  I was calm, she was nervous.  She used to say, “You’re just like your daddy,” and I was proud.  I tried to practice being the strong, silent type like him.  I found it hard to say what I felt.  But as I grew older I realized I wasn’t calm, I was just pretending to be calm.  I was rational, but I had emotions too.

Mother died in 2004 after many years of illness and devoted care from Glenda.  I miss her on Mother’s Day especially.   No matter how old I get, her shadow is still there, on the edge of the picture.

Recipe: Juanita’s “Rocks” Cookies

Rocks Cookies
Rocks cookies fresh from the oven

This recipe actually comes from my sister Juanita’s neighbor, whose mother made them in rural Pennsylvania.  Juanita sent me some at Christmas last year, and I liked them because they have that Christmas smell (see last week’s post).  Also they will keep for a week or two in a tightly closed plastic container, which is a plus sometimes, and they freeze well.

Anyway, I thought of them when I needed to make cookies for my book group, so I called Juanita and got the recipe.  When I baked them, they didn’t rise, and they cooked faster than planned.  Hmm, I said to myself, and called my sister Glenda.  Glenda said, maybe it’s because you used a dark cookie sheet?  Then she read the recipe to me, to make sure I had it all.  Woops!  I had left out the baking soda.

End of the story:  even without baking soda, they tasted fabulous.  So I took them to book group, and they snarfed them down, and requested the recipe.   Juanita called afterwards for a report, so I had to admit my mistake.  She laughed, and said the first time she made them, they ran all over the pan.  Her neighbor forgot to mention the flour when she gave her the recipe!

So here’s the deal.  If you want them the way they are supposed to look, and with the texture they are supposed to have (a little bit puffy and cakey), follow the recipe precisely.  If you have dark cookie sheets, lower the temperature by 25 degrees!  If you want them chewy and not puffy, leave out the baking soda.  It works just fine.  Also, this recipe can be halved.  It makes an inordinate amount of “rocks.”  P.S.  For some reason, this image will not rotate!  Makes me crazy.  Just turn your head sideways to see what the non-baking-soda version looks like.

“Rocks” Cookies

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

4 eggs

3 cups regular flour

1 lb. each of chopped dates, raisins, and chopped walnuts

1/2 teaspoon each of allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt

1 teaspoon baking soda, dissolved in a little hot water

Cream butter and sugar.  Add eggs.  Add dry ingredients and baking soda (batter will be stiff).  Fold in the dates, raisins, and walnuts.  Drop by spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.

Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes (if using dark cookie sheets, bake at 325 instead).  Makes 5 – 6 dozen.

1

Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down

Do you know the old Kris Kristofferson song, “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down”?  The lyrics are really poetic in a country kind of way.  He paints a sharp picture of what it’s like to wake up in a “sleeping city” (probably Nashville) with a terrible hangover and yet sharply observe the Sunday morning.

Part of that description is the “Sunday smell of someone frying chicken,” which takes the singer back to “something left behind.”  Smell is powerful at evoking memories, perhaps more powerful than any other sense.

I spent this Sunday morning baking cookies, not an activity I often pursue, and the scent of the cookies took me back to Mother baking at Christmastime.  The recipe was from my sister Juanita–I will share it if she permits, but not today–and called for nutmeg, allspice and cinnamon, as well as chopped dates, raisins and walnuts.  Something about the spices and the scent of dried fruit baking reminded me of Mother making a blackberry jam cake which used the same spices.

That was a three-layer cake iced with boiled icing.  Some people think a jam cake is just another fruitcake, but it doesn’t have those nasty candied fruits.  And when it is baking, the house smells of those Christmas spices and baking blackberries.

Thinking of Mother reminds me of another scent.  When I was young she always used perfumed dusting powder on her thighs and arms and chest.  She said it kept her from chafing.  I can’t remember what kind it was, although I faintly remember a pink round box with gold trim and a flat white pad instead of a powder puff.  I do remember a strong flowery scent with a bit of baby powder smell as well.  She was fond of Estee Lauder when she got older, but I don’t think we could afford that back in the day.  I wish I could smell it again.

So another Sunday is winding down.  Here’s to a good week, to all of us on sleeping city sidewalks, bustling suburban highways, and quiet villages.  Peace out.

Dick Clark: Thinking Back About Pop Music

Lovin Spoonful, 1965
Like so many people, I was sad when Dick Clark passed last week.  I saw many pop groups for the first time on “American Bandstand,” only to see them appear later on “The Ed Sullivan Show” or “Hootenany” (anybody remember that one?).  In the ’70s, I’ll admit I switched my allegiance to “Soul Train” (rest in peace, Don Cornelius!) but I still watched Bandstand fairly often.

Thinking about the wide variety of groups and solo artists who performed on American Bandstand led me to remember the first records I ever bought.  Do you remember your first purchases?  Mine were 45’s, argh!  (At least they weren’t 78’s.)  And they were:  “Do You Believe in Magic,” by the Lovin Spoonful; “The In Crowd,” Ramsey Lewis Trio; and “Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown,” the Rolling Stones.  I don’t remember what the B sides were.

Now, that’s an eclectic selection, is it not?  Pop/soft rock, jazz and serious rock ‘n roll.  If you looked at my iPod today you’d find pretty much the same mix, but with a large playlist of roots and old country music, another of indie rock, and a nice selection of Brazilian sambas and Carnival music, a liking inspired by a trip to Rio in the early ’90s.

