Month: May 2018

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Soft Gingerbread Cake

Soft Gingerbread Cake

Maybe you have a memory of soft gingerbread warm from the oven. I have such a memory but not from my childhood. When I lived in Reedsport, Oregon in 1984-1985 a friend invited us to dinner. I do not remember what she served for dinner. But for dessert, she served warm gingerbread with applesauce. It must have been VERY good because I still remember it today. Gingerbread does remind me of homey things and long ago days. I usually think of gingerbread in the winter but here I am home on a rainy stormy day and thinking of gingerbread. It is made from simple ingredients and ready to eat quickly. Because of this memory and my usual make do attitude, I went searching for a soft gingerbread cake recipe using ingredients I have on hand. I found a simple recipe at Once Upon a Chef. I adapted it a little. I used granulated sugar because I only had granulated sugar. I found it works well. I also love to use my flour sifter to sift the dry ingredients.  I chose to bake it in my small 13X9 cookie sheet pan so that it would be a bit thinner. I think you will like this recipe just as it is… My grandchildren happened along at the right time and shared in the sampling. We all agreed it tastes wonderful with a cold glass of milk.

You can find the recipe on the website below.

( Adapted from https://www.OnceUponaChef.com/recipes-Gingerbread-cake.html )

When I got ready to make a picture this is all that was left!

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From the Cotton Patch-Memories

We may truly believe in the accuracy of our memories, only to discover years later that our version of what happened disagrees with the versions of others who were there. This can be particularly true of children who blindly trust others and who tend to take things literally. Children whose older siblings tease or use scare tactics may have memories of what was told them or what was impressed on their emotions rather than what really happened.

Having two older sisters who sometimes worked together in creating impressions on me, I had some ‘memories’ that were later “put to the test” and found wanting. In laying the foundation for one particular story, however, it seems reasonable to relate things that they did to me before my memory kicked in. As you read this, please, keep in mind that all is told in sisterly love… for they have long since been forgiven.

My birth weight was guessed by the country doctor who delivered me as he hefted me up in his hands….. twelve pounds! (As you can imagine, even if he were off by a pound, I must have been a very large baby). As my mother became strong enough to take on her household duties, she relied a great deal on my sisters to keep watch over me. They probably did as good a job as any six and seven-year-olds could do, but the imaginations of the two together sometimes led them to try things that one, alone, might not try.

A proposed fun thing to do was to put me into our rural mailbox. Here, my weight turned out to be a blessing. As they tried to stuff me into the box, I was too big…. but that’s not the end of the story! They weren’t satisfied to give up on such a neat idea, so they ran to tell our mother that they had stuffed me into the box and couldn’t get me out. Needless to say, Mother was not nearly so thrilled with their joke as they imagined she would be, even after she saw that I was not harmed.

Another before-memory escapade that must be told concerns two china-head dolls that belonged to my sisters. They had each received a doll, of which they were extremely proud, so there was no need for jealousy. Right? Well, so it was in the beginning, but dolls with china heads are quite fragile, and it was not surprising that one of them got broken.

The tragedy happened at the hands of the doll’s owner so she could not blame anyone else, but she could be jealous that her sister still had a doll. In fact, she was so jealous she plotted to have baby sister “accidentally” break the surviving doll. After laying the doll down on a hard surface, my envious sister placed a stick into my small hands and instructed me to hit the doll. She had not counted on my inability to hit the doll hard enough to break it, so she did what she had to do… she broke it herself! Naturally, the owner was told that I had broken her doll, and that account was believed for several years. I ‘learned’ of the wrongdoing when I was about ten years old, as we were riding home from the funeral of a young cousin. The seriousness of the occasion must have pricked an over-burdened conscience, for the guilty sister made a full confession!

Memories of ‘sister abuse’ all center around my fifth and sixth years. The reality of ‘mad dogs’ gave rise to scaring little sister over any strange dog that came around. Once a dog wandered into the school building where some of us were playing, and one of my sisters declared that the dog had rabies. I was duly terrified and clambered to safety where I remained until the dog had gone on its way.

Sometimes fears that are impressed on children make them overly fearful as adults, but I had the story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” to help me develop a “wait and see” attitude. I was also blessed with a very practical mother whose calmness allayed many fears that were self-induced as well as those projected by others.

It is with good feelings that I recall my family and our rural Alabama home. The cotton patch is one identity of those years, but for now there are several sister stories left to tell.

