Grits were made famous for much of America on the TV sitcom, Alice. If you are old enough to remember Alice’s trademark “Well kiss mah grits” as she waitressed at Mel’s Diner set in Phoenix, Arizona, you are old. Enough.
If you’re not, here’s Alice’s classic rejoinder anytime she was mildly (or a lot) irritated or just wanted a laugh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftbm8EZZDqI
Grits used to be mainly a southern thing but now that gluten-free diets are such a big necessity for thousands of families, grits are a marvelous, cheap, quick, and hot breakfast that grow on you whether lathered in butter, salt and pepper (the way I like them, with an egg, over medium), or dolled up with honey, syrup, milk and sugar or whatever you fancy.
But grits have now become popular enough you even find them in northern restaurants and Amtrak’s Capitol Limited running between Washington D.C. and Chicago like I wrote about here. How northern is that?
I remember a stay at an Embassy Suites in Richmond, Va. where a northern women’s college sports team of some description was also staying. One young women paused at the breakfast buffet’s large container of white steaming grits. “What is THAT?” she queried as if it were pig’s feet. I was happy to fill her in on the southern delicacy.
“It’s a little like cream of wheat only not. Much better. Eat it with butter and pepper.” I’m certain she passed on it.
One of my daughter’s friends was allergic to wheat and I think she always appreciated coming to our house for sleepovers because I would always serve her up a plate of grits and eggs for breakfast. Sarah was a totally conscientious and responsible child who even when she was just 8 or 9, would make and bring her own wheat-free cupcakes to parties, so the least I could do was humor her with some grits for breakfast.
Now when I want to humor and treat myself, I stir up a quick batch. Here’s all it takes:
Grits for One – As supplied by a Quaker box of grits.
¼ cup quick 5-minute grits (a grain made from corn)
1 cup water
Dash salt
Stir grits and salt into briskly boiling water.
Reduce heat to low and cover.
Cook 5-7 minutes or until thickened, stirring occasionally.
Remove from heat. Serve.
That is it.
My pastor for many years, Ann Held, just retired (and was featured yesterday on our local public radio station; photos and podcast here). At our church potlucks she was famous for her Cheese Grits. I’ve only made them once. They are delicious, and in spite of this dish being supposedly the “only thing I know how to cook,” it is a little more complicated that just cooking up plain grits. I’ll have to try them again sometime, especially since Ann won’t be bringing them to our church potlucks anymore. Wah. Her recipe for Cheese Grits is included in my book featuring almost 100 recipes, below.
For other favorite recipes see my book, Whatever Happened to Dinner: Recipes and Reflections on Family Mealtime.
(Model train track layout in Baltimore, Maryland)
A week ago last night I was huffing down Interstate 81 in Virginia trying to catch a train by 5:45 p.m.
Would I make it?
I truly did not know. But I did know the only thing I could do was inch forward, stop, wait, go, breathe slowly.
I had left in plenty of time—even allowing enough time to go the local city hall in Martinsburg, West Virginia, and obtain a dollar parking permit before they closed at 5 p.m. That’s the joy of traveling by Amtrak where many stations remain totally unstaffed, no bag inspection, no way to pay for parking at the station. (Why couldn’t they at least put a locked box there?) Anyway, the deal is if you leave your car, you need a permit, and you have to send for it by snail mail a week ahead, or go visit city hall.
My first alert that something was up on my intended route down I-81 was a blurb on the radio—tractor trailer accident on I-81. So it was my turn to be caught in one of those numerous dangerous and dreaded snares. I dialed 511-Virginia. Yes, I would need to get off about milepost 292 or earlier. Traffic backed up for 8 miles southbound, 4 miles northward, my direction. It must have been a bad one. I prayed no one died. And began to get nervous. I still had time, but not THAT much time, especially if I had to go to city hall. You can’t fight it.
When I realized there was no way I could make it to city hall before they closed, I called them (luckily I had grabbed the phone number online before I left, no smart phones yet for the Davises); after they took down my license number, make and model of car, and phone number, they said I could just pay the $1 a day fee by stopping at city hall when I got back. Whew. Very decent and trusting of them, sweet enough to make up for not just having a pay box at the train station.
It took about an extra hour navigating the traffic dumped onto Route 11 which threads alongside I-81 through much of Virginia, and state police were directing traffic as I detoured through the small towns of Strasburg, Middletown, and Stephens City until I could finally get back on the Interstate. I won’t pace you through every squeal of breaks and one enormous pop once I got back on I-81, that sounded like yes, a bomb. That turned out to be just a retread blowing on a truck in front of me. For that I steadied my steering wheel, straddled the rubbish. Safe.
Suffice it to say I got to the train station with maybe ten minutes to spare, long enough to drive through the parking lot twice, hunting desperately for a parking space. I had to resort to rolling down my window and calling out to a man with a backpack, “Where is more parking?” He directed me to the other side of the station, across the highway. More thanks going up for the kindness of strangers. Once safely at the train station, I even had time to dash up one level to the station restroom (the historic roundhouse there is worth a visit all by itself, with displays of interest to children.)
It was a blessedly uneventful trip the rest of the way on Amtrak’s Capitol Limited, lounging in the sightseeing car, watching the backyards and swollen rivers of West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana go by in train time.
