Silly, Wiggly Jell-O

Is fruit flavored gelatin part of your childhood memories?  It certainly is in mine.  My Grandma always had a box on hand and she used it in all kinds of recipes.  But I find I never make it myself until the marketing department at Royal Gelatin cleverly added Spiderman’s image to the box.  You guessed it, my son spotted that right away and I couldn’t think of a good reason to say no that time.

Well as I mixed up the sweet blue stuff I remembered learning to make gelatin with Grandma and always finding a red or orange bowl in the refrigerator.  Images of the bowl of Jell-o on the table beside a plain cake and whipped topping surfaced. I never really cared for Jell-o on my cake but Grandma thought it was a great combination.

I assumed the popularity of gelatin was relatively recent since it does require refrigeration to set-up.  Imagine my surprise when Wikipedia reported that “the first use of gelatin in foods is attributed to Medevial Britains”.    It was even once considered something of a health-food for its high protein content.  Now, the box I mixed up this week shows only 1 gram of protein, but I suppose the kind they made from boiled cattle hooves would be significantly higher.

As early as 1845 dried gelatin was exported from Scotland to the United States.  Now gelatin is used to produce not just the instant dessert from my childhood but a host of other foods from marshmallows to yogurts, gummy candies and ice cream.

It didn’t take long for America’s sweet tooth to create the fruity dessert we are accustomed to.  In 1895 Pearl B. Waitand his wife May began experimenting with adding fruit juices to gelatin.  They would name it Jell-O.

The company’s slogans through the years are part of our American jargon and we all know you “can’t be a kid without it.”  Aren’t you glad “there’s always room for Jell-O!”

Drug Problem

I got a note from one of our blog readers, Mrs. Sandra Callison, who shared the following story.  I was nodding my head and ‘Amen-ing’ after about the second line and I wanted to share it here because I suspect there’s a sentiment in these lines that most folks who would care to read about Appalachian history would probably share.

I tried to research the author of this story but could only find that several other folks around the web had also shared it with no author’s name. 

The other day, someone at a store in our town read that a methamphetamine

lab had been found in an old farmhouse in the adjoining county and he asked

me a rhetorical question, "Why didn't we have a drug problem when you and I

were growing up?

  I replied, I had a drug problem when I was young: I was drug to church on

Sunday morning. I was drug to church for weddings and funerals. I was drug

to family reunions and community socials no matter the weather

I was drug by my ears when I was disrespectful to adults. I was also drug to the woodshed when I disobeyed my parents, told a lie, brought home a bad report card, did not speak with respect, spoke ill of the teacher or the preacher, or if I didn't put forth my best effort in everything that was asked of me.

  I was drug to the kitchen sink to have my mouth washed out with soap if I uttered a profanity. I was drug out to pull weeds in mom's garden and flower beds and cockle-burs out of dad's fields. I was drug to the homes of family, friends, and neighbors to help out some poor soul who had no one to mow the yard, repair the clothesline, or chop some firewood and, if my mother had ever known that I took a single dime as a tip for this kindness, she would have drug me back to the woodshed.

  Those drugs are still in my veins and they affect my behavior in everything I do, say, or think, They are stronger than cocaine, crack, or heroin; and,if today's children had this kind of drug problem America would be a better place.

 God bless the parents who drugged us.

Don’t Fence Me In

Lots of us love old things and we often try to re-create them.  Split rail fences seem to be one of the most popular of these things but so many of us are just bad at building them.  I see them with fence posts holding them up, I see them in nearly a straight line.  Then, I saw this lovely split rail fence at Bledsoe Creek State Park in Gallatin, Tennessee and was thrilled to see one built halfway correctly so it got me to thinking about fences in general.

Fully fenced farmstead

So just how was I to go about researching fences on the plateau?  Sure, I can ask questions but if everyone remembered how to build the things we wouldn’t see so many bad examples.  And, we’ve well established that photography was a luxury item not widely enjoyed by our ancestors on the Plateau so no one was wasting film on their fences.  Yet most of the old pictures I have were snapped out of doors so guess what’s in the background?  I found this pretty exciting to pour over my collection looking behind the main subject.  And I learned so much about the different fences of yesteryear.

