This sounds like a topic for ladies only, but it truly isn’t.  Tea cakes were a staple of cookie jars around Brooks in my youth, but seem to have ‘gone with the wind’ in recent years.   I never hear about them any more.  So I went next door to my 91-year-old great aunt, who may have been the best tea cake baker in Middle Georgia history, and got her time-tested recipe to share.  Tea cakes are best with no other sweets; their taste is subtle and easily overpowered by more assertive flavors.  Still, there are few things this side of Heaven better than a good tea cake, and I thought I’d share this bit of Southern heritage, together with a story about tea cakes from a hundred twenty years ago.  First, the recipe, which I tried and found as delicious as I remember tea cakes being:

Ruth Crawford’s Tea Cakes

1 egg, 1 cup sugar, 1 stick of margarine or butter (softened), 2 cups self-rising flour, 1 tsp vanilla

Mix ingredients together in a large bowl, kneading with your hands.  Mixture will resemble small crumbs.  Gather a palm-full and squeeze together, kneading between your hands.  Place on a lightly floured surface and flatten as well as you can.  Roll gently with a floured rolling pin, to no more than 1/4″ thickness.   Can cut no more than two tea cakes at a time.  Entire bowl-full should make approximately 2 dozen tea cakes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Cook tea cakes until edges begin to brown slightly.  May or may not have slight browining on top of tea cakes.  Do not overcook.  Remove from oven and transfer immediately to a cool pan.  Enjoy this subtle but delicious taste from Brooks, GA, a taste you won’t begin to realize until after the first mouthful. 

Now for the story:  My great-grandmother, Mattie Henderson Crawford (1882-1972), lived her entire life in Brooks, dying when I was almost ten.   One day when she was a girl, her mother, a great visitor of the sick and shut-in in what was then called Brooks Station, carried little Mattie with her to go see a poor old woman in town.  Mattie’s mother told her she was not to ask for anything to eat at the old lady’s house.

Mattie was a very naughty little girl, and asked anyway.  The old woman gave her a cold biscuit.  Mustering whatever disdain a five-year-old Southern belle-in-training could muster, young Mattie took one look at the biscuit, walked to the open door, and threw it out to the yard dogs.  She turned on her high-button shoe and said, “Shah!  If I’d been at home, I’d've had a tea cake!”

I’m sure Mattie was spanked for that display of petulance, but she was right about one thing:  not much will take the place of a tea cake.   And knowing this story happened about 1887 or 1888 means that the tea cake recipe above (which comes from Mattie’s youngest daughter-in-law) has a long history behind it.

Our older son, Niel, a freshman in college, is home for the holidays.  At supper the other night, we got to laughing about the night we heard sleighbells in Brooks — the night of December 24, 1996.

Lesley and I had just moved into my late grandmother’s house in Brooks with our boys, then aged 5 and 2.  They were wired for sound on Christmas Eve, to the point we thought we’d never get them into bed so Santa could come.

We watched a Christmas movie together; we read The Night Before Christmas.  We fixed a plate of cookies and a glass of sweet milk, and 5-year-old Niel wrote an epistle to Santa. He had a burning question to ask about the existence of Rudolph:  “Is Rudeoff the red nods render rell?”  He then mentioned the milk and cookies, and added a postscript: “Please don’t take the plate.”

Niel took his bath and was running around in footed pajamas, while Lesley was bathing Hampton.  I picked up my grandmother’s old school bell, held the clapper, and slipped outside to the pasture fence, where I rang it with great vigor.

I ran back in the house and asked Niel if he’d heard anything that sounded like bells.  “I did!” he exclaimed.

“I think it must be Santa,”  I replied.  “Y’all better get in the bed in a hurry.”

“I want to go outside and see him flying in his sleigh!”

“No, son.  Santa will fly right on over if he sees a young’un in the yard.  But maybe I can slip outside right quick and see if I see or hear anything.  He won’t fly away if he sees a grownup.”

Neil’s so excited he can’t stand it.  I slip back outside, run again to the pasture fence, and ring the school bell.  I scoot back in the house.

Niel is beside himself now.  “I heard it!  I heard it!  Was it Santa and the reindeer?”

“Yes, hon, but he saw the lights on and flew on over.”

Niel burst into tears.  I wanted to kick myself.

“I ’spect he’s gone down to the Sykeses’ house, and’ll prob’ly double back by here in a few minutes.  But you boys’ve got to get to sleep.”

Niel’s tears stopped like he had turned a faucet, and he tore down the back hall toward the bathroom.  “Mama!  Mama!  Mama!  Turn off the lights and bathe Hanton (which was how he pronounced “Hampton”) in the dark!  Hurry!   Santa just flew over!”  He whipped into his bedroom, jumped into his bed, and feigned sleep with impressive snores.  2-year-old Hampton liked to have killed himself getting out of the tub and rushing to bed.

