By Ludlow Porch

I have always loved sandwiches. If my mother had not insisted otherwise, in all likelihood, I would have grown up eating nothing but sandwiches and potato chips.

I have dedicated many years of my life in pursuit of the perfect sandwiches. I know what a sandwich is supposed to look like, feel like, smell like and, what’s more important, taste like. If the federal government ever appoints a sandwich czar, I certainly will be a front-runner for the job. Read the rest of this entry »

By Ludlow Porch

Kudzu, the national vine of the South.

I have heard several versions of how kudzu came to this country. The most widely accepted is that it was brought here from Japan in the 1930s. Somebody got the idea that since it grew so fast, it would not only stop soil erosion but would also furnish feed for cattle. Since that time, it has become the national vine of the South. Read the rest of this entry »

Reece Turrentine describes a magical moment on a canoe trip on the upper, upper Chattahoochee River with outfitter Dave Gale.

“We gonna canoe that,” I asked in disbelief. Dave just smiled. The entire creek bed was scarcely 12 feet wide. The little ribbon of water in it raced around a large boulder and then disappeared completely into some underbrush below.

“That’s fast, tight stuff,” I commented skeptically.

“That’s the point,” Dave said, bounding from the truck. “It’ll show us what kind of canoeists we are. Let’s get to it.”

We unloaded the canoes and slid them to the water’s edge.

“You go first,” I suggested. “This is your country.”

“Well, give me plenty of room to get ahead,” he instructed. “I don’t want you bashing me from behind when I get stuck. And we’ll get stuck.”

With that observation he planted one foot solidly in the center of his canoe, and with hands on gunnels, used the other foot to push off from the bank and into the swift current. Dropping to his knees, he swung deftly around the boulder downstream, leaned over and disappeared into the underbrush and out of sight.

Soon we emerged from the trees, and a series of bumpy cascades slid us out of Jasus Creek and into the Chattahoochee River. The scene we came upon stopped us cold.

“Not many folks ever see this, “ Dave said as I slid my canoe into the little eddy next to his. Dave’s face was lifted upward, and he was gazing all around.

The view we beheld was one that excited every sense. The whole scene was framed in autumn gold. Even the bottom of our little eddy pool was covered with golden leaves. Jasus Creek bounded in from the left, and from the right, high overhead, a silken waterfall sprayed down into the river. We were in the bright sun now and out of the tunneled creek. The river’s descent looked like a giant staircase dropping into the distance. Its water danced with a silver lucency. This was not white water; it was silver water. It was wilderness at its peak, full of raw contrasts, full of design and pattern.

Read more of Reece Turrentine’s canoeing experiences in the Streams, Rivers and Lakes blog.

Franklin Roosevelt talking with Georgia farmers in “The Cove” in Meriwether County.

It’s known that President Franklin D. Roosevelt liked to serve liquor at the Little White House in Warm Springs and it’s believed he got much of his moonshine in “The Cove” on the Flint River.

Moonshine was illegal even after Repeal. It was unaged corn whisky made in hidden spots along the Flint River. One such still was forever after referred to as ‘Roosevelt’s still,’ because, according to legend at least, he occasionally drove there with a Secret Service agent to chat and pick up the supplies for a party. This criminal behavior, if it did indeed occur, was not routine procedure for stocking the liquor cabinet at the Little White House. More often, the illicit corn was brought over by a friend like Henry Toombs, who preferred it to commercial liquor, as did many Georgians. This traffic was also criminal, technically, but the county sheriff was not feared, since he was an occasional supplier to the President himself. Or so the historians believe.

From The Squire of Warm Springs by Theo Lippman, Jr.

Blueberry Pie. In the Dillard House Cookbook and Mountain Guide, Henry Dillard of the Dillard House in Rabun County reminisced about his mother, Carrie, and the wonderful blueberry pies she used to make:

Back during the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration days Mother started the county’s first school lunch program. Before she finished, she established six lunchrooms. She prepared the best meals for the lowest cost anywhere. Kids would bring what they could from home, like jelly, jams, cornmeal, and so on, then W.P.A. set up some money to help pay for other food.

