What’s on your Breakfast table?

I’m not good at breakfast.  I’m happy eating leftovers or a sandwich or something and I realize how weird that sounds to yu’ns.  I’m a fan of cereal – all those nutrients and the protein from the milk all in one neat little bowl.

So when I saw an old advertisement for breakfast cereal it got me to thinking about how different that morning meal looked a few years back.

I don’t know about you but I always think of the “traditional” country breakfast containing meat, eggs, gravy and biscuits.  And that’s certainly been an enduring standard among hard-working farmers who needed a breakfast that would strengthen them through a tough day. 

However, we’ve mentioned many times that on the Cumberland Plateau – if not throughout Appalachia – wheat flour was a luxury for many, many years.  That kind of rules out biscuits for everyday eating, doesn’t it?  Of course the meat that was not available for lower income families in larger metropolitan areas was more common on the farmer’s table since he could raise or hunt for it.  And eggs are easy enough to produce. 

 Both of my grandfathers remembered eating cornbread for breakfast and maybe the reason that generation was so attached to bread at every meal was because they hadn’t always been able to have it.

Certainly, one of the early challenges for cereal manufacturers was the growing prosperity in early 20th century America.  For centuries people in the old country were sustained on porridges or gruel which would resemble today’s oatmeal.  This is still common fare in undeveloped countries.  So when those early Americans could afford meat for every meal there was no way they were going back to the food they’d gotten by on before. 

Cereal sales didn’t really take off until the 1950’s when baby boomers were targeted with marketing campaigns and cereals were sugared for better flavor.  Today, statisticsbrain.com reports that 92% of American households buy boxed cereal at least once per year and 2.7 billion boxes are sold annually. 

New Potatoes

Most homes on the mountain have a little vegetable garden – okay, most of the gardens are pretty big.  And potatoes are one of our main staples.  You may recall I mentioned here that I was raised to understand you needed bread with every meal, well you gotta’ have ‘taters too. 

This time of year (or a little earlier if you were ambitious in February) the gardens begin to yield little new potatoes.  We boil them in their skins with a little oil (bacon drippings or lard if you’ve got it), slather them in butter, add salt and pepper and it’s one of the best meals of the summer.  Well at least it seems like it at the time because if you raised your potato crop by this time of year they’re pretty shrivelled and soft.  And after all, we only get “new” potatoes for a little while before the skins start to get thick and you’re wanting to peel them.

Maybe I’m so thrilled to get these potatoes because of the childhood memories they trigger.  My whole life I remember going to the garden with Grandpa Livesay and digging out a mess of taters.  The dirt around the plants was loose and piled high on the stems so my fat little-girl fingers could just about scoop them right out of the ground.  He’d carefully drive a pitchfork in and we’d all exclaim over the number of little white spuds that popped out – after all this is the prediction of the winter’s potato crop and we thought we’d starve if we didn’t raise a bountiful enough crop. 

My grandpa was not a Christian until the very end of his life yet he always knew The Good Lord was providing this produce by the sweat of our brow – well mostly his brow.

Joy and Ricky Orias

With our day’s harvest in a bucket we’d go to the barn where there were barrels of rainwater caught for cleaning things like this.  Since we no longer needed to catch the water for drinking, you could plunge your hands straight into the cool barrels, cleaning both the food and the child.

We have missionaries from The Phillipines staying with us, and partaking of tonight’s early summer treat.  I asked if they grow this kind of potatoes – sweet potatoes are a staple for them.  She said, yes but we don’t eat the skins.  I bet she has a similar childhood memory for she grew up on a farm as well and little girls on farms have gotta’ have similar memories, don’t you think?

The Stories Online

Have you ever Googled your own name made the shocking revelation that most of us have some web-presence these days?  Publishers tell us authors we must have such a presence and we are always working to build our audience – after all if you’ve got a story to tell you want to tell a whole bunch of people don’t you?

While chatting with a friend recently some subject came up and I said, “Hey I wrote a blog about that”.  So I whip out my handy-dandy smart phone and search “Tennessee Mountain Stories” plus the subject of the moment.  What popped up was an “Interview with Beth Durham”. 

Huh?  What interview?

Well, I’m always talking about Tennessee Mountain Stories to pretty much anyone that will listen – and quite a few folks that tune me out.  And here was someone who not only listened but took notes!

You see homework can now be found on the World Wide Web and I had in fact answered some questions for my communications-major-niece.

It’s kind of fun to read through someone else’s summary of your work and I thought you good readers might enjoy this piece as well.  You can click here to see Anna Grace’s article.

Decoration Day 2017

I got a chance to visit the Whittaker Cemetery this week on Decoration Day and was reminded of a story Clyde Whittaker had told me about the origins of that cemetery.

The land for the cemetery was donated by one of Clyde’s ancestors, John Whittaker.  He lived near one of the corners of the land and when his mother passed away, they buried her in the back yard.  So, when the town of Monterey grew to the point that a public cemetery was needed, he donated this property. 

Mrs. Whittaker’s original stone has been lost but a modern stone marks that plot as the earliest grave.  Nearby are two graves marked by a single stone but with no names, only noted as relatives of John Whittaker.  And, there are no dates on Mrs. Whittaker’s stone.  nHowever, on Ancestry I found John Whittaker III who lived 1783 – 1869. 

This old cemetery has some of the tent graves we’ve talked about here before.  I was surprised to see a 1938 date on one tent grave as I would’ve thought that tradition had died by then.  And a son of John Whittaker III was buried in 1900 under a tent grave.

You know I’m always asking for the whys and hows of settlements and such so it’s exciting to hear an legend like this one about the origins of Whittaker Cemetery.

Wedding Memories

Well it’s the wedding season.  These days, June is the preferred month for brides, although only by a slim margin over August (0.6% more).   I love to hear stories about people’s weddings and as I’ve mentioned here before the old stories are very different from today’s. 

At a recent friends’ wedding someone commented that the bride’s day started before 7:00 because she had so much to accomplish before the afternoon ceremony.  I couldn’t help but think how different that day was compared with brides through history.

Diane Franklin recounted a story I love about her own wedding day.  It was 1965 and her family home had been crudely wired but there was still no running water.  But she was intent upon having a bath on her wedding day.  So she started her day by drawing water, heating it on the stove and filling a corrugated tub.  Her fiancé had moved up north to work in Ohio and picked her up in his 1964 Plymouth. 

There don’t seem to be any stories on the mountain of church weddings until the early 1960’s and I can’t seem to ferret out the inspiration to start this tradition – you will recall that all of the Appalachian stories I hear are about weddings in the preacher’s living room or the courthouse.  I suppose there were always some such ceremonies in town by the few somewhat wealthier families.  It seems like once a few folks started marrying in church the tradition took root pretty quickly.

Of course it helped that the groom in today’s story, Lewis, was doing pretty well.  He’d waited to marry until he found steady work and had good prospects for his future.  He bought flowers to decorate the church, someone took photographs and the bride’s sisters were attendants. 

So I’m curious about your stories.  What is the earliest church, or large formal, wedding you’ve heard about on the mountain?  Just click “comments” below.