Santa had indeed been down to the Sykeses, and he did double back.  We heard his bells one more time, and next morning, found a ton of presents, an empty plate, an empty glass, and a thank-you note from Santa.

It was a truly wonderful Christmas, one we’ll always remember.

By DAN LANGFORD

It’s funny how a comment in passing has the ability to conjure up a veritable photo album of memories.  It happened to me the last week in one of several unglamorous roles I fulfill, that of zoning administrator for the Town of Brooks.  A newcomer who has lived here only 30 years or so was asking about his tract of land, and in order to remind me where it is physically located, said “It’s what the old-timers called the ‘Gypsy Woods’.”

Indeed they did.  My grandmother, who was born in Brooks in 1905, remembered gypsies coming through every year in her youth, and would identify the particular copse the above-mentioned man owns any time we’d ride by as the “Gypsy Woods,”  saying that’s where the exotic foreigners always camped when they came to Brooks to trade.  I’ve never seen a gypsy to my knowledge, but have long had a picture in my mind of what their caravans and members must have looked like in those days of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The more immediate memory last week’s encounter brought back for me was that of the light-hearted parental threat I heard time and time again in my youth — a threat whose roots sprang from the mysterious and flashy visitors who had once come to our village annually: “Boy, if you don’t behave, I’m'o sell you t’th’gypsies.”  It basically means “straighten up and fly right,”  “mind your P’s and Q’s,” “I’m gonna jerk a knot in your tail if you keep on in that vein,” or something similar.  When I heard I was about to be sold to the gypsies, it was usually enough to cause an immediate attitude adjustment, for it was a parental warning shot over the bow, so to speak; a preamble to relatively severe consequences to come if behaviors weren’t rather immediately modified.

I suspect it’s distinctly Southern, and would be quite surprised if the phrase were confined to Brooks.  I would be interested to hear whether others have encountered this expression.

By DAN LANGFORD

This really happened in my hometown of Brooks, GA, on Sunday evening, December 7th, 2008.  You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.

The Women’s Club had been planning the tree-lighting for months, taking their idea from the pair of majestic thirty-foot cedars growing by the post office.  They spent Saturday after Saturday in the buckets of front-end-loaders, putting decorations and lights on one of the big trees.  Saturday Dec. 6th was the trial run.  The lights on the big tree blew breakers in the post office, the only possible source of power.  Not to be dissuaded, the ladies went and bought a six-foot tree to put across the street, by the old post office.

Sunday evening rolls around.  Your commentator had been asked to play two roles in the event — to lead the assembly in the singing of God Bless America, and to give a brief homily about the meaning of the season.  I arrived a bit early, and was given a very nice-looking printed program on card stock, copies of which would be distributed to the crowd.

I headed with several of the ladies from the warmth of Town Hall down to the tree-lighting site.  All the assembly is across the street, by the big tree, which still bears its decorations.  We have to holler for them to cross over the street, and the inevitable “whys” are met with general laughter about the fuse box problem.  Two new problems quickly become apparent:  items one and two on the printed program — namely, the presentation of colors by a high school ROTC corps, and a welcome by Brooks’s mayor.  Both the ROTC group and the mayor are AWOL.  The ladies are also quietly murmuring that the Santa they have hired has not shown up yet.

One of them punches me to go up and give an impromptu welcome to get things going.  I go to the mike (which doesn’t work), and proceed to welcome folks to Brooks’s first annual tree-lighting, with appropriate comments for the many wonderful things the Women’s Club has done in our town since 1921.  As I make these brief remarks, an aged pickup truck comes over the RR tracks, dragging several feet of tailpipe quite noisily.  The truck pulls up by our assembly, and a man with remarkable resemblance to Santa waves to the crowd.  Unfortunately, he is not dressed in a traditional Santa suit, but in  John Deere hat and overalls. I think to myself, “Boy, I hope this isn’t the Santa they’re expecting, but if it is, I guess the dragging tailpipe is a redneck version of sleighbells.”

I finish my brief remarks as the mayor arrives, on what we call “Brooks time.”  I turn the mike over to him, and there being very few original ways to welcome a crowd, he proceeds to welcome the assembly, with almost identical comments to the welcome I had just given.  Farmer Claus has joined the crowd by this time, and as the mayor wraps up his brief remarks, Farmer Claus asks him if he’ll lead singing on his favorite Christmas song.

Playing along and trying not to make the scene any worse, the mayor says he supposes he can do that.  “What is your favorite Christmas song?” he asks.

