According to CNN today is National Fried Chicken Day! Yee Haw! This is a day custom made for me! Growing up in the South, I have eaten plenty of fried chicken. Every year my grandmother would ask me what I wanted her to cook special for my birthday. Every year was the same answer, fried chicken, creamed potatoes, grandmaw’s peas, biscuits and white cake with chocolate icing. Just typing that has my mouth watering.
After all those years of enjoying that meal, I still don’t know what kind of peas grandmaw’s peas actually is. My grandfather’s family grew them on their farm and every summer my grandfather would head further south in Alabama to help his brothers, that remained farmers, and he brought home A LOT of these peas with his return. My dad called them field peas and I have searched for them and I have yet to find any.
For my grandfather, going to the even more intense sweltering heat to help his brothers do some harvesting, was a vacation to him. Even into his 70s the heat never bothered him. He grew up near Dothan Alabama and they never had an air conditioner. When I was a kid and I would go with my grandparents to the farm, the first couple of days I thought I was dying, but eventually my body adjusted and I’d really stop noticing the heat.
Along with the heat, you had to get along with lots of bugs. You couldn’t run from them, so you had to make your peace with that fact and carry on. During this time my great grandmother would cook amounts of food that were astonishing to me. My family also employed field hands and she fed them as well. One thing you learned quickly is that when you sit down to eat that is the only business at hand. You don’t talk, and you don’t laugh, you eat.
Hard to believe it, but I was a talker back then. I would sit down and start asking 100 questions as the food is being served up. Now these people loved me, but when it was time to eat, they didn’t think I was that cute anymore with all my jaw jacking.
There would be huge stacks of biscuits, a giant ham smoked and cured in their own smoke house, fried chicken, a humongous bowl of creamed potatoes, the infamous grandmaw’s peas, tall glasses of sweet tea and for some coffee. Coffee was available at every meal. They grew their own watermelons and they would take about 5 of them to a creek that ran along the back of the farm and sink the melons under the water. By the end of the day those watermelons were so cold they hurt your teeth when you bit into them.
After the meal grandmaw would place a thin cloth over the table and leave the food sitting there! I would grab biscuits through out the day along with everyone else. Food was eaten until it was gone. They worked too hard to be wasteful. The bowl she used to make her biscuits was big enough to use as a tub for kids. Grandmaw had 8 boys and 1 girl. The girl, my great aunt Alice, got the hell outta there when she was old enough. She had been farming enough to last her a lifetime. I think raising those 8 boys made my great-grandmother old before she even got through her 20s. After WWII, some stayed and farmed and other went out to do other things.
One thing about going on these visits, I was out of my mother’s watchful eyes and after some major playing all day I looked like a huge clump of dirt. I loved it. Nobody on that farm thought a thing about kids playing in dirt all day and if you wore shoes you were a sissy city girl. My cousins took me horseback riding. I helped grandmaw gather eggs and feed the chickens. This was a whole different world from the one I lived in northern Alabama.
Their main crops were peanuts and soybeans. I was always told to stay out of the peanuts because snakes loved curling up under the leaves. They grew blackberries and used them to make some kind of homemade wine. However, late in the day after supper they passed some time outside under a huge tree passing a jar of clear liquid. My dad said it was like drinking gasoline. I asked to taste it one time and my grandfather quickly intervened when one of his brothers started to hand me the jar. He told me that was one thing he would have to say to no to.
Much to my grandmother’s dismay I learned some well used cuss words while hanging out with them under that tree. I would try the words out under certain circumstances and she made it clear that if I went home and talked that way, my parents wouldn’t let me come back. I kept them to myself. She also explained that girls do not go around spitting like her grandfather and great uncles. She really could take some fun out of the party.
Of all 8 boys, only 1 remains. He was the baby and one of my favorites. I remember when he bought a tractor with air conditioning and a radio. They gave him hell for that, calling him a delicate flower and so forth. That is some great childhood memories for me!
I am thinking that today would be a good day to celebrate all those great memories by enjoying some friend chicken. I know they would!
Take care and treat yourself to some fried chicken,
KJ
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