Childhood Memories of September

Donna spurred memory when she remarked that she used to start school after Labor Day.

One of my standout memories is of a Labor Day when Mama loaded us children up to go buy school supplies in Ft. Valley.  The old store building where we stopped was torn down long ago, but I can still see it in memory.  I was so pleased with the blue denim notebook, the Blue Horse lined paper and my new pencil case with lovely new pencils and that nice box of crayons!

We went back home after shopping to find Daddy cutting grass.  I distinctly remember that morning as cool enough to wear a sweater when we went to town, but the afternoon was warm.  The grass Daddy had cut was lying dull and lifeless over the yard with that hay-like look it will take on.  

And that day, Granny and Big Mama came over and Mama served them a big turkey dinner, for no reason other than it was September.  I kept asking if it was Thanksgiving and everyone kept assuring me it was not.  

We must have been relatively new to living in that house at that time, because the dining room proper was still being used as a dining room.  Mama and Daddy soon turned it into a den with a Ben Franklin coal stove to keep the kitchen and 'Den' warm during the cold months.

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One year we happened to go up to Aunt Johnny and Uncle Herman's on the opening day of Dove Season, which generally takes place the first weekend in September.  If you weren't a beach-y sort or a barbecuing sort of person, you most likely were the hunting type.  My family being mostly farmers they were the hunting sort.

I recall well the joy I felt looking out over the freshly cut dry corn field where the hunt was to take place.  Big old oak trees separated the yard and the field and offered welcome shade for the tables set up for the hunters to clean their prey.  Aunt Johnny had a perfectly lovely back porch so we women folk sat there and watched the men hunt.   They brought in bags full of doves that were then dressed for cooking.

Aunt Johnny floured and fried those little, tiny birds.  Frankly, even to a child, they seemed hardly worth eating as there was hardly a bite of meat on the delicate bones.   I don't remember much about what else she served, but I do remember the pie, which wasn't pumpkin, but butternut squash.  For some reason that whole segment of family was inordinately fond of butternut squash and butternut squash pie in particular.  That was unheard of on Mama's side of the family.  It was practically as foreign to my tastebuds as Doves were.

Mama asked Aunt Johnny how she got such a tender flaky piecrust.  Aunt Johnny had dancing black curls, bright blue eyes and round cheeks. I watched her turn a pretty shade of pink as she said, "Oh hush, Ann, there's nothing to it!"

At the end of the meal, Mama was helping to clean up and went to put something in the trash.  "Why Aunt Johnny!  I thought you made that piecrust."  Aunt Johnny laughed merrily, though she turned bright red this time.  "I never said so, Ann!  I just said there was nothing to it!"

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Every year, the annual district meeting for our church association met for a three day long preaching and business meeting that ran from Friday morning right through to Sunday afternoon.  It was always hot when we began these meetings.  

We began with morning preaching, then stopped for a business meeting.  At this point, women headed outdoors to start setting up the table.  Everyone knew the rules for bringing food to any church gathering, "Always bring enough to feed your family and one or two more..."   Everyone exerted themselves as annual meeting was the trial run for many new recipes that hadn't been paraded out for the public just yet.  

Of course, there were old favorites as well, perennials that showed up time after time.  You can pretty well bet that on that table there were dishes of potato salad, plates of pineapple salad, fried chicken and sliced ham and on the dessert end, you'd always find pecan pie and a poundcake of some sort.  

But there was always something new and intriguing to try and be judged by each woman who gave her opinion privately to the family on the way home.

After lunch, we reconvened for a rousing afternoon sermon and then it was time to pack up and go home.  We repeated this on Saturday and Sunday as well.  There was only one difference.

Generally, on Sunday morning, but sometimes on Saturday, we'd wake to a distinctly cool morning that sent the family rushing about looking for windbreakers or sweaters to wear to church.

I'd love to see some of those old familiar faces once more.  The spinster Callahan sisters who were very old fashioned and very prim and proper but often escaped to the women's restroom to smoke like chimneys, the beloved old preachers who gave a rousing good sermon after a pleasant round of singing hymns, and the dear old familiar faces from my own home church that I was always so glad to see.

