Country Way of Life

[Guest guest]

I am not from the country but my paternal grandmother was and she

instilled a lot of those ways in us duing our childhood.

My grandmother, (Mama, we called her) would cook huge breakfast like

Terri mentioned about her Granny. My grandmother would be in the

kitchen cooking breakfast fot 2 hours sometimes before we sat down at

the table to eat especially on the weekends. We would wait patiently

watching the Lil Rascals, Tarzan, or the Mc Show as we

read the Sunday Comic Strip. I would pick up the Suday paper and get

the comic strip section a read along until breakfast was ready.

She would could ham, bacon, pork chops,sausage, eggs, grits or rice,

biscuits and sometimes pancakes with the biscuits, all from scratch

and from the local country store. Sometimes she would cook kidneys

too! Those things sure did smell STRONG! I tasted them once and that

was about all I could stand!

I often wondered why my Mama (we called my Grandma, Mama) would cook

so much for breakfast. But as the day linguered on each item would

disappear one by one until nothing was left by bedtime. We would

snack thoughtout the day on what was left over from breakfast, from

sandwiches made from the ham, sausage and pork chops with a slice of

bread or a good old fashioned home made buttermilk biscuit. And I

tell ya, it was delicious, even without the modern convenience of a

microwave oven to warm it. I would eat it cold and head right back

outside to play! Cold and all. And it just might have a little

Cricso built up on it. But thats okay, you just wiped that off and

kept on going, huh?

Ruth, did it ever bother you having to slaughter the animals that you

raised on the farm? It would have been very difficult for me to have

to sit down at dinner knowing that the fried chicken on the table

was my favorite chicken that I raised or the meat was from my

favorite pig or cow. I think it would have made me vey sick, hurt

and angry like it did a lot of children raised on a farm.

I don't know if I would have be able to do it. I probably would have

been a vegetarian for a long, long time. Until Daddy got the strap

and took me to the wood shed.

I miss those good ole days. Remember the bacon that had the thick

rhine on it? Man! You could chew on that for days. Breakfast would

be over and some people would still be chewing on bacon rhine!

Remember?

Brother Ron