The Lowly Persimmon

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Ahhhh! The Persimmon. A plant species that abounds in the South. As you drive through South Carolina, you will note pastures with luxurious growths of miniature trees with glossy leaves that scatter in clumps across the landscape. These most likely are Persimmon trees of the family Ebenaceae or Ebony. The wood is quite dense and the fibers are interwoven to make this one of the toughest in the world. In the days of wooden golf clubs, most Woods were made of Persimmon.

What is not so obvious when you see the clumps of bushes is that each time you see a thicket of them - maybe a quarter acre - they are all the same plant interconnected by tough roots. They spread quickly in pastures and are unconcerned with cutting and poisoning. If you cut one it comes back from the root. If you poison one, the leaves may fall off but you really haven't accomplished anything - it lives on. Some say that if cut during "Ember Days" in very late summer they will die. Since nobody seems to be able to pinpoint the Ember period anymore, nobody really knows if this will kill trees.

In addition to tough, dense wood, the Persimmon has one other redeeming quality - the fruit. The soft, sweet potato orange, pudding-like fruit is quite beautiful in August and in September it appears ripe and ready for eating. Almost every Southern boy keeps his eyes on the lowly persimmon during this time and when the time is right invites one of his dear friends from town to partake in the Persimmon Harvest Festival. Much time and effort is put into discussing the effacacies of the lowly fruit. The newbie must learn to identify the best persimmon, to pluck and peel back the skin just so and to avoid the hard seeds therein. His mouth begins to water for this delicacy and his heart to yearn. There are so many of them! Finally he is allowed to taste one. He bites into it gently and begins to chew and "Holy Moly - WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!!!!" Unfortunately for him he has "bitten into" one of the oldest jokes in American Agriculture. Persimmon fruit is noxious and astringent. Plainly put, the fruit will "pucker you up" to the point that you think your mouth is going to close up forever. The taste and effect last for what seems like hours and finally wears off so that you can talk and question the parentage, sexual pursuits, intelligence and charity of the farm boy. However, once tasted, you become a trusted member of the club and are empowered to initiate other victims - uh, "uninlightened."

Later on - say in October - the fruit becomes almost bearable and is a good source of fiber, protein, carbohydrates and tannin. At that point persimmons are eaten by some and collected by others to make "persimmon beer" - a sweet, orange "near beer". During times of economic depression, the fruit becomes a friend to the hungry. There's a story about my Uncle Jake - that he broke his arm eating breakfast one morning. He fell out of a persimmon tree!

The Third Grade

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Miss Loree Reeves. A stern looking, straight backed, well built woman with gray hair and a mouth like George Washington's. A stern purveyor of elementary education. I just "googled" her and she's not there. Part of me wonders how someone who had as much input into my life as Miss Reeves doesn't have thousands of pages about her. Somehow though, I think she would prefer not being on the web.

When she was my third grade teacher, she seemed to have been at least 70 years old. She continued to teach for many more years. I suspect she was in her 90's when she finally gave it up. She taught in a second floor classroom down the hall from the office where Mr. Stewart kept his straps and hard wooden chairs and probably some midieval devices such as thumb screws and iron maidens. Miss Loree didn't need Mr. Stewart or any of his devices. She had a wooden ruler, a yardstick and a metal ruler.

"Put your hand on the desk," was a chilling note. You knew that one or the other devices of torture was about to play hell with the back of your hand. For some reason none of us that I remember never refused to place our hands in the danger zone. We probably had no idea that we could refuse! Then the whacking started. It was never as bad as you expected - I think she knew that the public humiliation part of it was more punishment than the WHACK of the ruler. We all dreaded the metal ruler until we found out that it was ALL noise and very little pain.

