Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Following the Flood

I should have known better than to think that Camille could simply load a few items in a truck and head out for Atlanta. Not Camille. First, she went out to unload a couple of years’ worth of “stuff” off the table and desk tops in preparation for dusting the items. Then, she had to locate gorilla glue to repair the legs that had fallen off the antique table. After that, she had to rent a trailer – only to realize that her vehicle didn’t have a tail light harness. My mind had exploded by this point, so we agreed to coordinate our meeting place when she got closer to Atlanta.

Meantime, Rachel and I were having one of our “Lucy and Ethel” adventures finding the home of our Atlanta Flooded Family. Long before arriving at the address we’d been given, we saw the distinctive signs of flooding. Mud-frosted foliage lined the roads, and every road suggested by my navigation system for leading into the area sported several barricades with signs declaring, “Road Closed”. We were unable to call our AFF for alternate directions because the phone in their new apartment hadn’t yet been connected. Never the type of gals to be deterred by having no clue where we are, Rachel and I laughed along, alternately barreling forward and backing up for quite a while before finding our destination – we thought.

Well, it seems that there are adjoining apartment complexes with matching numbering schemes. We knocked. We asked around. We didn’t locate our AFF, but we ascertained that there were a lot of families in this area who were in need of a full complement of household goods. With promises of returning to the wrong address with our donations if we were unable to find the right address, we soldiered on. It may have taken us a bit longer to find the right address because we always treat being lost as just another adventure -- but find it, we did.

By the time we got to our flooded family, another of their friends had given them a washer. We got everything, except the washing machine, unloaded with still no sign of Camille. The last I spoke with her, my sister’s saga was too complicated to comprehend. I never did see her, but I think her carport is cleared.

We were thrilled that one of the parents is in the US Marines and the other works for Fed-Ex and at contract remodeling and renovations. We felt so productive knowing that crisis is not a way of life for this family seeking emergency intervention. And we could feel patriotic, to boot, helping someone who earns her living defending our country. Talk about enlightened self-interest.

I’m still driving around Atlanta looking for someone in need of a washer. Maybe I could be Atlanta’s Wandering Washer Woman if I didn’t need to head back to the holler.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Rains of Ranchipur

While studying for her MBA several years ago , my sister Camille decided to go into the antique furniture business. To this end, she and her daughter Alyssa loaded her carport with their “finds”. Then, reality intervened. Camille got a real job, and Alyssa went to missionary college. The furniture is still under the carport. With the Atlanta Flooded Family (AFF) needing everything to resettle themselves, I had a deal for Camille. I’d pay for the truck if she’d donate the furniture. She can think of it, not as “parting with her stuff”, but as reclaiming her carport.

Camille is always up for a roadtrip. She and I decided to meet in Atlanta to give our gifts to the AFF. Alas, the Rains of Ranchipur revisited Georgia and Coker Creek. I couldn’t see twenty feet out my bedroom window. In order to get the donations to the AFF in Atlanta, I figured it was imperative that I be able to see where I’m going. Driving into the rain, down mountain roads with ninety-degree curves may not be the best idea. So I loaded the van for an early a.m. departure -- and took a long nap. When I awoke, Richard had taken photographs of the swollen creeks racing across our property. The insurance company can laugh, but I know that where there is white-out rain, there is the potential for waist-high water.

Charlie and Deborah donated a washing machine, some kitchen ware, and some of Deborah’s clothes. Since Deborah is one of the best-dressed females in Coker Creek, her donations are divine. Betty, at Coker Creek Consignment and Storage, offered a television set, but with all this digital signal business, I figured the family would only receive snow on an old TV. And they probably don’t need snow added to their rain. Betty did give me some coffee mugs for the cause. Others are waiting to see what comes in before going through their stored treasures.

I’ve heard from friends all over the United States offering to help. Some are sending clothing. Some are sending linens. Some are sending money. – Simply because we asked. My daddy used to have a favorite saying, “People are no damned good.” I haven’t found that to be true. I know that some people aren’t good. But, I find that if you ask people to help in the best way they can, most people are pretty darned good.

Like the Girl Scout song says, “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other’s gold.” They’re both precious.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

An Overdose of Okra

We hadn’t been to the garden in over a week. With Richard being puny from the flu, my travels, and the rain, we’d let the garden go native. I suspected that there was a great deal of okra crying out to be picked, but I was intimidated by the scope of the project. The problem is that I feel guilty if I let any of Richard’s and Mamie’s hard gardening work go to waste. I had a good excuse for not visiting the garden as long as the rain continued. And I was busy writing my blog and lining up donations for our niece's flooded family.

It hadn’t rained in two days, so it’s a good thing Richard woke up in a “harvesting mood”. He headed over to Mamie’s where he found at least a bushel of mutant okra so big it tipped the plants over. We could have used them for billy clubs, but they’re not so good for food. Upon his return home,he heaped high the kitchen counters with fuzzy green giants for me to sort.

While I was cutting the tenderest pods, Jack called. He reminded me that his okra also hadn’t been harvested in over a week. I already had a couple of bushels of the slimy little seedpods. Where was I going to put more? Oy vey! Such an overdose of okra! I wonder if the Israelites had this problem with manna. Did they fill every goat skin bag they had with milk and honey, and then feel guilty because there was no way to use all of God’s gifts at once? There are now two large roasters of okra in the oven, and plenty of pods in the compost heap.I saved the babies for pickling.

That bodacious bounty taken care of, Richard decided to pick up the black walnuts littering our lawn. I’ve been told that the only way to crack them is to place them on a concrete driveway and run them over with your car. We don’t have any concrete, so Richard tried cracking the shells with a hammer. He allowed that the bodily injury this method could cause far outweighed the value of the nutmeats. Now he’s waiting for the walnuts to dry, so he can try other methods of black walnut extraction. I guess we know why the hand-picked pieces of black walnut at Designs by Baerreis are so pricey.

We’re having a lot of company in October. I know I’ll be serving oodles of okra, gobs of green beans and mounds of Maque Chou. And since Jack and I are renting a space to sign and sell his book at the Coker Creek Ruritan’s Autumn Gold festival, I might just decide to sell jars of jelly and other goodies from our garden.

I’m off to Atlanta again to deliver to our flooded family the harvest of household items from our kind Coker Creek friends. I wonder if they’d like some smothered okra…

Friday, September 25, 2009

Never Kiss Your Cousins

Can you believe that there’s a diagnosis for being too happy? I once went to psychologist who gave me a personality test and decided that, “There’s nobody that damn happy.” He then sent me to a psychiatrist who told me I needed a mood stabilizing medication. I knew enough about this medication to know that it could kill my liver. I also knew plenty of people who were on three or four mood altering medications and were still in a bad mood. It seems that when one doesn’t work, the shrinks keep adding more. I refused the medication. Anyway, who ever heard of trying to cure happiness?

People seem to get an itch whenever anything unfamiliar rubs up against them. One thing I like about country people is that they don’t think everything has to be “fixed”. Lots of their people are different; but they seem to celebrate differences, as long as the “different” folks are their folks. They even have a phrase to describe the mentally ill and brain damaged in their families: “He/she ain’t right.” In the country, people seem to look at themselves and their familiars for a way to accommodate the itch. In the city, they seem to look to the experts to “cure” the itch – and cure it in a hurry.

