Month: August 2022

Southern Mama’s Hoe Cakes

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As a Southern girl I know full well that, on a cold winter morning, there is nothing on this earth like the taste of strawberry jelly and hot, buttered hoe cake bread.

 

My family grew up enjoying this tasty bread along with an assortment of companion foods: sorghum, molasses, syrup, and honey plus all manner of jellies and preserves.

 

Usually a meat such as bacon, sausage, ham, chicken or fat back was also served along with fluffy scrambled eggs. This menu works equally well for breakfast and supper.

 

Since our Southern version of hoe cake was always a staple, we probably did not concern ourselves with its origin. We likely assumed all of America ate the same foods we did.

 

However, like many childhood beliefs, this has proven not to be the case. Apparently, the rest of the world didn’t get the memo. So, what is hoe cake (for the uninitiated) and how did it come to be such a desirable dish on Southern tables for so many generations past?

 

Hoecakes and honey are as American as apple pie and the popularity of this simple food quickly spread among settlers throughout Colonial America. Originating with native Americans, it eventually became a commodity eaten regularly by not only early white Americans, but slaves and European settlers as well.

  

George Washington’s Mt. Vernon table boasted a sumptuous and bountiful bevy of dishes from which to choose. One of his favorite choices was hoe cakes and honey. One guest offered the theory that the softening effect of the hot butter and honey made the food much easier for Washington to chew. In colonial times, hoe cakes were consumed throughout New England, Virginia, the Deep South and the Southwest.

 

American diplomat and poet Joel Barlow wrote about hoe cake in his 1793 poem “The Hasty Pudding”, calling it “fair Virginia’s pride.” Barlow also referred to it by other names: in New England, it was called Johnnycake (“a dash of pumpkin in the paste.”) In other parts of the nation, it was referred to as journey cake, ash cake, corn pone, spider bread, mush cakes, Injun bread and bannock.

 

Simple hoe cake was made with corn meal, water and salt. It was baked on the flat part of a hoe over a wood fire, hence the name. Johnnycakes and corn pone were somewhat thicker and may have contained wheat flour or added fat. Southern hoe cake was essentially a little corn meal pancake, brown outside and crispy around the edges.

 

These hoe cakes were often eaten with turnip greens or collards and, for those ‘in the know’, dipped in pot likker. Basically, these hoe cakes were fried corn bread made with only corn meal and water, but many cooks liked to use eggs and milk.

 

I have often eaten fried corn bread, and I frequently had corn meal pancakes growing up, but I have never cooked nor eaten anything that was cooked on the flat side of a hoe.

 

The Southern hoe cake, eaten by most of us Southerners for generations, is not a corn meal product, but rather a biscuit-like bread made in a skillet. 

 

My recipe, which follows, was handed down from my mother and probably represents a chain of generational sharing in the family. My first piece of advice: put on an apron, one that covers the preparer. While preparing hoe cakes, believe me, you will want coverage. Also, have a damp washcloth and paper towels handy.

 

A Southern Mama’s Hoe Cake

 

You Will Need:

 

2 cups plain flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup of shortening 

Buttermilk

10” or 12” cast iron skillet, well-seasoned and well-used

 

Add dry ingredients, work in shortening with (clean) hands, until well mixed. Add buttermilk a little at a time until you have a stiff dough. With floured hands, knead until it is no longer sticky. Put it into a greased, floured skillet and shape it evenly around the edges. Bake at 450 degrees until lightly brown.

 

Take it out of the oven with mitts and dish it onto a large plate. Let it cool, cut and butter, spread on your favorite jelly or jam and dig in!

 

Thanks for listening and… keep smiling.

 

Audrey McCarver, August 5, 2022

 

Alabama’s famous shoe tree

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Let’s face facts. There are just some aspects of life that defy a satisfactory explanation. Without empirical evidence, many matters fall into the abyss of “opinion.”

For instance, why do people take a pair of shoes, tie the strings, and toss them onto a tree limb? I have heard from a reliable source (my son), that in the Marines it’s often done to commemorate one’s leaving the corps. A defiant gesture against those rigid, smelly, blister-causing foot coverings, perhaps.

As some have suggested, there could be a yearning to free their feet and go native and at the same time leave a visual ‘footprint’ on the sands of time.

Alabama’s famous shoe tree is a testimony to this curious phenomenon. Located on the north side of Highway 72, four miles west of Cherokee, Alabama, this popular roadside attraction has drawn thousands of admirers, picture-takers and curiosity seekers over the years.

There, several hundred pairs of shoes-tennis shoes, dress shoes and boots-dangle from the limbs of a lone sycamore tree which juts out of an embankment along the highway.

