We noticed a field of corn on the hillside opposite their front porch. We asked how they had cultivated the ground; William said they dug it up by hand, using only hoes. I could not picture a man on crutches, standing on a steep hillside using a hoe.
Aunt Betty wanted to show me her garden, so we left Ginny and William to enjoy the shady front porch.
William told Ginny about his earlier life in eastern Kentucky—and how, after meeting and marrying Betty, he has lived in Bingham Hollow ever since. Ginny told me later how William shared his philosophy of life, his views on people in general, and what he thought of living conditions for people in specific locations around the world. He told her he had never learned to read.
At the end of our visit, as we drove back to Berea, Ginny told me she could live in a place like Bingham Hollow or Stoney Fork forever!
Through Ginny, an educated and worldly woman whose vision is unclouded by stereotypes, I saw Stoney Fork and my people with a new appreciation: my brother Jeems, living in three tiny rooms, unable to get outside on his own, still managing to surround himself with life and love; and William and John, as politically and socially aware as anyone I know.
We are constantly bombarded with stereotypes, both blatant and subliminal, all stemming from supposedly informed sources. Stereotypes have shadowed the Appalachian people from the first accounts. Too often the media, without knowing the people they are describing, look for the unique, the grotesque, or the tragic, because that is what the tabloid mentality seems to find most appealing.
Marijuana in the Mountains
When their family was almost grown, Grandma and Grandpa Saylor moved from the head of Stoney Fork down into “civilization” at the head of Bingham Hollow. Two of their children—my Aunt Betty, who was thirteen years older than I, and Aunt Laura, who was only four years older—were playmates of mine when I was a child.
It was a snug, safe place surrounded by folds of hills and valleys, and we were surrounded by kinfolk. My family worked hard raising corn, potatoes, and a big garden every year. We got milk from our one cow, and eggs from a dozen or so chickens. Grandpa had a few apple trees, and we always picked huckleberries and blackberries and gathered black walnuts and hickory nuts to eat. We lived in our own little world.
On one hand not much at Stoney Fork has changed, but on the other everything has changed. When I was young, there was a rough dirt road for jeeps and trucks from the mouth of Stoney Fork up to the beginning of York Branch, and elsewhere there were only narrow footpaths. Today there is a paved road all the way up to Aunt Betty’s house. The number of houses and trailers alongside the creek, and in any level spot to be found, has tripled since I lived there.
There is still grim poverty, but the people do not seem to dwell on that. They do what work they can find and eke out a subsistent living as best they can. They have hopes and dreams, just like most people do.
And they have marijuana!
I was aware that marijuana was grown in the hills. I can recall numerous stories of marijuana crops destroyed by the state police, and of people being arrested—or killed—in the process. A talk with Betty and William brought it home to me.
Two summers before Ginny and I visited, their garden was destroyed when a helicopter flew over the hills and dipped down into the hollows, searching for marijuana. Their corn was shoulder-high; staked tomato vines were loaded with green tomatoes just beginning to turn color. The wind-blasts from the helicopter blew down the tomato vines, even sucking some of the plants up by the roots, and the cornstalks were uprooted, twisted, and flung about. Even the onions and cucumbers did not escape damage. The helicopter flew over again and again as it crisscrossed the area.
William complained to the state police office in London, Kentucky. Later state police from both Frankfort and London came to look at the damage. The Frankfort police wrote down accounts and estimates and promised that something would be done.
William asked the London policeman just what would be done. The officer told him, “The reports will be filed in Frankfort, and that’s probably all that will ever be done.” Then he added, “Sorry for your loss,” and walked away. Betty and William never heard again from officials in either London or Frankfort.
An old cornfield sits near the top of the mountain in back of Betty and William’s house. They said marijuana had been grown there before the raid, but not by anyone they knew.
Odd things began happening at night around their house and out-buildings after the raid. For example, in the early morning hours they would suddenly hear knocking on a back wall of their house, loud and insistent. They would get up and look everywhere but could find no one on the premises.