I’m generally considered “not right” by folks whether in the country or in the city. A lot of people like that about me. Richard married me to “bring some life” into his house. Richard is a stoic New Englander who grew up on a nice, stable chicken breeding farm. I tried to warn him that he wasn’t ready for the life forms that I was going to drag through his home. He didn’t know better because he had never been married, even though he was forty-eight years old. So he took the plunge.

My Cajun grandma used to brag that my sister married one of our cousins. She grew up in an era when you judged marriage prospects by who “their people” are. In order to make a good match, you had to have close interfamily ties. When my daddy brought my mama from Bayou Teche, less than one hundred miles away, to Bayou Lafourche to meet his mama’s mama, his grandma started crying, “Oh, Leonard, why you marrying a foreigner?” Daddy’s grandma spoke only Cajun French; Mama’s people spoke only English. And Daddy’s grandma didn’t know any of Mama’s “people”. By great-grandma’s standards, Mama could have just as soon come from another continent.

I guess my mama’s folks weren’t foreign enough. While it’s true that sometimes you win in genetic roulette by breeding like with like, often the weaknesses in the offspring far outweigh the strengths. Even though rural folks used to marry their cousins because they lacked transportation into and out of isolated pockets of population, today’s country people generally like hybrid vigor in their livestock.

I’ll admit that I’m rather high strung, but so are thoroughbred horses. My family all tends toward the “high strung”, and most of them married high-strung people – and have high-strung kids. That makes for family gatherings with a “whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on”.

Richard hasn’t yet asked to get off the roller coaster of our combined lives -- not even when I dragged him to a reunion of our family one summer. I like that about him.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Mountain Mists and Monsoons

As wonderful as the retreat with Gayle was, by the time it was over, I was exhausted. Richard is fond of reminding me that all change is stressful, whether it’s good or bad. No wonder I was exhausted. I’d been to the hospital twice, Roger’s house, the retreat, and Rachel’s house twice. I had also driven over five hundred miles in my almost-two-hundred-thousand-mile-on-the-odometer van.

When I turned on my phone, I found a message from Richard that the rains had been soaking our home for several days. The prediction was for another nine days of rain, so he wanted to make sure that I got home before dark. I called and assured him that would be no problem.

Well, I took a wrong turn not two miles from the retreat center. It wasn’t long before I began to see fuchsia wildflowers that didn’t look familiar, but you know how flowers are: changing daily -- and I’d been on retreat for two days. With my head in the clouds and a smile on my face, remembering the good times with Gayle, I drove on – until I hit a dead end. Oops! I may not make it before dark, after all. The bad news was that I hadn’t a clue where I was. The good news was that I got to pass the beautiful fields of fuchsia flowers a second time. I did, however, focus long enough to get back on the right route.

I drove through light rain in Atlanta, and in and out of showers until I hit Tennessee. My “almost home” spot was enchanted by pockets of fresh-washed, sun-dappled green and gold, alternating with moving mists. It was such a fitting way to re-enter my mountain reality after a week-end of mysticism and shared memories. It was like being gently awakened from a dream.

It seemed surprising to me that all the houses, horses, fields and farms of Coker Creek remained the same. I floated home and found our Great Pyrenees, our tabby cat, and Richard all lined up on the porch. Richard had made salads. I fed the dog. Richard carried in my luggage. We discussed whether Richard had started building an arc and whether I should begin collecting pairs of animals. Richard reminded me that God had promised Noah that there wouldn’t be another world- wide flood. I was home!

The next day was a perfect pajama day – Rain, rain, rain. Most of the day, I sat in my writer’s room (also called the guest bedroom and playroom, depending on whose here). I read, wrote, and relaxed while it rained, rained, rained. Rachel called in the afternoon to tell me that it’s a good thing we moved to the mountains because parts of Atlanta were flooding.

We slept well that night, in our mountain home, to the sound of continued rain on the trees. It’s easier to sleep when you have flood insurance. You should have heard the insurance salesperson laughing when I insisted on flood insurance for our mountain place. I’ll bet the folks in Atlanta aren’t laughing.

I awakened to bright sunlight the following morning. While drinking my coffee, I turned on the news. Oh my God! There were photos of parts of Rachel’s suburbs under eight feet of water. I called Rachel for assurance that her family and friends are okay. They are.

Rachel reminded me that unlike on the coast, there aren’t boats in every Atlanta driveway to do rescue work. And as Roger pointed out, Atlanta people don’t know that if you have to climb to your attic to escape the floodwaters, you should bring an ax for breaking out if the waters keep rising. I began calling other Atlanta friends. Thankfully, all are okay as long as the locusts don’t start swarming.

My niece’s husband has an Atlanta cousin with children that lost her home. We’ve offered them help, and we’re now putting out pleas for help for others who are displaced. We think we know something about how they feel.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

That Wild and Crazy Cook

Richard has been doing a lot of cooking. He has always been interested in cooking. When I met him he would create elaborate meals for friends, using the cookbooks of Julia Child. He’s always loved the Julia cookbooks because they have step-by-step photos and give so much detail. Julia Child actually gives twelve steps for boiling an egg. That much detail drives me crazy, but is right in Richard’s comfort zone.

Richard is a scientist and a process person. He’s never in a hurry to get to the end of a project or a journey. We get there when we get there, and enjoy the trip along the way. This is often good, but sometimes gets him in a bit of trouble. Like when he’d choose a complete Julia Child menu and think he could prepare all five courses by himself in one day.

I know that a twenty-four hour day is just a method for keeping track of time, but Richard lives on a continuum of eternal time that doesn’t necessarily synch with the rest of the world. This served him well when he was on hospital call for three or four days in a row, but not so much when having guests for dinner.

The first time he had me over for dinner, I arrived at 7:00p.m. to find him still vacuuming his house. He offered me a drink, told me to make myself at home and disappeared with his vacuum cleaner. I wandered into the kitchen to find Julia Child and Company cookbook open to a paella recipe and all the ingredients laid out on the counter – raw. I had nothing better to do, so I began preparing the paella. Julia Child recipes are not things you can whip up in a half hour. By the time we had dinner, it was 11:00 p.m.

Fast forward to the first time we had a dinner party together. It was important to Richard that he prepare the meal. He pulled out his Julia Child cookbooks, and came up with a menu and grocery list. Since early in our relationship, Richard has minimized our power struggles by insisting that in every shared project, we first decide who is officer and who is enlisted. For this meal, I was enlisted.

As Richard sliced and diced, my job was to stir and sauté. It didn’t take long for me to realize that our meal wouldn’t make it to the table until well after our guests were passed out from hunger (or, quite possibly, from inebriation). Behind Richard’s back, I began to cut corners to save time. We did get the meal done in time, and then agreed that we’d use no more than two Julia recipes per meal.

Since I travel so much, Richard often attends the bluegrass sessions at Charlie and Deborah’s without me. Other attendees look forward to discovering what’s in our chafing dish, and being exposed to something out of the ordinary. Richard’s most recent creation was Paprika Chicken, a rustic stew with carrots, potatoes, onions, red and green bell peppers, and a bunch of spices including caraway seeds and paprika. To feed the crowd, plus leave some for our host and hostess, plus give some to Mamie and some to Jack, Richard had to make a vat of vittles.