According to RoadsideAmerica.com, the Alabama shoe tree was first reported in 2008. This site also lists thirty-two such shoe trees around the U.S. and names several in multiple foreign countries.

Why do they exist? Frankly, no one knows. One such tree is known as the Tree of Lost Soles. Being the eternal optimist, I prefer Sole Survivor. How did the tradition first get started?

It may sound tongue-in-cheek, but maybe the first toe-box thrower was a muscular, stealthy type—an athlete with an old pair of sneakers. Or a disgruntled employee who, as an act of protest against a boss who was a heel, wanted to release their frustrations.

Maybe some jealous would-be beau swiped the foot wear of a rival for his love’s affections and flung them into forever. That would teach her that the upper crust did not care to be strung along!

It has been attested to that many who consign their old footwear to heavenly history inscribe on them their names, hopes, aspirations, predictions and even poetry.

It’s my opinion that people who engage in this practice usually do it just for the fun of participating, to see if one can achieve higher altitude and perfect placement and add their personal touch to posterity. Bragging rights, so to speak.

If a reader determines to see this showy shoe spectacle, please be advised that this timely tree is terrifically close to a bustling, busy thoroughfare and sudden stopping could result in catastrophic conclusion.

Best way to get a photo while traveling?

As the objective nears, slow down and take a picture from the car, then quickly return to the real world where a shoe tree is just a figment of an overactive imagination.

Thanks for listening… and keep smiling!

Audrey Brooks McCarver. August 4, 2022

 

 

Latest review of The Bird of Time

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“I am a John I. Jones fan!

Okay, this story was so darn good, so full of interesting characters, and so well written, that I’ll never forget it…especially the conclusion.

Jones is a talented storyteller and writer, and his skill shines in ‘The Bird of Time’.

Lifetime friends and brothers from different mothers, John Chance and Jesse Trubble perform their tasks, deal with life’s good and bad, and show us exactly what true friendship is about.

At my age, I recall all of the time periods these two go through. Brought back many memories.

And, Jones concludes this wonderful story with one very special segment, one I fully believe in, that will leave the reader feeling good, warm, and with moist eyes.

As a writer and avid reader, I highly recommend ‘The Bird of Time’ to everyone who’s ever had a truly special friendship. You’ll be glad you read it.

“Thank you, John I, for one compelling story. Please keep writin’…and smilin’…” – Author Lee Carey

(Lee Carey lives at Sandbridge Beach, a suburb of Virginia Beach, Va. and is the author of nine novels and two short story collections. Lee enjoys surfing, writing, golf, and hanging out on the beach with his wife, Kay, and their rescued pooch, Angel. Learn more about Lee at https://www.leecarey-author.com/) 

 

How I Learned to Read

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I came into this world in the usual way: one mother plus one father equals one baby girl, born in November, 1950 in the City of Champions, Gadsden, Etowah County, Alabama, which is nestled at the very end of Lookout Mountain.

I have a pretty good memory, at least for the early fifties. Some of my earliest impressions of reading material included books, newspaper comic strips, comic books and postcards. Fortunately, I started life in a family that loved to read.

As the fourth girl in the family, I didn’t remember a time when our house wasn’t littered with books, whether for pleasure or study. Further, like so many other families of the times, we were proud owners of the complete set of the World Book Encyclopedia, bought on the installment plan, which included a yearbook each year to update the owners on the latest knowledge available in print.

Mama was a reader of all kinds of material, conversant on umpteen topics. If she didn’t know the answer when a question was brought up, she would know it soon. Daddy had only a ninth-grade education in public school, but he read widely and made sure we had plenty of opportunities to broaden our thinking.

Occasionally, we made the fifteen-mile trip from our rural home into town to the fascinating Gadsden Public Library every couple of weeks and spent a wondrous time perusing the shelves for interesting reading material.

Then we would check out with as many books as we could carry home and bring them back to repeat the process again and again over the weeks ahead. There was something special in that old library building in Gadsden, and in that atmosphere, that wonderful ‘smell’, the beguiling odor of adventure, excitement, knowledge would come to life again and again.

I started school at our little country school called Highland Elementary in 1957 in the first grade. Very few children had access to kindergarten in those days, only those who went to a private school. My teacher was a wonderful little lady we called Miss Milam. There was another first grade teacher, but according to survivors from her class, they didn’t get to do anything.

Her class was boring. Miss Milam’s class was anything but that. In the middle of the class room, we had a baby bed set up wherein sat a little girl who was there all day long playing with an unclothed doll with a cracked head.

I called her ‘Miss Milam’s baby’. She wasn’t. She was our age and I guess this was representative of early efforts at so-called “mainstreaming.”

