THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
My mother, Ethelene Dyer Jones,
who usually
writes the column “Through Mountain Mists,” is in the hospital with
pneumonia
and other ailments, so I told her I would attempt to write a substitute
column
for her readers this week.
A couple of years ago, I learned
a fun name
for folks like me—people whose parents grew up in the hills and hollers
of
A cosmic possum grew up in some
form of
American suburbia or urban life, but went 'back home' with his or her
parents,
and so had at least a little experience of the old way of life in these
hills.
Hartwell, Hiawassee, and
I remember a lot about going to
my Granddad
Dyer's farm. Widowed when my Mom was a young teenager, he'd remarried
about the
time my parents were married, so I had uncles and aunts who were my age
and
younger. Unfortunately my step-grandmother also died while her children
were
young, so my Mom tried to visit often to help Granddad with raising six
children.
Granddad was a good cook. He had
an unusual
woodstove that also had two electric eyes. The children cooked on the
electric
part, but Granddad always fired up the woodstove. He was a master syrup
maker,
so every meal finished up with a gob of homemade butter in the middle
of your
tin plate. Over this, you poured sorghum, then beat the mixture
together and
sopped it with a hot biscuit. To wash it down, icy cold milk from
Granddad's
Of course, to heat the stove
(and the
house, for that matter) you had to have wood. Granddad's farm had both
fields
and woods. He'd always cut some oaks and hickories and drag them with
his
tractor to the woodlot. When we were teenagers, my uncle Troy and I
used to
have the job of helping cut wood. Granddad had a huge electric motor
that we
could hook up with a belt to a circular saw. The saw had a tilting
cradle that
would push the logs against the saw. OSHA inspectors would faint today
if they
saw this contraption, but somehow Troy and I still have all our
fingers.
Some of the wood was split into
quarters
for the fireplace and large wood heaters. The kitchen needed smaller
kindling
and some pine 'fat lighter.' And we also cut some of the limbs from the
trees
into long pieces that were used to fire up Granddad's syrup cooking
pan.
Many people have seen pictures
of a cane
mill powered by a mule ambling around in a circle. By the time I was
helping
with syrup-making (or getting in the way!) Granddad used a different
method. He
jacked up one rear wheel of his old Chevy pickup, somehow attached the
same
wide belt that was used with the big circular saw, and ran that belt to
the
wheel at the top of the crusher mill. The idling truck turned the
raised wheel
at just the right speed to run the mill.
From the crusher mill, the juice
ran first
into a concrete settling box. I think this was a re-purposed septic
tank or
concrete grave vault, but it was where a lot of the pulp from the
sorghum cane
settled out of the juice. Then the juice ran to the pan and began its
transformation into the best syrup known to man—sweet sorghum.
Granddad not only made his own
sorghum, he
also cooked up a lot of other folks' crops, too. The juice entered the
pan at
the lower end, over the firebox door. Underneath the pan was a long
firebox
heated with all those long limbs we'd cut a few weeks before. On one
side,
there was a step so that workers could keep an eye on the syrup and
skim off
the scum (skimmings) that developed as the syrup cooked. A roof kept
off the
rain, but also kept the billows of steam confined near the workers.
Often it
would 'rain' under the roof as steam condensed and dripped back down. A
large
chimney at the upper end gave a good 'draft' for the fire and kept it
roaring.
The syrup wound its way back and
forth through
a series of baffles, gradually boiling uphill until it was cooked
completely.
At the right moment, Granddad or my uncle Bluford would remove the
stopper and
let the syrup strain through many layers of cheesecloth into a large
barrel.
Yellow Jackets were always trying to get at the syrup, attracted by the
sweet
smell. Maybe they account for the sharp tang that's part of the flavor
of good
sorghum!
The last job was filling the
pints and
quarts and attaching labels. Granddad started as a syrupmaker at a time
when he
would have to put syrup in earthenware jugs and peddle it from farm to
farm. He
lived to see the day that people would drive from Atlanta or even
further away
to buy his syrup. Sadly, no one in our immediate family has made syrup
in the last
couple of years.
Hog killin' time was also busy.
It was
hard, dirty work for the most part, but the reward that evening was
cracklin'
bread, tenderloin, and for Granddad, a plate of scrambled eggs and
brains.
Somehow I never wanted to share that particular delicacy!
For many years, Granddad's
household got
their water from a well on their back porch. At first it was completely
kid-powered, with a bucket and windlass. Later, an electric pump was
added. But
either way, in the dry part of the summer, that well usually went dry.
That
meant that any kids or grandkids who were handy when water was needed
were sent
across the road, over the side of the ridge to the spring, to bring
home two
five-gallon buckets each. Having to carry water a half mile or so helps
you
appreciate being able to turn on a tap anytime.
I could talk about long walks to
visit our
great-aunts, of watching a long plume of dust on the distant road as we
anticipated the visit of the bookmobile, of playing on the barn roof
and the
haystack, of 'skating' in winter on the frozen water that collected on
the
'cane chews,' and so much more…but there's no room, and a deadline
looms.
c2009 by
Ethelene Dyer
Jones; published Feb. 26, 2009 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville,
GA.
Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Updated August 13,
2009
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