Slow but sure.
***
For a 2009 article from The Washington Post on the frequency and severity of crashes along I-81 check here.
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Have you enjoyed train travel? Stories? I’d love to hear yours.
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For more tales from the train, see my Another Way newspaper column today. Two trips in one month’s time is about enough. My mother had surgery in early May and is doing well. To sign up to receive my newspaper column by email every week, go here.
I promised in my most recent post on picking strawberries, that today I’d write about my favorite thing to make out of strawberries.
Did you guess: jam, shortcake, pie, cheesecake, or maybe a trifle? Or maybe I should ask, what is YOUR favorite thing made with strawberries?
My hands down favorite strawberry thing, besides eating them fresh from the patch, is pie.
Okay, so my strawberry pies are not as beautiful as the ones you see at a restaurant. But what they lack in eye appeal they make up for in full bodied sweetness and nutrition. Did you ever succumb to a beautiful piece of strawberry pie at a restaurant and then think, oh, how tasteless? All sugary glue/glaze and hard strawberries shipped from who knows where?
My recipe comes from Fellowship Cooking from my home congregation, North Goshen Mennonite (Ind.), dog-eared and grease stained, so you know it is good. Counting a strawberry chiffon pie listed there, there are FOUR strawberry pie recipes in one cookbook, but my favorite I’ve adapted from Viola Miller, the mother of one of my brother’s childhood friends.
Strawberry Pie
1 pint strawberries, crushed
2 ½ Tablespoons cornstarch
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
2 Tablespoons strawberry jello mix, (as powder)
1 cup sugar
1 pint whole or sliced strawberries, as you prefer
Baked pie shell
Add sugar, cornstarch, jello and lemon juice to the 1 pint of crushed strawberries; cook until clear and thick, stirring constantly.
Remove from heat. When cool, put into previously baked and cooled pie shell.
Add the second pint of whole or sliced strawberries—placing them one at a time for a prettier pie, or just add willy nilly.
Refrigerate at least one hour before serving. Serves 6-8. May be topped with whipped cream.
For this pie crust, I used up a half cup of lard (made 2 crusts, froze one for later use) I had in my cupboard from another cooking project. The lard was older, but not rancid, and had softened. I pieced this crust together like I was playing with Play-Doh, pinching and merging it together. It made for a very rich crust which my husband drooled over each time I served it. He has no problems with a crust that falls apart on slicing: the better the crust, the worse it looks.
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens … fresh homemade strawberry pie is one of my favorite things.
Mom’s shortcake with strawberries is another, but that’s for another day.
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For hundreds of recipes helping you cook whatever’s in season, check out Simply in Season, from Herald Press.
![[Simply In Season Cover]](https://i0.wp.com/store.mpn.net/client/products/ProdimageLg/9493.jpg)
For other favorite recipes see my book, Whatever Happened to Dinner: Recipes and Reflections on Family Mealtime.
We used to have nearby neighbors who, instead of flowers or shrubs in the landscaping around their house, grew strawberries. The Sachs were and are lovely smart people who raised lovely smart kids and I never really set out to copy them. But lo and behold when we moved to a new home my daughter, who lived at home for several years after college and since we were still working on landscaping stuff, said why don’t we plant strawberries instead of bushes or flowers in that bed. (See above.)
I hemmed and hawed and drug my feet. I had tried to grow a bed of strawberries once, before kids, and when they came along I gave up trying to weed and maintain that small bed.
Oh she would do most of the work, she said. But you won’t always live here, will you, I said. No, of course not, but we all love strawberries. And they are so good for you! Think of stepping out our front door …
Well of course she won and for 3 1/2 years she did most of the work in terms of taking care of the beds (while we both picked them and fought the dreaded slugs). Now I’m happy for not just one but two strawberry beds that function as ground cover. And on the steepest slope on our property, the strawberry plants keep the bank from eroding. They seem to thrive in only a little bit of not-great-soil.
It beats weed eating this dang bank.
The strawberry beds also function as my morning exercise a few weeks out of the year. Talk about building your core—stooping over a patch of strawberries with feet planted in bare spots in the bed, and holding that pose while reaching far to gather all the berries your fingers can reach. And then when you maneuver your position just a little, you see another whole clump of berries.
But the reward: three quarts (plus a handful) of fresh berries right out your front door and down the bank at the end of the house, that you didn’t have to drive 10 or 15 miles or more to pick. Not as big and pretty, but homegrown.
Sure there is weeding (always), and transplanting and thinning when the bed gets too full (which should have happened last year but it didn’t, so this year the berries are kind of small) and covering up the bed in the fall with straw (which again, didn’t quite happen this year, but even with the harsh winter we had, those plants survived). They are hearty. I just wish I knew what type we planted.
But not to worry. They keep spreading their love and juicy goodness further down the bank and out from the original patches.
There is one small worry: the poison ivy that stands as a menacing guard over a small portion of the bank patch. And I’m notorious for getting a bad case most years from somewhere on our property. Like last year. So I pick carefully, and just in case, scrub my hands with the mechanic’s friend, GoJo when I’m done.
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Coming up on my Friday recipe of the week, my favorite thing to make out of strawberries.
What’s your favorite strawberry dish or recipe?