One day they had blueberry pie. Mother asked one little boy named Jack Darnell to say grace, which they did before every meal.
Mother said, “Jack would you say the prayer?”
Old Jack said, “Oh, Lord, look on us this blueberry pie. Open our mouths and eat blueberry pie. One more time we thank you, Lord, for this blueberry pie.”

Hog Killing Time. This recollection by novelist Harry Crews describes the ritual of killing and processing hogs on the farm where he grew up in Bacon County in rural south Georgia.

Farm families swapped labor at hog-killing time just as they swapped labor to put in tobacco or pick cotton. Early one morning our tenant farmers, mama, my brother, and I walked the half mile to Uncle Alton’s place to help put a year’s worth of meat in the smokehouse. Later, his family would come and help us do the same thing.

Before it was over, everything on the hog would have been used. The lights (lungs) and liver – together called haslet – would be made into a fresh stew by first pouring and pouring again fresh water through the slit throat – the exposed throat called a goozle – to clean the lights out good. Then the fat would be trimmed off and put with the fat trimmed from the guts to cook crisp into cracklins to mix with cornbread or else put in a wash pot to make soap…. After the guts had been covered with salt overnight, they were used as casings for sausage made from shoulder meat, tenderloin, and – if times were hard – any kind of scrap that was not entirely fat…. Whatever meat was left, cheeks, ears, and so on, would be picked off, crushed with herbs and spices and packed tightly into muslin cloth for hog’s headcheese. The fat from the liver, lungs, guts, or wherever was cooked until it was as crisp as it would get and then packed into tin syrup buckets to be ground up later for cracklin cornbread. Even the feet were removed, and after the outer layer of split hooves was taken off, the whole thing was boiled and pickled in vinegar and peppers. If later in the year the cracklins started to get rank, they would be thrown into a cast-iron wash pot with fried meat’s grease, any meat for that matter that might have gone bad in the smokehouse, and some potash and lye and cooked into soap, always made on the full of the moon so it wouldn’t shrink.

“Hog-Killing Time” is from A Childhood: The Biography of a Place by Harry Crews. Reprinted in The Best of Georgia Farms Cookbook and Tour Book and used by permission. Buy a copy of A Childhood from Amazon.

By Reece Turrentine
The Urban Chattahoochee is one of the most unspoiled, scenic and historic rivers running through any major metropolitan area of the United States. Exploring the East Palisades, storyteller Reece Turrentine pauses to observe that he is standing between two different worlds.

Not long ago, I was walking upstream along the East Palisades river’s edge trail, looking for a better location to beach canoes. When I’m guiding a group down this “city section,” I always like to stop them along here for a short hike back into the woods and up to the cliffs of the old “Indian Shelter.” It’s a 30-foot deep rock overhang archaeologists determined had been used for shelter for six to seven thousand years by nomadic Indian tribes following the river’s course. The trails along the river were Atlanta’s original interstate highway.

I had just seen the bridge of I-75 in the distance. Where I stopped along the trail, I could no longer see it around the bend, but I could still hear the roaring engines and speeding tires slap the bridge joints of the pavement. So close and yet so far. They couldn’t see me. When you’re bumper to bumper at that speed, nobody has time to look out at a river.

For a moment, my imagination ran away with me and I thought I could hear the traffic of I-285 upstream and around the bend to my right. I was hearing some kind of distant roar from up there. It was giving me kind of a stereo effect from both directions, but I looked under limbs upstream and saw the source of the muffled roar. I was relieved. It was not from the traffic. It was from Thornton Shoals, bubbling over its rocks. It was sounds of wilderness, not the interstates. Although the two worlds are competing for dominance out here, this spot at least looked and sounded like wilderness. It occurred to me, what a strange place I was standing on. To my left, downstream and around the bend, was a mixture of Long Island Shoals and I-75. To my right, upstream and around the bend was Thornton Shoals and I-285. What a mixture similar sounds from different worlds. But that wasn’t the end of it. In front of me was the river, teeming with fish and wildlife.  Just beyond the river and over the hill was Rottonwood Creek and the old flagstone foundations of the Akers gristmill, which operated until the late 1800’s. But almost scraping the mill’s foundation stones was the gouging of giant earth-moving machines, carving out yet another larger and longer multi-lane interchange for the surrounding interstates. The creek and mill foundations were saved by a matter of feet. The worlds are competing in this “city section,” but as of now, the river rolls on.