Aunt Betty is very superstitious, and she concluded that this incident was a supernatural warning of some impending disaster. William, however, insisted that human beings did the knocking. Their disagreement over the cause of the occurrence went on for several weeks.
Finally, William decided to take matters in hand. He knew some men in other communities who had been involved with marijuana crops. Two or three of them were casual friends and happened to be in Bingham Hollow one day. William cunningly invited them to have dinner with him and Betty. They came to the house and enjoyed the good midday meal of fresh, homegrown vegetables and cornbread.
While they sat around the table Betty mentioned the harassment they had been subjected to and her opinion that it was some supernatural warning. William jumped in with strong words about his guns and what he was going to do the next time it happened.
As Betty and William told me the story, Aunt Betty said, “I can’t help but believe that it was a warning of some kind and that we’ve got to be ready for whatever comes.”
“Yeah, it was a warning all right,” William said. “They wanted to scare us into moving out of this hollow. Then they could plant marijuana in here.”
“Is the harassment still taking place?” I asked.
“No. Not since I let it be known what I was ready and able to do,” William said.
Although Aunt Betty was very superstitious, William was more practical about human nature. He was strong and active even though he was handicapped. It was amazing to see him and Betty on a steep hillside hoeing corn.
13
Foods We Loved
As I look back over my life, I am impressed with
how many memories I have of foods we gathered,
prepared, cooked, and ate.
Perhaps it is my memories of early childhood, warm kitchens, and scrumptious food that has made my kitchen the most popular place in my house today. When friends come to visit inevitably we end up settling down to talk in the kitchen. Each of us has different types of memories and recollections from childhood to call upon, but food often figures largely in those memories.
After I married, my husband and I had two sons, Dennis Wayne and Bruce Alan. Wayne is eleven years older than Bruce. We lived on Stoney Fork when Dennis Wayne was small; Bruce Alan was born in Berea. Each of them has different memories about home cooking, perhaps because our lifestyle in Berea turned out to be very different from that in Stoney Fork. Wayne always wants me to make chicken and dumplings, banana pudding, and molasses pie. Bruce wants hamburgers, chili, French fries, and chocolate cake.
I see little reason in taking all day to cook something that can be done just as well in thirty minutes. At the same time I value the knowledge and survival skills that were handed down from the pioneers to my ancestors and, through them, to me. These skills, and the knowledge and wisdom that accompanied them—hunting in the hills, tending the garden, feeding the family, and providing a warm kitchen—are all part of the Appalachia I knew and still love.
We worked sometimes from early morning until it got too dark to see outside. We also played hard. Three meals a day were never enough for us, and we looked for snacks in the afternoons and at night before bedtime. We had breakfast before daylight, dinner in the middle of the day, and supper in the early evening.
Duri
ng the winter we snacked on walnuts, hickory nuts, beechnuts, and hazelnuts. Dad often gathered hickory nuts while he was out squirrel hunting (squirrels were found most easily where hickory trees grew in the hills). Sometimes he would come home with his hunting pouch full of hickory nuts instead of wild game. Walnut, hazelnut, and beechnut trees grew close to our cabin and alongside fences and roads. We children eagerly gathered the nuts.
I remember the golden days in October when we used to take coffee sacks made of burlap and head up the smaller ridges and coves to gather walnuts. The ground would be covered with leaves as rich in color as an Oriental rug. When we reached a walnut tree we would rake back the leaves with our hands and feet and find green-hulled nuts covering the ground.
For days after gathering the walnuts, we had the task of hulling them. I remember how embarrassing it was to go to school being one of only a few girls with my hands stained brown from the walnut juice. The stains could not be washed off; they had to wear off with time. We stored walnuts and hickory nuts in the loft of our house or in the hayloft of the barn. The smaller nuts we stored in jars and cans in the kitchen.
A favorite snack of mine was black walnut kernels and cornbread. We kept a sack of walnuts near the wood box in the corner and a hammer by the hearth. We’d crack a bowlful of kernels, sprinkle them with salt, and eat them with a piece of cornbread.
