By Alice Hickman
heartpaths@yahoo.com
We sat around exhausted from our traditional turkey dinner. Uncle Bernard had been brought home for the day. Mother huddled around him doing her usual duty of making sure his plate stayed filled. Auntie, who is barely able to stand on her own two feet, kept insisting that she be allowed to cook, wash dishes or something. After all, she wasn't use to having someone else do the work while she sat and watched. She kept trying to slip in and take over.
The author's mother, Mae Weaver Jennings and Uncle Bernard Weaver
Finally, she settled into an easy chair and then quickly moved up
to the quilting frames to take a few stitches, while we visited and
reminisced about former days and former ways.
Sister and I decided to begin gathering information for a prospective family cookbook.
Uncle began looking at photo albums and Mom curled up in my recliner.
We start questioning Auntie, being the only one of the three that hears well enough to converse with ease.
Our collection will be named "Grandma Weaver's family Cookbook". We hope her descendants will be willing to make contributions of not only recipes, but stories, pictures and their version of family history.
Our grandmother, Delphia Lockard married John Weaver on October 12, 1916. Delphia grew up at Cox's Mills, often working for 50 cents a week. John grew up on Laurel. He was 15-17 years older than Delphia. All we know about their early days together was that John wanted a wife who could make good biscuits. We know that Delphia could make good biscuits.
Her natural mother's name was Fanny Mae Gainer Lockard. Fanny died when Delphia was nine years old. Her stepmother was Amy Hinzman, remembered as Grandma Amy.
"Grandma Amy was the only grandmother us kids ever knew", Mom inserted. "She was a good grandmother too! When I went to high school at Tanner I stayed with Grandma Amy. She got up before daylight and fixed me breakfast and packed me a lunch to take to school", she added.
As sister questioned Auntie about Grandma's recipes, Auntie replied, "Mom made meals from recipes in her head". She taught her youngest daughter, our aunt, to cook the same way.
"Mom made everything with a 'dab' of this and a 'dab' of that. She used what she had. Not as we now do. She didn't have a store on the corner to run over and get whatever she didn't have", Auntie continued.
For mincemeat pies, Grandma Weaver used currants and goose berries that she gathered from her own bushes in the garden.
Mincemeat was made from hogs head. It was cooked until the meat fell off the bone. Some people used the tongue, also. Odds and ends were added to the ground meat. "Raisins was the only fruit that Mom bought from the store for her mincemeat", Auntie said. She used whatever home canned fruits that she had in her cellar. Apples, peaches, black berries, grapes, huckleberries and green gage plums were some of her favorites. Cinnamon,
nutmeg, allspice and cloves were mixed in for the finished product.
The meat and fruits were cooked in a pot until thick, then poured into quart canning jars while still hot and sealed.
"Us kids loved green gage plums", Auntie added. "They were hard to find back then". Grandma got her green gage plums from Bernard Wilson in a neighboring community. Mr. Wilson attended church at Nobe much of the time as did the Weaver family. "She always spoke a year ahead for green gage plums so she could make her special mincemeat and have extras for us kids", Auntie boasted.
Sister and I marvel that our Grandma was such a wise woman and obviously knew how to plan ahead.
Auntie continued on with Grandma's biscuit recipe. "She put her flour in a bowl, made a hole in center and added buttermilk, lard, baking powder, salt and soda. She mixed it all together with her hands. Of course she had washed them first," Auntie explained. "She then pinched off enough dough the size needed for her biscuits", she concluded.
"Lard was rendered from hogs and kept in quart or pint jars, ready to scoop out", Auntie explained as we questioned for more explanation.
"What were examples of meals that Grandma prepared at home," I asked.
"Brown gravy and biscuits. Cornbread and milk. Blackberry cobbler with milk was a meal for us sometimes." "I didn't like milk with mine, so I ate it plain with a little sugar on top", Auntie remembered. "Potatoes if we had them. Brother and I were talking shortly before he died about Mom's potato salad. She would dice up potatoes after they were cooked and cooled, then added diced onion to them. Sweetened vinegar was poured over them. Salt and pepper were added." "Vinegar and sugar was set on the wood cook
stove to warm. It was poured over the potatoes."
"Breakfasts were pancakes made with buttermilk sometimes. Syrup was sugar and water boiled with maple flavoring. Sometimes we had molasses or chocolate syrup made with cocoa, sugar and milk if we had it."
The stores that were close were John Kight's store at Nobe where the present residence of Dallas and Carlene Frederick is. Otto Amos' store was on Trace Fork. This is where Grandma purchased regular items such as flour, soda and baking powder if she needed extra. Amos' store was across the road from Trace Fork Church beside the present home of Dave Smith. "Back then, there was a pot bellied wood stove in the store. Men gathered around the stove in
evenings and chewed and spit in cans kept near", Auntie recalled as memories came back.
"Mom had a big pan that she made biscuits and cornbread in", Auntie said. "So big it filled the whole oven".
The stories continued, just as Sister and I had hoped they would. Auntie is a walking history concerning her mother and life back than. It didn't take much prompting on our part. Mother sat and listened too, adding information as she thought of it.
Our afternoon concluded with the humdinger story of all. "I remember a big snow once", Auntie said. Brothers Johnny and Bernard and I shoveled snow and made paths to the hen house and to the barn. It was very deep, about to the knees. When we came back into the house, Mom had hot coffee made and I remember that it smelled so good. Pancakes and coffee for breakfast. She had made plenty and there was a little left over. Mom added some more to that and we had pancakes for dinner. There was a little left over then too.
Mom added some to that and we had pancakes for supper. Brother Bernard came in and sat down to eat and said, "Dammed old pancakes again". "I'm so tired of them that they make my teeth hurt", he grumbled as he got up to leave for Amos' Store to buy something. "Maybe Vienna sausages"", Auntie said.
Hope your Thanksgiving Day was endearing as mine. Thanksgiving is family. Family is "where the heart is". | 
