Dinner on the Grounds

Mama got up earlier than usual to make her famous Banana Pudding.  That's how I knew it was “Dinner on the Grounds” church day because that’s what she always did.  As was the tradition at all the Baptist Churches in the south, when it was time for “Dinner on the Grounds” every family was required to make a “dish” of something.  I hated those Sundays because I would rather go home after church and play.  Daddy didn’t always go to church with us, but on those days he went.  I hated the “Dinners” (they were actually lunch, but everyone in the south calls lunch dinner).  I hated them because as soon as we got outside to where the ladies had the tables set up with the food on them, my great aunts Minnie, Effie and Beedie along with a slew of other people I didn’t know would come over and have to kiss me like they had never seen me before, right on the mouth!  They wore way too much “old lady” perfume and way too much hair spray.  Kissing and hugging all the little kids was something of a ritual for all of them.  I guess because they were so old, they were genuinely happy to see us young ones.  And they were a gossiping group!  My grandma (Daddy’s Mama), “Ma” was included with the best of them.  Ma didn’t go to church every Sunday either.  She was usually “down” with something, but on these Sundays she relished the thought of bringing her potato salad and throwing in with all the ladies for a good old time of fellowship and eating.  Everyone ate way too much and it was all good old Southern food that was probably bad for you.  Afterwards, they had singing in the church.   Thankfully, we didn’t stay for that. 

I liked the other Sundays better, when we would just go straight home from church and Grandma Polly would have “dinner” for us at her house.  Grandpa always bought the Sunday Times Picayune and I’d lay across the cool concrete floor of their front porch and look at the funny paper section.  Grandma and Grandpa (Mama’s Parents) never went to church, although I knew they were religious in their own way.  Their church was the Church of God Church (an actual church).  I had been there for funerals and such. 

After we ate grandma’s good cooking, I could go play.  No kissing, no hugging, no singing.

Uncle Ben's Death

  

I sat far enough out in the yard so that the thick black mop water missed me as the ladies swept it off the back porch of Uncle Ben’s old house.  I was crouched down digging in the dirt, looking for doodle bugs.  They were those little bugs you could find under pine trees.  Doodle bugs made a tell-tell inverted cone in the sand where they had gone round and round and buried themselves.  I sang the song as I stirred the hole with a pine straw.  “Doodle Bug, Doodle Bug, come to my wedding, Doodle Bug, Doodle Bug come to my wedding, Doodle Bug, Doodle Bug, come to my wedding, early in the morning.”  And after that if he was in the hole, he would appear.  He sort of “scooted” backwards and tried to bury himself again.  I was intent on occupying myself as the ladies were on getting the house clean for the mourners that would come.

I heard the phone ring and heard Mama talking to Grandma Polly earlier that morning.  I knew whatever it was, it was big!  We had gone over to Uncle Ben’s house as soon as the people had taken the body away, so that Grandma Polly and Mama and the other ladies could clean the house (which I don’t think had been cleaned for a while).  They were getting it ready for the wake, which I knew was where the funeral home delivered the body back to the house and people would come and sit with it all day and night for three days before the funeral. 

Mama had brought her own broom and mop and they stirred up some dirt that must have been there for years, because after they wet it, it was thick and black, almost as thick as molasses.  I had never seen anything so disgusting.  It smelled too!  Like old!  The house had no air conditioning and you could just smell the death in it too.  I guess that’s another reason I stayed outside. 

Wakes were a big deal in McNeill.  Everyone came and brought lots of food which sat out on a long table for the whole time.  They'd put a cloth over it to keep the flies out.  Thinking back, I wonder why people didn’t get sick from that food, but I guess they never did.  As they gathered together at these otherwise sad events, they would laugh and tell stories about the deceased person. 

 Yep, wakes were a big deal in McNeill!

Grandma Polly's Kitchen

One of the happiest places in my childhood memories is my Grandma Polly’s kitchen.  She was slightly heavy set (thank God she’s dead, cause she would have wacked me over the head with her iron skillet for saying that!).  She always wore the cutest little aprons, the kind that came from the waist down. Not those with the bibs.  But her hair was always done just so, with the lightest of makeup on her face and always some lip gloss.  She even went through a phase of wearing wigs, when it was close to her beauty shop day and her hair was not so cute. 

Anyway, Grandma Polly kept me while Mama worked.  Our day usually started in the kitchen, where she’d set a coffee cup in front of me with evaporated milk and sugar covering the bottom in anticipation of the coffee she was brewing.  I stirred it up to make what tasted like condensed milk and usually had eaten it before the coffee was done.  “I’m not gonna give you any more if you eat this!” she’d fuss, as she spooned more sugar over the evaporated milk she had replenished.  “You’re gonna rot your teeth out before you're ten,” she continued.  Then when the coffee was done, she’d pour the steaming hot liquid over the mixture in the cup up to half full.  I only got a half cup, ‘cause “coffee will stunt your growth,” she’d say.

Most of all I remember the smell of her homemade yeast rolls.  She would make enough for the whole town of McNeill, it seemed.  Grandma Polly’s yeast rolls were famous in McNeill!  The dough was usually on its way to rising when I got there for coffee.  Then she’d punch it and knead it some more and make little round balls, which she placed in baking pie dishes.  I’d watch those round balls rise until it seemed like they were going to spill over the sides of the dishes.  Then she’d placed them in the oven to bake and just before they were done, she’d brush real butter all over the top to make them shine a golden brown.  The smell alone made your mouth water for the delicious taste of buttery rolls.  I know the reason I am “slightly” overweight today, because on yeast roll days, we had sloppy joes on the rolls for lunch and then homemade jelly on the rolls for dessert!  Mmmm!  I can just taste that now.  Then Grandma Polly would send me out to deliver a half dozen pans to the people within walking distance.

Grandma Polly was always making something in her kitchen.  If she was at a loss for food items to make for dinner, she would combine leftovers in some flour and egg and fry them in her iron skillet and call them pea patties or potato patties or whatever the vegetable. 

She fried her catfish in lard and made her hushpuppies from scratch on the days that grandpa spent the day floating Boley Creek in his canoe.  He’d come back with ice chests that were filled with brim and catfish.  I never ate the brim because they had too many little bones.  I would always snag a coke from the ice chest (the little ones, that seemed to taste better than the ones in the big bottles).  The coke bottles smelled like fish 'cause he didn't separate them in the ice chest.  But they were ice cold and I loved the bite.

Although it would seem that it was often scarce, food was a large part of growing up in McNeill.  We lived right next door to my grandparents, Polly and Walter.  In the summertime, Grandpa would bring home watermelons and put them under the azalea bushes to keep them cool.  Then in the afternoon when it wasn’t so hot out, he’d yell, “I’m cuttin’ a watermelon!”  And we would all rush over for the cool sweetness, that wasn’t perfect without a dash of salt for contrast.  Some nights he’d call us on the telephone and tell us he was making root beer floats and we were there before the ice cream bubbled up in the Barq’s Root Beer! 

Yep!  Those were the good ole days!