Family - grace grits and gardening

Shall we gather at the river?

March 30, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

Woodrow Johnson - Johnson Family, Little River

Uncle Woody
Woodrow Johnson

Once upon a time not so very long ago, there was a mystical headless horseman who silently rode along the banks of Little River at dusk. Sitting atop an enormous horse, he wore a flowing cape that trailed behind him. He could most certainly be seen when there was a fog or mist rolling in. And if that wasn’t eerie enough, a gigantic black snake slithered around within the overgrown brush on those banks as well.

A huge snake, bigger than the one at the Memphis Zoo, more like the ones in National Geographic that swallowed whole villages. We were very mindful playing around Little River, because that snake snacked on little girls just for fun. Thank goodness Uncle Woody kept a vigilant eye on these dangers. He was a Navy man, trained for menacing assignments around U.S. waterways. And he always reminded us of these creatures that lived only a few cartwheels from the back door, especially at bedtime. We often spent the night with our cousin Lesa.

As masterful as Uncle Woody was at weaving together a hypnotic tale, Aunt Lavern was just as skillful whipping up a luscious banana pudding or chicken pot pie in the kitchen. Both could make your heart skip a beat. Who wouldn’t want to fritter away time there? Snake or no snake.

Talya, Lesa, Staci
Cousins:)

We played on the Little River ditch banks, building forts and making trails. We stayed out there all day until supper time, coming home with sunburns and cockleburs. On Sunday afternoons, we often hid down inside the weeds around the water, watching a group being baptized in the muddy water. One by one these sinners waded into the mucky water. No way would I go in there! Plus, did these folks not know about the SNAKE? This was Little River for heaven’s sake, not the River Jordan! This was not the way we did it at Brinkley Chapel just down the road.

We sat and watched, silently mesmerized. These people seemed to speak a completely different language. Were they speaking in tongues? We read about that in Sunday School, but we didn’t partake at our church. Maybe we should – it would certainly shake things up a bit. In fact, maybe these people were snake handlers… Hmmmm. That would explain a lot. Sometimes we accidentally giggled and rustled the underbrush. I’m sure they spied us in the tall grass, and said a prayer for the little heathen barefoot girls with cherry Kool-aid mustaches. Aunt Lavern would eventually discover us over by the bridge and shoo us into some more appropriate activity, leaving these people to their sin washing in peace.

Aunt Lavern

The Johnson family has always gathered at Little River for reunions. Cousins and babies and aunts and uncles make their way back to that little spot between Athelstan and Carroll’s Corner to visit and eat and laugh and hug and sing and talkandtalkandtalkandtalk. The Johnsons are a talking, eating, hugging, singing bunch of people. They drive in from Missouri and Texas and Louisiana and just down the road. Uncle Woody died years ago and sadly, Aunt Lavern passed away recently. Will this tradition change? I know she would still want everyone to gather at the river. At her house. Just watch for the headless horseman. And the black snake.

Aunt Lavern’s Chicken Pot Pie
1 can cream of potato soup
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can of veg-all (mixed veggies) drained – about 16 oz
1/4 c milk
Thyme, salt, pepper to taste (or whatever seasoning you like)
3 cooked and chopped chicken breasts (or leftover turkey)
One package Pillsbury pie crust (2 crusts to a pkg folded) or homemade pie crusts

Mix all ingredients and pour into one crust. Fold other crust on top. Vent top with a few knife cuts or use a pie bird. Bake at 350 degrees for approx 1 hour 15 min until brown and bubbly.

Note: I always make this with leftover turkey after Thanksgiving. The turkey is well seasoned already which makes the pot pie flavorful. Also, I usually have leftover roasted veggies of some sort to use instead of Veg-All. Carrots, parsnips, potatoes, anything will work well. I prefer to buy the creamy potato/leek soup at Whole Foods, but any “cream of” soup…. celery, mushroom, etc, will work. And to save time you can use one of those roasted chickens from the grocery store (if it isn’t Thanksgiving). This freezes well. I usually make 2 and freeze one. Also, you can leave out the meat and add additional veggies for a vegetarian pot pie.

talya

Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

Musical Pairings:

Alison Krause, “Down to the River to Pray”

“The preacher says all my sins is warshed away, including that Piggly Wiggly I knocked over in Yazoo.” Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

Land spreading out so far and wide….