Carolyn, one of my forever friends, reminded me of that class because she cried day in and day out. Loudly. Unconsolably. If Miss Milam left the room for a few minutes, Carolyn began to despair of her ever returning and commenced wailing.

I remember, on one occasion, Miss Milam left the classroom for some reason and Carolyn cried…and cried…and cried. A boy, wanting to help and stop the waterworks, moved a chair over to the closed door and set it up against the door. Carolyn climbed up on the chair and looked out the little window, anxiously watching for Miss Milam.

Meanwhile, the teacher, having heard Carolyn’s sorrowful sounds was hastening back to the classroom. When she got to the door, she looked in the window face to face at Carolyn crying piteously, wanting her to come in but blocking the door so Miss Milam could not enter. Just the two. Looking at each other. Neither coming nor going. Just staring. Finally, Carolyn removed the chair and Miss Milam returned to the classroom.

But I digress. How did I learn to read? Well, we had to learn our ABCs. So, we worked daily on each letter, seeing how it was made then practicing over and over on our tablets, lower case and upper case. Learning words that the letters started.

A is for apple. B is for banana. On and on. And it worked. We learned to string the letters into words and how to pronounce the words. Then we would string the words into simple sentences.

Our class was split up into three reading groups, the redbirds, the blue birds and the yellow birds. Each group had its session with the teacher while the other two groups read at their desks and read supposedly silently.

And each of us had a copy of the latest issue of The Dick, Jane and Sally book. “Oh, look, Dick! See Spot. Funny, funny Spot. See Puff Jump Down! Down! Down! Down!” And it worked.

Repetition does teach. We read the words over and over. We read the groups of words (sentences) over and over. And without any fanfare we were learning to read.

And the books had the beautiful, colorful illustration of the perfect children, the perfect Mother and Father, and the perfect pets. Part of the pleasure of learning to read was learning to spell.

I loved clean, white, ruled paper in a neat notebook. I loved discovering words and their meanings. And I loved spelling. I was good at it, therefore I was a good reader. Then one day, my Mama caught me doodling on my school paper and told me not to waste my paper on drawing. I always listened to my Mama.

On the following Thursday, we had our weekly spelling test. So, I sat at a desk on the front row about a foot from where Miss Milam was calling out the spelling words. After the test, students swapped their papers to be graded by another student. Once the papers were swapped, Miss Milam turned to me.

“Audrey, come up here and call out the words with the correct spelling,” she said.

“I didn’t take the test,” I said.

“Why not?” she replied, seeming befuddled.

“My Mama told me not to waste my paper.”

Thanks for reading…. And keep smiling

Audrey Brooks McCarver,

July 25, 2022

 

 

Legend of Alabama’s Goat Man

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There are legends, and then there are LEGENDS.

Some legends are born of woman. Some legends are born of imagination. Some are born of a combination of the two. Often, in such a case as the latter, it is difficult, if not impossible, to separate fact from fiction.

There are those who are ‘a legend in their own time’; there are those who are ‘a legend in their own mind’. Then, there is Charles “Ches” McCartney, known throughout the South as Alabama’s legendary Goat Man. 

Born in Sigourney, Iowa, on July 6, 1901, Charlie was a student at the local rural school which numbered only 14 students, all ages gathered into a single room.

“Charlie was never very bright,” said a former classmate. “I never really liked him all that much, to tell you the truth it was because he liked to keep to himself.”

At age 14, Charlie ran away from Iowa to New York City where he married a 24-year-old Argentine knife thrower. They had a baby boy and, to make some spending money, Charlie joined her knife-throwing act as a human target. It was also his job to keep the knives sharp.

After this venture failed, they moved back to Iowa and bought a farm, but after only a few years, the woman became unhappy, took the child and fled to parts unknown. The small farm he owned was lost in the Great Depression, but a local historian claims that Charlie gave up the land to satisfy a grocery bill that he couldn’t pay.

While cutting trees for the WPA in 1933, Charlie was struck by a falling tree and injured him so badly that, when he was found hours later, he was taken to a funeral home. As the undertaker was inserting the needle with embalming fluid into his arm, Charlie suddenly woke up and sat up straight on the mortician’s table. The surprised mortician passed out cold.

After this, Charlie could use his left arm very little due to the deformity from the accident. Out of pure shame, he didn’t want to be put on the newly-formed welfare programs created by Roosevelt, so, he decided he wanted to travel the world and preach the gospel.

When Charlie discussed the matter with his wife at the time, she gave him a firm ‘no.’ She was having no part of such foolishness. A week later, Charlie sold her to a neighboring farmer (whom the wife already had her eye on) for two payments of $500 each. Now Charlie was free to do whatever he liked.