When I arrived at home the day after bluegrass, Richard regaled me with stories of his kitchen conquests. He was so proud of his method for efficiently deboning all that chicken, and how well he utilized so much of our fresh-from-Mamie’s-garden produce. He was positively poetic in his praise of our potatoes; they were so firm, so flavorful, so fantastic. And the ease with which he deseeded the peppers; I should have seen him at work…

Everyone loved the dish, and he had saved a generous portion for me. I agreed that it was, as Richard would say, “A keeper”.

The only complaint Richard had was that the directions in the cookbook were faulty. I pointed out that I found this hard to believe based on the results of Richard’s efforts. In his very precise manner, Richard explained to me that the instructions had said to cube the bell peppers. He was horrified! How could this be? If he cubed the peppers, they would be only five sixteenths of an inch cubes, and this was a rustic dish. He had to make an executive decision. Did I tell you that Richard likes rules? Was he to disobey the rules?

Richard decided to cut the peppers into half inch squares, throwing all caution to the wind. I told him I think he’s about to graduate from cook to chef.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Jumping Jack and Happy Hens

I’m heading to Georgia to be with Holly and Don while Don has surgery for liver cancer, and then on to visit another dear friend from my ten years living in Atlanta, Roger. Then it’s off to Columbus, Georgia to attend a retreat with my new-mother-days neighbor, Gayle. So, I made the rounds to collect veggies and deliver cooked samples before my departure. We hadn’t picked Jack’s okra or peppers for several days, and I didn’t want Jack’s labors to go to waste. I really am a sucker for fresh okra.

I arrived at Jack’s house to find a solar collector aimed at the morning sun in front of his porch. Jack’s marine battery, that powered his television before the digital conversion made it impossible for a lot of mountain folk to receive anything other than satellite television, was hooked up to the solar collector. He had borrowed Cotton’s solar collection panel to give it a try running an electric light bulb. He likes the extra light so much that he and his cousin are considering buying their own solar set-up. What’s next -- a word processor to replace his manual typewriter? I think we’re in danger of Jack jumping over the twentieth century into the twenty-first.

We sat in the cool autumn breeze on his porch and talked about the trip Richard and I took with Charlie and Deborah to Oak Ridge. This led to a discussion of our hopes for the future of solar and wind power. Jack allowed that he’s not averse to accepting modern-day technologies; he simply wants the benefits to outweigh the costs – to the environment and to his way of life. We then walked to the garden up the road.

After collecting okra, we walked back down the road to his kitchen garden on the side of his house. As we collected the peppers, and a couple of ears of Silver Queen corn, Jack told me how he keeps his garden soil healthy by composting all his organic waste. I was intrigued by his telling of how some old-time farmers used to allow their brush piles to decompose on their fields, mowing around them as they rotted. I wonder if this is where the custom of raking leaves originated.

After lunch, Richard and I went to Mamie’s to help her clean her hen house. Both Jack and Mamie use a small amount of commercial fertilizer because they don’t create enough animal and yard waste to substitute for it. Jack has only one horse to clean up after, and Mamie’s several dozen chickens aren’t exactly a commercial egg-laying operation. But they do poop, so Richard and I decided to collect their offerings and transfer them to our garden plot for feeding next year’s crops.

Richard’s lack of immune system because of his heart transplant dictates that he’s not allowed to breathe in a chicken house. Not breathing could seriously inhibit his ability to shovel shit. (Excuse my being crude, but sometimes there is no substitute for the perfect word.) For this type of task, we purchased a super-high-efficiency face mask. With Richard looking and sounding like a cheap knock-off of Darth Vader and me in my honest-to-goodness cowboy boots, we entered the laying house.

Mamie and I were the bucket brigade. Mamie positioned empty buckets for Richard to fill, while I transported the full containers to Richard’s trailer. Richard positioned the trailer near the garden and took empty buckets from me while he, quite literally, took a breather. I walked over all of the played-out parts of our garden, sifting the poop over the soil. I also found out why cowboy boots are called shit-kickers; the pointy toe is a great way to break up clods of you-know-what. Next time Mamie’s son Junior tills (or is it plowing?), the manure will be incorporated into the dirt. We finished the yearly hen house cleaning in less than two hours. I think a farm family originated the saying, “Many hands make light work.”

Who knew that cleaning a chicken house would be another “homecoming” for Richard? He says that, when he was a kid, his family egg layer breeding operations supplied six hundred trucks – that’s about three thousand tons – of chicken poop to North Brookfield, Massachusetts farmers per year. He waxed ecstatic about how nice and dry and easy to handle Mamie’s chicken poop was compared to the poop he shoveled as a child. And he looked like a proud papa that had just finished painting the nursery as he surveyed the chickens fluffing the newly laid straw litter in the newly cleaned hen house.

Mamie insisted on paying us for our labors. I tried declining payment on the basis that I had read in Budget Travel about farms charging one thousand dollars a week to teach “campers” how to farm by using them as hired help. When that didn’t work, I explained that if she taught at an agricultural college, they’d pay her probably fifty thousand dollars a year-- And we weren’t paying her anything for her knowledge. Mamie laughed and started our payment with four dozen of her good, brown yard eggs.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Mountain Mama

I’ve always admired the women of the Old Testament. They seemed to be women of substance, who knew how to survive and protect their children no matter what life threw at them. Their attitudes were more “Bring it on.” than “Wait and worry.”

Mamie Murphy is that kind of woman. She was only fourteen years old when Frank took her as his bride. Frank had left Coker Creek looking for work, as did many people during the Great Depression. He hired on at Mamie’s daddy’s Texas farm, and fell in love with the little spitfire named Mamie.

Just like in the Bible, Frank worked for his love’s daddy to earn his bride. Unlike in the Bible, he didn’t have to first marry her sister to get Mamie. Now, Mamie’s daddy didn’t know that Frank planned to take his oldest daughter from him, but Mamie’s mom and sisters saw that he was worthy and helped them elope. It was to be three years before she saw her family again.

Leaving her mother, father and four younger sisters, Mamie traveled more than twelve hundred miles with her new husband. This journey to a new life took her from her familiar surroundings in the flatlands of Texas to the wild wonders of the Cherokee National Forest in the Appalachian Mountains. By the time she reached her fifteenth birthday, she had her first child, a daughter she named Jean.

Times were hard everywhere, and Coker Creek was no exception. In 1934, the timber industry was the only viable industry in the area. Frank’s family worked in the lumber industry, and in 1935 opened several businesses to service the industry: a sawmill, a general store and post office. When electricity became available to the area, Mamie traveled the mountains signing people up for electricity. When she had enough customers to make it worth the while of the utility company to run the lines, they added a Laundromat. The family also farmed vegetables and raised chickens for eggs. They even took a stint at raising hogs. Mamie says that families used to trade products from their farms. One family may have a milk cow, and the next may have a crop of potatoes. They would trade for what they needed.

Mamie, with a baby on her hip – and three more in her future -- farmed, clerked, planted, picked and plucked. She also acted as postmistress of Coker Creek for fifty years.