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Here’s one tasty salad recipe I shared earlier using strawberries and lambsquarter (weeds).
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Are strawberries found in the Bible? Not really, just if you are reading the paraphrase, The Message, you find some. But it is a passage worth remembering, speaking about how difficult is to control the tongue–kind of like a spreading berry patch, or poison ivy.
“This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can’t tame a tongue—it’s never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. Curses and blessings out of the same mouth!My friends, this can’t go on. A spring doesn’t gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it? Apple trees don’t bear strawberries, do they? Raspberry bushes don’t bear apples, do they? You’re not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you?” James 3: 7-12
This is a recipe variously known as Cherry Delight, George Washington Pudding, and probably some other names. Google it, you get plenty of options and photos and all of them a delight to look at.
I loved it as a child and my mother made it from a recipe in our church cookbook which was called “North Goshen Fellowship Cooking,” one of those marvelous collections which is generally only special to the families of the particular church.
In that book a recipe called “George Washington Pudding” (so named I’m sure because of the generous use of cherries from canned cherry pie filling) uses 2 eggs mixed with cream cheese and baked for 25 minutes at a low temperature before you add your cherry pie filling with whipped cream on top. The baking was a bother.
Eventually I found a much easier and better recipe just called “Cherry Delight,” and what is special now is that it came from the kitchen of a woman who became a teacher for at least 2 of my daughters, and a beloved one at that, Sara Ann Showalter.
But the back story is that the recipe card comes from a recipe box collection created by the faculty, staff, and spouses of what was then Eastern Mennonite College in a valiant fund raising effort of some kind on behalf of the college. I do not know or recall the particular financial crisis but I’m sure it was some threatened budget cuts which the faculty rallied to raise some funds—token, I’m sure. (See notation at the bottom of this card. Also note they were called “the faculty ladies.” Click on card to enlarge as needed.) The cards were hand typed and then printed off and cut into the proper 3 x 5 standard index card size.
But the memorable part of this effort was that someone came up with the idea to collect the recipes onto cards and real boxes (plastic). Students, families and staff spent an evening in the North Lawn basement cafeteria collating the collection.
The index cards were laid out in proper order on the dining room tables and each volunteer would go up and down the rows adding recipe card after recipe card in order. The names on the cards are a trip down that memory lane for sure—Anna Frey’s “Orientation Punch” which she served to me in her home when I was in her freshman orientation group, and who died much too young of a heart attack.
On to the recipe.
Cherry Delight – adapted from Sara Ann Showalter* (and as the card adds, Mrs. Millard)
First layer:
2 cups Graham cracker crumbs
½ c. melted butter
1 Tablespoon powdered sugar
2 teaspoons clear gelatin powder
Mix together and pat into 9 x 12 baking dish. Press down with hands to flatten (can use waxed paper if you don’t want to use bare hands since this is not a baked crumb crust). Chill in refrigerator for 15 minutes to harden.
Second layer:
1 8-ounce container whipped topping
1 8-ounce package cream cheese (softened)
½ cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
Mix together and beat with mixer to combine well. Spread layer of cream cheese mixture onto the Graham cracker crumb layer (a bit challenging, but take your time).
Third layer:
Spread 1 can cherry pie filling on top.
Chill. Cut into squares to serve. Delicioso!
My family all loves it, especially my youngest, who often requests it instead of a birthday cake, and even tried to make it the semester she was a student in Scotland using canned cherries (without any cornstarch), spray whipped cream (the only kind she could find that didn’t require a mixer) and the sprayed cream of course lasted only long enough to become a disastrous mess. It went down in infamy. I have a photo she sent but, perhaps mercifully, I can’t find it now.
* Sara Ann Showalter taught fourth and second grades (and maybe some others) at Linville-Edom Elementary School for many years, a beautiful woman and awesome teacher. She died much too young too, of cancer. I remember her “grandparent” circle–a day when the children invited grandparents or other beloved senior citizens to come to school to share memories and traditions. Her husband, Millard, had a hobby of memorizing and reciting poetry and long passages of scripture. He’s still living and regularly greets guests at the nearby (country) McMullen Funeral Home.
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What memories or persons do the cards in your recipe files bring to mind?
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What memorable fundraising projects do you recall from your school or college days?
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For more favorite recipes see my book, Whatever Happened to Dinner: Recipes and Reflections on Family Mealtime.
I have written before (here) of our practice as a congregation to hold Sunday morning worship services in homes 3-4 times a year as a way of being more “New Testament” or like the early church. We meet as small groups or house churches, which form the basic structure of our church, a congregation of about 130 people (not everyone participates in house churches, and that’s o.k.).
This past April, I hosted my house church meeting at our home (my husband had to work that Sunday) and in a quiet moment of reflection during our service that morning I was stunned to notice something in my house (built seven years ago) I had never observed before.
I looked up after a prayer and my eyes were drawn to a cross in our living room.
There on a closet door in the living room was a perfect, stunning cross. Then I realized it was visible everywhere we had an inside door: on closet doors, bedroom doors, bathroom doors.
Why had I never become aware of it before? Why did I suddenly see it in that moment?
The doors are just simple six-panel wooden doors available in any big box home improvement store, but the cross bars and upright are dimensioned as a typical cross.