February 27, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

Daddy was a John Deere man. Never did he fritter away money on blue or red equipment – no Case or International Harvesters and certainly no Kobotas. Our lawn mower – which the Tate girls commandeered every weekend – was a John Deere. We even had John Deere bicycles. Fancy schmancy. We were green and yellow John Deere people all the way. Other brands and colors were only much slower imitations.

Tate Farm

My sister and I grew up on that equipment, spending entire days climbing on the gargantuan combines and dirty tractors out at the shop on the home place. If a piece of farm equipment sat idle, maybe because the fields were too muddy to plow or it was just the wrong season, we would claim that cotton picker or combine as our own for the entire afternoon. It became our submarine. Always a submarine – never an airplane or boat or tractor. We climbed all over the surface, up into the rafters of the shop, swinging from one side to the top. Amazingly, we never broke any bones or farm implements. But, if we could have figured out how to actually start our submarine, we would have driven it over to Little River.

Daddy hired several families from south Texas each summer to chop cotton. One summer, Dallas equipped us with hoes, and we chopped with them. We were hoe’rs. I know they must have been absolutely thrilled to have us in their midst. They were serious about their work, and quick. Speaking no English – at least not to us – they were covered head to toe in long sleeve work shirts, boots, jeans and wide brimmed straw hats. It was freakin hot, and we thought that was idiotic. Laughing and singing to our portable radio, we wore our bikini tops and Daisy Dukes. We didn’t even wear hats – we wanted those natural highlights you only get from the sun.

We quickly identified the low spot with standing water at mid-field as our natural turning around spot. It certainly wasn’t our fault there was a huge area in the field with standing water – that was totally an act of God. So my sister and I chopped to the water, turned around and chopped back to the highway. The crazy farm hands went around the water and then continued chopping all the way to the ditch. We could barely see that ditch on the horizon! Daddy was not too thrilled with our progress – evidently we were slow hoe’rs. He should have paid us per row instead of per hour, but a deal was a deal. I’m pretty sure we never got that deal again.

Mississippi County Cotton

The cotton that survived was harvested in the fall. This was one of our absolute favorite times because we loved to tromp cotton. We parked our submarines and spent every moment in the cotton trailers. There was nothing like seeing a full John Deere picker opening along side a trailer and dumping a giant load of freshly picked warm cotton. Sometimes we stood underneath the basket while the cotton was emptied on us like popcorn, then we climbed into the basket high up in the air to make sure there was no cotton clinging inside. Once it was dumped, our ‘job’ was to tromp it. We stomped it down, packing the corners of the trailer so that it would hold more. As soon as the picker returned to the field, we began digging tunnels in the cotton – long, deep, hot tunnels – totally un-tromping it. At dark, we went home exhausted, with cotton lint covering our clothes and burs in our hair. It was the mark of a great day.

I love the smell of freshly picked cotton. It has a very distinct smell that cannot be duplicated. If you’ve picked it, tromped it, turned head over heels in it, or napped in it, then you know. And you’ll always remember. It’s a sweet, clean, damp smell. It smells like cotton.

talya

Musical Pairings:

Creedance Clearwater Revival, “Cotton Fields”
Buddy Jewell, “Sweet Southern Comfort”

Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!

February 7, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

I wanted to be a cheerleader in the 7th grade. I was skinny and dorky and nervous. BUT, my super cool cousin, Cindy, was the captain. She was a 9th grader. So, maybe I had a chance – nepotism and all. She graciously took me under her wing, and attempted to teach me a cheer for tryouts. We could do any cheer we wanted which was pretty neat. Cindy had a whole repertoire from which to select. I was a cheerleader moron – a blank slate.

Cindy selected a cheer and helped me master it, paying special attention to my floppy arms and overall gawkiness. We worked on it in the front yard during the summer before tryouts. I remember it very well.