This picture is labelled 1907.  The horizontal fence may be boards but very likely palings which could be produced on the farm without a sawmill.

Fences on both sides of the dirt road.

First of all let’s establish that these days we fence animals IN.  In fact, if your stock is roaming and does damage (like wandering into the path of a moving vehicle) you are liable for that damage.  And that was true in the earliest days of the United States.  However, between the years of 1858 and 1947 the law required crops to be fenced in and allowed the animals access to ‘open range’.  That just sounds like something from a Western movie where cowboys rode out to round up the cattle and brand them so they could be differentiated from the neighbors’ herds.  But this is Tennessee Code. 

So if all the animals are gonna’ be roaming, anything you don’t want eaten or trampled had better be surrounded by a fence.  Are you going to go buy a few rolls of barbed wire?  Well it was available, having been patented as early as 1867 and with 150 companies producing it in the last quarter of the 19th century.  And there was some barbed wire in use on the mountain.  But we’ve established here many times that cash flow was always at a minimum in Appalachia and therefore our farmers used whatever materials they had in abundance. 

Paling Fence

Trees.  That’s what the mountain had to offer in abundance for many, many years.  Hence the famous split rail fence.  But the more industrious land owner could split out flat palings to make something more like a board fence, or a picket fence. 

Rail fence built with Saplings

Every young boy knew how to split rails.  My grandpa told me at one point he could sell them for a penny apiece.  If you really put your head down you could make a dollar in a day – big money!  But notice the group picture here – that zig-zagging fence is made of saplings.  Do you get the idea that they were clearing out some land that had lain fallow for a few years and was taken by saplings so they just used what they were cutting?  I tell you what, the resourcefulness of these folks awes me.

So once you’ve got the barrier between you and the wild hoards, you’re going to need a gate.  Gates are expensive.  It’s not too hard to build a gate but a gate made out of palings would get heavy pretty quickly.  So the common gate was the draw bar.  Simply put four posts in the ground and lay more posts horizontally between them.  It might take a minute or two to get it open but it will certainly serve the purpose. 

Photo courtesy of Farm Hand's Companion

Again the more industrious fencer could build wooden gates then find a way to hang them.  Any ironware meant money so they made wooden hinges with three boards mounted two on one side and the third on the other side and joined by a dowel in the center.  Pa Mac from Farm Hand's Companion shared with me some examples of these hinges he photographed in the Smokies and I'm pretty amazed by them.  He also reports he's saving special wood to try his hand at making them so we'll have to be watching his blog for a report on that.

Horizontal posts are a Draw Bar Gate

I'd love to hear if any of you have seen these hinges in use on the Plateau, or if you've experienced opening a draw bar gate!

I hope you’ve enjoyed the backgrounds of these family pictures.  Maybe this little exercise will lead us to see more detail in all of our old pictures.

Goin’ Sallet Huntin’ by Callie Melton

 The following is taken from an article written by Callie Melton for The Standing Stone Dispatch in the early 1980’s.  I present it verbatim

Going sallet hunting in the Spring was a necessity even more important than making soap.  The holed-up cabbage, turnips and Fed Allreds had long been used up… so had the kraut and the smoked apples.  We were tired of leather britches.  Bacon, hominy, pone bread, Irish potatoes and sweet potatoes were ood to fill an empty belly, but did nothing to satisfy that craving for a mess of something fresh.  So when the first touch of green appeared in the woods and fields, we knew it was time to go sallet hunting. 

The women would take their baskets and knives and make an occasion of it, for it was rare indeed for the women to be away from the house like this.  They would start out right after breakfast, and would wander all through the nearby fields and woods until they got their baskets full.