Now you’re going to think I’m going to mention seeing a shrouded Jesus in my toast this morning too. I don’t wish to make too much of it, but if the photographer* who looked up and saw this skyline configuration and realized it formed a cross and submitted it as a church bulletin cover, he or she too was noticing a nice symbolic image in his or her daily landscape.
We are people of the cross. Theologians debate various theories and some try to downplay the role of the cross in the Christian faith, believing a good and loving God would not “demand” such violence as integral to Christian faith, or ask that God’s son die such a cruel and horrible death. Isn’t that the same as abuse, they ponder? How is it different than Abraham “almost” sacrificing his son Isaac before the little lamb shows up? How can Christians be comforted and believe such things?
I believe that God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the great Three-in-One however, so it is God who also suffered the agony of the cross in the form of Jesus. It is God who endured that intense pain. It is God who so loved the world …
If we can’t believe in the truth of the cross then we don’t have much of a religion. I will leave it to minds greater than mine to debate and theorize (and the link I included above does a decent job of covering some of the issues being debated). But I believe with the Apostle Paul:
“… We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” (I Corinthians 1:22-25)
We are still in the Easter season, and as the song says “Every morning is Easter morning from now on.” Thanks be to God our faith doesn’t end with the cross, but with the empty tomb and life everlasting in the presence of that loving God.
So my house is filled with these gentle (albeit horrific) reminders of the love and grace extended to all humans, and the potential by faith to grasp and claim God’s love for all.
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Is the cross a difficult symbol for you? Why or why not?
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* I wish the people who made bulletin covers would identify photographers and locations for their photos but they never do, so I’ll just identify it with the copyright as printed on cover, MWM Dexter, Inc., Aurora, Missouri © and indicate it was selected as PC9USA) Bulletin No. 14F04.
(My slightly late but sincere entry for a special May Mennonerds blog series on Anabaptist convictions, one of which needs to be believing in the centrality of Jesus and his death on the cross.)
For more on what some believe about the cross, check Third Way Cafe.
Two weeks ago we had a magical weekend celebrating my daughter’s graduation from grad school with her masters in earth sciences.
She studied the impacts of changing human population densities on biodiversity in forest patches, especially between urban and suburban or forest areas. Specifically carabid beetles, who became her friends for the last two years.
We also celebrated Mother’s day—the first mother’s day for our two daughters with babies. The obvious quip is two are working on their mother’s degrees, and one got her masters. Much much to be thankful for!
So this took a special cake that I had never made before. Carrot cake. Blogging friend and nearby neighbor Jennifer over at Mama’s Minutia had shared HER mother’s never fail recipe here. I like carrot cake because it is probably the only cake that can claim to serve up a healthy amount of Vitamin A along with the sugar and carbs.
I knew that Doreen liked carrot cake and that she would enjoy it more than a store-bought decorated cake with tons of icing. So for her quick after-grad party lunch, we had homemade cake and store bought Jimmy John’s sandwiches, chips and veggies, shared in a motel suite. Easiest grad party ever, for me. And finished celebrating with dinner out that night at a fav spot Doreen had found with some friends.
I adapted Jennifer and Shirley’s cake only in the raisin and topping department: I knew Doreen didn’t like raisins much so I lowered that quantity to ¼ cup, and for frosting, put slivered almonds on top for a slightly festive look without lots of globby decorations. My main learning was that I think I should have left the cream cheese at refrigerator temperature than room temperature to whip it, because it was a little less firm than ideal.
But. It. Was. Good. So good I didn’t get great pictures of plated pieces, but oh well. (See Jennifer’s pretty pictures here.) I made the 2 cake layers at home, froze them, and put them in a picnic thermos for the 5 hour trip, then frosted them at my daughter’s house. TIP: I always freeze cake layers before frosting them as it makes that job go much easier in my opinion.
Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting (adapted from Jennifer Murch)
2 cups flour
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
½ scant teaspoon salt
1 cup canola oil
4 eggs
3 cups grated carrots
¼ cup raisins (Jennifer says she prefers currants and used ¾ cup)
Mix together the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the oil and eggs. Whisk the egg-oil mixture into the dry ingredients. Stir in the carrots and raisins.
[Melodie’s addition: I cheated on grating the carrots. I bought one bag of grated carrots and chopped them finer with my very small food chopper. That worked great.]
Divide the batter between two greased and wax paper-lined 9-inch cake pans. Bake at 325 degrees for 50-55 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes before running a table knife around the edge of the pan and flipping the cakes out onto a cooling rack. Peel off the wax paper. When the cakes are completely cool, ice with cream cheese frosting.
Cream Cheese Frosting
8 ounces cream cheese
2 tablespoons butter
3 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon vanilla
Beat until creamy. Spread on cake.
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For a podcast of a radio interview I did with Jennifer a few years ago, go here.
***
And a few more weekend photos here:
Doreen’s cat, left at home, wonders why she can’t go to grad, too.
Sam, Tanya, James and Doreen unwinding in the motel room.
Sam has graduated to sitting up. Yay Sam!
Second of two parts on Dr. Peggy Shifflett’s book, The Red Flannel Rag. First part here.