Chicken and Dumplings
A favorite dish at church suppers and family reunions was chicken and dumplings. (Pork, wild game, and chicken were the most commonly served meats.) This dish can feed fifty people, or just a few. Many Appalachian cookbooks contain basic recipes for chicken and dumplings, using various ingredients.
No one knows when chicken and dumplings was first served in Appalachia, but it became a welcome dish in big-city homes and mountain kitchens alike. Cooks varied the taste by using sherry, lemon peel, parsley, and pepper in stewing the chicken. Some added butter and chopped giblets as well as boiled eggs to enrich the broth. There were two kinds of dumplings: fluffy round balls and slick dumplings rolled out flat and cut into strips.
Up until the 1950s mountain people lived closer to pioneer times than did their city cousins. They dressed chickens and made dumplings the way their mamas and grandmas had always done, still using wood-burning stoves and cast-iron cookware.
In my childhood Mama filled her cast-iron teakettle with water to heat on the cook stove, then caught a chicken (usually a hen). She killed the chicken, either by wringing its neck or chopping off its head. She then put it in a number two-size galvanized tub. Picking up the boiling teakettle, she walked outside to the tub and poured water over the chicken. After the hot water loosened the feathers she plucked and saved them for pillows and feather beds. Mama then brought the chicken inside and held it over a flame in the stove to singe the remaining pinfeathers and hairs.
After Mama washed and dried the chicken, she cut it into serving pieces and boiled them in a cast-iron kettle. When the chicken was forktender she removed the kettle from the fire to cool. After deboning the chicken she put it back into the broth and moved the kettle back onto a hot part of the wood-burning stove.
Then Mama made dumplings. Hers were always fluffy and tender. She shaped them into round balls and dropped them into the rich, boiling chicken broth where they cooked until they were waxy on the outside and fluffy and tender on the inside.
Our family did not like flat dumplings. These had no baking powder and little shortening, and were rolled and cut into strips like wide noodles; when cooked, they were firm and bumpy. I believe that fluffy round dumplings are more old-fashioned, while flat dumplings are somehow more sophisticated. The preference for one version over another tends to run in families.
I grew up believing my mama’s dumplings were perfect. I knew I could never improve on her basic recipe, so I never tried. I no longer use a wood-burning stove or a cast-iron teakettle in which to heat water. I also buy chicken from the supermarket. But I still shape dumplings by rolling a wad of dough with my hands and cooking them just the way she did. People rave about my chicken and dumplings almost as much as they did about Mama’s.
Dried Apple Stack Cake
Mama’s dried apple stack cake was a low-fat, nonsweetened, many-layered cake. It was made with stiff, cookie-like dough flavored with ginger and sorghum molasses, and a sweet, spiced apple filling. When served, the cake was tall, heavy, and moist.
The dried apple stack cake was a favorite pioneer wedding cake. In the mountains, weddings were celebrated with “in-fares,” where people gathered to party, dance, and eat potluck dishes. Because wedding cakes were so expensive, neighbor cooks brought cake layers to donate to the bride’s family. The dough for the cake was rolled or pressed out into very thin layers and baked in cast-iron skillets. The family of the bride cooked, sweetened, and spiced dried apples to spread between the layers of the cake. The number of layers in the wedding cake was a gauge of the bride’s popularity. Sometimes there would be as many as twelve layers; the average was seven or eight. Stack cake was also served at family reunions, church suppers, and other large gatherings.
The dried apple stack cake is the most “mountain” of all cakes baked and served in southern Appalachia. The story goes that James Harrod, one of Kentucky’s early pioneers and the founder of Harrodsburg, Kentucky, brought the stack cake recipe with him when he traveled the Wilderness Road to Kentucky. Whether this story is true or not, this cake has remained popular with mountain people.