This is the eleventh basic article of “From the Cotton Patch”. As a grandmother, I have seen older siblings tease the younger ones in ways that sometimes seem cruel. I prefer to believe that teasing within the family can help buffer one against trials of teenage and adult years.

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30 Minute Cure

Whenever Mother knew that some of the children in school had scabies (itch), she was ready and waiting for one of her own children to start scratching. I’m sure she kept up with the latest treatments offered by the medical world, and even though sulfur and grease was considered a reputable cure, it took **time **to do its job. So when Mother heard of the “30 Minute Cure”, there was no justification for denying her family of this modern method of dealing with the problem.

The time came when we, or some of us, started scratching, and Mother was ready. No more days and days for her children to get rid of the little critters that were buried under their skin causing the red rash with its awful itching. Her children were going to be cured in thirty minutes…….. The only picture that I have retained about that memorable scene is that a #3 “bathtub” was in the middle of the room when Mother began treating her afflicted children. I do not know who was first nor how many of us were introduced to the “miraculous” liquid, before the howling became so intense that our dad jerked up the miracle cure and threw it out the door and into the yard (the same yard he had thrown the burning lantern into a few chapters back). I don’t recall that any of us were treated for scabies after that, nor do I recall Dad throwing anything else out of the house!

Several years later, however, Dad did come to my rescue again. It seems that I had a rash which I attacked with rigorous scratching, and Mother’s fear of scabies returned. To allay her suspicions and to save me from her threatened reaction, Dad took me to the doctor. Needless to say, it was not scabies, or I would not be telling this, and probably just as needless to mention is the gratitude I had for Dad’s sparing me the embarrassment of the old treatment with its telltale smell or the impossible pain of the “30 Minute Cure”.

Before leaving this story, I must describe that particular trip to the doctor. Most people today are aware that family doctors made house calls in the first part of this century. How common it was for patients to do as Dad and I did on that occasion I do not know.

It was on a Sunday, and Dad, as usual, had a preaching appointment in a neighboring community. I accompanied Dad to his appointment, and when it was time to leave, we returned by way of our family doctor’s private home. We drove into the front yard and Dad summoned the doctor to come outside, which he did. I remember standing on the lawn as the doctor looked at the rash on my hands, arms, neck etc. He believed that I had a food allergy and “prescribed” that I restrain my appetite for sweets. Whether he was right or not, I’ll never know, but after that, I probably restrained my urges to scratch more than my urges for sweets! Giving up sweets would have been almost as bad as suffering through the treatment for scabies. Besides, I have a suspicion that my weight had more to do with that “prescription” than the rash, and I’ve also toyed with the idea that the doctor and Dad may have had a conspiracy going.

Having followed several of my ancestors into becoming a public school teacher, I understand the fear of exposure to all the “bugs” that attack school children. I am thankful that scabies seemingly ran its course and became much less of a threat during the years that my own children attended school and during the years that I taught. The dread of those years was head lice! Medical technology has provided, however, for the development of a shampoo that works quite well for head lice without the embarrassing smell or other telltale signs that accompanied the treatment of scabies.

Families are better educated today in preventive measures, normal households are better equipped for the practice of personal hygiene, and visiting the family druggist can often save a visit to the doctor.

I will have to submit that the “good ole days” in medical matters was not “back when”!

This article is the tenth one.

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Cotton Patch – Bed Bugs

When an* Old Timer *like myself recalls “The Good Old Days”, the big, the bad and the ugly are often forgotten. I don’t want my grandchildren to accuse me of showing them my childhood through rose-colored glasses, so here is a chapter of “The Rest of the Story.”

It’s true that I actually enjoyed living in rural Alabama in a somewhat impoverished condition, and it’s true that I did not mind the hard labor of working in the cotton fields, or chopping firewood, of feeding pigs and chickens, of helping plant, weed, and harvest in the garden. Perhaps, of all the things that I had to do, the least enjoyment came from milking the cow (after I got over the thrill of learning how!) I loved the outdoors, and most of my work tended to be outside. Perhaps that is why my priorities, today, are noticeably not in keeping an immaculate house. In that time and that place, everyone pretty much experienced the same way of life. Our family was not at the bottom of the economic ladder, but it certainly was not near the top. Because our parents worked in education and in church ministry, we enjoyed a great deal of respect among most of our neighbors, and that made up for some of the financial instability.