Part 2
Mennonites of Hopkins Gap get a mixed review in Dr. Peggy Shifflett’s book, The Red Flannel Rag. That is not too surprising, and it extends here generally to Appalachian practice of religion. But then, looking back, many of us grew up among religious beliefs that were well-intentioned but misguided at best, painful or abusive at worst.
Early on Shifflett signals a theme of her mountain culture clashing with mainstream American culture in a number of instances including “in church, when the Mennonites, at times not so subtly, let us know we were not ‘born Mennonites’ and would have to work especially hard to enter the kingdom of heaven.” (p. 12) She includes a reference to one uncle who laughingly said he made moonshine in one Old Order Mennonite home because they “liked to have it around for medicinal purposes.” (p. 107).
Mission work in the Hopkins Gap area started in 1886 but official “organized religion” she documents as arriving around 1907, when two Mennonites by the last names of Suter and Heatwole held Sunday school at the community school building, White Hall School. Two men donated one acre for a church and cemetery located right where you enter Hopkins Gap crossing Little North Mountain, which became known as Gospel Hill Mennonite Church. I was acquainted with it as an Eastern Mennonite College student only because it was near the turn off for “Long Run Road” which was a drive/excursion we loved to take. (For some photos, check here.)
Eventually J. Early Suter became the regular minister there and “the people in Hopkins Gap were very devoted to the church and admired Reverend Suter and his family; however they also viewed religion and the Bible in a very practical everyday manner. A person was judged by whether he read his Bible every night” (p. 251). A local man used an open bed truck with side rails to haul a boatload of children to Sunday school, according to Shifflett, including one picture of 34 kids in the back (p. 252). Great church and community picnics were a part of the social life of the Gap, and elsewhere in our Shenandoah Valley (as shown in some of my husband’s family pictures).
(My in-laws arriving at a family picnic in a nearby area to Hopkins Gap, Hershal, Richard and Estella Davis, 1949)
But Shifflett does not flinch when she writes about the efforts of young Mennonite men and women doing “their missionary work for two years in Hopkins Gap” making it sound like they were Mormon missionaries. “Some young people went to Africa, some went to Asia, and some went to Hopkins Gap” (p. 255). There were “messages, sometimes subtle and sometimes blatant that the ‘Hopkins Gappers’ were heathen and needed to be changed before they could be saved.’” The “Gappers” felt that times of illness and death were particularly used as crisis events to could convert them—when a funeral service focused more on conversion of the living than memorializing the one who died. I have heard the same kind of sermons, and felt the same messages during my time of service in the hills near Hazard, Kentucky.
One of the things that the young Peggy Shifflett pondered as a child were why the men and women at Gospel Hill sat on different sides of the church, and her mother would only tell her “that’s just the way things are done.” Childishly she wondered whether it was because the men had a better view of the pulpit. Her mother told her she asked too many questions. (p. 257).
As she grew older Shifflett noticed that a preacher’s attention was indeed mostly directed to the male side of the audience. Once when she was nine years old and tried to raise her hand in order to be given the floor to recite a Bible verse from memory like men on the other side were being called upon to do, the visiting evangelist in charge that day noticeably refused to recognize her hand until at the very end she just shouted out her favorite Bible verse, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Her mother was appalled, jerked her hand down, and told her to “shut up.” Shifflett’s verse was probably the most appropriate of the day.
This brought the evangelist to visit their home, who asked the younger Shifflett point blank if she was a sinner. Well, with her mother sitting right here, she knew she couldn’t lie, of course she was a sinner. But that wasn’t good enough for this “Reverend.”
“What kinds of sins do you commit?” he queried. He should have been silenced right there—and he was—but not by a good answer. “It turned out that this was another occasion when I was glad to be a female and just started crying and the reverend moved on to another topic.” (p. 259).
But then came what Shifflett calls in her book “confirmation time” or technically in Mennonite circles, more often known as the age of accountability, when young people are growing in their ability to be accountable for choices and direction in life and deciding whether to be baptized and become followers of Jesus themselves (not just because of their parent’s influence).
Shifflett writes, “The Mennonites expected young people to join the church at twelve years of age. I was told again and again that up until the time that we joined the church, any sins we committed were the sins of our parents. I thought that was a pretty good deal. I could sin all day long and mom and dad would have to pay for it.” (p. 259). Peggy had observed friends crying as they went forward under the influence of the moving hymn, “Just as I Am” and thought they were crying because they would have to give up all their “fun,” and had vowed she would never go forward and cry “in front of the ‘born’ Mennonites.”
One of the most vivid and sad descriptions in the book came at the end of summer when she was 12 and she still had not “gone forward.” She thought about it, every Sunday, but she kept remembering her questions that had remained unanswered over the years: about difficult Bible stories, about why she had to keep quiet in church, about people who confessed their sins, took communion, and then went right back to doing what they’d be doing before. Her Dad, who she describes earlier as completely changed in an unhealthy way after he came back from World War II, drew back his fist as if to hit her one Sunday morning as he waited in the car just because she’d slipped and fell into the back seat of the car and the noise scared him as he was listening to a sermon on the radio. He called her a “speckle-faced son-of-a-bitch.” She was terribly wounded by that burst of anger. “I thought that was a pretty awful thing to say to your own child on the way to church. If that wasn’t a sin, I didn’t know what else would be. I never forgot that day.”