Just about the time Mamie and Frank got their children reared, Frank died. Mamie kept on running her home, farm, store and the post office. When, while a still-young widow, her store burned down with a new shipment of merchandise, she took to her bed for two hours and then got up to do what had to be done to reopen the post office. She says she’s always too busy to get depressed.

Whenever discussing a life-changing event like a death in the family, my Cajun grandma would preface the discussion with a question, “Do you want to laugh or do you want to cry?” We would then frame our stories in terms that would evoke the desired emotion. No matter what we discuss, Mamie manages to spin the story in a positive direction with her ever -present gift of good humor and the constant twinkle in her blue eyes. Mamie clearly prefers to laugh.

Mamie is almost ninety years old now. When we met, she told me that after running the post office for fifty years, she figured that if she was going to do anything else with her life, she better get to it. Mamie is still raising crops and chickens for eggs. She does all her own housework, even though she says it takes her a while to straighten up in the mornings. And she has a revolving door of guests to whom she serves her wonderful home-grown, home-cooked vegetables.

As a matter of fact, she’s looking forward to the second week-end in October, her busiest time of year for entertaining out-of-state guests. Her oldest son Frank, Jr. is very active in the Coker Creek Ruritan Club. The second week-end in October is when they put on their annual fundraiser, the Autumn Gold Festival. Mamie will be putting several families up at her house for the week-end.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Nuclear Fusion and Finances

Charlie and Deborah treated us to lunch and a visit to the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The drive to the museum was beautiful. We thoroughly enjoyed the scenery, but I was distressed to be told upon our arrival at the venue that much of the ground across which we drove had been a dumping ground for radioactive waste.

While we were given the history of the “City Behind a Fence”, as the top-secret nuclear bomb project site was called, I couldn’t help but be distracted by my sadness for the thousand farm families displaced to build the facility -- with some having only two weeks notice to vacate land that their families had farmed for generations. That’s little more notice than we had before being hit by Hurricane Katrina.

I’m ashamed to admit this, but I know very little about the history of nuclear energy or the atom bomb. I tune out most things that have to do with violence -- or start imagining myself and my children in the scary situations-- so I miss a lot in history lessons. And if I were a scientist, I’m sure I would be more into natural science, like botany. Not that my “wing-it” approach to life would lend itself to me being a scientist.

I had a hard time enjoying the exhibits, even though they were pointing out all the good things that have come out of nuclear power research and development: x-rays, for example. Maybe if our tour could have started with a talk on all the good things that have been invented using nuclear technology…

This event was organized by the East Tennessee Chapter of the Antique Automobile Club of America, in which Charlie is a judge and automobile restoration grand champion award winner. This group of old car lovers regularly hits the road in their beautifully restored cars of yesteryear and cruises through and to scenic and historic venues. Many of the members of the club are as antique as their cars, as is the case with the membership of a great number of non-profit organizations. The events are good ways to introduce children and grandchildren to the glories of the American automobile’s past.

Charlie has tried to interest Richard in becoming a member of AACA. Richard’s 1989 Bronco II is a classic. It looks pretty good for its age, and it still runs pretty well. Also, Richard has a lot of experience in restoring old things. In fact, if we could get back even half of what we invested in our Nixon-era house and boat in New Orleans and our Clinton-era RV, we could about recoup our Bush-era losses in our retirement portfolio.

We are now in the process of fixing up our Reagan-era house in Coker Creek, and are at a critical decision time. I’d dearly love to remodel the kitchen; although, as you can tell, our outdated kitchen doesn’t stop us from preparing whole cafeteria lines of food. We estimate that, even with Richard doing all the work himself, an optimistic estimate of the cost would be over ten thousand dollars.

Our magic carpet RV will never take us on another adventure without a new diesel engine. Estimated cost is ten thousand dollars. Our second Clinton-era vehicle, my van, has almost two hundred thousand miles on it, so it may be the next thing to go. The cheapest cars cost at least twenty thousand dollars. Add to these realities that travel ain’t cheap, and I can’t go more than three months without seeing Scott’s family in Mississippi without feeling like I’m going to die.

I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about this, but in a conservative investment portfolio, it takes a million dollars to generate fifty thousand dollars. If you’ve invested in tax-deferred annuities, you have to pay taxes on your money as you take it out of your portfolio. That would leave you with probably less than forty thousand dollars, if you had a million dollars in your portfolio in the first place.

Our experience tells us that the amount of money you can spend on a hobby with an engine is endless. Fixing up a classic car may not be in the cards for a family on a fixed income in today’s economy.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Seeking Serenity

Upon our return to the holler after twenty-four hours in Atlanta, I immediately headed over to touch base with very stable Mamie and her ever-changing garden. I needed to ground myself. (I don’t know if that pun was intended.)

I’ve never been one to embrace sameness, so it may seem impossible that I’ll ever feel like I belong in slow-moving Coker Creek. You’ve heard of the “slow food” movement created in response to the fast food culture. Coker Creek could be a poster child for a “slow life” movement.

This year, I’m coming to grips with the need to celebrate the moment by fully embracing each process that the moment offers. I’m attempting to heed the admonition of my friend Dot, “Take it easy, Greasy. You have a long way to slide.”

I married at eighteen. My honeymoon was in a primitive fishing camp in the middle of a south Louisiana bayou. We had no electricity, no plumbing, and no other people for miles around. I, who had always insisted to my grandma that I could never live close to her on the bayou because it would be too boring, cried all the way back to civilization. My very stable new husband insisted that we had to live in the city for him to make a living.

When my very stable mother-in-law died at age fifty-six, I became convinced that I’d be long dead by age sixty. I was only nineteen years old when I added this to my long line of magical thoughts. My husband and I were also expecting our first child.
I tried to settle into the life of a young wife and mother in a tiny brick house in the suburbs without even one tree in the back yard. Every day was the same: Change the baby’s diaper; make my husband’s lunch; do the laundry; clean the house; make supper; watch the news; go to bed. Wake up and repeat.

The best times were with my neighbors, but my husband didn’t particularly like their husbands. And then, my seemingly stable neighbors started dropping like flies.
Peggy moved back to her bayou home and family. Merline took to her bed with a major depression when her husband had to leave the state to find stone mason work. Gayle had a meltdown after she had her third child. The only stability seemed to be at my house, but the solitude and sameness were killing my soul.

Sybil, a single labor and delivery nurse and the only faithful visitor at my dying mother-in-law’s bedside, had worked many years with my mother-in-law. She became my daughter’s godmother, and took me and Rachel under her wing. Sybil could see that I needed a hobby. She began introducing me and my infant daughter to the finer man-made things in life.

We took Rachel in her stroller to Antoine’s and Brennan’s, and all the better New Orleans restaurants. Sybil encouraged me to learn gourmet cooking, buying me my first gourmet cookbook, The New Orleans Restaurant Cookbook, and teaching me cooking techniques in her tiny French Quarter apartment kitchen. Sybil would attend our many parties, bearing fine wine and Waterford crystal goblets for me and my husband, and hand-smocked Polly Flinders party dresses and Madame Alexander dolls for our little princess. She was our very own fairy godmother.

After my second child, Scott, was born, I was no longer ever-laughing and fun. Sybil insisted that I go to her therapist because she thought I was depressed. Her therapist was incompetent. Sybil got married, and I got divorced. I was on my own without a compass.

