Audrey McCarver

Daddy’s Peanut Candy Delight

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As a small child growing up in the hills of North Alabama, there was always one thing that would always make my ears perk up. That was my Daddy’s announcement that he was making his special peanut candy.

“When will it be ready, daddy?” I would ask.

“About thirty minutes,” he would reply. “I’ve got to shell peanuts first.”

With those words, my stomach would prepare itself for one of my favorite childhood treats.

Although my father Auburn Brooks was a man’s man, he was also quite handy in the kitchen and, while serving in the military, proved himself to be a capable baker. One of his favorite recipes he came away with from those days was the one for his famous peanut candy.

“Quick, easy and tasty,” he would say.

The final product looked and tasted like peanut brittle, but it was much softer and chewier than its time-honored counterpart.

With great fondness do I remember those days I would sit in the front porch swing nibbling away at his fresh peanut candy and watching the world go by.

The following recipe is published exactly as he wrote it so the ingredients and amounts are included in the body.

Auburn Brooks’ Peanut Delight

First, shell one pint of peanuts, then put peanuts in a flat pan.

Put in oven at 350 degrees; let roast for 15 minutes. While peanuts are roasting, use a four quart or larger boiler. Put in 1 1/2 cups sugar, 1/2  bottle of 16 oz. white Karo syrup and 1/2 stick of butter.

Bring to a boil and let boil for 10 minutes, no longer. When this is done remove from heat and put in 1 teaspoon soda; stir in very well. Next pour in peanuts and mix very well. 

Tear off a piece of foil larger than the cookie sheet you plan to use and place in pan. Butter the foil thoroughly.

Let candy set in boiler no longer than 10 minutes.

Pour out on buttered foil. I use a butter wrapper to flatten it out and spread.

Allow to cool for 30 minutes.

Break it apart and place in your serving dish.

Thanks for listening… and keep on smiling.

Audrey Brooks McCarver, August 22, 2022

Interesting Facts about William Faulkner

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Did you know William Faulkner, the Mississippi native and famous American novelist, bragged to his friends and acquaintances he had been wounded in battle during World War I when, in fact, he never saw combat.

Did you know that the Nobel-winning author was an avid golfer who loved to spend hours searching for lost golf balls? Or that he was the worst campus postmaster in the history of Ole Miss?

These are just a few of the interesting new facts I discovered recently after reading Carl Rollyson’s new book, The Life of William Faulkner, The Past is Never Dead 1897-1934, Volume 1, and conducting a sit-down interview with the author.

Rollyson is Professor Emeritus at Baruch College, The City University of New York. He has published many biographies of celebrities and literary figures, including Walter Brennan, Marilyn Monroe, Sylvia Plath, and Norman Mailer. His article and reviews have appeared in many national publications.

Now back to Faulkner’s military shenanigans.

In June of 1918, after Faulkner’s high school sweetheart married another man, “Bill,” as his friends called him, deserted his home town Oxford, Mississippi, then went to Canada and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force.

To enlist, he used a forged letter of reference and, once he was signed up, traveled to Toronto to begin basic training. Although he had hoped to learn to fly a plane, most of his time was spent mopping floors, peeling potatoes and washing dishes.

Bill loved military life. When one officer saw him busily digging a trench with great concentration, he ordered the recruit to snap to attention.

“What are you doing there?” the officer said.

“Learning to fly, Sir!” Faulkner replied.

When the war ended before his training was over, Faulkner returned to Oxford in December 1918 looking every inch the war hero. He was wearing a spiffy RAF officer’s uniform, carrying a swagger stick and hobbling on a cane.

When friends and relatives asked about the injury, he launched into wild tales about being engaged in frenzied aerial dogfights with enemy planes. The truth was that Faulkner had never received cockpit training or had ever flown a plane.

***

Even as a youngster, Faulkner loved the idea of flying. As an eleven-year-old playing in his back yard, he put together a model plane out of several pieces of junk. Once finished, it was ready for a test flight. With the help of two friends, a disabled coachman and a one-armed yard man, the three heaved the plane into the sky.

The craft, of course, promptly crashed and broke into pieces.