She recalled another time on the way to church they saw a woman lying in the ditch, but her parents lost any concern when they saw it was a local woman known as a lesbian. Later they learned that the woman had been raped and beaten and left in the ditch. Another time on the way to church four local men, some of them married, were having sex with a woman on the trunk of a car, drunk. Her mother also called her a dirty bitch. They drove on to church.
Shifflett also did not want to have to change the way she dressed to the long dresses and capes worn at the time, or the woman’s prayer covering worn by the “born Mennonites” at Gospel Hill.
All of these things rolled through Shifflett’s mind again and again and kept her from walking the aisle to the front of the church, a step necessary to be confirmed. On the last Sunday when she was expected to go forward (likely in order to join a new believer’s group), as “Just as I Am” started, her mother gave her a meaningful push to get up and walk to the front of the church. “I refused. I sat down and wrapped my feet around the pew in front of me. She pulled and pushed. I would not budge. Finally, after what seemed like a month, the song was over. I figured I would be in deep trouble when we got home.”
At home her mother asked why she refused to go forward. “I told her I did not want to wear that little bonnet on my head; why should I accept Jesus as my savior and be only a ‘converted’ Mennonite, and besides I was not allowed to talk in church because I was a female. She listened carefully and didn’t say much. Three months later, she stopped going to church and to this day has never gone back to that church or any other.”
Remarkably, later in life Shifflett came around to joining a Methodist church herself and eventually her mother’s body was buried in the Gospel Hill Mennonite cemetery, and I’m sure God’s grace is big enough to cover someone who stopped going to church because of her daughter’s grievances, but whose faith remained steadfast on a God greater than petty rules. Shifflett, her sisters, and sister-in-law managed—for five long years—to honor their mother’s desire that she be taken care of at home until she died. And she was—which says something about the true nature of family, faith and community—sacrificing one’s life and career for a period of time to take care of family members.
I was also moved by Shifflett’s compassion for the plight of the “field rabbit” children I referred to in my previous post (essentially homeless) where “broods” were fathered by a single men who “sowed their wild oats among the females of the community.” She says she would “often cry myself to sleep at nights worrying whether they were cold or hungry” and she wondered why their father or mother paid them such scant attention. Eventually as time went forward, social workers intervened in that predicament.
Isaac Risser, a later pastor gets high marks for changing the structures of the church to include local leadership of those who were not necessarily born Mennonite. This trend in Mennonite mission work the world over seems to be the key to transition to local, authentic church and mission. Today the congregation has a husband and wife team serving as ministers, J. Mark and Emma Frederick. I know one man who tells the story of visiting this congregation where he was just royally welcomed and embraced, even though all he had to wear that day in the way of dress clothes were his military dress blues. After he learned more about Mennonites and the typical stance of pacifism and not joining the military, he was doubly amazed by the welcome he was given. Times change.
My own journey bridging the Mennonite and wider church, the culture of north and south, of mountain and non-mountain through years spent in Kentucky, North Florida and now Virginia for 42 years has been a life exercise in finding harmony and seeking to understand others. My Virginia relatives (by marriage) have become my loving extended family who I know much better than my own who live at a distance. I don’t think you can’t usually have too many relatives and I sense that Shifflett immensely treasures her ongoing ties to her family in the Gap.
Family picnic from another era, 1973, at the “homeplace” near Bergton, Va.
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Were you ever confused or frustrated when told “That’s just the way things are done”?
What are your good memories of “old time religion”? What are some of the bad? Most of us have a mixed bag.
My book about living in the hills of Kentucky for one year can be found as a used book on Amazon, On Troublesome Creek, Herald Press, 1983.
You can read more of Dr. Shifflett’s work with links to two other books she’s written here.
Did you ever feel so different from your peers it affected your life? Were you or your kids made fun of at school, workplace, at church?
In this two-part post I’m reviewing the highlights of what is to me a fascinating book because for the past 45 years my feet have also straddled several worlds, as did those of author and sociologist Peggy Ann Shifflett growing up in mountain gap very near my home called Hopkins Gap, at the edge of Little North Mountain.
To be sure, her “gap” and straddled world is different than mine but we can usually learn something about ourselves when we delve into the experiences and culture of others.
A church friend, Beverly Silver gave me the book as she was thinning out her bookshelves. It is titled The Red Flannel Rag: Memories of an Appalachian Childhood, a self-published book in 2004. The front of the book has a photo of a typical Virginia home from the 1930s or 40s which grabbed me immediately. Had I seen that home?
Shifflett is a retired professor of sociology at Radford University in southern Virginia and former chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology there. For anyone interested in or living in western or southern Virginia, and parts of West Virginia, Kentucky or Tennessee, it is fascinating covering folk medicine, moonshining, education, dating and marriage, childhood, hog butchering, employment, hunting, superstitions, and much more. These were days of almost “living off the land” as hunters, gatherers of wild berries, gardeners, farmers, and wood cutters.
When I got to the chapter on hog butchering—which my husband-to-be introduced me to while we were barely engaged (and I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to experience neat “olden” days still lived or quietly go puke somewhere), I was hooked. Shifflett’s book is memoir, family history, and Appalachian culture retrospective written by a woman with her doctorate, but with occasional extra words left in or completely missing, typical of a book not published by a major publisher. (As a book editor, these things just jump out.)