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When I was a young bride during my first marriage, and we were more than broke, I longed for beauty.  LONGED.  There was no budget for flowers or pretty things.  But in Autumn, usually sometime in late September, the roadsides exploded in all sorts of fall flowers and grasses.  I would drag my then husband to the car and we'd take off down the back roads and stop frequently so that I could cut masses of grasses, golden rod, leafy branches, and gather seed heads and pods.  

When we got home, I'd fill a big old crockery milk churn with water and start to arrange my massive haul.  Once it was all arranged to my satisfaction and smaller bouquets had been made up for the house as well in the old sour dough crock and old Milk of Magnesia bottles, I'd go about the home and decorate it.  

The massive bouquet took place of honor right by the front door, a lovely compliment to the butter yellow door and the old cypress twig furniture on the porch, which generally had an old quilt folded to use as a cushion.  

People used to stop and tell me how pretty that front porch was.   And what I wouldn't give for a whole new set of that Cypress furniture!

One day I came home to find the old butter churn gone...I guess someone really liked it a great deal!

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Another fun fall activity, which also usually took place in September...

Several friends and I would gather on a Saturday, drive down back roads until we found a lot of wild grape (scuppernong or muscadine) vines draped in low hanging trees.  We weren't after the fruit, though that was a nice side bonus.  No, we were after the vines themselves.  We would stand about on some shady dirt road, while the kids ran wild, and we would cut and strip great lengths of vines and make grapevine wreaths for our doors.  

Now and then, someone would make tiny ones up to use as napkin rings for the table, but mostly we wanted wreaths to put on our entry doors or on the wall of a room for the fall season.  

How I enjoyed those morning forays to gather grapevine and make wreaths each year!

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My friends and I might not have been after the fruit, the green gold scuppernong nor the more winey tasting muscadine, but my grandparents and mom were.  These fruits were coveted for the jelly they'd make which was just lovely on a hot biscuit when the weather turned off cold.

Mama decided to make wine a few years with it, not much, just a bottle or two.  It is a long and tedious fermentation to make wine.   We were allowed a sip or two and it was certainly a drink that would warm you.  But mostly it was tucked back in the cupboard and never saw the light of day, so I really don't know the purpose of having it on hand!

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Who remembers the thrill of the Fall/Winter catalogs?  Of course, they arrived before September, but September was the month to sit and look and dream and wonder at all the lovely things.  Of course, I was most interested in the clothes and shoes.  And I loved reading the descriptions of clothing colors: Cordovan, Evergreen, Beech, Aubergine, Bittersweet.

Each year I adored sitting down next to Mama, Granny and Grandmother (three times at least every single season) and admiring the clothes.  I loved sitting next to all three because it was always a pleasure to see which outfits we'd agree upon.  

I think of Granny often these days because unlike Mama, she didn't go to the Sears or Penney's catalog centers to place her orders and pick them up.  Granny did it the old-fashioned mail order way, filling out a form and paying for them by check or money order before she received them...and I kind of think that's what I'm doing now with online shopping.  I'm ordering from home, paying before I get the item and then receiving it right here at home.  Sometimes it's the mail lady that brings it and sometimes it's UPS or FedEx but it's all the same anymore, isn't it?

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The aromas of Autumn are another fond memory.  Back in my childhood years it was a rite of autumn to rake leaves and then burn the piles.  Such a lovely dusty sort of aroma!   

Every now and then someone does some pruning and then adds them to the fires as well.  It's the loveliest aroma, that mixture of dry leaves and small hardwood limbs!

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Before I get sidetracked on another aspect of burning, I must add here that our favorite activity in the fall, was always to scrape those leaves into lines that formed rooms of houses.  I've shared that memory with you all before.  We girls were all young housekeepers, dreaming of our future homes as we created our imaginary walls and built snug little houses with a flat rock for a stove and acorn caps for cups and the acorn meat for cheese...