Having always been very fond of his goats, he rounded them up and attached several to a wagon he had made from a railroad cart. He took a bed, a pot-bellied stove, lanterns, Robinson Crusoe and the Bible and hit the road. Along the way, Charlie gathered up various items he found along the way.

“He made some money selling postcards he had had made of himself,” said one historian. “Twenty-five cents or three for a dollar.”

He also sold or traded items he gleaned along the way. He was known to preach and pray in return for dollars and dinners. His sermons were liberally salted with cursing and profanity.

“He smelled awful!” was the most often expressed impression people had of Charlie. Having lived with and slept with goats for years and never bathing would be a believable reason. It was often said that people could hear the commotion of the goats and wagon and smell the pungent odor long before he could be seen.

When word got round that the Goat Man was coming, parents would gather up their children and their cameras and go to see him. With few other forms of family entertainment, his appearance made for an enjoyable outing for a family (provided they stayed upwind).

Charlie would camp where tolerant landowners allowed it. Each night he would build a huge bonfire and top it off with cut-up rubber tires he had harvested from his travels.

Ostensibly, this was done to keep the bugs away, but others surmised that this thick, smoky cloud brought the locals to see what was on fire. When they arrived and saw that it was Charlie, well, now, what a fine opportunity to sit a spell, chat a while and buy a few postcards —“25 cents apiece or three for a dollar”. 

He didn’t have a big overhead, living on goat’s milk and items people brought to him. He accepted donations, especially from a little Georgia church that he started near Jeffersonville. And the goats would eat anything.

People remembering the sight of “Ches” McCartney and his smelly, clamorous entourage traveling down a road would be a sight they were not be likely to forget. Sometimes his herd numbered thirty goats, some goats pulled the unsightly sight from the front and some of the billy goats would push from the back.

If an animal was sick, or “off its feed”, he would hoist it up into the wagon for treating. The baby goats were often born in this wagon. One goat was observed with no front legs, and it hopped like a kangaroo.

Once while taking this tremendous load up Monteagle Mountain in a winter storm in southeast Tennessee, Charlie passed stalled vehicles left and right. That night he survived, he said, by taking extra goats into the wagon —a real Three Goat Night.

Around 1969, the Goat Man retired from the road; new super highways were frightening the goats and it was just time. After decades spent traveling in this fashion all over the South and most of the East, Charlie was calling it quits.

He admitted to having three wives and children with each and admits “there could be more. Who can I know?”

In 1984, Charlie became enamored with Hollywood actress Morgan Fairchild, so he set out to hitchhike to California and woo her and make her his own. He actually made it to Los Angeles, but, upon arrival, he was promptly mugged. This brought his wife-hunting to a halt.

Gene, Charlie’s son, traveled with Charlie for several years and never went to school. Charlie had photos of the lad dressed in clothes made of goat skins. After Charlie was mugged on Signal Mountain and eight of his goats killed, the father and son retired to an old family property near Jeffersonville, Georgia.

On the site, there was a concrete tomb which housed the remains of his father and step-mother. There was no electricity or running water. When the wooden shack burned down, Charles and Gene took up living in an abandoned school bus on the property.

In 1998, when Charlie had been moved to a nursing home in Macon (where he made a new girlfriend), Gene was found in the old school bus shot to death. The crime was never solved.

In less than six months, Charlie McCartney died in the nursing home. He and Gene are buried, side by side, in Jeffersonville. 

In all his decades of travel, he visited forty-nine states, only missing Hawaii.

“My goats couldn’t swim that far,” he said. “And if they could, “they’d just end up eating the grass skirts off the hula dancers anyway.”

Thanks for reading and… keep smiling

By: Audrey McCarver

July 21, 2022

 

Zora Neale Hurston

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It was once said of Mary Ann Evans (the English novelist who, under the pen name George Eliot, wrote the classics Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner) that “when you read her work, you knew you’re in the hands of genius.”

The same can be said of Zora Neale Hurston, author of “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”

From the very first, you realize that she is an extraordinary literary genius. You watch as a miracle unfolds across the pages. The flux and vivid detail of her imagery is not only truly original, but at times, the multi-layered meanings, subtle double entendres and the exquisite use of language approaches that of any writer I have ever read.

I found myself rereading some of her narrative passages seven or eight times to savor their excellence.

This woman is a novelist with a poetess living inside her who rushes to the forefront of the narrative at the most unexpected moments. In experiencing this book, you will be reading a long passage which has been driving forward at a slow, steady pace then suddenly launches into pure poetry.