But this rich book of customs, folklore, “granny healers,” and growing up female in a family clan led by moonshine makers and runners, where any questions asked about the “why” of activities or behaviors received the response “that’s just the way it is,” helps me explore my own journey with this adopted Virginia culture. Reading that many families kept a fire burning year round—usually in a kitchen cookstove to keep warm water available helps me to understand why my neighbor’s woodstove still often burns into early summer and starts up again in late August—even though they and other homes have long since had hot water available at the turn of a handle.
Moonshining
If you want to know the particulars of making moonshine, this book pretty well covers it, short of a recipe, including why some brews could be lethal when the “mash” for the moonshine was run through car radiators or mixed in zinc-lined wash tubs. She describes how some moonshine makers kept their children out of school to help brew the stuff or to watch the roads for “revenuers” (the agents constantly seeking out the makers to arrest them), or the children watched from open windows at school for any strange or suspicious cars coming into the Gap. They’d leap out the schoolhouse window to dash on a secret path to tell their dads or uncles that a revenuer was on the way. And teachers, not having other recourse, would literally look the other way. Shifflett’s own father spent two terms in prison for his part in making and selling moonshine over the years. It was the way many families made a decent income.
My father-in-law plowing his garden.
Hog butchering
I was never close to any relatives ever involved in moonshine trade, but Shifflett’s description of hog butchering brought back memories of several times I helped butcher with my husband’s family and friends. My father-in-law, Hershal Davis, had a small patch of land where he raised a hog or two every year on the edge of Bridgewater, Va. But my first day of helping—including cutting up the “wiggly” portion of hog fat typically assigned to a newbie according to Shifflett—and wanting to plug my ears when the shots killing the hogs went off—were dead on accurate to my experience. I did learn to appreciate how every part of the hog is used up in this old fashioned processing system, but I was not sad when Hershal gave up butchering and I no longer had to help. I didn’t mind though when my husband brought home some fresh prime tenderloin “fish” pieces or a aluminum foil pan filled with ponhoss for a day’s work when he helped on hog butchering day at the homes of friends.
Dating
I loved Shifflett’s description of how the whole family would go into Harrisonburg to shop on Saturdays and the young people would meet up and pair off for dates or courting, and then ride back home with their families. Kids got married as young as 14 – 16 with many babies born but not necessarily all reared (dying in infancy, or in desperately poor families, raised by others). Shifflett’s own brother at 20 married a bride 14 years of age, and “Mom finished raising Hilda and taught her how to cook, clean, preserve food, bake bread, and do all the things a mountain wife did for her family.” (p. 21). Years later when Shifflett’s mother was on her deathbed and all of the family came to say their goodbyes, Hilda had been called away to care for her own father. But they were so close that when Hilda returned to her mother-in-law’s bed, the older woman finally let go and passed on.
Infant mortality
So many babies died in fact that Shifflett spends several portions of the book talking about “cry baby lane” where a woman’s still born babies were said to be buried. Still born infants were usually buried without a name or bonding with family and consequently the superstition was that these infants could be heard crying for their families when conditions were right in the gap. She talks about other children known as “field rabbits” because they pretty much fended for themselves wandering from farm to farm for whoever would feed them a meal, offer a place to sleep, and show a little love. Children living like that is unimaginable for most of us but not unusual in earlier times or in many places of the world even today.
Mountain medicine/superstitions
Shifflett’s area of professional research and expertise is Appalachian folk lore and she includes all kinds of healing arts, from medical “granny women” to whom many would go for medical needs to the “red flannel rag” to heal pneumonia or protect from colds and sore throats. In my family, growing up in Indiana, we did not wear red flannel rags to school but
What my mom put on us when we had a cold or sore throat.
I remember many a night when Mom would “Vicks” us—applying the commercial healing ointment by rubbing it into our necks and then tying one of Dad’s red handkerchiefs around it out of the belief that the cloth would not only keep Vicks from getting on our jammies but help it kind of “steam into” our necks—not so far off from the theory behind the red flannel rag, huh? One reviewer, Becky Mushko, notes Shifflett’s “red flannel rag” also appears in the book as a filter to cleanse the impurities from moonshine whiskey, to heal pneumonia, and tied to the mane of a mule to prevent a local “witch” from causing the animal to balk.
Work
As people began to give up moonshining for a major income source apart from their hunting and gathering, many began to build chicken houses to supplement their income, or take jobs in the poultry or sewing factories in or around Harrisonburg when they quit school or graduated. Shifflett notes as this shift to factory work occurred, the new employees carefully wrangled to be able to take off extended time during hunting season as part of the condition of their employment, which now helps me understand the widespread custom of kids not attending school the first day or week of hunting season and everyone being pretty much ok with that.