Faulkner cried like a little baby.

***

Bill loved to drink whiskey and often played being drunk, remembered one long-time friend. That way he could act out his frustrations, evade responsibility for his actions or dramatize the despair of being the returning veteran and lovesick poet. Oftentimes, family members indulged Faulkner and these antics.

Once when he was on a drunk, his mother Maud diluted his whiskey with iced tea until there was little or no alcohol content. That afternoon, while her son was still drunk, she asked if it wasn’t time for him to go to work.

“I can’t,” said Bill. “I’m drunk.”

“If you are, you’re drunk on iced tea. That’s all you’ve had for the last twelve hours.”

“Then I believe I’ll get up and go to work,” he replied.

***

From childhood, Faulkner was always concerned about his appearance. At an early age, his mother made him wear a back brace to further straighten his already perfect posture.

In one of his letters home he wrote:

“I might be ragged and full of fleas, but my pants, thank God, don’t bag at the knees.”

***

In the fall of 1921, Faulkner told a friend he was going to New York and “be famous overnight.”

Two weeks later, he wrote the same friend: “Oh, yes. I have already stopped traffic in the streets; fame, in fact, has alighted early upon my furrowed brow. A traffic cop gave me a talking-to because I ignored a stop sign that caused a trolley car to almost run over his feet while another brushed the skirts of his coat.”

***

Bill was an adept golfer and was often seen on the course near his home helping the groundskeeper, Thomas Clark, work on improving the course.

Clark appreciated the assistance, but suspected Bill wanted to retrieve lost golf balls in the course’s three water hazards to “replenish his own slender stock.”

“Nothing thrilled Bill more than finding a golf ball some errant golfer had lost.”

His golf course experiences probably provided material for the golfing scenes in the novel The Sound and the Fury, a work many consider his greatest.

***

In the late summer of 1923, Faulkner took a job as campus postmaster at the University of Mississippi. Although he signed on to work, he spent most of his time writing poems for his book, The Marble Faun.

In September of 1924, Postal Inspector Mark Webster had three pages of complaints against him. These included: failure to deliver mail, mishandling stamp money, failure to attend promptly to customers at P.O. window and an overall lackadaisical attitude. Only days later, he was fired.

Years later, after The Marble Faun was printed, Faulkner sent a signed copy to Webster, noting in the inscription:

“It is to you that I owe extrication from a very unpleasant situation.”

Bill was more than ready to leave the post office job.

***

In 1923, Faulkner went to New Orleans to live in the French Quarter and hobnob with the South’s so-called literary elite. When he first arrived, he became close friends with author Sherwood Anderson.

One night, Faulkner arrived at Anderson’s home wearing a heavy, bulky overcoat with the sides bulging out all around. Instantly, Anderson wondered what the problem was.

“I want to leave some things with you,” Faulkner said.

“What do you want to leave?”

Faulkner pulled back the heavy overcoat to reveal six one-gallon jugs of moonshine.

“You can leave them if you’ll give me one,” Anderson said.

Thanks for listening…  and keep smiling!

Audrey McCarver. August 19, 2022

The Joys of a Front Porch

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I am retired now; that is, I am retired from working with the public. 

However, I am not retired from life and I am relishing  the freedom to harken to a whim and go sit out on the front porch with a cup of coffee or a glass of cold iced tea, a good book in hand, and just sit and soak up the sights and sounds of my surroundings.

From my earliest memories of growing up on Lookout Mountain in North Alabama, the front porch played an important role in everyday life.

It was the first place we went to in the morning to relax, a place to get out of the sun for a while when working in the garden and shelter from a sudden downpour.

At the end of the day after supper, when the dishes were washed and the food safely put away, it was our reward for a long day of hard work and play.

 Those hours spent on the front porch are never about wasting time, it was about observing life.

When I was a barefoot child in the mid-fifties, I sometimes stepped on a sharp piece of rotted wood while playing with my sisters. The front porch was the place my Daddy would always take me to remove the splinter from my heel.

Then he would attack the splinter in my swollen heel with an alcohol-sterilized pocket knife while I wailed in pain.     

