September Gran'ma Gertie

Howdy Ya’ll!

I hope this purty day finds ya’ll doin’ good. Me, I been about as busy as a sore tailed cat on a porchful of rockers. It’s that time of the year. I done finished with all my cannin’, and September’s time fer cane grindin’, peanut boilin’, and jelly and preserve makin’.

The pear’s is jest now startin’ to get ripe enough for makin’ some preserves. I done sent Gran’pa out to the barn to bring in some of my mason jars. I reckon I’ll have to go into town to get some more lids and rings. Fer some reason, I never get back all my lids or rings. Oh well, I guess new ones will work better anyhow. I figure I aught to get at least four bushels off the trees out back. I’ll probly freeze a few fer the gran’young’uns. They like me to peel’em, add a little sugar, boil’em jest until the sugar melts and freeze’em. Then, when it’s done got good and cold outside, heat ‘em up a bit and eat’em over hoe cake. I got one gran’young’un that likes me to make cobbler. Gran’pa likes the cooked down preserves better. I always add a little spice to’em while they’re cookin’. They make a real treat with a hot buttermilk biscuit and a piece or two of fried fat back!

I know I’m gonna have my hands full when Gran’pa starts the cane grindin’. He always wants to sneak a little juice off to the side to make Happy Jack. That’s kinda like a homemade rum. It is some kinda powerful. I’ve seen that stuff make reg’lar men plum crazy! My daddy liked to take some juice in a old bottle down to the river with him. He’d set and fish while the juice got cold settin’ in the water. I never liked the juice myself. I wait fer the syrup!

It ain’t every body that knows how to make syrup. I’ve seen some that was real watery, and some almost as thick as molasses. I tasted some that wasn’t sweet at all, and some that was cooked too fast and tasted burnt. I’m perty picky when it comes to my syrup. After all, it’s gotta be good enough fer my hoe cake, my biscuits, and my griddle cakes. I also ain’t never had a piece of pork that didn’t taste better if’n you had a little syrup and bread to go with it!

I’ll be perty tied up this weekend, too. I got the gran’youg’uns comin’ to help me pick bullass grapes off the vines in the edge of the woods. I shore hope the birds ain’t got to’em first. Those wild grapes make some real perty jelly. I know them young’uns will probly eat as many as they pick, but at least the seeds aught slow’em down some!

After all this cannin’ and puttin’up is done with, I hope to throw a real ol’fashioned peanut boilin’ party. The kind we had when I was still a young’un. I’ll get out a couple of my cast iron washpots, set up some saw horse tables out by the barn, and invite the whole community. I’ll tell ever’body to bring somethin’ fer supper. That way, we can have supper first. The little young’uns won’t be so hungry and so apt to get into mischief. I also learned that the older young’uns won’t be so apt to complain when they got a full belly. There aught to be enough gitar pickers and fiddle players around to make us some music. It should turn out to be a right nice little get together.

People used to do things like that all the time. Ever’body knew ever’body else, and all had a good time. It gave the woman folks a chance to catch up on their gossipin’, men folks a chance to talk about farmin’ and hog prices, the little young’uns a chance to play, and sometimes, and the older young’uns a chance to sneak off and smooch a little bit! You’d prob’ly be surprised as to how many married folk got that way because of community get togethers!

I’ve heard so much about today’s get togethers that I’m glad I’m old now. About all I ever hear is about the fightin’, the drugs, and the other bad stuff. I know about the drinkin’ too. Shore, sometimes the men folks would sneak a little shine, or some young’un would bring a ceegar that he’d stole from his daddy, but we dealt with things a lot differnt. If’n a man got out of line ‘cause he’d been drinkin’, his wife or the other men folks would embarrass him so bad he’d be ashamed to show his face in town fer a month. If’n the young’uns smoked that ceegar, they’d all show up by the bonfire lookin’ a little green, and too sick to enjoy the rest of the evenin’. It really taught’em a lesson!

Well, I reckon I’d better get busy. Things don’t happen by themselves. Now that I think about it, that get together I been plannin’ sounds better and better. Maybe if more people had get togethers like this, we wouldn’t have so much trouble with our young’uns. It would at least give’em somewhere differnt to go, and somethin’ differnt to do beside hunt trouble. Think about it the next time ya’ll are plannin’ some kind of party!

‘Till next time,

Gran’ma Gertie

August Gran'ma Gertie

Howdy Ya’ll,

It’s me again. I been sittin’ here on my porch lookin’ at all the sale papers that came in the mail. It’s time fer the young’uns to git back in school, so they got all the school stuff on sale. I never will understand what differnce a certain kind of notebook is gonna make in the way a young’un learns.

