grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

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Tate Farm (hwy 140) surrounded by rice
I recently spent two days home in Mississippi County driving around the farm, sleeping in my bed, visiting with my Aunts. I love to go home to feel the delta soil beneath my feet, smell the air, see the cotton growing. Arkansas is my place to recharge. There are no city noises to spoil the peace and quiet. It’s dark at night. There are stars. Every farmer waves at each driver on the road, and everyone says to me, “You look just like your momma” or “Thomas was a great farmer”. 
Home Place

Saturday morning I drove to the home place on the gravel road between Crews Lateral and the Coleman Farm. Nana and Papa Creecy started farming there in 1936 with a $75 loan from Keiser Supply Company. Momma grew up in the house and Uncle Rex lived there for a time. It’s where we celebrated Christmas Eve every year until they moved to Keiser in 1973.  It’s still the home place.

As kids we spent hot summer days playing on combines and pickers in the barn and planting watermelon seeds behind the storm shelter. Watermelon seeds that never sprouted. The huge concrete storm shelter in the center of the back yard was the catalyst for backyard games serving as our jungle gym, home base, picnic table. After a morning of playing in the dirt we ate lunch sitting on top of the shelter, sandwiches and melon and homemade vanilla ice cream, probably because Nana could easily hose us off there. Two minutes after Nana said – don’t drop a spoon down that storm shelter! – our cousin Lesa dropped her sterling silver spoon down into the hole on top… That spoon would be worth $200 today. The shelter was dark and abandoned and filled with trash and snakes, so no one dared go inside to hide from a tornado or to get the spoon, no matter its worth. The storm shelter is gone now. Most everything is gone. But the memories are still there.
I often wonder if anyone found that spoon.
A farm worker now lives in the house. His young wife was outside, so I immediately finagled an invitation inside. She was accommodating and I was THRILLED. Although I’ve driven by many times over the years, it was my first time back inside in 39 years. A place changes in 39 years. A girl changes in 39 years. 
The den (now)
Walking into the front room, I couldn’t breathe. The walls were still covered with knotty pine paneling once displaying Papa’s mounted deer heads and a wild boar shot in mid-charge. I immediately teared up.  I’m sure the young lady who now lives in the house thought I was a complete basket case. I still saw Papa Creecy sitting in his worn leather recliner surrounded by stacks of papers and farm magazines, his big desk in the corner and the television on the opposite wall where we always watched the Miss America pageants with Nana. We always cheered for Miss Arkansas but fell asleep before the pageant was over. Papa carried us to bed, my long legs dragging the floor. He smelled of Brut.
Papa Creecy (Reven Creecy)
I explained to the lady how the original bathroom ran along the back where her closet is now and how the current bathroom was once Uncle Rex’s bedroom. She had no idea who I was talking about, but I didn’t care. If she was going to live in this house, she needed to know its history. She needed to understand the importance of this place.
I stood inside our bedroom there, once my mother’s. Staci and I always played in the closet, hidden deep in the back, building forts. We had big imaginations… Our bedroom backed up to the dining room so we woke early on Sunday mornings to Nana’s kitchen sounds, the rattle of pots and pans and the smell of bacon frying. 
The little kitchen looked the same except her big stove was gone. And Nana was gone, but not really. As I looked out the kitchen window to the field beyond, I remembered she had a little poem on the wall beside the sill that I memorized as a child reading it over and over each time I visited. I don’t know who wrote it or what happened to it, but I remember it.
The world is wide and wonderful
Wherever you may roam.
But thoughts return to special things
Like friends and love and home.
A girl really doesn’t change in 39 years.
talya
Musical Pairings:
What a Wonderful World, Louis Armstrong
The House that Built Me, Miranda Lambert

A Place to Remember

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I don’t think you see a town until you spend time walking around. Every place has hidden treasures to uncover, even those nearly invisible communities tucked among the corn fields hours away from the closest Dillard’s. You may need to squint to clearly see.
Presbyterian Church, Piggott, Ar

Flying down Main Street in a cool car driving somewhere better, the old church cornerstone is a blur, the cemetery overgrown, the dilapidated house with gingerbread trim faded. The town appears abandoned, a ghostly whistle-stop off the interstate. Small-town stereotypes come to mind leaving an empty feeling, a who-on-earth-lives-here feeling. Stopping at the single red light seems ridiculous with not a soul in sight. You have some place to be. Some place exciting. Some other place. But walking the neighborhood, studying the building design and reading the historical markers bring back life. A life. A history. Every place is someone’s home, someone’s place to remember. It crosses someone’s mind.