Now, you will accuse me of painting the rosy picture in order to take the gray tinge out of the “not-so” rosy that I’m about to tell! The truth is, I don’t feel about the conditions and events that I’m preparing to relate as I expect most of you will feel as you read them. It was life…it was the reality of the times.

Much of what you have been reading in the last several articles took place in a community named Piney Chapel in the years between 1933 and 1937. Dad was the principal over a school that contained grades 1 through 12, and it was where I completed the first and second grades. My brother, J.H., was born just prior to our moving to the community, and a second brother, Will Ed, was born while we lived there.

The teachers’ home at Piney Chapel had walls made of beaded ceiling (rather narrow wooden boards with grooves running the entire length of the boards.)

The grooves made painting extremely difficult, but an infestation of little critters created the need for an even more difficult job than painting! It was not a shame to have a few bedbugs, but to allow them to multiply unchallenged was not considered appropriate management of one’s household. Besides, they had a habit of biting human beings as they slept!

Well, as “luck” would have it, the family or families before us had either done nothing or had no success in their battle with the bedbugs. The grooves in the walls were alive with those little critters, and Dad and Mother set about to get rid of them. I remember very little of that initial declaration of war, but I do remember that more than once our mattresses were hauled outside and inspected carefully. I think we applied kerosene to the crevices around the edges of each mattress and around the “button” tufts that kept the cotton stuffing inside the mattress from shifting around. I also recall fumigating the house by closing it up and burning sulfur inside. Mother was a very determined lady and such jobs were attacked with fervor!

Being closely involved in school affairs of all kinds, Mother was aware of every kind of communicable “disease” or condition that was making the rounds among the children. I’m sure there were times that we children were subjected to treatments for itch (scabies) when we had no more than dry skin or a harmless rash. Frequent bathing and applications of sulfur and grease were the common methods of treatment for scabies, and if you have never gone to school smelling of sulfur and grease, you can’t possibly know how humiliating life can get!

Next time: “The Thirty Minute Cure!”

This ninth article shows a “not so pretty” picture of the “good old days”. Life had its bad moments, and the problems with pests and diseases that were rampant then would be unwelcome guests in this modern world of my grandchildren. Bearing up under life’s struggles may produce great strength, but I’m thankful some trials are gone.

Reprinted with the permission of Redding Magazine.

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Cotton Patch – The Maytag Washing Machine

Where there’s a will, there’s a way! Whether that is a universal truth or not, it appears to have a lot of credibility in view of numerous tasks that have been accomplished against all odds.

Dad needed a method of income during the weeks that school was not in session, and he always seemed to find something to supply that need. Well, when he became aware of the “new-fangled” washing machine, he saw not only something his wife needed, he saw something that all women needed. That meant there would be a wide-open market, once people knew that these machines were the marvel he saw them to be.

Advertising, through any of several types of media, is a good vehicle by which to sell products today, but in rural Alabama in the thirties, only a few, ineffective methods were available. Newspapers and seasonal catalogs, such as Sears and Roebuck and J. C. Penney, provided many people with their information about new products. It would take more motivation than some questionable promises and a pretty picture on paper to cause one to turn loose of enough hard-earned money to make such a major purchase as a washing machine.

Whether Dad initiated the following method of sales or whether the Maytag dealership initiated it, I never knew. Dad attached a homemade platform to the back of our Model A Ford car, and onto this platform he loaded a washing machine. It was in such a manner that he set out to educate the public about this wonderful machine method of washing clothes. He went about the countryside demonstrating this revolutionary way of doing laundry to anyone who would allow him to do so!

There was still the washpot for supplying hot water, and there were the rinse tubs in which the soap was removed from the washed clothes, but forever gone was the metal rub board, and forever gone was the awesome task of hand-wringing the water from the clothes! There was a wringer on the washer that consisted of two hard rubber rollers through which the clothes were put in order to squeeze the water out. I only have a vague memory of the wringers on those first machines, but I suspect that they were turned by hand. The later models, however, were automated and could be quite persistent in pulling fingers and hands through with the clothing, if one were not careful.

The wringers did a tremendous job of removing the excess water from the clothes, and the agitator in the tub of the machine “agitated” the dirt right out of those dirty clothes without scrubbing them on a washboard.

Recently, I was privileged to see an old gasoline powered engine with a pedal on a long metal arm, and I recalled that the washing machine also had such a pedal. When one was ready to start the engine, the pedal was given a hard, strong kick which caused the engine to fire and start its noisy, wonderful work.

