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Patricia's Porch Talk |
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Christmas takes me back to that small town in East Tennessee where I was born. Miss Kate, my grandmother, worked her fingers to the bone for days, cooking and baking for her large family of eight and their offspring. A couple of days before the holiday, she made 'stack cakes', cooking dried apples, peaches, or apricots into a yummy jam-like filling that went between the many thin layers. Storing the covered cakes in a cool corner, she warned, "Don't touch these yet! They need to sit a couple of days before they're ready." I don't have the recipe and I'm certain I don't have the skills to bake those many thin layers, but I will forever remember her old fashioned 'stack cake' as a childhood favorite. There was the year she had the flu. Keeping with tradition, she bought a huge turkey and planned to roast it all night. Knowing she would need to be up frequently to baste the turkey, my grandfather, trying to be helpful, told her to stay in bed and get some much needed rest. He would baste the turkey. True to his word, he set the alarm clock and basted the turkey every two hours all through the night. It was daylight before they discovered the oven hadn't been turned on. Dinner was very late that year. A railroad ran through the center of town, splitting it down the middle. There were a lot of transients…men riding aimlessly in boxcars, others wandering from town to town looking for work. They were called hobos. They marked the homes where they were given food and passed the word along to others. Miss Kate often answered a knock at the back door from a traveler who had heard they would get food there. She turned no one away, making sandwiches or scooping up leftovers and wrapping their meal in wax paper. Once, in the middle of our family dinner, there was a knock at the back door. The slightly built man apologized for the intrusion, then said he hadn't eaten for a couple of days. He asked if she could spare him "just a bite of food, ma'am." Before Miss Kate could reply, my grandfather, who stood behind her, listening, said "It's Thanksgiving. Come inside and have dinner with us." That little man came inside, removed his hat, and sat down to dinner with us. It sounds strange to you, I know, but everyone around that table was related to Miss Kate and Sam so we didn't give it too much thought at the time. It was the way they did things. After I moved away, I eagerly looked forward to going home for the holidays. The family had become scattered; some, like me, had moved just down the way, others had gone all the way up to the Great Lakes. The holidays became a time for reunion, sometimes meeting a new in-law or a brand new cousin. The annual get-together inevitably became our measuring stick. I remember clearly how we worried and whispered among us, "He seems frailer than last year, don't you think?" or "She seems to tire so quickly now; I never noticed that before." Time and the ways of nature eventually took their toll on that generation's holiday reunion, but by that time, we of the newer generations were busy raising our own families and setting our own traditions. The old home place no longer stood but we had established our own. We served up new dishes made from more modern recipes and placed them alongside the old favorites. And just like in Miss Kate's kitchen, several scoops of warm memories were served on the side. Have a wonderful Christmas and while you're making new memories, take a moment to reflect on a couple of older ones. They're all good for the heart.
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