Fluggie and Rose--Part One--rough draft....

Fluggie...

I was born in Arcola, Mississippi, Washington County, USA September 25, 1938 to Sterling and Gertrude Jordan. As I recall that time, it was a confusing, scary and sometimes happy time for me. I remember Mildred, Baby-mel, and Junior – they were my very best friends. I remember Ms. Lucille, Junior’s mom. She was one of three good friends to my mom…she was my other mom. The most important people to me during this time was my Aunt Dump and my Uncle Henry. Aunt Dump and Uncle Henry raised my dad, his twin brother and their sister. She also raised my father’s sister’s child. I never heard anyone discuss how Aunt Dump and Uncle Henry came to be their caretakers. Some of my bestest memories were when I visited my Aunt Dump and Uncle Henry. She was short in stature, but she would sit in her favorite rocking chair, holding me as my legs dragged the floor, rocking me until I went to sleep. She tried to teach me unsuccessfully how to churn butter…oh, I could watch her all day as she sat with the churn between her knees, churning the milk that she had gotten from the cows after she had let it “keep” until it became sour (or until it was ready). I walked along side her as she gathered eggs to sell along with the butter. And, boy could she cook. My favorite meal was a stewed roaster with dumplings or rice and her good old buttermilk cornbread. I remember on one of my visits one of her many dogs were going to have puppies. Aunt dump gave me an old blanket and told me to put it under the house for the dog to lie on – it was cold. I would go out every 5 minutes to see if I could see the puppies being born…I would peek – no puppy; go back in the house, wait 5 mins or so before I went back and low and behold there would 1 or 2 puppies…never got to see the actual birth, but my Aunt Dump would say “…baby, better go and check on the puppies…” and when I would come back in all excited that there had been an additional puppy she would just smile and encourage me to keep looking “…you’ll get to see the puppy being born, Sugar…”

Rose...

When most people think of "country eggs" they think of brown, farm-raised or free-range eggs. The kind that are "gathered" daily from the hen house. Not me. When I think of "country eggs" it reminds me of spending summers down on the farm my mother was raised on. Breakfast was basically the feast of the day. We all ate in shifts according to when we got up. My aunt and grandmother would have been up for hours making "syrup-soppin'" biscuits from scratch with churned butter and fresh non-pasteurized milk. The baking sheet was iron and so huge it would take up the entire oven shelf, filled with biscuits. Depending on how many there were going to be to eat, sometimes there would be an iron skillet or two full of biscuits too. I fail biscuits to this day and thank God for Mary B or I would never have another biscuit in my life.

There was always a plate of some kind of meat, bacon or country ham, but not very much...or at least there never was by the time I got to the table. The men-folk always got to eat first because they had things to do before going to the fields to plow or plant or whatever. They lived on a dairy farm so the cows had to be milked before anything else. There was also a big plate of fresh eggs, fried in whatever meat drippings were left after the meat was fried. They were always of different stages. Some were hard fried, some were runny and some were medium and they might or might not be warm. Oh, I almost forgot, there was usually a small bowl of red-eye gravy on the table too.

I had to learn how to eat this breakfast, you understand, because there is an art to it. First you pour some syrup on your plate. I would like to say here that it was home made molasses but by the time I came around they had long since given up making their own from sugar cane, even though you could still find it growing everywhere and we used it for a snack in the afternoons, peeling it and chewing it until all the sweetness was gone. Then you would put a dollop of fresh churned butter in the middle of the syrup and blend it all through with your fork. Get an egg or some meat or whatever else you wanted and commence to soppin' those biscuits in the syrup, with a bite of egg or meat in between. If there ever was heaven on earth it was those breakfasts!

My aunt and uncle moved in with my grandfather and grandmother when they first got married. I suspect it was because my uncle was basically worthless and my grandfather wanted to keep an eye on him, but I was told it was to look out after my grandmother after my grandfather was gone and to run the farm, which they did. They had six kids. My aunt looked after my grandmother and my uncle ran the farm. My mother had twelve brothers and sisters. Two died. One before she was born and one when she was little. She was the "the baby" and no one ever let her forget it. There's a whole long story that goes along with that maybe I will get to on another day. There were five boys and eight girls, I think.

I never knew the real reason I ended up spending my summers on the farm but I suspect it was party time in the big city the whole summer while us kids were gone. Three of the sisters had moved away from the farm to the city to go to school and never left. One aunt was an "old maid" who spoiled us kids but made us work for it too. The other aunt that lived here in the city with us had four boys and they were the closest I ever had to siblings. I guess that's why I was a tomboy, I had to be to survive...


So you can probably tell this started out to be a very different post :)