Oh boy, what a wild ride ensued to “find myself”. I began living in overdrive. Life became one big adventure, and I became “hell bent” to experience all the adventure I could without doing myself or others bodily harm.

I tried different New Orleans neighborhoods, and different Atlanta neighborhoods -- even moving to a couple of Tennessee cities for a short time. I worked at different jobs, and opened several businesses. I began and ended many relationships. I still hadn’t located me.

It seems that the only thing that soothed me was immersion in nature. Nature never bores me because, if you watch very closely, nothing in nature is in straight lines or perfect circles. And constant changes, large and small, are nature’s norm. Every chance I got, I’d pack a bag and take the kids to the woods or the water.

After another failed stab at stability, I finally moved back to New Orleans . Through grace, I managed to marry Richard in time to have my first grandchild. We lived in a brick house in a suburb named Tall Timbers. At least we had trees in our yard. Then Richard became a candidate for a heart transplant.

When Richard’s near-death disabled him, I insisted that we run to the arms of nature. I had found the setting to sooth my savage soul a marsh on Lake Pontchartrain in south Louisiana. When Hurricane Katrina gave Louisiana a nervous breakdown, our earthly Eden was erased.

We were seriously downsized. Time to hit the open road, footloose and family- free. We traveled the southern United States in an RV for nine months. Every evening a different natural-setting campground welcomed us home. We had no neighbors, but kept in frequent communication with our family and friends. We also spent weeks at a time in the New Orleans area, assisting our loved ones left digging through the lost cities of Louisiana.

I vowed never to try settling down again. But Richard, who had grown up in a rural agricultural environment, had different ideas. He wanted a home above sea level. We bought eight and a half acres at sixteen hundred feet elevation, with a house and two creeks, in a cradle of trees, in the Cherokee National Forest.

I’m now trying to acclimate to the rhythms of nature in the mountains and the pace of the people of the land. There’s a song with the lyrics “I’ve been to paradise, but I’ve never been to me.” I have been to me, but I kept trying to add more and more to me. I now think that paradise is where we find it. I’ve decided to savor the moment and get comfortable with me – whoever I may be.

Very stable Coker Creek seems to be a good place to begin.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Back to the Big City

While we do dearly love many things about living in Coker Creek, we’re mighty glad that we’re within two hours of three major metropolitan areas: Atlanta, Knoxville and Chattanooga. In these parts, tastes in food and faith tend toward the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant. Ethnic foods are at least an hour’s drive from us, whether at a grocery store or a restaurant. Access to emergency medical services is reliant on personal transportation for a considerable distance, ambulances, and helicopter air lift. Controversy is discouraged, as is attention-getting behavior. How you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve lived in New Orleans?

With the choice of three cities from which to choose our extension of hometown, it was a no-brainer for us to choose Atlanta. I had lived for ten years in the greater Atlanta area, and still have several very good friends there. My daughter and her family live, work, and go to school in Marietta, a suburb of Atlanta. And Atlanta is a multi-cultural city with many choices for music, theatre, grocery stores, and restaurants.

Richard gets his post-transplant care from Emory and his medications from the V.A., within a couple of miles of each other in the Atlanta area. We enjoy combining these visits for medical care with socializing. This week, we went to dinner and a play with Holly and Don. The dinner was very tasty at Simpatico on the Marietta Square, and the play The Savannah Disputation was worth a trip in itself.

Coming from very Roman Catholic New Orleans, and living now in the heart of the Bible Belt, I’ve struggled mightily with how to come to peace with the disconnect between my upbringing and my surroundings. The play was a humorous look at how little sense, and how much damage so much of the religious controversy makes. It was a good way to reframe my discomfort.

I have to be honest; Coker Creek is pretty progressive about their Christianity. There are eleven churches in this little hamlet of less than one thousand people. All but one of the pastors is a part-time preacher, with some preaching at more than one church to more than one denomination on a given Sunday. When I asked Mamie about this, she replied, “Well, it’s all one Bible.”

After about twenty-four hours in the city, we were ready to head home. You know you’re not in Atlanta anymore when you get to Pickens County, Georgia whose claim to fame is that it’s the “Marble Capital of Georgia”. Next, you’ll hit Gilmer County, the Apple Capital. We see a lot of chicken trucks coming out of Ellijay, but I think Gainesville, Georgia is the official chicken capital.

Also on the way back from Georgia, you pass Priest Recycling – What do they turn priests into? And don’t miss Wildseed Stone Casting where you can procure you very own life-sized concrete (or is it cement?) hog. It’s after we exit the many lane highways onto two-lane roads in Tennessee that we really see the best sights, the flowers and the forest. Even though only two days have passed since my last trip from Atlanta, the predominant bloom had changed from thistle to goldenrod.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

City Sophistication

On the way to Atlanta for Richard’s medical care, we stopped in Copper Hill, Tennessee for lunch. Isn’t it funny how many small town businesses try to make people think they’re sophisticated city businesses by giving themselves high-falutin’ names? It seems that the Greek immigrant who opened New York Restaurant and Hotel in Copper Hill, Tennessee in 1927 used this method of declaring that his place was as good as any you’d find in New York. I wonder if he’d ever even seen the Big Apple.

I don’t think anyone ever came through Copper Hill looking for a good Jewish deli’s pastrami on rye. You also won’t get chopped liver, but you may get fried chicken liver as their Wednesday lunch special. Good Southern home cooking is their forte. Why put on airs? The waitress sure doesn’t.

We like New York Restaurant partly because it’s so small town folksy. The food is good, and the walls are lined with before and after photos of the 1990 flood when the Ocoee River overflowed its banks and inundated the town. Or was it the Toccoa River that flooded the place?

You see, as you stand on the state line in the middle of the bridge crossing the river and look to one side, the river is in Tennessee and is called the Ocoee. On the other side of the bridge, the river is in Georgia – and is called the Toccoa. Given the current discussions between Georgia and Tennessee about water rights, who knows whose river flooded whose property? But, then again, Tennessee has a long and colorful history of property line feuds.

Copper Hill’s name comes from the copper mining that used to be king there. You can still see a huge mound of iron ore tailings from the mining operations. I’m surprised that nobody has decided to open an amusement park with “Miner’s Mountain” roller coaster barreling down the rust-colored hill.

Though the copper basin area is now lush with timber, in the late nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, the city and surrounding areas were completely devoid of vegetation – an unforeseen consequence of the sulfuric acid byproduct of the “open roast heap” method of copper production.

Reforestation efforts began in the 1920s and continued until the 1940s. Much of this work was done by the Civilian Conservation Corps, as was much nature conservation work in Coker Creek. In fact, the CCC camps were prime sources of local husbands back in the day.

Copper Hill and Ducktown (“A Quacking Good Place” is their city slogan) are currently known primarily as the entryway into the Cherokee National Forest and the Ocoee River. The Ocoee was the site of the 1996 Olympic Canoe and Kayak Slalom Competition. Whitewater rafting enthusiasts come from all over the world to challenge the class five rapids.

A more fitting name for Copper Hill might be Phoenix, but that name was already taken. No matter what hardships hit, the town continues to pick itself up, dust (or dry) itself off, and find another claim to fame. What other places can you name that have made an industry of straddling a state line?