“Sing!” he would say. “The more it hurts, the louder you should sing!” 

Even to this day, I can still hear myself singing “Way down upon the Suwanee River, Far, far away…” at the top of my range.

The porch was used as a place to eat when the indoors was full of company, or stifling heat made the outdoors a comforting place to rest in the cool of the evening.

For me, the front porch is far and away the place to get lost in a canyon with Zane Grey; the light is the best there and the wide open vista represents a clean slate for the imagination to conjure up the scenes he is describing.

Further, the front porch is the primary vantage point from which a person could protect his or her property from mischief.

And what a perfect spot to sit with a date in the swing at night, near enough to the folks inside to satisfy convention, but also not easily seen (unless your little brother went out the back door and ran around the house to spy on you.)

A porch is a common individual’s psychological clinic. It’s a place to get away to for a few little while, if only to think, or reason, or plan…or reboot.

Front porches are found all over the world, in many shapes and sizes, plain or grand, tiny or tremendous. The word “porch” come from the Old French word “porche” and the Latin porticos “colonnade”, and is known by many names: Arizona Room, screened porch, sleeping porch, rain porch, loggia, veranda, lanai, sun porch and stoop.

All these designations refer to a covered shelter projecting in front of the entrance to a building. A Southern porch is often at least as broad as it is deep.

My porch is not a very deep one, but it can comfortably hold four chairs, a bench and a glider (all of which I have painted several times). When I go outside, I often “set up shop,” armed with a book, a phone, an iPad, a Nintendo DS loaded with the game Bookworm.

While enjoying my “porch time,” I am always alert to what is going on around me, especially if it involves wasps or hornets. I keep several hummingbird feeders ready for the season and I delight in watching them consume the free food.

If I have flowers blooming, the birds will just as likely drink from them. Hummers must feed about every ten minutes, so their waking hours are spent flying and eating.

The king of the front yard is the mockingbird. Atticus Finch had it right when he told Scout that it was a sin to kill a mockingbird. They don’t harm, but they provide exquisitely lovely and intricate song patterns that consist of whatever they hear: other birds, other animals, hammers striking, someone whistling for a dog.

The male sits high in a tree and tells the news to all, changing directions so that his warnings and admonitions can be projected in every direction. 

Blue birds are often seen in pairs and their undulating flight calls attention to their presence.

The cardinal males are bright red, showy birds, while the female is a muted color. Redbirds often gather in large groups and eat seed that falls from trees or are scattered by the wind.

Then there are those birds who are only passing through briefly, the Indigo Bunting, the Gold Finch, the Cedar Waxwing, the Baltimore Oriole. Count yourself lucky if you get to witness a brilliant flash of blue or gold as dozens of these birds lift up into the sky, or if you see a small tree completely covered in Waxwings. 

There are so many woodpeckers and I love them all. The Pileated is seen more in deeper woods than out in the open, but what a sight when he swoops down and around, looking like some long-extinct ancestor.  If you sit with a pair of binoculars and a bird book, you might get especially lucky.

Butterflies abound and all have a beauty of their own. Rarely you might see a hand-sized moth and more commonly the Luna moth. You will see the spiders, mosquitoes, dragonflies, but every thing living has a story and you can learn a lot just by observing each and every one.

When baby birds are being taught to fly, it is a common sight to see the parents attack a cat or dog or squirrel that wanders into the vicinity. Rabbits foraging for food are not unusual and a fox or deer shows up occasionally.

If I get up and walk a little ways, I can see the elephant ears–their broad leaves flapping in the gentle breeze–standing staid and flamboyant in the flower bed.

For me, the best time to be on the porch is during a rain. It soothes the senses and causes a deep feeling of well-being. However, when the lightning flashes and the thunder claps boom, its best get up and go inside.

Did you know lightning can jump ten miles on a clear day?

Thanks for listening….and keep smiling.

Audrey McCarver, 9-16-22

Baking Bread to Relieve Stress

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Believe it or not, baking bread can help relieve stress.

Since the day I started cooking as a teenager, I have loved working with yeast. Perhaps you do, too. It’s not difficult, but the yeast needs to be in date or it will result in a useless effort.

