My Grandparents

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I visited my Dad's parent's graves today. There was a funeral in Edgewood Cemetary that I was attending and thought I would try to find their plot. I found out that my grandfather's name was William Rufus McKinney (aka Big Papa) and that my grandmother's name was McGrath instead of Tolbert. McGrath, by the way, in this part of the country is pronounced McGraw (as in "queeksdraw mcgraw".) When I saw that I remembered a story that I had heard a long, long time ago. It seems that my grandmother was a Tolbert, but both her parents passed away when she was very young - leaving her as the heiress to a lot of land. As the story goes, her Dad's brother paid the McGrath's to adopt her so that he could take control of the properties. I also recall that the McGraths were not kind to her and that she married at a very early age in order to get away from them. My Dad said that her sister (and I can't remember her name) was married when she was 9 years old. He showed me the tree under which she played with her dolls after the wedding.

Another interesting note is that I also found my wife Pat's grandparent's graves are located adjacent to my grandparents! That's fairly odd, since they didn't know each other and grew up/ lived in different worlds - go figure.

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Our Food

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I have mentioned food several times in past entries, but think that we should dedicate a day just to the things we ate and loved - mostly! Entrees were generally: Pot Roast, Fried Chicken, Fried Pork Chops, Hamburgers, Fried Round Steak, Fried Liver, Pork Roast, Beef Stew - both brown and red, Chicken and Dumplings, Ham, Pan Grilled Steaks, Spaghetti and fried fish. Sides were green beans, butterpeas, butterbeans, okra, corn, salad greens, collards, rice, potatoes, biscuits and cornbread. Not a whole lot of variety, but enought to get us by.

Mamma made good cornbread and biscuits. She used our own lard and buttermilk as much as possible in their making. She thought that small biscuits were more genteel, so we had biscuits about the size of a silver dollar (though they were usually about one inch thick. We seldom ate "Loaf Bread" from the store, but once in a while we would have a loaf of Sunbeam white bread. (Did I forget to mention banana sandwiches?)

I just remembered a "pate" made from hog liver that we called Liver Pudding. Almost everyone loved it - except of course, me. I did not like "souse meat" either. Souse meat was made by cooking, and then preserving in the natural jelly, those parts of the pig that would not have been eaten otherwise. I found out later that in the Pennsylvania area they call the stuff "scrapple."
Desserts were wonderful. Peach, Apple, Blackberry pies and cobblers, cakes and cookies, puddings and jello were more or less expected after a heavy meal.

I do not remember Mamma keeping anything like potato chips or other snacks around the house in those days.