Early Sundown Studio

Henry Elija and Nellie Green Cook Dorsett

Christmas in Keechi

One of my most memorable Christmases occurred around 1942. I was preschool aged.

My maternal grandparents and their eldest daughter, Mazie, lived in Leon County, not too far from the Keechi Post Office. We, on the other hand, lived on a tenant farm near Oakwood, Texas. Granddaddy Dorsett was a logger and Granny took care of the landowner’s goats on the post oak covered land where they lived.

Most of you will find it difficult to believe, but neither my parents nor my grandparents owned an automobile. Neither family had access to electricity or plumbing. To visit my grandparents in Keechi meant a trip in the wagon, pulled by a team of plow horses, ol’ Nancy and ol’ Blue, for the 9 or 10 mile trip. Fortunately the weather is seldom bitterly cold in that part of East Texas.

Granny lived in a little unpainted, wooden house at the end of a dirt road. The house had three rooms; a kitchen/dining room, a “front room” and a bedroom. Dominating the kitchen was a large, cast-iron, wood-burning stove. The “front room” was not exactly a parlor; in fact it contained a double bed with a cast iron frame along with a couple of chairs and a wood-burning heater.

The Christmas tree Granddaddy had cut was in the bedroom. In addition to a few store-bought ornaments, including tinsel icicles, it was decorated with construction paper chains and popcorn strung on thread. Atop the tree was an angel my mother had carved from a bar of Ivory soap. The bedroom was unheated, so we didn’t spend a lot of time in there admiring the tree.

The evening meal was called “supper” in the south, and was eaten on an oil-cloth covered table in the same room as the cook stove. It usually featured pork in some form; tenderloin, ham, bacon or sausage. It was late enough in the year for a hog to have been butchered on the first really cold day. My favorite part was the biscuits made from scratch. Granny had a wooden bowl, somewhat larger than her ample lap, which she kept about half full of flour. When biscuits were called for she merely tossed in a handful of hog lard, a little salt, Calumet baking powder, and some buttermilk. The middle part was kneaded together until it was firm enough to first roll into round balls, then flatten out before being placed in a hot, greased, cast-iron skillet and shoved in the oven. The biscuits came out brown and crunchy, just right for the brown “thickened gravy” made from the pork drippings and flour. The gravy, too, was prepared in another black, cast-iron skillet, stirred over the open eye atop the stove. Since desert was rare except on Christmas day, you could always finish up with sorghum syrup poured over the buttered biscuits.

After supper we gathered in the living room, warmed by a wood-burning sheet metal heater and its companion metal stove pipe. Between Mom, Dad, Grandmother, Granddaddy and Aunt Mazie there were plenty of laps to go around for Johnsie, Keith and me. Johnsie was Aunt Mazie’s nickname for John Henry, perhaps because her name had been shortened from Maggie May. Time passed extremely slowly, paced by Granddaddy’s wind-up mantel clock which ticked loudly enough to hear throughout the house. The rule in the Dorsett family was that Santa Clause only came at midnight, and then only if not seen by little girls and boys. If he felt that he was being spied upon he would flee, knocking over a chair on the way out.

Some time a few minutes before midnight, Granddaddy got worried about the livestock and decided he should take a lantern and go out to make sure no predators were about. Wouldn’t you know that while he was out we heard something stirring in the bedroom! We wanted to rush in but cooler heads convinced us we should wait ‘till granddaddy returned. Besides, we didn’t want to take a chance on surprising Santa Claus.

When granddaddy came in through the kitchen we rushed to ask if he had seen Santa while he was outside. He allowed as to how he must have been in the barn at the time. In any event it was time to peek into the bedroom and see what Santa had left. I don’t remember any individual toys we received, but I do recall such exotics as oranges, English walnuts, Brazil nuts and a coconut; items we seldom had occasion to see. Santa had left Granddaddy a huge striped peppermint log about the size of my upper arm. (I was a pretty skinny little kid.) Of course he shared it with all of us by hacking off small chunks with his butcher knife.

When all the excitement settled down, it was time to figure out where everyone would sleep. Now Granny had a lot of quilts she had made by carding her own cotton and placing it between a patchwork face and plain back and quilting it in a frame hung from the ceiling. Now here is the best part. Aunt Mazie had to give up her bed to Mother and Daddy so she had to join the kids on the floor near the heater, nestled among several layers of Granny’s quilts.

The Saga of the Possum Grape Jelly

Well, autumn is finally here. I guess its my sharecropping up-bringing, but this time of the year I get an irresistible urge to harvest and preserve food for the winter.

Aside from a few hickory nuts and springtime poke salat and rusty haw, there is little edible growing at Early Sundown in Tyler, Texas.

The one exception is Possum Grape or Sweet Winter Grape, (Vitis cinerea )

In late September, just about my birthday, the possum grapes ripen.

We have about 50 feet of grape arbor. This year (2010) the vines were loaded with about 15 to 20 pounds of blueberry sized grapes in clusters of varying sizes.