CHRISTMAS AT THE FARM

CHRISTMAS AT THE FARM

Memories Within Memories

Between1988 and 1995, two Heard Cousins, Sarah Jolie Allardyce Rhine and Frances Ruth Jackson Freeman published a Family Newsletter — WE HEARD —for the descendants of James Addison Heard and Clora Frances Nolen Heard.  Each issue included Family History, Current Family News, and Childhood Reminisces. Patricia  Rogers Heard saved many copies, and recently shared these.  Over the intervening 30 years, the “Current News” became reminisces, while the Reminisces became Family History.  In this series of Blogs, we are reprinting materials from WE HEARD.   The original articles are printed in Black; comments and new information are inserted in Red.  With thanks to Pat, who made it possible, we dedicate these Blogs to the Memory of:  SARA JOLIE ALLERDYCE RHINE

WE HEARD

VOLUME I.                      December, 1988.                       Number 2

A CHRISTMAS MEMORY

For all the early years of my life, (1940-1957) Christmas Day was spent at Mawmaw and Pawpaw Heard’s farm.  There was always lots of love, food, and cousins.  I cannot remember much about presents — being together seemed the point, and the joy, of those holidays.  I recall only one very special gift — Aunt Vera brought me a puppy so small she carried it in her pocket.

There were always great meals, including Christmas dinner, but somehow Grandma’s wonderful breakfasts are best remembered.  To me, they were an impossible extravagance.  I can visualize the loaded table.  In the center was a huge platter of quail, fried a golden brown (the Uncles had hunted the day before).  Sometimes tender young squirrel would be similarly lightly breaded and fried, but more often, the squirrel would be stewed with a rich light gravy in which tiny fleets of pepper floated.  Sugar cured ham, sliced thin, and browned in its own juices would cover another plate, and by its side would be a bowl of redeye gravy.  Beside this ham was a dish of unsurpassed delight.  To prepare it, Grandma took red sweet potatoes baked to creamy softness, sliced them lengthwise, and butter-browned the slices to a golden crispness.

But the star of every breakfast was Grandma’s biscuits.  For many years after she had an electric range, she kept the old wood stove in her kitchen, strictly for baking (and keeping the kitchen warm). There was an assortment of wonderful things to eat with the biscuits.  Big cakes (pressed circles,1/2 lb. each) of pale yellow, freshly churned butter sat beside fig and pear preserves (and of course apple butter for John Ballis).  I especially liked to cover a biscuit with gravy and then pour fresh ribbon cane syrup over the whole.  One of the cousins christened this combination, a “mess,” but it tasted better than it looked.

At Grandma’s table, you didn’t ask for simply “milk.”  You had to specify whether you wanted “sweet” milk or the thin, bluish “buttermilk” with specks of butter still floating in it.

Other more traditional “breakfast” foods were there, but in quantities that made them seem strange.  Huge bowls of scrambled eggs, grits, or oatmeal appeared and were refilled as they emptied. 

 

There was one dish I never tasted.  I didn’t like the look or the aroma or even the name.  I encountered this dish again, many years later, at Sunday brunch at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.  The chef called it “clotted cream;” Grandma Heard called it “clabber.”  (It looked and smelled the same.)

In the evenings we would gather around the fireplace in the living room (It was the only warm room in the house.). We would strip the outer coating, and chew freshly-cut sugar cane, then throw the pulp into the fire. None of the modern chemical salts can recreate the colorful flames that spewed from that burning pulp.  Sometimes we would shell and eat nuts, reserving some for pies and cakes. Mawmaw would serve rich, creamy eggnog (nog reserved for adults); and everyone would tell wonderful stories. (Oh how I wish I could hear those stories again.)

Part of the excitement (at least for the children) always centered on the sleeping arrangements.  At least once during the evening one of the Uncles would announce that there were not enough beds and the children who fell asleep first would be hung up on coat hooks for the night.  For years I believed the viability of this threat, mostly because I never could figure out where we would all sleep.

When the size of the crowd permitted, the kids slept four to six to a bed.  Mawmaw achieved economy by making our bed up sideways, after all, we weren’t very long. (We slept cross-wise.).  I feel great sympathy for anyone who has never spent the night snuggled in a warm bed with four or five cousins.  

When there weren’t enough beds, the left-over kids slept on pallets on the floor in the warm living room.  As the fire burned slowly down, we whispered and giggled.  At fairly regular intervals some parent would shout out a warning of the dire consequences that would certainly follow if we did not quiet down and go to sleep.  When things got out of hand, we would hear a pair of feet hit the floor.  By the time the overhead light in the living room went on, we would all be still as mice, pretending deep slumber.

Florence (Adele Heard Larguier) inherited the family gift of story-telling.  She spun the most exciting, never-ending tales, transmitted in a terse whisper in the semidarkness of the flickering fire, over the background ticking of the big old mantle clock.

When the crowd was “too large,” some of the older cousins were occasionally lent out to neighbors.  When Sara and I were in our early teens, our “turn” came.  We were sent to Aunt Bertha’s parents’ home on a bitter cold December night.  This past summer, we revisited that old house, now vacant.  Like most old Louisiana homes it was built with more concern for summer heat than for winter cold.  (It was a Dog-Trot, with the center hall extended to form a long porch with a room on one side.). The spare bedroom was located off an open porch.  It not only had cross ventilation, it had floor ventilation, through quarter-inch spaces between the floor-boards.  The only place colder that that bedroom was the outhouse, that could only be reached by venturing across an unfamiliar, frozen wasteland.  When I hear someone grow nostalgic about the “good old days,” I remember that night and shake my head in appreciation of central heating and indoor plumbing.  

However, I would be more than willing to live that miserable night again if it could be preceded by an evening around that fire and followed by one of MawMaw’s holiday breakfasts.  (Indeed, I would trade everything to see those dear faces and hear again their voices.)