But there was more. Behind me was yet another contrast. Some of Atlanta’s finest homes are just beyond the river and occupy streets like Mt. Paran, Harris and Northside. But before you can get to them are the cliffs of East Palisades, containing Atlanta’s oldest home: the old Indian shelter. Worlds collide, but as of now, the river rolls on. I was standing on a strange, almost holy place. Just beyond ear and eye a great city was grinding away. But where I was standing was a pocket of pure wilderness.

Links:

• View a map of the area Reece’s reflection is about. Be sure and see it in “satellite” format.
• Learn more about Atlanta’s Chattahoochee National Recreation Area.
• Learn more about the Chattahoochee River, one of Georgia 14 major watersheds.
• Join the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper and help protect the Chattahoochee.
• Read storyteller Reece Turrentine’s narrative of a canoe trip on the Flint River in “A River Makes up Its Mind.”

Walt Grindle of Dahlonega, Lumpkin County, Georgia
Recorded by Jean Bieder

Great-uncle of mine, he liked pepper – any form of pepper. He ‘as crazy about pepper. And his name was Hiram, and his wife was named Elizabeth. So she was always grumbling; she ‘as just a chronic grumbler.

Come spring of the year, and he told her one day, he said, “Elizabeth,” said, “it’s time you’s sowing pepper seeds now.”

She said, “Oh, Hiram, it’s no use.” Said, “I won’t live to see no pepper grow this time.”

He didn’t say any more about it.

So after wadn’t no pepper come that fall, when he had something he ’specially wanted pepper with, they set down to the table and he looked around and said, “Elizabeth, here you are still a-living, and no pepper.”

Recorded in 1975 by Jean Bieder from Walt Grindle, then sixty-eight, of Dahlonega, in Lumpkin County, “Fruitless Prophesy” is one of 250 authentic folk tales and stories recorded by the students of Dr. John Burrison at Georgia State University and published in Storytellers, Folktales & Legends from the South. Copyright by the University of Georgia Press and used by permission.

• To buy a copy of Storytellers from the University of Georgia Press, click here
• To buy a copy from Amazon, click here.

Links:
More on John Burrison and his projects at Georgia State University and the Folk Pottery Museum of Northeast Georgia at Sautee Nacoochee Center.

Editors Note: Dean Brown grew up in Fayette County, Georgia, when it had only one paved highway and horse drawn wagons mingled with a few automobiles on the roads - quite a contrast to the Fayette County of today, which is often ranked as one of the fastest growing and most affluent counties in the state. Now in his 70s, he has assembled a collection of “Little Stories”  that are entertaining tales and snapshot history lessons about how much the South has changed in one man’s lifetime. Here’s his recollection of riding the train to Atlanta as a small boy. If you enjoy this “Little Story” there are more on his PopSpin website. Mr. Brown would like to hear from you with your Southern Stories and so would Brown’s Guide.

The Southern Railway ran a route passing through Fayetteville to Atlanta in the morning, coming back through Fayetteville in the late afternoon. When I was about four or five I went to Atlanta on this train and remember it very well.

Atlanta’s Terminal Station, the station where Dean Brown disembarked after his train ride from Fayetteville. Terminal station opened in May 1905 and served Southern Railway, Central of Georgia, and Atlanta & West Point railroads. It closed in June 1970 and was demolished in 1972. Read the rest of this entry »

Harmless but abundant, may flies are native to the Lake Seminole area. Their presence is an indicator of good water quality. They appear in swarms. They do not bite, but swarms can be so thick they can impede breathing.

One night the Corps of Engineers got a call from a campground where may flies were clustering around an electric light. Campers complained that the odor from dead flies was bothersome. When Corps workers got to the site, they found a pile of expired flies three-feet deep that had to be hauled away with a front loader.