Faded mural on side of building

Last night I walked for hours taking pictures of this little town that at first glance appeared forlorn, forgotten, faded. A passerby waved and an old man said hello from his porch swing. A stone cottage surrounded by a sizable garden with rows and rows of vegetables and apple trees caught my eye. It was framed by a rock wall, crooked yet perfect. I coveted it. I considered knocking on the door to ask permission to walk beyond the stone wall. Tomatoes already grew heavy on the vine. Could I have garden tour and learn the secret to this abundance? Would the gardeners who live within those walls consider me crazy? Do I care? It was late so I thought better of it.

Piggott reminds me of Keiser where I attended grade school, trick-or-treated on Halloween and hung out with my friends on weekends. I’m sure travelers blow through thinking it to be a sad, depressing place. They didn’t know Vic and Bobby Don who always hung out at the gas station guarding the entrance into town, or Howard Ray who road his bicycle affectionately named Trigger, or the Shake Shack with slap-yo-momma Pizza Burgers. But we do. We were part of it. We remember cotton trailers lined up at the gin, Edwina’s Beauty Shop always smelling of perms, and Spin-the-Bottle in Nana’s dimly lit attic. We remember cheering on the Keiser Yellow Jackets. We remember.

talya
“Living in a small town…is like living in a large family of rather uncongenial relations. Sometimes it’s fun, and sometimes it’s perfectly awful, but it’s always good for you. People in large towns are like only-children.”  Joyce Dennys, Henrietta Sees It Through

Adventures with Aunt Virgie

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Aunt Virgie lived at the end of Johnson Road at Carrolls Corner just past Athelstan. The house was tiny, the ceilings slung low, the outside was covered in old asbestos siding—just like our recently purchased Fayetteville house. In fact, our new house reminds me of Aunt Virgie’s house, which is probably one of the reasons I was drawn to it.

Sometimes I think I channel Aunt Virgie…

Fayetteville Cottage
As kids we often slept at her house which was always a great adventure, a bit like camping. Aunt Virgie had no indoor plumbing… even in the 1970s. We thought her back yard outhouse near the chicken coop was THE coolest thing ever.

Using the bathroom outside in the dark was THE coolest thing ever.

I suggested to my husband that we might build an outhouse for our Fayetteville cottage. Since there is only one teeny bathroom (the size of our Dallas shower), an outhouse would be a brilliant time management tool! Especially since we are always working in the yard (no more tracking dirt into the house when we are digging and planting). And especially since I always have to pee.

It would be adorable tucked away in the wisteria beside our bamboo forest, maybe with one of those little half moon cut outs on the door.  Just a one-holer and only used for number one, of course.

I’ll have to check with our friend and real estate agent Paula to see if this would hurt the re-sale value. But, this is the Ozarks… I think it would boost value… a 2 bedroom/1 bath + 1 holer….? Charming. And very eco-friendly. 

Since Aunt Virgie had no running water, she had a pump outside the kitchen door. We took turns pumping buckets of water for her, avoiding the fat rooster that terrorized us and her chickens. That water was always cold and clear—the best tasting water—and we drank it out of a long-handled dipper. After she died, I wondered about that dipper. I hope someone in the family kept it.
In that tiny kitchen with the 50s style formica dinette and authentic tin pie safe, she baked the most fabulous pie crust for us as a special treat. She rolled out her dough, cut it into strips and baked it. We ate those strips of flaky crust straight out of the oven with nothing on it. If I could do one thing over again, I would watch and learn how she made that pie crust. I still haven’t perfected mine, but I’m working on it. 
talya
The original 12 Johnsons
1960’s Johnson reunion.
 Uncle’s- Ervin, Roy, Woody, Grandpa, Earl, JB, Land, Claris. Aunts- Ruby, Essell, Frances (my Nana), Rena and Virgie 
Musical Pairings:

Alison Krauss, “Down to the River to Pray”

    Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

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