Southern Style Cornbread Dressing & Giblet Gravy
Night of the Escaped Convict
Grandma and Grandpa always went to bed with the chickens. Their little house didn’t have electricity, so on hot summer evenings they lay on top of the covers in their respective beds, hoping a stray breeze would meander in from the screen door at their feet.
On one such evening many years ago they were lying there just after sunset when a warning came across the old Bakelite radio: “At 5:45 this evening a dangerous convict escaped from Kentucky State Penitentiary. Citizens are advised to say indoors. This escapee should be considered armed and dangerous. If you have any knowledge as to his whereabouts, please call your local police.” Continue reading “Night of the Escaped Convict”
Under the Haystack, Fast Asleep
Goosebumps and tingles. Goosebumps ran up both my arms and tingled around my neck as I tried to see out the bedroom window. At first, all I could make out in the dark were raindrops trickling down the panes of glass. It was summer, and the window was cracked open about an inch at the bottom. I could hear the wind moving the limbs of the big elm a few feet away. During a lightning flash I saw the top of the tree swaying to and fro.
Beside me in the feather bed, Grandma was beginning to snore. She had just finished scaring me half witless with the story of the three “Billy Goats Gruff.” I didn’t know exactly what a troll looked like, but I was fairly certain it would eat a skinny little redheaded boy alive. And so I lay awake, listening to the rain and imagining things out there in the rainy dark. Things that hid behind elm trees and grunted into the wind. Things just outside the window, with only glass between us. Continue reading “Under the Haystack, Fast Asleep”
The High Hollyhocks of My Old Kentucky Home
For as far back as I can remember I have associated stately hollyhocks with my childhood homes in Kentucky. I spent a lot of time with my grandmother, and hollyhocks were her lifelong favorite. Recently a cousin sent me an old black and white photo of grandma–circa 1940’s–and in the background of the photo were hollyhocks, standing regally against the weathered clapboard of her house.
Grandma grew hundreds of hollyhocks on the rocky hillside of “Pea Ridge.” A forest of them towered over me as a child. I marked their progression upwards with each weekly visit.
And though hollyhocks generally love full sun, grandma’s hollyhocks grew to gigantic proportions–or so it seemed to a small boy–in the partial shade of a giant elm. The secret was her soil—dark earth amended through the years by countless buckets of chicken manure. It also helped that the hollyhocks were “out back” of the kitchen door, where grandma tossed a dishpan of water after each use.
About the only thing that grandma loved more than her flowers were her hens. The chickens loved nothing more than to dig around the hollyhocks for grubs. When the soil was dusty hens would flop around under the leaves, making low croaking sounds. In a way, the hollyhocks fed the chickens and the chickens fed the hollyhocks.
Hollyhocks against my fenceGrandma has been gone for 30 years, but I cannot pass a clump of lofty hollyhocks without thinking of her, which happens often around here. Hollyhocks along a fence or up against a barn wall are almost a given in the Kentucky countryside. And though many gardeners no longer grow hollyhocks, considering them old-fashioned or not stylish, I smile inside whenever I see them.
Do you associate a particular flower or shrub with a loved one? Please return to My Garden Buddy and enter the conversation. Thanks.
© Wade Kingston
Grandma’s Cornbread
Some of my fondest memories are of me sitting at my Grandma’s kitchen table in her old farmhouse watching her cook, and Grandma’s cornbread was a favorite.
Grandma gave birth (at home, during the Great Depression) to twelve children. To say that she knew how to cook would be a massive understatement. To keep her hungry brood fed she made everything from chocolate pie to churned butter, from cornbread to country fried steak–and all of it from scratch.
One of my favorite foods (among dozens) of Grandma’s was her cornbread. Not too moist, not too sweet, just always perfect enough to eat by itself (though I usually slathered her home-churned butter on it, soft from sitting out on the table). Continue reading “Grandma’s Cornbread”