Growing Up Southern

Growing Up Southern

         I grew up in Georgia and spent most of my summers with my maternal Grandparents. They lived in a small mill town about an hour south of Atlanta. Summers there were wonderful. We would always rise early in the mornings. Grandmama and I would get the breakfast started while Granddaddy would read the morning paper.
         Grandmama had a large wooden bowl she kept full of flour and stored in a cloth flour sack. Each morning she would take the bowl from its storage space in the cabinet and place on the counter. This was my favorite part of making breakfast. I would stand next to my Grandmama and watch as she made a hole in the flour then take shortening and milk (sweet or buttermilk, depending on what was in the icebox at the time), and mix the ingredients into the bowl of flour. She never measured anything but the dough always turned out the same. She would turn the bowl and incorporate more flour with each turn, then she would squeeze and mix. When the dough was like she wanted it, Grandmama would pinch a bit of dough off, pat it a little, and then place the small bite size biscuit on to the cookie sheet.
         I know I must have seen my Grandmama make thousands of biscuits throughout my life, but it always amazed me. To this day, I can still see her standing at the counter with the morning sun lighting the kitchen as she turns the bowl,and pats out biscuits. The smell of bacon frying, biscuits cooking, and eggs in the frying pan brings me back to that kitchen in a small town in Georgia.
         Granddaddy owned a small general store in the village not half a block from the house. My Grandfather could add columns upon columns of numbers in his head with in seconds and was always right. I’m told the local high school home economics teacher would take her senior class to his store each year she taught school; to demonstrate how the human mind was better than a calculator. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t inherit this ability. I decided once when I was about 10 years old to test Granddaddy myself. I had taken a sheet of notebook paper and wrote 3 columns of 4 digit numbers and handed it to my Granddaddy. He took the paper and ran his finger up and down each column and then gave me the answer within seconds. I don’t remember what the exact answer was now but I do remember he was right. He handed me back the paper and asked me if that was the correct answer. I remember sheepishly telling him I didn’t know the answer yet. I took the paper back and then headed off to another room with a calculator in my hand. Five minutes later I went back to the living room where my Granddaddy was watching a Braves game and told him he was right. I was so amazed that he could add like that, but to him it was nothing. He just smiled and hugged me.
         Going to his general store was always a treat for me, my sister and our cousins. Granddaddy would give us each a small paper bag and let us all get as much penny candy, back when it truly was penny candy, as we could fit into our bags, much to the chagrin of our mothers. Granddaddy retired and sold the store, but the painted concrete floor and open produce bins will forever be etched into my memory.
         The pungent smell of a cigar will send me back to a living room in a small mill town in Georgia, where my Granddaddy would be sitting in his recliner. I never saw him with a cigar in his mouth; mostly it just burned in the ashtray next to his chair. Granddaddy liked to watch the Atlanta Braves play baseball on a black and white T.V. with the sound off. There would be a radio on next to his recliner tuned into the same game. I remember asking him once why he would watch the game with the sound off but listen to it on the radio. He smiled at me and told me that the radio gave better play by play information than the commentators on T.V. I listened for a minute to the radio, and I had to agree with him. My Granddaddy was a smart man.
         Grandmama had to quit school in the sixth grade to go and work at the local mill to help support her family. There were 11 children in the family, all but one had to quit school and work in the mill. The youngest sister, Velma, was the only one to graduate from high school. I remember Grandmama telling me that she and her brothers and sisters made sure Aunt Velma graduated. My Grandmother was an avid reader and always emphasized the importance of a good education. She could do anything. One summer she decided that she would make me a shirt out of some left over scrap material. She measured me and the proceeded to make her own pattern out of a brown grocery bag. The shirt was a perfect fit and I wore it proudly. It was during one of these summer visits that my Grandmama taught me how to crochet, needlepoint, and embroidery. She tried to teach me how to knit, but I just couldn't quite get the hang of it. Each year, right before the end of the summer, my Grandmama would give me a pair of crochet slippers that she had made herself. I would wear them until one, if not both, had a hole in the bottom. I still have the last pair she ever made me tucked away in a drawer.