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Now back to the burning leaves.  It's common enough here in the deep South to smell Asafetida which is pungent and odd anytime a pile of leaves is burned. The very definition of this strange sounding thing says the aroma is "fetid".  Look closely and you'll see that 'fetid' is smack in the center of the very word itself.   

I've said it is an odd, pungent sort of aroma and it is.  Yet if it is a familiar aroma to you, one you have smelled all your life, it might even be said to be pleasant and to smell almost clean in a strange way.  It is an aroma that can be described as 'olivewood' by many who are unfamiliar with the resin, though it's nothing at all to do with olive trees.  It is a product derived from an herb root that is a family member to carrots.  And that resin or the powder resulting from grinding that resin, is an all too familiar aroma in the south, especially if there is a fire burning.  I don't know why that is so, but it is and it's most common among the black community.

Also familiar is the asafetida that is liquid and in medicine form.  That was often given for coughs and chest colds.  It was pretty strong stuff.  Right up there with the Creosote based cough mixture that was all too familiar in my childhood.

And for the record, while the spelling may say 'As-fit-a-duh' the common pronunciation was 'As-fit-ad-dee'.  I was 60 years old before I ever learned to spell it.

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Wood smoke is another familiar smell as the mornings deliver chilly damp air and the evenings cool rapidly.   All sorts of wood are burned, hardwoods the favored woods, but a few foolhardy souls will use pine which is full of pitch and too damp for burning, unless it's been drained of its turpentine and is now fat lighter.  That is the best way to use pine, in my opinion, as a fire starter.  Not as the main source of your fire.  

Each hardwood has its own aroma.  Oak smells different than pecan or hickory or apple yet all three make for a very fragrant and lovely smoke that lingers closely over rooftops and hangs just above houses that are in a low place.  

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Another all too familiar set of aromas is that of peanuts.  There are three aromas associated with peanuts in my mind.  One is of freshly turned peanuts in a field.  That aroma is fresh and clean in a way that newly turned dirt and green plants are. The second is of the green nuts drying in the fields before they combine them to separate the green leaves from the nuts.  That aroma is slightly burnt smelling (scorched by the sun) and dry and dusty.

It's quite a sight to see the fields of nuts laid out in great long rows drying, stretched over acres and acres of fields.  

The other is of boiling peanuts which is salty and green smelling.  Parched nuts may be made as well and that is a whole different aroma, but it's less commonly known to me personally.  We boiled we did not parch, but I was told as a child by elder members that parched nut parties were a big deal in their day.  

Yet for me, this time of year, when peanuts are being harvested the aroma of boiling nuts is the predominant scent probably because so many people still prefer to boil their nuts outdoors.  In my childhood, they were boiled over an open fire in a great old iron wash pot or Dutch oven hung over the open fire.  And in the country, it was a common enough sight to see especially if you lived near a peanut field because the farmer always stopped by and offered the opportunity to gather a few peanuts before they combined them to take to the dryers.

Boiling peanuts takes a long, long time, hence why most people put them outdoors to cook.  And they require a load of salt.  LOADS.  Peanuts are like potatoes in that they absorb salt and turn it into nothingness.  The result if a lovely squishy shell with a briny liquor and a soft meaty little nut to pop into your mouth.

The peanut boil used to be a long-held staple of autumn neighborhood gatherings and family reunions, but one seldom sees them anymore, except on street corners where the general public will stop and buy a quart bag for $5.  In my childhood, that would have been a 5c paper bag, which held about 1 cup of the damp, hot peanuts.  That paper bag would fall to pieces as you filled it with peanut shells after fishing about trying to find the nuts one hadn't yet eaten.  Now it's a plastic quart bag and the price has increased.  Peanuts are cooked in a propane fryer pot now.  The aroma of boiling peanuts is still good but not quite the same without the woodsmoke and the seasoning of the cast iron pot.

I liked the brown paper bags best because they added their own aroma and taste to the peanuts.  And after you were all done, the nuts and bag would all sail out of the car window because it was all bio-degradable and not considered littering at all. 

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