Wherever Appalachian people migrated—to Washington, Florida, and Arizona, for example—they took along recipes for their favorite version of old-fashioned stack cake. Called by different names—dried apple stack cake, apple stack cake, Confederate old-fashioned stack cake, stack-cake, and Kentucky pioneer washday cake—all had two constant ingredients: ginger and sweet sorghum molasses. (While sorghum molasses was considered not suitable in most cakes and pies because it was too heavy, it worked very well in the stack cake, with the dried fruit and spices. Sometimes cooks varied the amount of sweetening by adding brown sugar to the sorghum molasses: one-half cup of sugar to one-third cup of molasses.)
The original method is a long, tedious process, with the cake taking as much as three hours to assemble. Some cooks just use regular cake layers and plain applesauce or apple butter, or a combination of both, as the filling between the layers. While stack cake made this way may be tasty, there is no comparison between applesauce or apple butter and the strong apple flavor that dried apples give.
One method of preserving foods in Appalachia was by air and sun drying. After coring and peeling, apples were cut in half, then in quarters. Each quarter was cut into two or three thin slices. When the apples were ready they were spread on a large white cloth and placed on top of a shed or other flat area to dry in the sun. A fine wire screen put over them kept out flies and bugs. This method was chancy because of cloudy skies and the chance of rain. Apple slices can also be dried near a wood-burning stove, in a sunny window, or in the oven at a low temperature. Stringing the slices with a needle and stout thread and hanging them can also dry them. As they dry, the apple slices shrivel and turn brown. When completely dry, they are stored in cloth bags, glass canning jars, or the freezer.
Not many mountain families still dry fruit in this old-fashioned way, although they still love dried apples and dried green beans. They are more likely to use a dehydrator or barter with local florists for room in a greenhouse where they can spread out their apples and beans to dry.
Although today’s cooks may use different methods for drying fruit, and different versions of stack cake can easily be found in recipe collections and cookbooks, mountain cooks still prefer the old-fashioned recipe for apple stack cake, handed down for generations.
Roasting Ears
Mountain cooks have many ways to prepare corn, including roasting the ears and using the ground cornmeal.
To roast corn, turn back the husk to expose the ear of corn, but do not break it loose from the ea
r. Inspect the corn for worms, bugs, or rotten spots. Clean away all the silk. Turn the husk back over the ear of corn, and tie some of the husk ends together. Dip the corn into water to wet the husks so they will not burn. Place them on hot coals. Turn them once or twice while cooking. Leave them in the coals until they are tender. Then peel back the husks and eat the corn on the cob with salt and butter.
Johnnycakes and Hoecakes
Granny Brock told me how johnnycakes got their name. The story goes that one time a little boy called Johnny was crying for his supper. His pioneer mother told him she’d fix him a little cake of cornbread, and it would be “Johnny’s cake.” She heated a bit of bacon grease in a skillet and spooned a mound of cornmeal dough into the skillet, where it quickly spread into a pancake shape. Later, the thin, crisp corn cakes baked in a skillet or on a griddle on top of a hot stove came to be called “johnnycakes.”
The early settlers in Appalachia often cooked bread at noon in the fields. Usually the cornfields were high on a steep hill, a good walk from the house. If the corn needed to be hoed out quickly, the men would take their lunch with them—cooked vegetables and a piece of ham or shoulder meat. They would build a little fire and, using a sharpened stick, broil the meat while baking their bread. Tradition says that these early settlers never bothered using skillets for the bread they cooked in the fields. They cleaned their hoe blades, made up the dough, and baked bread on their hoes. They called this kind of bread “hoecakes.”
When he was working, Dad would take along a cast-iron skillet and a coffeepot. He would make a fire and put bread in the skillet and coffee and water into the pot. The aromas made even the weakest person feel glad to be there under the shade trees, high upon the mountain.
Gritted Cornbread
“When the corn is too hard for the table and too soft for the cow,” Mama used to say, “it’s just right to make gritted bread.” This was a delicious way to prolong the season for eating wholesome, garden-grown corn at the end of the summer.
My Appalachia Page 11