Miss Loree introduced homework into our lives and I learned quickly that for some reason - probably genetic - I would not do homework. Beat me with a strap; put me in the iron maiden; make me miss recess every day of my life: I would not do homework. I think she could have probably rid me of that minor personality maladjustment at that point in my life and I would have become great and famous - but no, she knew that I retained everything and didn't actually need to do homework, so she finally gave up. Not doing homework has followed and haunted me all the days of my life.

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.

The Pond

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When I was nine or so Daddy got some money from the government to build a pond. It wasn't really big - maybe an acre - but it was the first standing body of water on our place. Daddy had it stocked with Bream and Bass and we waited for them to grow. There were tadpoles galore the first year and then when summer came, we had bullfrogs. If you have never heard a bullfrog bellow, it can be a scary thing and we had hundreds of them.


It wasn't long before Daddy and Mac were gigging frogs. I won't go into the gruesome details, but there should have been a lot of little froggie sized wheelchairs involved. Mamma agreed to cook the froglegs, but when she put them in the hot frying pan they started jumping around. That did it right there - she didn't care if the frog wasn't attached to the legs, she couldn't cook something that was moving around. They compromised and Mac would start cooking the legs and she would finish. The froglegs were very tasty as I remember - and they didn't remind me of "chicken."

As is nature's way, the abundance of frogs attracted an abundance of snakes. They were actually Red Water Snakes, but we all thought they were of the Cottonmouth variety and were deathly afraid of them. If they had been poisonous we would have been in a lot of trouble because Red Water Snakes are very agressive. Several times, as I remember, I gave all my surroundings to a snake. Once, Dan Hardy and I gave a boat to one of them. I don't recall anyone getting bitten, but I recall a lot of close calls.

When the fish got big enough the fishing frenzy started. We caught bream after bream and ate them. Then, we learned from my cousin Mitchell and his dad Carrol how to catch Bass and we caught and ate them too! I spent many a day around that pond.

Other people asked for permission to fish and Daddy let them and soon there were always several people at the pond. One afternoon Daddy got his minnow bucket and rod and reel and headed to the pond to fish. He was fishing away when a guy came up and told Daddy he had to leave because this was "his" fishing place. Daddy went to the house and got the .22 rifle and cleaned the pond off. For several years nobody but family were allowed to fish in our ponds.

Trains

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Where our road crossed the Southern Railroad was a bridge. Not just any bridge; but a bridge with a name - Moonlight Bridge. It was made all of creosote timbers and on hot days you could find your way there just by the creosote smell. To me it was a magic place - far enough from home to be safe from parents - close enough to ride to on a bicycle and a serene place to hide and daydream. Serene that is until the morning or afternoon run of the Southern came through. At that point it was an adventurous place - loud and dangerous with rail cars almost near enough to touch.


Rail cars went everywhere - Augusta, Atlanta, Charlotte, Columbia - exotic places that I hardly ever saw. The cars were laden with coal, bananas, pulpwood, gravel and anything you could imagine. Sometimes the train would deposit a car or cars on the siding near our property and if the seal on the door was already broken, you could sneak aboard to see what was in it. Sometimes it would be the bananas left over from unloading. Then we would have bananas - green ones to keep for a week or two, ripe ones for eating, making ice-cream or puddings. Mamma would bake and fry bananas or coat them with mayonnaise and roll them in nuts for a "banana log." Soon after finding a nearly empty banana car we would find ourselves tired of bananas and ready to move on.


Once there was a wreck of the P&N right in front of our house. We heard the cars crashing and impacting with the earth in a very long, loud noise that seemed to last forever. The next morning I went over to the site and will never forget seeing the power of a train wreck. Cars were strewn on both sides of the railway. Some of them were dug into the ground up to six feet or so and some were in splinters. Nobody was hurt or killed in the crash - the engineer lost his job though. The story was that he had been nipping at the brown drinkin' likker all the way from Anderson and forgot about the tight curve coming into our area. The rails gave way and the train stopped prematurely.