For example, early on, Hurston describes the porch-sitters, the old busybody black women who huddle together on front porches and gossip about everyone that passes. This is how Hurston describes them:

“These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became Lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouth. They sat in judgment.”

When the book was first released in 1937, the Harlem Renaissance intellectuals objected strongly to her use of dialect. Here’s an example of dialogue in the book:

“Naw, Ah thank yuh. Nothin’ couldn’t ketch dese few steps Ah’m going. Anyhow mah husband tell me say no first class booger would have me. If she got anything to tell yuh, you’ll hear it.”

The Harlem intellectuals felt it was wrong to depict black folks talking in dialect. They felt it presented blacks in an inferior, truly unflattering light. Hurston could have cared less. Unlike the Harlem crowd who only wanted to enumerate and seek justice for the white man’s cruelty to the black man, Hurston wanted to present black people exactly as they were.

She had no interest in sugar-coating the life and culture of her people. She wanted to get as close to the truth as she could. Once you start reading, you see immediately how and why the use of dialect helped achieve this special truth.

If you like muscular, vibrant prose which lays bare the very heart and soul of black culture in the deep South during the twenties and thirties, you’ll love this book. Watching Hurston’s literary genius bend and swing with the rhythm of the narrative is truly a literary miracle to behold!!!

Breath-taking imagery! Great read! I will never forget the love story of Janie and Tea Cake.

Now I know why Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, said: “There is no book more important to me than this one!”

Majestic book!! Absolutely magnificent!!

Tasty Chicken and Dumplings

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“My mom makes the best chicken and dumplings in the world!” exclaimed my eight-year-old granddaughter. Then, as if to console me, added, “Yours are second best in the world.”

Every Southern born man, woman and child from who were living before the fast-food era probably had a mother or grandmother or friend who made the best chicken and dumplings they ever ate.

Recipes have been handed down through generations and the traditions observed in the preparing and serving of this Southern comfort food which has stood the test of time. 

Eagerly anticipated at church pot-lucks, family get-togethers, home style cafes, this basic meal is not likely to disappear from Southern tables any time soon.

Since taste is so subjective, I feel no one article could be written that reveals the perfect, accepted recipe for chicken and dumplings. So, I will provide the recipe and instructions I grew up with, those of my mother, and her mother, and her mother before that.

To people of the South, there has never been a time when chicken and dumplings was not known. Do we know how this very popular dish came to be?

The actual history of chicken and dumplings is scarce, well, as hen’s teeth. The probable beginning given is that this pleasing plate of plump poultry and delicate, delightful dough had its start in the Antebellum south as a mainstay for harsh economic times. They did their best with what they had.

As is the case with any recipe, add, subtract, substitute, experiment: Make it your own. Here is my favorite recipe:

Chicken and Dumplings

About 4 chicken breasts (or preferred pieces)

Salt and Pepper, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Dumpling pastry

Cover chicken with water and cook until tender, about one hour. Remove chicken from bone and cut into small pieces. There should be enough liquid in the pot to make dumplings; if not, add small amounts of hot water with chicken bouillon cubes dissolved in it, or use canned chicken stock.

You can also use cream of chicken soup, diluted. Keep the liquid hot because the dumplings will take up the liquid and get too dry. Salt to taste.

Put two cups plain flour into a large bowl, add about 3/4 teaspoon salt. Work into the dough about 2 tablespoons of shortening until it is all worked in. Mix just enough ice water to make a dough.

Have a floured surface prepared. Turn out dough on this surface. Knead the dough with the flour until it is not sticky. Halve it for better handling. Keep using flour as you roll out the dough very thin. When dough is thin enough, cut into thin strips and drop into boiling liquid. Put on the lid and cook for 20 minutes.

Next, remove the lid. Turn these dumplings under the liquid and add the other strips. Let cook for another 20 minutes. Add more water if needed. Be sure to add black pepper, but not too much. Time to eat.

What should be served as accompaniment with chicken and dumplings? Bread is already in the dish, so it is not needed. I would suggest beans or peas and a relish tray with cut raw vegetables; carrots, bell pepper, cabbage, celery. Maybe a comfort dessert such as blackberry cobbler, but that is another recipe for another day.

So, if my grandchild thinks my chicken and dumplings are the second best in the world, I consider that a real, heartfelt compliment.

P.S. I am going to reveal a secret. If you just can’t dedicate this much time and effort to making the homemade dumplings, don’t despair. Go to the grocery and buy roll-out pie crust, then follow the rest of the instructions. It will save you some time and still look and taste authentic.

Thanks for listening… And keep smiling!

 Audrey McCarver, July 20, 2022