I have opened my eyes to the smell of bacon and fried eggs. I have had backyard barbecues while sweet tea was warmed by the sun, instead of in a boiling pot. I have churned apple butter with church ladies while they shared stories as old as memory, and I have spent sunny Saturdays placing as many items as I could grab into a twenty-five cent bag at a yard sale (or, as many of the area residents call it, a “rag pull”).
I was raised in Unicoi County. It is a small, dog bone-shaped corner of Tennessee, with classic southern traditions and homemade greetings. There were many culinary experiences and homegrown ingredients available to me in my area. I sampled sweet tea and root beer, and detested them, and I ate warm homemade biscuits with locally produced apple butter or honey, and loved them. I helped my grandfather, who I called my pap-paw, in the garden with corn, lettuce, potatoes, and tomatoes, and I assisted my grandmother, “Nannie”, by rolling out biscuit dough and cutting it into round shapes with the rim of a glass. My pap-paw explained the difference between a large tomato and a salad tomato, which he called a “Tommy Toe”, and modeled the way to put up a fence to humanely deter the interference of hungry animals. My nannie showed me how to prepare a meal for a large number of guests, and, thankfully, I never contracted E. coli or Salmonella poisoning from eating the raw biscuit dough she slipped to me.
I observed my nannie and nana, without the knowledge that their homemade noodles and delicate, made from scratch desserts would become lost in a world of canned biscuits and freezer meals. I took in the smells and some of the process, but I was there to grab bits of the delicious food, so I didn’t record most of their methods of baking and cooking.
Thankfully, my mama has been a good resource for southern baking, and some of my nana’s recipe cards were given to me after she passed away, but I will never be able to make her cheesy rolls the same way. My grandfather told me so much about gardening, but I was lost in solving the mysteries of a Nancy Drew book, so I remember very little of his self-sustaining advice.
How could I have let the traditions and self-sufficiency of my grandparent’s era slip away? Sure, I remember the stories of the region, but could I grow a large garden, or bake six different desserts in one night for a bake sale without the convenience of a boxed recipe?
Luckily, there are still people alive in my area who can pass on this knowledge. I talk to them, at appropriate times, but my grandparents would have shared their life’s knowledge with me at any time when they were alive. I made the mistake of thinking I had longer to learn from them.
My nannie’s Christmas pinwheels and my pap-paw’s secrets for raising a good crop of corn are not the only traditions that need to be preserved. The traditions from cultures around the world should be cataloged for future generations. Practical knowledge from any country should not be lost.
In my books, I seek to keep some of my county’s traditions alive by including them in the dialog. In one instance, my characters discuss the reason some town businesses close, or used to close, at noon on Wednesdays. My pap-paw and my mama related the reasons to me when I was young, but I felt as though my children saw it as an activity that happened in all areas of the world, when it was mainly a practice in rural communities.
I learned so much from my grandparents. I know how to plant and structure tomato plants so they can receive the best sunlight, and I line wax paper on the bottom of my cake pans to keep the bottom of the cakes from sticking, but imagine how much more information I could have recorded! I wish I would have written papers, or created a video journal, about their experiences during The Great Depression and the wars of their generation.
I encourage you to record the traditions of your culture. I wrote poems in my teens, and made a few journal entries during the tragedy of 9/11 and the days that followed, but there are so many seasons and experiences lost to me in disregarded memory.
Share your feelings, memories, and traditions. I would enjoy reading them, and future generations will appreciate you for it!
What will you pass on?
Recent Comments