TADPOLES AND PINE BARK STEW

You’ve heard the stories from some parents about how they had to walk through snow and ice for miles to get to school?   Well, I didn’t have to walk miles and miles and in southeastern Georgia, a snowflake is a rarity.  But I did have to walk a little less than a mile.  I lived just inside the limit for the school bus route. 

Walking to school wasn’t so bad most of the time, however.   Walking home was even better.  If I was running late going to school, sometimes my Momma or Daddy would take me.  Daddy had an old beat up truck with wooden sides that would make the Clampett’s truck look like a Cadillac.   He loved taking me to school in that ugly truck.  I would have to be really late or it would have to be pouring rain for me to let him take me to school in that truck and then he would laugh and take me right up as close as he could to the school building.  I’d beg him to let me out at the corner.  But nooooooo, he’d drive right on up to the front.  He was such a teaser!  But I loved my Daddy!  Momma would have to borrow Biggie’s old Ford before we finally got a car of our own.  It was Mercury and I thought we were pretty rich to have Mercury.

Walking home from school allowed me the opportunity to lollygag.  If I went a certain way, I could cut through the backyards of some folks and follow a stream that had some neat tadpoles.  That way, if I had time, I could stop and play and catch a few.  Sometimes I’d catch some and put them in a canning jar.  Come to think of it, that wasn’t too smart.  Wonder what happened to the tadpoles.  Guess becoming a frog wasn’t in their future.

My Granny Elkins lived along the route to school so I could stop and visit her when I was very young.  Granny raised chickens and ducks.  The story goes that I would go out and pick up the little baby ducklings and love them to death.  Literally.  I thought they were so sweet that I just squeezed them so hard it smothered them.  I remember helping Granny gather the eggs from the nests too.   I wasn’t much of a farm girl.  I was a bit heavy handed and broke quite a few eggs. 

Granny was a super snow cone maker.  She could crush ice with a hammer and flour sack better than a commercial blender any day.  She’s chip off ice from a block of ice out of her ice box, put it in a flour sack, put a rubber band around the end of it and beat the heck out of it with her hammer out on the back porch shelf.  Then she’d take the fine “snow” and put it in a glass, pour some cool aid out of a little glass bottle on it (I liked grape) and top it off with some sugar.  Man that was something good on a hot summer day.  If I was lucky, she would have a left over piece of “Mary Ella” toast or a biscuit which I would poke my finger in and fill with syrup.  (“Mary Ella” toast is what I called her toast for some reason.  It was made in her wood stove and buttery crisp through and through.)

After Granddaddy died, my Granny moved to Atlanta, so I didn’t get to visit her on the way home from school anymore.  I missed that.  I loved Granny.  She was fun.

Daddy had some big heavy earth moving equipment like a tractor and other big things that I didn’t know anything about but he rode me on his Caterpillar tractor when he was doing the grading work for the new local golf course.  He scared me half to death when he was crossing a creek because I just knew the thing was going to turn over and we would be drowned and lost forever.  I trusted my Dad, but not that much.   I begged him to let me off, but he kept right on going through that creek instead of on the bridge.   Turns out we made it home ok.  Daddy took care of me just like he always did.   I was his “baby”.

Daddy and Uncle Aubrey fished a lot and they cooked a lot of fish and ate a lot of fish.  Many a time, we would get in Uncle Aubrey's car and drive all the way to Savannah, late in the afternoon, just so they could eat some fish or shrimp at the little fish camp they loved, on one of the creeks on the road to Tybee.  That’s a long way just to eat some fish and shrimp!

They also had this secret recipe for something they called Pine Bark stew.  It was a concoction of fish, rice, and catsup and various other secret ingredients unknown to man and they would get together in our kitchen at all hours. and cook up a mess of this stuff and eat their fill.  I wasn’t too keen on Pine Bark stew.  Uncle Aubrey had some weird ideas about some things and I wasn’t too sure I wanted to partake of that even with my Daddy.  I remembered several times Uncle Aubrey slipping some barbecued goat on the table with our real barbeque at our family reunions, so I was a little leery of his cuisine.

My Daddy lovingly teased me all of my growing up years.  But I know he loved me more than life itself.  My Daddy was my hero.  You see, I never saw anything but the good in my Daddy.  That’s the way it should be with children.  You love your parents, you respect them and you honor them.  None of us are perfect.