In this article, I am going to provide an easy recipe for bread that is not only delicious but will calm and soothe your nerves during the baking process.

My Daddy was a great story teller, probably because most of his stories were totally true. What follows is one of his favorite anecdotes, and one of mine, too. The episode he relates occurred over ninety years ago.

While stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, Daddy worked in the base bakery part of the time, baking bread and pastries. One day a fellow baker was assembling a recipe for several loaves of bread when he realized he had put in much too much yeast.

Greatly wishing to avoid the trouble he knew would come to him when the boss discovered his mistake, the man rushed outside with the yeast, infused it with a large batch of dough, then threw the huge doughy glob into a big pile of sawdust behind the bakery building.

Hours later, the head baker came storming into the bakery and demanded to be told where that little mountain outside in the sawdust pile came from.

Both my father and the errant baker denied any knowledge of the “little mountain in the sawdust pile” and the head baker never learned the truth.

I suppose bread-baking history could be breath-taking or boring, depending on who’s talking or who’s listening. For the purposes in this article, however, a few remarks will suffice to satisfy our need for knowledge on the subject.

How did those intrepid pioneers of yesteryear manage to produce this life-sustaining loaf? Starting around 1850, they began using a baking kettle, a deep cast iron pan with three legs and a rimmed, close-fitting lid.

Then, in 1856, the bread baking process rose to a new height with the development of a soda-like ingredient made from lye and wood ashes, or baker’s ammonia. Pearlash consisted mainly of potassium carbonate, which produces carbon dioxide quickly and reliably. However, being difficult to make, it was also caustic and smelly. If yeast was being used and it was good, then “a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.” If the yeast was finicky, then the diner would be forced to devour flat, dense dough.

Then something wonderful happened—baking powder came to be in existence and started to appear in everyone’s cabinet. It simplified a heretofore tedious, onerous undertaking and opened the baking process up to new and easy possibilities. 

Happily, for the modern cook, we don’t have to know the complete history of baking to produce a delightful dish. Further we can enjoy working with yeast because we know there is a backup plan in case our first efforts fails.

FOR THIS BREAD YOU WILL NEED:

>.  2 cups warm water (110 degrees)

>.  1/2 cup white sugar

>.  1 1/2 tablespoons active dry yeast

>.  1 1/2 teaspoons salt

>.  1/4 cup vegetable oil

>.  5 to 6 cups flour ( either bread flour or all purpose)

INSTRUCTIONS:

First, I find it essential to put on an apron and some good music. Neil Diamond is encouraging and the right tempo, however, you might want to avoid “Morningside” because it is very sad.

1. Using a large bowl, dissolve 1 TBSP of the sugar in warm water and then stir in yeast. I use my heavy duty Kitchen Aid mixer with the dough hook. The dough hook is your new best friend and will save you a lot of time and hard work. Allow this to  proof until the yeast looks like a creamy foam, about 5 minutes.

2. Mix remaining sugar, salt and oil into the yeast. Mix in flour one cup at a time. I have my dough hook running on low speed as I add the flour. Dough will be tacky and clean the sides of the bowl, except a small part at the bottom. If you use too much flour the bread will be dry, so have a little extra warm water in case you need to thin the dough.

3. Knead the dough for 7 minutes. This is what the dough hook does, this is its reason for existing. Let it work for you. Place the dough into a well-oiled plastic or glass bowl, and turn dough to coat. Cover with  damp paper towels or cloth, nothing heavy or the bread won’t rise.

Allow it to rise until doubled in size, about 1 hour.

4.  Punch down dough. Herein lies the stress relief I promised. Knead for 1 minute and divide in half. Shape into two loaves and place in two greased loaf pans. Allow to rise another 30 minutes, or until the dough is one inch above the pans.

5.  Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes.

Cool, brush with butter or slice and add softened butter and honey. 

Thanks for listening……..Keep smiling!

Audrey McCarver. 8-15-2022

Southern Mac and Cheese

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Don’t most people like macaroni and cheese?  Seems so to me. Somewhere long ago some forward thinking cook decided to combine two of my favorite ingredients–macaroni and cheese–to make a delicious and simple main dish or side dish.