Another part of doing laundry in those days was that of starching cotton dress clothes, especially men’s shirts. It caused the material to iron smoother and gave some stiffness to help collars and cuffs look better. In the absence of Faultless or Argo starch, Mother made her own. First, she made a paste of cold water and flour, then slowly, while stirring vigorously, she poured boiling water into it, making a clear thick liquid that worked quite well.

Starch made outer clothing look really great, but it could be irritating in clothes worn next to the skin. Once, when Mother was helping a neighbor lady wash, one of my sisters and the lady’s son thought it would be neat to starch a pair of his mother’s rather large, cotton undergarments. I understand that they made quite a sight as they dried very stiff and full-figured on the clothesline!

I don’t know how many washing machines Dad succeeded in selling, but our washdays were never the same after the summer we experienced the new Maytag washing machine!

The eighth in a series of a grandmother’s recollection of days when life in rural Alabama was full of hard, but satisfying work; a time of few material possessions, but also few wants; a time when families knew their neighbors and interacted with them in common concerns; and when the front porch offered peaceful relaxation at day’s end.

 

 

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Cotton Patch – Washday

Washday was a very memorable event before washing machines took over the hard work. Private wells had brought the water supply closer to most families, and the method of bringing water out of the wells went through several improvements making the process easier and more efficient. The method of removing dirt from clothes, however, had advanced very little over that of the days when people washed on the banks of rivers and creeks.

The hand-over-hand method of pulling on a rope to draw water from a well was replaced by the pulley and, or, windlass. The vacuum hand pump was probably the greatest advancement before electricity, but most of our neighbors were still drawing water by hand when the first washing machines appeared. The only tools available for washing, up to that time, consisted of a big black washpot, some tin tubs (which doubled as bathtubs on Saturday nights), a washboard, some homemade lye soap and a lot of muscle power.

The entire family was often engaged in securing firewood to build a fire under the kettle, in drawing up the large quantity of water to fill the kettle and rinse tubs, in scrubbing dirty clothing with the help of the washboard, in wringing water from the clothes, in pinning the clothes on a clothesline or fence, in cleaning up the mess, and in retrieving the fresh, clean clothes after they had dried in the sun-drenched air. A lot of family togetherness made the job less burdensome on any one person and had a great potential for developing healthy work attitudes. As we worked, play and fun were not forgotten. We could get in some joking around as we worked, and there was always a lot of singing….besides, when the washing was done, there was all that warm, sudsy water that could be played in before it was “toted” off to the garden or flower beds.

Washing clothes by this method could be fun to children, but it was recognized as a backbreaking job and one that took adult skills and strength to do well. Fire around the washpot and boiling hot water inside it were fearful things that had to be supervised constantly. A washboard only “did its work” when soap was applied to dirty clothing which was then rubbed up and down over its metal ribs. This process could easily result in bleeding, scuffed up knuckles! Then there was the task of getting as much water from the clothes as possible. It was not so hard to wring water from a washcloth or a pair of socks, but wringing water from a pair of men’s trousers or a bed sheet was not a job for small, weak hands.

An older cousin was once visiting my sisters, and while there, she helped with some hand washing. I was amazed at how strongly she wrung the water from those clothes. My sister explained that Madeline had developed great strength in her hands from taking over many of the responsibilities that had belonged to her mother, who had died some years before. Madeline not only impressed me with her physical strength, but I remember her as having a happy countenance, despite her hardships. I believe that her example of survival made its impact for good in my developing perception of life.

One summer during school vacation, Dad made contact with someone that sold him on the usefulness of a new gasoline-powered Maytag washer. It was similar to the old wringer washers that were later powered by electricity, but this one had a long exhaust hose that took and released the fumes some several feet away from the machine. It made a popping noise so loud that neighbors far and near could hear it releasing its power to wash clothes in a way that would revolutionize family washday. This new gadget was something all housewives would surely demand once they knew what it could do. Our dad knew how much it would mean to his overworked wife, but how could he afford such a luxury??? The salary of a poorly paid school teacher was hardly the answer!

…….Next time: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way!”

Explanation of a confusing statement last month: In the unedited form of that article, I related that the ice delivery man had performed at school functions by walking across the stage on his hands. My error was in not editing my memory along with my article! Oh, well, my grandchildren already knew I’m not perfect!

Reprinted with permission from Redding Magazine.