I seen wired notebooks, zippered notebooks, colorful notebooks, plain notebooks, ones with movie stars pictures on ‘em, ones with cartoons on’em, and ones with ever color of the rainbow on ‘em! They got regler pencils and fancy pencils, regler pens and colered pens and pens with special grips. Crayons now come in big boxes of 96 differnt colors, and paper is in ever color you could want to write on. They even got special stores that sell nothin’ but school stuff!

They got them backpack things fer the young’uns to lug all this mess back and to in. The TV said the other day that doctors is worried about the young’uns back messin’ up before they even get out of school to get a job! They just ain’t no sense in any young’un totin’ that much on their back! We didn’t have to tote that much when we worked in the fields ‘till we got older and big enough to handle it.

Can anybody out there prove to me that all this new fangled stuff is teachin’ the young’uns any better? Most young’uns now ain’t got sense enough to get out of the rain unless some game tells ‘em to! The young’uns that make it to college are taking so long to graduate that they done got gray hair before they know what a job is! And when they do git a job, guess where they go first? To the store that sells all the school stuff so they can git fancy stuff fer their new jobs! ‘Cept now, they’re called “office” supplies! Don’t make no sense to me, neither.

Since we done got all the supplies, are the teachers any better? I wonder. I see on them school calendars that they schedule teacher work days. These are days that the young’uns could be in school, but today’s teachers need the time to fix up report cards. I figered it shouldn’t take ‘em as long today ‘cause they got them computers to do all the work. In my day, the teachers had to do the figurin’ themselves, and the writin’ themselves, and there weren’t no such thing as settin’ up an appointment to see your young’uns teacher. If you needed to see her, you just stopped by the school when you had a minute. Boy, if you try that now, they’d have you hauled off! Yet all the time you hear the teachers whinin’ about they cain’t get the mamas and daddies involved in their young’uns schoolin’! They need to learn that you cain’t have it both ways. Either you want me there, or you don’t. They need to learn that time is important to mama’s and daddies, too. Some mama’s got jobs, and those that don’t got meals to cook, homes to clean, and probably got clothes to fold! Most daddies got jobs, too. They have to take off to go see the teacher. The least they can do is work with the man!

They need to learn that supplies don’t teach the young’uns, good teachers do. What is wrong with the good, old fashioned ways of readin’, writin’, and arithmetic, as long as you throw in some of that computer stuff so the young’uns don’t fall behind the rest of the world? Now a days, they’re teachin’ girls how to be welders and boys how to cook. They got health and safety classes, babysittin’ classes, and picture takin’ classes. If the mama’s would teach the cookin’, and daddies would teach the weldin’, and we all raised our young’uns with a little common sense, and left the picture takin’ as a hobby, they might find they could teach something that mattered.

Today’s young’uns ain’t as dumb as most of ya’ll think. They got plenty of brains to learn with. It’s just that what are we teachin’ ‘em? I was told one time to keep an open mind by some of the young’uns that I run up with. The only problem is that if your mind is always open, there ain’t no tellin’ who is goin’ to dump what in there!

‘Till next time,
Gran’ma Gertie

July Gran'ma Gertie

Howdy Ya’ll!

Gran’ma Gertie here again. July shore is turnin’ out to be a hot one. I reckon I don’t mind so much as long as I got ice in the frigidare fer my tea, and the rockers on my chair don’t wear out! I been thinkin’ a lot about this month. It’s always been a time fer young’uns to have their git-togethers, cold watermelon on summer nights, star watchin’, and flag wavin’. I figered out what seems to be wrong with July nowadays. The young’uns still git together, people still watch the stars, and people still have cold watermelon, ‘cept it’s got cool in the frigidare instead of a washtub. The problem seems to be the flag wavin’.
I don’t rightly know when the flag wavin’ stopped. All I do know is that today, people just don’t have the respect fer Ol’ Glory like they used to. Seems like ever body in town had a flag on their porch in July. They also had’em on Veterans Day and Memorial Day. Now, all these days are nothin’ but sale days fer furniture and automobiles. Don’t people know what these days are fer? Has ever body just fergot?
If’n you ain’t had somebody close to you that was in a war, or got killed in a war, or was sent a letter tellin’ you that somebody was just plain missin’, you may not ever understand. Our young’uns have been blessed by not knowing really what war is, ‘cept what they read in their history books in school. Them books don’t tell it all! Neither do the movies or the politicians. The wars that this country has been through has made it what it is today. My daddy used to say that the best place somewheres else was worse than the worst place here in the good Ol’’ U.S. of A. I tend to believe him.
If’n you got your gran’young’uns over fer an evenin’ this July, tell ‘em what it’s all about. Some things you just cain’t learn from a book. Sometimes the best learnin’ is what you hear from those that got experience and wisdom. If you got that experience and wisdom, share it. If you don’t, then set your bottom down and listen! I’d shore like to see more flag wavin’ goin on. Wouldn’t you?

‘Till next time,

Gran’ma Gertie