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Heading to the Holler

There’s an exact point on my drive back to Coker Creek from Atlanta where I begin to feel like I’m almost home. About ten miles before Coker Creek, the highway winds its way into a world of endless greens and dappled sunlight. There are no man-made buildings in sight – around every smooth turn in the road is another soothing scene of forest and stream. My van is my dance partner in my slow motion homecoming dream sequence.

It never ceases to amaze me that in less than two hours, I can drive between two completely opposite worlds. There are many areas of the interstate through Atlanta where you have to know several miles in advance where and in what direction you’re exiting because you have to make sure you’re in the correct lane of the six choices. And traffic is usually so fast that it’s breaking the sound barrier.

Tennessee Highway 68 going north from Georgia is mostly two lanes. The long series of nearly ninety-degree turns keeps speeds at an average of about forty miles per hour. This is a good speed for gawking, but only if you’re a passenger.Every trip is different on the drive through the Cherokee National Forest. Some trips are pale spring green; some are decorated with mountain laurel blooms; on some, the streams are very visible because there are few leaves on the trees. On this trip, the thistles were in bloom.

Atlanta is the epitome of progress. I think the whole Greater Atlanta area is a Wi-Fi hotspot; whereas, we don’t even have mobile phone service in Coker Creek. This is probably a good thing, given the nature of driving in the mountains. We barely have land line phone service. Talking on the phone to someone in Coker Creek is like talking in a sawmill. The phone service provider calls it “the Coker Creek buzz”.

Buzzing is a common sound in the holler. In addition to the buzz in the phone lines, there’s the buzzing of honey bees and the buzzing of far-off motorcycle engines as they negotiate the ever-popular Highway 68 curves. We notice these things because mostly the sounds are of leaves rustling the in the trees, horses whinnying in their pastures, birdsong, and dogs barking in the distance.

When I arrived at home, it was obvious that our house had also been abuzz -- with Richard getting prepared for my arrival. The bed was made; the bathrooms and the kitchen were clean; and the laundry was folded. Richard had made salads, and there was a pot of his paprika chicken in the refrigerator waiting to become our supper. He had also been to Mamie’s. Easily ten pounds of okra and an equal amount of tomatoes beckoned from the kitchen table.

It’s quite a comfort coming home to a tidy house, a clean kitchen, a familiar task -- and a man so happy to be allowed to stay home that he’s prepared for me a homecoming fit for a visiting dignitary. I don’t know if my absence makes his heart grow fonder, but I am planning to be away again in two weeks.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Cleaning the Kitchen

Many of you are probably horrified that I can turn the light off on the big mess I left in the kitchen. I like to think that I’m a better homemaker than I am a housekeeper, but someone always has to clean up the mess – eventually. If only the story of the Elves and the Shoemaker were to come to life in my kitchen…

No such luck. I awoke to as big a disaster as I had left. The directions for making grape jam had said to bring it to a rolling boil. Mine had been more a flying boil with a fireworks display. Grape jam spots covered everything within two feet of the stove: counters, walls, and floor. Big grapey pools had stained the countertops all over the kitchen. And I was on a deadline because I was due in Atlanta early that afternoon.

My friend Gayle once told me that she likes the “automatic” tasks like cleaning the kitchen to ease into her day without having to think about what she’s doing. Then again, Gayle probably never had to contend with shrapnel from a great grape grenade.

It’s a good thing that Richard’s attitude is, “We’re not here for the house; the house is here for us.” He also believes that cleaning up can be a pleasant experience if you focus on remembering the fun you had creating the mess, instead of focusing on the work that lies ahead. For a mess of this magnitude, I think I’ll have to remember how much fun it was to make the jam. And I’ll also look ahead to how many people will love receiving the jam at Christmas.

I know the house is still here -- somewhere. While hunting for supplies in the kitchen clutter, I came upon a plastic bag with several pairs of children’s swim goggles. Figuring they must have been left by the children of my niece Ginette when they visited two and a half months ago, I called Ginette. The fact that the goggles had been there for two and a half months before I found them gives some indication of where my homemaking priorities were not focused.

The goggles didn’t belong to Ginette’s kids, but calling her was a pleasant break between cleaning, more cooking, and final cleaning before my departure. Ginette said that reading the blog was making her wonder how long it will be before we start packing her Christmas package of goodies. Maybe I should start taking orders for folks’ favorites.

As soon as I found the countertops, I prepared the peppers and peas. The pointy ends of the banana peppers will be perfect for hors d’hoeuvre-sized stuffed peppers. The remainder will be divided into red and yellow varieties. The red will be made into red pepper jelly, and the yellow will be chopped and frozen as a substitute for bell pepper. The peas go will go to Rachel’s family.

I began slogging through the grape glop. I wanted to leave a clean kitchen for Richard. He’d need all the counter space he can get as he prepares Chicken Paprika and Cherry Queen of Hearts Crown Cake for upwards of thirty people who attend the every-other-Saturday’s bluegrass pickin’ at Charlie and Deborah’s Coker Creek Saloon.

Richard has a favorite joke about a man traveling through the countryside who comes upon a farmer with a three-legged pig. He stops to ask the farmer about the pig. Three times the man asks about what happened to the pig’s fourth leg. Each time, the farmer proceeds to tell the man about heroic deeds the pig has performed: Running for help when the farmer had been pinned under the tractor; Squealing loudly to wake the farmer’s family when the family home caught fire; Dragging the baby to safety and standing guard until help arrived when a wild dog came after the child. After the third try, the man became exasperated. “Okay, I understand that the pig is very heroic,” he said, “but what happened to his leg?” The farmer replied, “Oh, that. A great pig like that you don’t eat all at once.”

I got through the pots and pans, the stove, the walls, and even bleached out the stains on the countertops before I had to leave. I’ll try not to feel too bad about not getting to the floor before my departure for Atlanta. Ancient hunter-gatherers had dirt floors. The kitchen will still function heroically, even with a filthy floor.

I didn’t quite finish my task on schedule, but then “A great pig like that you don’t eat all at once.”

Friday, September 4, 2009

Joyful Jammin’

The process of making grape jam is so sensuous -- even if you don’t crush the grapes with your feet. The viscous velvet combination of juice and pulp is as royal a purple as you ever want to see. Add pectin and -- bubble, bubble, no toil, no trouble – dump in the sugar and stir until the sugar melts. This magic turns the mixture into clear liquid rubies. Boil for only one minute more, and voila! We’re now the proud parents of twenty-four jars of gorgeous grape jam -- And a kitchen that has been hit with a great big grape grenade.

I’m leaving town, so I’m getting desperate to finish up with this week’s harvest. What does one do with two and a half gallons of questionable corn, four dozen banana peppers, and a half dozen green bell peppers? I chickened out on canning the best of the corn because I was a little afraid of its quality after Jack said that it would be too tough to eat. And, I ran out of pint jars. I tested the texture in succotash for lunch. That went well, but I didn’t have any more limas, or any more pint jars. It was time to get creative with corn.

Don’t groan. I made only a small portion into maque choux, using one of our many peppers and several tomatoes. And I made a savory corn and pepper “pudding” (sort of like squash casserole, but with corn). Some pudding we’ll have for supper; some will go to Mamie and Jack; and some will go to Rachel’s family. I froze several quarts of corn, planning on months of corn puddings of various types. I’m especially interested in a corn and chorizo variation.