Times and tastes change, but what these all have in common is melody and a beat.  I’ve always liked singer-songwriters, too.  Ah, the moody albums of college days!  But for every Joanie Mitchell I listened to, I also played the Allman Brothers’ “Eat a Peach.”  (OK, I confess, my first album was “The Monkees,” from my brother as a Christmas present.  I wanted it badly.)

Now I listen to WFUV, Roots and Rock Radio (Fordham University public station) as I drive to work, and get my dose of Lyle Lovett and the Alabama Shakes early in the morning.  And a couple of weeks ago I got to see Nora Jones at the Music Hall in Tarrytown.  I am far from the cutting edge in musical taste.  But a good song still gives a lot of pleasure.  And a good pop song still bores into my brain.  “Moves Like Jagger,” anyone?

Easter Baskets and Orchids

Ours were not this pretty!
I wonder how many kitchen counters are smudged with Paas Easter egg dye today.  My great-niece and I used to dye them in my sister’s kitchen, covering every surface we could find with newspapers, and we still wound up with dye on our hands, our clothes and most counters.  The kits got fancier as the years went by.  No more cheesy transfers of rabbits and ducks!  The last time Courtney and I dyed them, we had glitter and a sort of tie-dye effect.

When I was small Mother was really into Easter.  I always got an Easter basket with a hollow chocolate rabbit, some jelly beans, and a stuffed animal.  I was a great collector of stuffed animals and was thrilled to get a really lifelike brown rabbit one year.  I petted him as if he were real.

We always went to church.  This involved a new Easter dress, shiny patent leather Mary Janes, and a hat and gloves.  Mother was encased in a dress and hat (and of course her girdle), stockings and heels, and gloves.  Daddy bought us each a corsage to wear.  In good years the corsage was an orchid.  I endured church by concentrating on Easter dinner, which awaited us at home.

Mother usually baked a ham and made candied sweet potatoes and green beans.  These had to be heated when we returned home.  Sometimes we had rolls from the grocery store, which I considered a great treat.

Usually dessert was coconut pie, although one year when we were on the farm Mother made a special, multi-layer coconut cake with little nests of green-dyed coconut holding jelly beans.  The layers were graduated like a traditional wedding cake.  Unfortunately they crumbled at the edges–maybe the recipe was a little too moist?  At any rate, the cake turned into a coconut mountain with nests perilously clinging to its sides.

Maybe it was the return of spring which made Easter so special to her.  Mother tried recipes out of Good Housekeeping which involved cutting cake layers into rabbit body parts.  And we both religiously dyed eggs, even when I came home from college.  We ended up throwing them away because they weren’t safe to eat after sitting out for a couple of days.  But it was worth it to have a bowl full of jewel-toned works of “art” on the table to celebrate resurrection and spring.

Recipe: Spiced Lentil Soup

Now that we’re back to cooler spring temperatures (although still above normal), I decided to make a pot of this soup today.  This recipe comes from an old Prevention magazine Slow Cooker Meals cookbook.  I have had it for a long time, but had not tried this recipe until this winter.

If you like Indian food, you will love it.  If not, stay away–it is very spicy!  To me, that’s a virtue, especially when my nose is running and my ears are stuffed up from all this early and abundant pollen.  Another great thing about it is it can cook all day on low, so it’s safe to leave in the slow cooker even if you have a lengthy commute.  The recipe says it makes 4 servings, but I think it makes considerably more than that.  I tend to freeze it in 2-cup containers for nights when I don’t feel like cooking or days when I want to take something microwaveable for lunch.

Spiced Lentil Soup

1 cup lentils, rinsed

1 can (28 oz.) stewed tomatoes, undrained

2 medium potatoes, diced

2 medium carrots, sliced

1 medium onion, chopped

1 rib celery, sliced

3 cloves garlic, minced

3 bay leaves

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

3 Tablespoons curry powder

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander (in Asian groceries; if you can’t find, it’s ok without)

4 cups low-fat, low sodium chicken or vegetable broth

Combine all ingredients in slow cooker.  Cover.  Cook on low 8 to 10 hours or on high 4 to 5 hours, or until lentils are tender.  Remove bay leaves before serving.

Makes 4 servings, per serving 260 calories, 14 g protein, 51 g carbs, 15 g fiber, 930 mg so

Somebody’s Princess

While I was getting my nails done today (big, once-a-month treat) a young woman came in with her daughter.  The little girl was wearing a special dress with a velvet sleeveless top and a longish skirt of lace and pink taffeta (“Target,” her mom said when I asked), and her hair was pulled up in a ballerina’s bun on top of her head.  “It’s her birthday today, so she would like her nails polished, please,” her mom said.  The Korean nail ladies made a fuss over her and asked how old she was.  “Six, today,” she said.

For some reason this made me remember being taken to the beauty salon in Clarksville by my sister Juanita.  I don’t remember if I had been before, but I was entranced by the whole experience.  The beautician trimmed my bangs while Juanita was getting a proper ’60s haircut and styling–no blow dryers back then!  Rollers and pin curls and those dryers with big metal bonnets were the norm, and the smells were strong with perfume.

I had been admitted to a world where you were pampered and made beautiful.  And I had no doubt at all that I was beautiful!  The finishing touch was a hairpin with a large fake diamond, which the beautician used to help keep the stray hairs from my ponytail in place.  I was thrilled.

I still feel pampered and treated when I go to the salon now.  I’m no longer convinced I’m beautiful, alas.  The face in the mirror doesn’t look like it did.  But it’s still nice to come out looking better than when you went in, and to feel taken care of for an hour or two.  I hope all little girls get the chance to feel special that way, at some point before the pains of growing up set in.