Mamma's Kitchen

Mamma was a good, journeyman cook. I've always tried to cook like she did. As early as six years old, she had me in the kitchen teaching me to cook. No, as a six to to ten year old I didn't slave in the kitchen, but she talked to me about cooking as she went along. Mamma said that if a man could cook he would never go hungry, so I tried to learn and I helped out with the stirring and cooking. The big test came when I was about 11, she went to the hospital for a while and I did the cooking for the family and the field hands. I was very proud of my performance.

Now don't get me wrong here, Mamma was still a step or two ahead of everyone else when it came to cooking too. She even belonged to the local Home Economics Club sponsored by Clemson College (yep, even Clemson was a college in those days.) The name of the club Mamma joined was The Ellis Heights Home Economics Club. I always wondered about that name, "Who was Ellis?", and where were the heights? I found the answer 40 years later when I was training at Fort Riley Kansas. One of the housing areas on the ridge above the old base was named "Ellis Heights." Someone in our area at some time must have been stationed there and liked the name. The Clubs in those days weren't all about telling housewives to wash their hands and cook their eggs and hamburger well done. In addition to learning about running a tight ship at home, they observed pleasantries and shared recipes and once in a great while had a national meeting in exotic places like Louisville Kentucky.

The club system changed a lot in the 60's and most of the members just stopped going. Mamma still tried new recipes and if she didn't like them, threw them out the back door for the dogs. If the dogs wouldn't eat them we understood; but my brother and I always fussed when she did that. I remember several things that she and I did together later in life that were pretty good. We made a plum pudding (which is actually a drunken fruitcake - steamed, not baked.) There was a beef roast done in strong coffee - the dogs took a while to get rid of the evidence - and another beef roast cooked encased in a pound of rock salt. It wasn't bad.

I carry on Mamma's love of cooking and trying new exotic things to this day.

P. S. I just did a spell check on this and found out that "Mamma" is really supposed to be spelled as "Mama". Go figure. I've done it wrong for 60 years, so I AIN'T changing now.

Miss Evelyn Martin

Ah, Miss Evelyn Martin. Such a buxom lass for a second grader to fall for. Miss Martin was a soprano in the Metropolitan Opera before she decided to return home to Greenwood and help the little ones through a tough year. The only scene I vividly remember from the second grade classroom was when I was given an "F" for a drawing. Even at that young and tender age I demanded to know just how any critic could give a budding artist a thumbs down for his best effort. Alas my love for her was blunted by her effete criticism.

Then there was the lunchroom. At Magnolia, it was located in a little white house surrounded by the playground. One could smell it as it was approached. The food was adequate, but the menu deserved some attention. Item: I do not and I will not ever, ever consume spinach in any way. The same goes for liver. How COULD you serve spinach and liver to second graders and expect them to eat it. Alas, we were required to clean our respective plates before joining our classmates at recess. Miss Martin would take charge of a recalcitrant young scholar whose plate was marked by the presence of some offending victual and attempt to force said swill into the scholar's mouth. Now, I had a couple of tricks up my sleeve - or at least in my cuff. We wore blue jeans every day and our mothers would purchase said jeans a little long to allow for growth. The solution to the extra length was a turned up cuff from one to five inches depending on the time of year and the growth state of the kid.

I have always been the type of person who can make use of almost anything to solve a problem. So, those cuffs soon began to hold the liver and spinach for eventual egress to the playground and covert dumping of the offending crud to be scuffed into the sand. She caught me. I don't know how. It may have been the gravy dripping through the fabric - or the unlikely pouch formed by the swill. It too may have been the god-awful smell of my trousers in the classroom after lunch. Anyhow, she decided to sit with me and force me to eat everything. I'm sure she told the lunchroom to prepare unappetizing lunches every day for a week. Caught, scruffed and forced to eat, I relented. She shoved the fork full of spinach into my mouth and I decorated her cleavage with all the milk, roast beef, carrots and one forkful of spinach contained in me. I never had to eat spinach again.