While I jammed in the kitchen, Richard ran over to Mamie’s to clear the weeds around our carrots and help her dig up her gladiola bulbs. He came home with tomatoes, field peas and okra. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as we sat down to shell yet another passel of peas.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Gathering Grapes

While Richard tore out the old shelving from the root cellar, I ran over to Mamie’s for a visit. Writing a daily blog means that I have to look for something interesting every day, and Mamie is always interesting. And I wanted to harvest okra from the Baerreis’ plants. The Baerreises said that they have more okra than they can use – which I can’t even imagine. Rachel loves smothered okra, and I’ll be seeing her this week-end. Hence, the harvest.

Mamie returned some of my canning jars. She said she knew it was a shame that I gave them to her full of food, and she returned them empty. This led to a lot of laughs about our canning experiments that had failed. Like the time she decided that she didn’t need to process her green beans for as long as the book said, and the whole year’s crop of beans spoiled. And my first attempt at pressure canning green beans when I released the pressure on my pressure cooker by running it under cold water, like my mother had always done (Of course, she was cooking -- not canning.) I didn’t know that a sudden drop in pressure would boil the water right out of the jars. Seems that Mamie and I are both students of “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get” school.

When I whined about the grape shortage, she offered me a jar of her grape juice that I could turn into jelly. I declined because I didn’t want o be greedy. After all, I had already scored a jar of Shirley’s jam with my whining. I also asked Mamie about Sumac tea. She had never heard of it, and says that she thinks Sumac is poisonous. I’ll have to check out Sumac via the internet.

I was so surprised that grape harvesting had already come and gone, it had never occurred to me to check the areas on our own property where we had previously harvested wild purple grapes. Probably because we had cleared most of the creek banks last winter, and I thought we had destroyed all our grape vines. I don’t know why I always assume that I missed the boat just because other people have reported disappointing results in some of their adventures. It’s true that Charlie’s grapes will never make it into wine bottles or jelly jars and that Shirley’s brother Dean lost his grapes to the raccoons. (Oh, the perils of low-hanging fruit!) That shouldn’t mean that I automatically accept defeat.

When I finally got home, I decided to take a walk on the creek banks to see whether I could locate a couple of grapes. There was no low hanging fruit, but I spied some grapes on the ground. I looked up -- way up. Lo and behold! There were clusters of these marvelous mountain jewels in the treetops! I was able to pick up a pint or so from the ground, and I could reach maybe another quart of grapes. Last year, Richard had risked his life on a ladder picking grapes from the treetops. But he was busily loading the trailer for a run to the county dump and recycle center. I’m a total spastic, so I stay off ladders. What to do?

Just before Richard drove off, I asked him to do me the favor of bringing his chainsaw over to the creek bank. You see, a branch of an old scrub tree leaning beside the creek was loaded with grapes -- way out of my reach. Richard always loves to rev up his chainsaw, so I had him cut down the branch. I ended up with over a gallon of grapes. I don’t know if they’re fox grapes or concord grapes, but they’ll make great jam.

Upon his return from “downtown”, Richard helped me shuck the corn. Then he took over the kitchen to make one of his sumptuous salads. The kitchen floor was still full of bags and baskets of produce, waiting for my attention.

Since Richard was still working in the kitchen, I looked online for Sumac tea information. I came on this cool website http://www.jewishnaturecenter.org/ with all kinds of nature projects, including Sumac tea information and a recipe. It seems that Poison Sumac has white berries and only grows in boggy areas. And from http:www.countrysidemag.com/issues/87/87-4/Sam_Thayer.html, I learned that Sumac tea has been called sumac-ade, rhus-ade, sumac lemonade, Indian lemonade, sumac tea. I think I like the name Indian Lemonade best.

Once the salads were chilling in the refrigerator, I rose from my internet search and tackled the most perishable produce first – the grapes -- de-stemming, washing and boiling in preparation for grinding into pulp for jam. Next came corn. I grated, blanched, and creamed corn for two or so hours, then took a break for salad eating while the corn cooled.

Returning to the kitchen, I pressed the grapes through the foodmill, dying my hands a gangrenous deep purple, then turned back to the corn. I cut the plumper half the corn off the cob for use as canned corn and then ran out of steam (my steam, not pressure cooker steam). I stuffed everything into the refrigerator, and turned off the kitchen light. It was already way past my bedtime when I collapsed on the couch to watch NCIS.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, I’ll can tomorrow... It’s only a day away.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Wildflower Walk and Watermelon “Scent”

I went back to Cooper Hollow Road again yesterday to take photos of the wildflowers that Jack had pointed out on our wildflower walk of the day before. While snapping pictures, I ran into Jack’s friend Cotton. He wanted to know if I’d come to take pictures of the hog that had been stealing Jack’s watermelons. Cotton was in Jack’s field to get one of the few surviving watermelons to make “scent”.

When I expressed puzzlement, Cotton said that “scent” you buy is very high priced, so he figured he’d make his own by liquefying a watermelon in a food processor with a little alcohol to keep it from spoiling. I still couldn’t imagine why one would want this concoction. Cotton explained that after a hunter has been in a blind for a while, the smell of the hunter is blown all around the blind. The deer and hogs won’t come near enough to be shot, so the hunter has to trick the game with “scent”. You spray this “scent” all around the blind, and it masks the scent of the hunter (who, I presume, may be very odiferous after a few hours in the woods). I figure, if the watermelon “scent” doesn’t fool the deer or hog, Cotton can stay warm drinking the stuff.

I took leave of Cotton, finished taking my pictures, and went on to Jack’s. I wanted to harvest the corn left on the stalks before Jack and his brother Charles cut the stalks and bundled them into fodder shocks. Fodder shocks are those bunches of corn stalks that city folk use as fall decoration in their entryways. They were used as winter feed for livestock back when Coker Creek was corn-growing country, and most families kept livestock for food and work animals. While Jack and Charles create the shocks for nostalgic reasons, I want to experiment with the corn -- to see if it’s still good for human animal consumption.

As Charles cut the stalks with a machete-like corn knife, Jack helped me gather the corn. He suggested that the older, dryer corn would be good for “grated corn” for making “grated bread”. I looked for recipes for grated bread, and what I found is more like a corn pudding. I’ll have to ask Jack about that.

I sat down on the porch with Jack and recreated our wildflower walk with my pictures. Jack loves wildflowers and happily provided the local names for the profusion of blooms along our path. He had stopped to show me how the seeds of the Jewel Weed jump from place to place when stirred by a breeze or a passer-by. Golden Black-eyed Susan plants and several other bright yellow blooms tha Jack simply calls Sunflowers bloom profusely alongside the deep magenta of the New York Ironweed blossoms and the mauve Joe-Pye Weed. Jack said that his grandpa’s name for Joe-Pye Weed was Queen of the Meadow, the name he prefers because it has a royal bearing as it reigns over the surrounding foliage.