By itself, macaroni is just about tasteless, but combine it with other ingredients and it can become a magical, flavorful, mouth-watering experience.

I prepare Mac and cheese the usual way with the good results. However, I also make a Mac and Cheese casserole that will serve as the center of a meal; just add desired extras. 

This dish can be started, finished and ready to eat in an hour.

This dish does not depend on precise measurements and amounts, so play with it and develop your new favorite go-to Mac and Cheese recipe.

INGREDIENTS

Macaroni

Hamburger (at least a pound)

Butter

Milk

Cheddar Cheese Soup or Cream of Mushroom Soup

Ritz or Town House Crackers

Salt and Pepper to taste

INSTRUCTIONS

Brown the hamburger in a skillet and break into small pieces. Add onion to meat when it is nearly done. Drain grease and set meat aside.

Boil the macaroni by the package instructions. When ready, drain in a colander.

In a large bowl, mix hamburger and onion, macaroni, soup and milk enough to make a good mixture. The macaroni will absorb much of the liquid, so add a little extra. I add melted butter just because I can.

Have a greased casserole dish prepared, add the mixture then top with shredded cheddar cheese. 

Put a few of the crackers at a time in a plastic baggie but don’t seal. Use either a rolling pin or your fist to pound the crackers to small bits. Spread this over your cheese. Repeat this step until the dish is completely covered. 

Melt more butter, a half stick or more. Drizzle crumbs with the butter.

Cook in a 350 degree oven until lightly brown, usually 30 minutes.

The final step is to ring the bell and call out: “Dinner’s Ready. Come and get it!’

Thanks for listening… and keep smiling.

Audrey McCarver August 12, 2022

 

 

Old-Fashioned Butter Rolls

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Many years ago my mother made a book of recipes to be handed down to her children and grandchildren.

The book was a treasure trove of recipes from generations past, many concocted in order to utilize the ingredients on hand and produce tasty dishes.

During hard times, such as the Great Depression, my mother and her mother used these to produce fortifying, tasty desserts, seemingly from nothing.

One of those desserts was the butter roll.

“Back during Mama and Grandma’s time, they used what they had to make a meal,” my mother recalled. “We always had good meals, sometime seemingly out of nothing, but we always had a dessert. I have never seen this butter roll anywhere except at my home. I have made it many times for my family.”

Here is that recipe:

Pastry:

Put 2 cups plain flour into a bowl, sprinkle with salt and work in 2/3 cup shortening until it resembles meal. Stir in just enough ice water to make a stiff dough. Put on floured board (here I find a clean countertop better for rolling this), and use a floured rolling pin.

Roll, turn over on more floured space until it is very thin. Use small saucer and cut rounds around the saucer. Spread each round almost to the edge with softened butter, sprinkle generously with sugar, roll up tightly and place in a buttered baking dish.

Bake at 400 degrees until the rounds or rolls are browning slightly.

DIP:

Heat 1 1/2 cups milk with enough sugar to be sweet, add about a teaspoon vanilla. Have this very hot, but not boiling. Pour carefully over the rolls, return to oven for 10 or 15 minutes.

Better served warm.

P.S. This tip is mine: for a delicious variation on this recipe, combine dark brown sugar, cinnamon and finely chopped pecans. Sprinkle this over the buttered surface before you roll them up. 

Thanks for listening…. keep smiling!

Audrey McCarver August 10, 2022

Alabama’s Famous Noccalula Falls

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For the past seventy-five years, residents of Etowah County, Alabama have used Noccalula Falls, a 250-acre campground high on Lookout Mountain, as their primary gathering place for Sunday picnics, family reunions, office parties and social club events. 

When I was young, my family often went to “the Falls” to admire its grandeur and to hike both above and below the falling water. The unfenced grounds were open to both the fearless and the fearful. We were kids. We knew little fear.  

It was an exciting adventure, to go down the steel staircase, counting each step until your lead foot touched the ground. Then it was a cautious walk-run race to see who would be first to get to the cave behind the waterfall.  