Tic-Toc, It’s Time to Rock
Let’s Have a Vic-to-ry!
Tic-Toc, The Game is Locked,
And the Jackets, (clap-clap) Have the Key.

SERIOUSLY?

Clearly, she did not want me on the squad. Not the coolest cheer in the ole cheer book. Of course this was the 70s.

Marcia

My sister and I loved to spend the night with Mam-maw Ruby and Papa Homer when Cindy was there. Cindy was our leader. Our inspiration. She wore Cover Girl makeup – lots of it – and removed it with Noxema. We weren’t allowed. She looked like those models on Teen Magazine. She even did some modeling in Memphis. How could we EVER compete with this? For a period of time, she even spelled her name Cindi – with an ‘i’. She was that kind of girl. She could just change her own name, and everyone went right along with it. She knew just how to apply that tanning lotion – QT. I tried to do it one time but my hands turned completely rusted and my legs looked corroded. She was bronze. I couldn’t leave the house for a week. My dad thought she freaking hung the moon. So did we.

Tryouts made me very nervous. I was sure I wouldn’t make the squad – I wore gold wire rim glasses! How can you cheer in glasses? I was Jan Brady. Cindy, of course, was Marcia. Most definitely. She had straight, long, shiny, brown hair that swung across her back as she walked around the Keiser playground. Just like Marcia. AND, her boyfriend was James Parks – ohsweetjesus. If he even looked in my direction I stuttered. He too was in the 9th grade. AND, he was the big brother of my best friend. So, I got to look at him a lot. Marcia had Davy Jones; Cindy had James Parks, and I had glasses. Like Jan.

Jan

Cindy worked and worked with me on the splits – it was part of the tryout test. There was no way I could do the splits. Not even close. How could I possibly be a cheerleader and not do the splits? My legs didn’t work that way. She gave me homework – stretching exercises which I did religiously, on my own time. Staci, my little sister who also was uncool – tried to help. She stood over me and pushed my shoulders down, trying to force me into the splits. Surprisingly, to my knowledge, I didn’t rupture anything. I rubbed vaseline into my knees, trying to limber them up (my own idea). No luck. Cindy was as nimble as Raggedy Ann. She could actually sit on the floor Indian style and put her feet around her head! She invented the flowering lotus pose before yoga was invented. We were first cousins! Why couldn’t I do that?

When the time came for tryouts, I took my glasses off and handed them to Cindy. a) I didn’t want to be a four-eyes; and b) I didn’t want to be able to see anyone in the stands, especially Mrs. Ashley who selected the team. The team needed a blind cheerleader – I was sure of it. I couldn’t see a thing without my glasses. I squinted the entire time. Attractive.

Amazingly, I did make the squad. Maybe everyone made it? I don’t remember, and I didn’t know because I couldn’t see. I was too cool now for glasses. Thanks to Cindy, I’m certain.

James Parks

Later, in 1977, the year I turned Sweet 16, I actually had my first date – with James Parks. Still the most handsome boy in Keiser, somehow Becky and I finagled a double date with James and his best friend, Lance. They took us to the Osceola drive-in theatre, across from the graveyard. The movie was Walking Tall, but I couldn’t concentrate on it. I was too aware of James sitting so close to me in that dark back seat of Lance’s dusty car. I had no idea how I had gotten so lucky to be on my first date with James Parks! I was pretty sure being a cheerleader helped. James played football. Later, we learned Becky’s dad tradedhis best hunting dog to Lance to entice him into this date. Nice. I still have no idea what my daddy promised to James, but I would have given my eye teeth and sold my soul to truly get his attention. Of course, I was just his little sister’s annoying friend and he never gave me a second thought. I don’t even think he knew I was there. I’m sure he was still thinking about Cindy.

I actually saw James Parks a few weeks ago on his way to a funeral, and he asked me about Cindy. I KNEW he was still thinking about her.

jan

Musical Pairings:

Ella Fitzgerald, “Blue Moon”

Johnny Rodriguez, “Ridin’ My Thumb to Mexico”