Jack talked about mountain mint -- which Cotton swears will repel gnats when rubbed on the skin. I don’t know if it repels gnats, but it sure attracts bees. This led to a discussion of different flavors of honey. Jack wondered if all the honey sold as Sourwood Honey is really made from sourwood. It seems that he’s been told that there’s not enough Sourwood trees in the country to produce all the honey sold as sourwood. He’s also has watched his Sourwood trees through a pair of binoculars and saw no bee activity. I’ll have to ask our local beekeepers at Seven Sisters Honey Acres about that.

Delicate deep pink blooms camouflage the pesky Velcro-like seed pods of the Beggars Lice which Jack says he removes from clothing by scraping them off with a knife. He had shown me the seed pods of a felled Sweet Gum tree, and told me how the women at the sewing factory used to paint them for Christmas ornaments. Then he talked about how he used to cut a gash in the bark of the tree to obtain the sap that local kids chewed before Juicyfruit came to these parts.

While Jack cut okra, I had spied a paper lantern-looking bud that opens into a beautiful blue and white flower that looks like a balloon flower and grows only in tilled fields. Jack’s grandmother called it Fly Poison. Jack had pointed out the brilliant red flowers that grow only on creek banks, saying that locals call them Cardinals. He had told me about the Bullweed along the path, and how much horses and cows like to eat it. He and Charles used to pick big bunches of it and take it with them to distract the cow while they milked her.

On our walk back to Jack’s house, I had asked about the tiny deep red berries on a plant that I recognized as something that grows on our land. Jack pulled a couple of berries and popped them in his mouth, explaining that mountain folk make beverages from the berries. I tasted the Sumac berries, and they were delicious – kind of tart/sweet like lemons. Jack wasn’t sure whether people cold or hot brewed the beverage, so I guess I’ll ask Mamie or Shirley.

Jack asked if I’d like to see the Wild Apricots growing on his fence. Apricot is one of my favorite fruits, so I was game. I was thrilled when we came on a fabulous Passion Flower vine in full bloom. When I exclaimed that passion flower was one of my favorite blossoms, Jack allowed that Passion Fruit is another name for wild apricot. He’s promised to call me when the fruit ripens.

Maybe I can make Passion Fruit jelly.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

“Catching Up” on Canning

I caught up on canning yesterday (only because neither Richard nor I visited the garden yesterday). So, yesterday morning, I decided to bring samples of our canned creations to those who have been our greatest support network: To Mamie – Cherries Jubilee Sauce and some okra and tomatoes for her friend. To Jack – Carrots from Mamie’s garden, some field peas, and a jar of pickled beets. To Charlie and Deborah – Carrots, red and white potatoes, maque choux, green beans, and field peas. To our next-door-neighbor Shirley – A jar of okra and tomatoes that I had promised her at the spaghetti dinner benefit where I heard her and her family (the Daltons) sing last Saturday. To the Baerreis Family – wine and liquor bottles. I know --That’s not a canned creation, but I’ll explain later.

You may think we were kind of stingy with Mamie considering all Mamie does for us. But Mamie has dozens of cans of produce in her basement, and she’s began making her own okra and tomatoes last year after we gave her a sample. Mamie wasn’t home, so I dropped the goodies off in her egg refrigerator and went to the garden. I picked okra and tomatoes, and then headed over to Jack’s.

I had to return a notebook to Jack, and we sat on the porch discussing his recently published book, as well as his more recent writing about corn in Coker Creek. He also spoke of the wild hog that ate all his watermelons in his and his brother Charles’ big garden. Jack’s gold-hunter friend Cotton (who also hunts wild game) had spent the night in the field watching for that hog, but had fallen asleep on the job. As Cotton slept, the hog had come and gone; so Jack thought he ought to go check his field.

As I prepared to leave, Jack (as usual) offered to give me more tomatoes and peppers – an offer I can never pass up. I told him about the green pepper jelly I made with his last batch of peppers, two batches of which have to be reworked because they didn’t set. We agreed that reworking can wait until after all of the fresh produce is taken care of.

We picked all his red banana peppers to add to the ones already in my freezer from last year. These will become red pepper jelly. Now, pepper jelly is new to the mountain folks. They make jelly from every fruit, including tomatoes, but Mamie told me that the first time she read a recipe for pepper jelly she thought it was a joke. Then again, okra and tomatoes was new to them, and they sure have developed a taste for it.

As we spoke about all the okra and tomatoes I hoped to can this season, Jack asked if I wanted to go with him to his big field to pick okra. This field is about a half mile down the Cooper Hollow Road from Jack’s house. For a year, I had been meaning to have Jack take me for a wildflower walk. We grabbed a bag and started walking. The bag was full of okra when we returned.

As I headed to Charlie and Deborah’s my van looked like a produce vendor’s truck. Since Charlie and Deborah had given me several cases of canning jars – and since they host a bluegrass pickin’ session (to which we are invited) every other Saturday -- we thought it was only fair to share some of our garden bounty with them. Placing potatoes, peppers (from Jack), carrots, maque choux, and fields peas on their new granite countertop, I marveled once again at the great job Charlie did in remodeling their home.

Charlie is a real mountain man, cutting timber on his property and dressing it out for his building needs with his own sawmill. A great storyteller, he regaled me with the story of a realtor who used to take people to look at Coker Creek property, telling them about the gold-mining and panning history of the area. As the prospects walked with the realtor along the creeks, the realtor would remove a piece of fool’s gold from his pocket. Bending down and acting as if he found it in the creek, he’d announce, “Look at that. That’s the biggest nugget I’ve ever found.” The prospect would immediately sign a contract for the land. He also raises several kinds of grape. I was hoping to collect some of his concord and fox grapes for grape jam. Much to my chagrin, he informed me that all his grapes had rotted and fallen off the vine as soon as they ripened.

On the way “downtown” to pick up some prescriptions, I ran by Designs by Baerreis to drop off the wine and liquor bottles. Martha, Phil and Elisabeth Baerreis make wonderful treasures out of wood, glass, and clay. Their hardwood hair toys, sculptural boxes, kitchenware, toys and puzzle boxes, as well as their fused glass jewelry, and other glass and pottery objects de art and photography are prized by collectors around the world. They aforementioned bottles are turned from ordinary recyclables to unique cheese boards in the creative hands of Elisabeth. The Baerreises are also gardening at Mamie’s, so we traded garden tales and recipes.

My last stop was next door at Shirley’s. Shirley’s house is on land that used to be part of the parcel we bought. Her daddy was Rube Dalton, a well-known mountain musician. Shirley grew up on the land that we now own. I remembered that she had talked about the root cellar on out property, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask her advice on root cellaring in our cellar.

She gave me advice, and we talked for a while about her family’s musical talents. I presented her with her first-ever jar of okra and tomatoes to try and asked her if she knew anybody who had extra red grapes. She called her brother who said that the raccoons had gotten to his grapes, and that her own grapes had already been harvested. It was with a heavy heart that I realized that I wouldn’t be able to provide Richard with his favorite jam this year.

As I prepared to depart, I offered her some of my fresh tomatoes, which she accepted -- saying her tomatoes and her brother’s tomatoes were finished bearing. Shirley then excused herself, asking me to wait a minute. Oh, joy of joys! Upon her return, she held a precious jewel out to me – a jar of her mountain grape jam. My winter larder will now be complete.

And then, it was home to can tomatoes.