Usually there would be people clambering around the rocks or sitting and feeling the spray of the water, some enjoying a picnic meal in the shadowed, dank recess of the cave. On hot, sweltering days the misty, cool interior provided respite from the baking heat above.  

There was easy access to the time-worn trails through the floor of the canyon, many people jumping off the huge rock into the soothing coolness of the natural pool at the bottom of the waterfall. 

If the visitor wanted a more rugged experience, there was a trail down the other side. This trek was more demanding physically and vigilance was required for the rocky, often perilous climb down. And believe me, the climb up was no picnic either. 

In hot, dry times, Black Creek becomes little more than a trickle, but in a rainy season, it cannot be contained within its banks and floods much of the area on either side, rising to the level of the footbridge and cascading wildly over the rocks, creating a noisy, frothy, glorious torrent. 

For several years my husband, my sons and I lived within a quarter mile of the Falls and directly across the road from Black Creek. There was a large area near the falls that had never had a home built on it, so when someone built a home there, locals expected the worst.  

Sure enough, when the rainy seasons came, the creek overflowed its banks and reached the road and the houses. Those stranded were rescued in a boat and brought to drier, higher land. 

The park has fifteen miles of hiking and biking trails, of different degrees of facility or difficulty. Trails wind past caves, an indigenous fort, pioneer homestead, an abandoned dam, and civil war carvings.  

Further, there is petting zoo. Sadly, last year the barn caught fire and burned and many animals did not survive. The barnyard animals were all saved. Plans are underway to construct a new barn and bring in more animals. 

Created in 1946 and operated by the City of Gadsden Parks and Recreation, Noccalula Falls Park is on land owned mostly by former Gadsden Mayor R.A. Mitchell.  

In 1909, aware that the land was going to be subdivided for houses, Mitchell bought 169 acres of land, intending it for a park. 

In 1940, his daughter inherited the land and offered it to the city for $50,000. Eventually the city bought the property in 1946 for $70,000 and more acreage was added in 1959. 

In the second half of the 19th century, the Gadsden Land and Improvement Company ran a dance hall and tavern in a cave behind the waterfall. In an attempt to increase the flat area inside by using dynamite, they created a cave-in. 

Underneath the falls was a wooden dancing platform which was used during, and maybe, before the Civil War through the early 1900’s. The dance floor was so near the waterfall, that dancers were enveloped in its mist. 

There is evidence that Col. Joseph “Fighting Joe” Wheeler and his men were there during the Civil War. 

The reader who is unfamiliar with the area might ask how the name is pronounced. “Knock-a-lew-la” with emphasis on the third syllable is correct. 

At the top of the Falls there is a nine-foot bronze statue of a young Cherokee woman, perched eternally ready to plunge into the water below.  

In the time-honored story, the Princess Noccalula was ordered by her father, the chief, to marry a man she did not love, in order to solidify the two tribes.  

Rather than obey, the maiden took her own life by jumping into the abyss below.  

In 1969, probably every Gadsden resident of accountable age was aware of the drive to raise money for sculptor Suzanne Silvercruys to create a statue commemorating Noccalula’s historic jump.  

School children collected pennies. Volunteers collected donations on city sidewalks and social clubs, including The Gadsden Woman’s Club, held charitable functions to raise money. 

For visitors, the park features a host of amenities. These include cabin rentals, campsites and hookups. Several pavilions and meeting rooms are available for rent. On the paid admission side, the visitor will find a beautifully landscaped oasis, including a Botanical Garden, Animal Habitat, and historical buildings built in the late 1700’s and 1800’s. 

When the train is operating, it goes on a mile-long journey through history. The campgrounds have two full bath houses with restrooms, a laundry room, library media room, a pool, and a meeting room. 

Some of the principal celebrations held throughout the year are: Christmas at the Falls, Art on the Rocks, Smoke on the Falls, and the Barbarian Challenge. 

For those coming on 1-59, take exit 188. For times and prices, check the website. 

Thanks for listening… keep smiling! 

Audrey McCarver, August 9, 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

 

 

How I Learned to Read

by

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