“There’s a Tear in My Beer ‘Cause I’m Cryin’ for You, Dear,” Farmer Claus responds in apparent seriousness.  The mayor is dumbfounded, along with everyone else, and responds that he doesn’t think he knows the words.  A quick-thinking lady of the club steps up at that point and says that if it’s singing he wants, the next-scheduled girls chorus from Brooks Elementary School will fill that bill nicely.

The precious girls gather round, guided by their director.  She asks the man operating the CD player to start selection 12.  Apparently he starts 14 instead, for it’s the wrong song.  On the second try, selection 12 begins playing — Ding Dong Merrily on High.  The girls begin singing, but the CD cuts off in mid-song.  The director keeps them going a capella.  Then the music turns back on, but not in the right place.  They have to start over.  I’m wanting to go hide at this point.

The incomparable sound of little girls’ voices is interrupted by the heavy tramping of boots — it’s the ROTC corps, to present colors. The girls finish their song at about the same time as arms are presented, and the ROTC corps stands there in pregnant silence.  Another quick-thinking lady of the club steps up and starts the pledge to the flag, after which the corps does an about-face and marches off.

I come up next to lead singing on God Bless America, breifly explaining that we’ll sing a capella because we have no recording.  “Yes we do! I brought one!” said the chorus director.  Giving up hope that anything about the cermony would go by plan, I amended my instruction and urged everyone to sing to the music.  They did.

Then came my homily, during which nothing went wrong; followed by a touching and flawless solo by a high school senior of O Holy Night.  The last two items on the program were another selection by the girls’ chorus, followed by the dramatic appearance of Santa Claus (not Farmer Claus), which is being directed by cell-phone so the timing will be perfect.  The girls begin their last selection, but it, too, is interrupted — by the blaring of the horn of Santa’s car as he is driven down the hill from Town Hall.  Apparently the careful timing did not work, either.

I kept looking for Gomer, Goober, Barney, and them to show up; as well as for Ellie Mae, Jethro, and Granny Clampett.  They would have been right at home.  As for me, I’ve been laughing ever since.  So have the ladies of the club, who take everything in good stride.

By DAN LANGFORD

Tomorrow (Dec. 9) is my 46th birthday.   I should have passed that milestone three weeks ago, but back in 1962, I seemed to want to stay put.  I was born on Mama’s third trip to Griffin Hospital, on a Sunday evening after she had gone to church, come home and eaten a big Sunday dinner prepared by my paternal grandmother, and gone out into the woods of Hilpine Farm in Brooks, our family homestead, to root kindling stumps up out of the ground with my daddy — partially because the family was low on the fat pine, and partially to see if they couldn’t force her into labor.  It worked, and I was born about suppertime that Sunday night.

She nearly died, and was unconscious for several days.  When she finally came to, a cleaning woman was in her hospital room mopping the floor.  Seeing Mama’s eyes open for the first time in days, the janitress cast down her mop and headed for the bedside.  Exclaiming over how relieved everyone would be when they learned Mama had come to, the woman was suddenly struck with the realization that Mama, who had been knocked out for the birth, had absolutely absolutely no memory of what had happened.  “Honey,” the maid exclaimed, “I bet you don’t eebm know what you had!”

Mercifully remembering nothing of her long ordeal, nor realizing exactly where she was or why, Mama’s mind went back to the last thing she remembered with any clarity — Sunday dinner.  “Yes I do,” she declared weakly.  “I had roast beef, green beans, mashed potatoes…..”

Considering I’m from rural Brooks, GA, a place where folks have all sorts of nicknames, I’ve always considered it a blessing that my own isn’t “Green Bean.”

By DAN LANGFORD

Aunts are wonderful people to have in one’s life.  Depending on whom one is talking to, though, pronunciation of the word can vary greatly.  So far as I know, the three most common pronunciations are “ant,” “ont,” and “aint.”

I was raised using the first and the last of those pronunciations — the first, if I was talking about my aunt; the second, if I was talking to her.  “You need to meet my “ant” Helen,” I might tell someone.  When I introduce the two, I would say, “Aint Helen, this is my friend _____.”   Don’t ask me why — that’s just how most native people of good standing used the pronunciations in Fayette County, Georgia during my youth, and yet today.

In my experience, “aint”  is used as the only pronunciation of the word in upland regions of the state.  There, you may hear, “I need to talk to my aint about it.”  That sounds substandard to my own ear, but it’s perfectly acceptable in many places.  Standard pronunciation, after all, in many cases depends solely on where you’re from.

As for “ont,” I really couldn’t say.  Growing up, we thought it was solely an African-American pronunciation, but I’ve learned since that many Northerners say it that way, too.  Furthermore, I’m relatively certain that’s the orginal British pronunciation.  So, while “ont” may be the most correct pronunciation to most English-speaking people,  I personally never will be convinced that the usage I grew up with isn’t the highest and best.  If you don’t believe me, just ask Aint Helen, my favorite aunt.