They picked blackberry brier leaves, rabbit lettuce, pok weed shoots, broad leaf plantin, narrow leaf plantin, spotted dock, sour dock, creasy, violet leaves, lamb’s quarter, sheep sorrel, pepper grass and dandelions.  You picked only the very young tender leaves, and just the right amount of each kind o plant.  You couldn’t pick too much sheep sorrel or dock, or pepper grass for their flavors were so strong that they would spoil the whole mess.  When you got home, you picked over your sallet, washed it seven times under running water, and then you put it on to par-boil.  In the meantime you had put a good-sized hunk of smoked hog jaw in the pot and put it over the fire to cook… you had to cook your meat almost done before you put in your sallet.  After you sallet had parboiled for a few minutes, you drained off the water, then put the sallet in the pot with the hog jaw to finish cooking. 

The pot simmered over the coals until the sallet was tender.  The liquid in the pot was pot likker, and it was saved for the youngest and the oldest in the family… most usually there were three generations in every household.  You would put a big piece of pone bread in a bowl and pour some of the pot likker over it, then feed it to the baby.  Grandpa and Grandma would do the same way with theirs, except they would cut up an onion in their bowls.  If you didn’t have scallions in the garden, you just went out and hunted wild onions… sallet was’t sallet without an onion to go with it.

Callie Melton’s “Spring in Appalachia”

A cousin recently shared some old newspapers another cousin had been saving for a few decades and I will be sharing some excerpts from them over the next few weeks, very much like the Soap Makin’ article last week.

This week’s article comes from The Standing Stone Dispatch.  There’s no date on the paper but based on some of the advertisements I deduce it was printed in the early 1980’s.  In “Spring in Appalachia” Callie Melton mirrors many of my own thoughts so I’ll share some excerpts from this article verbatim.

Ever since we were discovered, we of the Appalachian Area have been probed, prodded, surveyed, measured, evaluated, talked about, and written about… and most of the people doing this have had no earthly idea of what they were seeing or hearing.  They were… and are… people who have come in, stayed for a year or two at most then become instant authorities on the whole subject.

Almost to a person we have resented this.  We are what we are, and we are proud of it, for our heritage is second to none.  There are a few natives who have written about us honestly and truthfully… but it’s like trying to describe a taste or an aroma… this describing us and our ways.  You have to live a mighty long time among us to understand our talk and fathom our ways.

…Most of us were cut off from the outside world for more than 300 years.  No roads, no waterways…only the Buffalo Trails and Indian Traces leading in, and once in nobody wanted to leave.  What we had came in with us over-moutain on pack horses from North Carolina and Virginia… and what we brought consisted of wife and youg’uns, a few iron cooking pots, a few iron tool heads, a few precious seeds wrapped in deerskin and carried in the cooking pot for safety during the traveling.

We settled on the rivers and up on the steep hillsides, and always by a big sweet-flowing spring.  Trees were cleared, a cabin built and chinked, a few out-buildings thrown u, with room for truck patches nearby.  Wild game furnished the meat, and the skins were tanned to furnish the leather.  Eating utensils were carved from the soft buckeye wood, while the harder woods furnished the tubs, barrels and piggins, and the ax, maul and the hammer handles.  And thus we made our first homes in the new area in a corner of what is now called Appalachia.

But what makes us of this area so unique is that along with ourselves, our seeds and our cooking pots, we brought along our beliefs, our habits, our customs and our superstitions.  And down through the years through thick and thin, we have hung onto them… we have always fought change like we fight sin and the devil… for what was good enough for Pap and Grandpa was, and still is, good enough for us.  Mostly we were English, German and Scotch-Irish… and we came to this new country for two main reasons… homes and religious freedom.  We had known hard times, fear and deprivation in the lands from whence we came… so even though the wilderness and the Red Man held terrors for us, we faced them willingly just ot be able to have our own bit of soil and to worship our God in our own way. 

…We were not so bad off… danger and hard work abounded, but so did food and shelter, and the other necessities of life could be obtained here the same way we got them before we came to this area.  So, we dug in for a long hard struggle… and in this struggle we developed a way of life and a character that you will not find the likes of elsewhere in the world.