Every summer I had to participate in many things that made up country living. I was a kid from the Bronx in the 1970's,what could I possibly know about
snapping string beans, shucking white corn, feeding pigs and milking cows. Well that all came to end because my grandmother quickly taught me. I come from a rather large family therefore some summers my grandmother Christine would have some fifteen or so grandkids down.
My
grandmother was a school teacher and a mother to twenty children. She was a well noted person in the community. After all she helped
my great and great great grandparents run the only Black owned store in the rural town of Roseland, Virginia. A time when most people had barely enough to survive on the Great Depression. She always worked hard and had plenty of nourishment for her family and any neighbor that would stop by. She also every Sunday would
prepare meals for the church people. So this tradition has stuck with my mother, my aunts and uncles and now me. I find myself in the same mode come Sunday preparing meals to feed my family and friends.
So of course, we had to eat and we had work over the summer to maintain all that my grandmother had started over the years. I can tell you now that all of the hard work paid off. We had the best sit-down meals. Breakfast consisted of fresh eggs, strawberry preserves, fresh biscuits, bacon, sausage, freshly squeezed orange juice and of course that country apple sauce. Lunch was ham and turkey sandwiches with cheese and a cool slice of watermelon that my grandmother grew. Every morning my grandmother would place a couple of watermelons in the cold stream behind the house so that by lunchtime they would be cold for us to eat. Dinner was white corn, yams, greens, fried chicken, corn bread, macaroni and cheese and cake made from scratch.
That was southern life for me and family. But it also taught me that if you want something good you have to work for it. I know today if I had to survive I could do so off the very land that my grandmother taught me to respect.
