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The following is from Happy Home published in 1905 by the noted Methodist Evangelist, John Butler Culpepper (1849 – 1937) who served in Talbot County during 1884 – 1885. |
I want you to go with me into one good home. I will take you to the base of oak and pine mountain, in old Talbot county, the last circuit I ever served. We are on a farm. These people eat breakfast by lamp-light. Have a seat with this father, mother, and a teen of children. They look like mountain sprouts. They are all healthy and hungry. Pass the bread, I don’t mean this old wasp-nest stuff, which you handed in from the bakers. I mean old Georgia corn-bread, made from meal ground fine, from white corn. The dough is soft, and is manipulated into a “pone,” about the length of your mother’s hand, of an oval shape, made flat on bottom, by falling into the oven. But it is delicious, and is genuine, for it has the trade mark (your mother’s finger prints) on it. Pass the tray, containing it; each hungry son and daughter will break half or a third of the “pone.” Now the meat. Each piece is nearly as large as your hand. Pass the grits. I will say that this is, par excellence, a Georgia dish, made from corn, ground into very coarse meal, cooked, with water, in a pot. They will each take two very large spoonfuls of this. Now pass what Georgians call “gravy,” what Virginians call “sop.” They don’t put flour in it, making putty, but pour water or milk into the hot, salty grease, which has come from that meat. About two spoonfuls of this. Let them repeat all of this, at least once. Bring on the biscuit. I don’t mean your little beaten, town biscuit, with back and front so close together that you can’t tell one from the other, I mean a good, healthy country biscuit, so large that you would have thought the cook aimed to make but one from that batch of dough. (I don’t mean one of these little fellows you need a spoon to dip up.) Pass them three or four times. Then, there is that long string of sausage coiled up there. Set it around. As the preacher is here, there is abundance of fried chickens and fried eggs. My! How they disappear! Well, let them go, but pass the waffles and preserves. No jar ever survived the first meal in a country home. This is all washed down by two or three cups, of coffee, (no after-dinner make shift) holding as much as a small bowl, strong enough to “tote” double and kick up. Now, let them have two glasses of buttermilk, and they are ready to pass out and go by the water pail and kinder fill up.The sun is rising upon fields of fleecy cotton, golden corn, pastures of pearl, winding streams and majestic mountains. We will walk to the front door. Some of the boys have gone to ginning cotton; some are packing a bale; some of them have taken hired hands and gone with a team, to picking it from the fields; some more of them have taken a load and gone to market; others still have gone to plough in wheat; still others have gone to cut and haul up the cane to make syrup, while another batch is bringing in wood to “boil the syrup.” The lesser boys have called the dogs and gone to drive up the calves.
Some of the girls have gathered up the “dirty clothes” and gone to the spring to wash; some have gone to gather vegetables for dinner; another group have thrown bedding over in the sun, put on a pot of water, and are preparing to chase British American from bedstead to wall, and from cellar to garret. Three or four have caught up the “piggins” and gone to the cowpen to milk. Now, stand with me here, and listen to the music of “Home, sweet home.” Just listen!! When I hear the whinny of the horses, the braying of the mules, the rattle of those chains, the creak of those long-armed levers, the clatter of the wagon, over the mountain rock, the lowing of the cows, the bleating of the sheep, the yelp of the dogs, the whoop of the calf boys, the cahowing of the peacock, the gobble of the turkeys, the cackle of the geese, the crowing of the barnyard boss, the matchless trill and warble of the inimitable Southern mocking bird on yonder apple tree, as free as the October air – punctuated with rustic repartee, bandied from lad to lassie, from cart-tongue to cow-pen gap, all interlined with an occasional couplet caught up by one of these happy boys, such as “Work for the night is coming,” finished up by a blushing, beautiful girl at the spring, under the hill, the boys up the mountain-side gathering wood, those in the cotton-field, and all about, having joined in the chorus of the song they learned in the Talbot valley Sunday-school, now given new life, sung and sung here. Listen to the music! It is all music. Listen! The notes come like doves to their windows! Do listen! What a marshalling of sounds! The crisp air is music; the music is martial! The choir has gathered – the orchestra peals! How they treble on H—Heart, Home, Heaven! Where are we? O, sir, just “away down in Dixie.” We have only let you peep in and witness the opening of a day in a country home. But, do you know, I think there is more genuine living in one such week, than there is in ten years of your little puckered up town existence.
“Pleasant smiles and glances bright
Are like pure and fragrant flowers,
Shedding round them loving light,
Cheering many weary hours.
Deeds of kindness, done in love,
Diamonds are in settings rare;
In the realms of bliss above
There the gems the blessed wear.
Words of love, from hearts sincere
In this world of care and woe;
Are like springs in deserts drear
Giving life where’er they flow
Let us cherish them with care,
Looks and words and deeds of love;
Each the other’s burden bear,
Traveling to our home above.”
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