Education
When some of my own daughters were in middle school, they first ran into the tremendous cultural gap still felt in pockets of our Shenandoah Valley. Shifflett’s own feeling of being different came on the first cold day of school in first grade when her cousin had to wear a red flannel rag to school. When classmates asked why he was wearing it he answered that his mother put it on him because it was cold and it would help him from getting a sore throat or cold. Everyone laughed. “Virgil was silenced and humiliated, but he continued to wear his red flannel rag day after day because he trusted his mother’s opinion over the teacher’s” that colds came from germs. He “continued to tell the truth when his way of life was questioned …. And dropped out of school in the third grade.” (p. 9)
This is the tragedy of kids anywhere feeling so different from their peers they aren’t willing to put up with it, or fight back against this kind of prejudice. Early on, Shifflett decided she would never go to school with a red flannel rag around her neck. If her mother insisted she wear it, she took it off on the school bus before she got to school. Shifflett was born and raised in Appalachia, but went to school with “mainstream American children just a few miles outside that community.” (p. 9)
When three schools consolidated as she began high school, she got on her uncle’s old bus to ride out of the gap to Mt. Clinton Elementary school, and then transferred to another to ride to her new high school, Turner Ashby (where my husband went).
The Turner Ashby High School of the 70s (now replaced).
“I didn’t know it yet, but I immediately lost my label ‘gapper’ and didn’t realize it until much later,” (p. 250). After doing much the same quality of school work as she had done earlier, all of a sudden she had three A’s and two B’s. She thought there had to be a mistake. She was on the honor roll for the first time in her life. Kids on the honor roll got their name in the school paper. Kids thought she was smart. “When I was identified by the school bus as a ‘gapper,’ I earned C’s and D’s.” Now the teachers and the system regarded her without that label and rewarded her differently. Shifflett was at first scared, not knowing how much it would change the trajectory of her life. She went on to earn her doctorate but has always kept her feet in both worlds by becoming a professor of sociology just two hours away, and going home for holidays, special occasions, wedding and funerals and enjoying the stories, memories, and tales from her youth.
Next time I’ll tackle the interesting dynamics of the faith environment Shifflett grew up in where the closest church they attended was a small mountain Mennonite church, in whose cemetery many of her family and her parents are buried today.
Did you ever feel so different from your peers it affected your life path? How did you cope? Have you seen this with others?
You can read more of Dr. Shifflett’s work with links to two other books she’s written here.
You can sign up for a free e-mail subscription to my Another Way newspaper column at www.thirdway.com/aw
Spring just says granola, doesn’t it? Or muesli? Whatever you call it, however you make it, wherever you buy it, granola is all about crunchy and earthy goodness mixed with milk and not-too-sweet sweetness. Yum.
But I have a confession. I just made my first batch. I’m not a very good More-with-Less simply living Presbyterian/Mennonite am I?
During the years my youngest daughter lived at home after college, she made numerous batches which I relished. But never got around to making myself. It was easier to buy it. My go to right now is “Go Lean Crunch” by Kashi. (Not a commercial.)
My niece gave me some awesome local honey (thanks JoAnn) for Christmas and I knew I would no longer have the excuse, “but honey is so expensive.” (The honey container is upside down but says Mossy Creek Apiaries in Fishersville, Va.)
Sharp Shopper here in Harrisonburg, the go to place for all things bulk and natural, has sliced almonds for about $8.95 a pound (does anyone get them cheaper, truly wondering here?).
And now I know. This granola is so simple to make there just is no excuse. I whipped up half a batch Saturday while waiting for my husband to clean up and get ready to go to town. I whisked it out of the oven as we headed out the door, and popped it into the microwave to cool (out of the way of the cats).
It is just as good as I remembered, and says spring just as well.
I should do the math on which way (purchased or homemade) is cheaper.
And now I have a little surprise waiting for my daughter on her next visit. Pay back.
Thank you, Doreen, and all my daughters, for what you are teaching me about “modern” cooking (Tanya’s Stromboli) and baking and even preserving (Michelle, Apple pie filling)
Here is Doreen’s Granola, adapted slightly from Weight Watchers website. This is way simpler than any of the ones in my other fav books for this kind of recipe, More with Less or Mennonite Recipes of the Shenandoah Valley. Weight Watchers gave a serving size as one cup which may seem reasonable until you start actually counting calories. At my age, I try to limit myself to 1/2 cup which is plenty satisfying and makes the good stuff last longer.
Down to Earth Granola – Preheat oven to 300 degrees
4 cups old fashioned oats
1 ½ cups sliced almonds
½ cup packed light brown sugar (can use splenda)
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
Warm up in sauce pan:
¼ cup honey
¼ cup cooking oil
Whisk 1 teaspoon vanilla into sauce pan once honey and oil are warmed through.
Carefully pour hot mixture onto dried mixture and stir gently or mix by hand. Spread into a 15 x 10 x 1 inch baking pan, lightly greased.
Bake 15-20 minutes, stirring carefully every 8 or so minutes. Cool completely Add raisins or dried cranberries as desired, after cooking. (Fun fact: I accidentally added my raisins before baking and it was so cute watching those little raisins plump right up into brown puffy oblongs, which kids might enjoy watching. They [the raisins, not kids] shrink after cooling.) Store in airtight container for a week or freeze for 3 months.
1/2 cup serving granola in small dessert saucer
What have you learned to cook, bake or like because of your son’s or daughter’s example? I’d love to hear about their dishes.
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In my book, Whatever Happened to Dinner: Recipes and Reflections for Family Mealtime, there’s a chapter that includes recipes my kids came up with themselves or enjoyed cooking early on. Almost 100 recipes in all. More on the book here.
findingharmonyblog 
