CRAVINGS FROM MY YOUTH ON THE FARM

I got an urge to go back to South Georgia this past week. 

I can't drive down there at this time, so I did the next best thing. I went online and found Mark's Melon Patch where I have shopped in years past.  They carry fresh produce grown in the area and they carry jellies and syrup, with no additives like corn syrup, that I cannot find in my area of North Carolina or in the area of Atlanta where my sister lives.

When I was a girl at home, Mother and I would go to a farm where sugar cane was processed. A horse or mule hitched to a pole, walked around and around while activating a machine that squeezed the juice out of the cane stalk. The juice ran into a large kettle set over a fire. This was called a cane grinding. It was a fall harvesting of the sweet cane grown on the farms. 

Mother liked the juice and we drank a few cupfuls while there. The juice was cooked down and became cane syrup. Mother took home a large bottle of juice and several jars of syrup. Although we didn't think about it then, we were able to buy for a small price, something that was pure. Nothing was added to it - no high fructose corn syrup - as is found in all the syrups on the grocery store shelves today. 

Sugar cane syrup purchased at Mark's Melon Patch online

Although I doubt many farms grow cane now and don't hold cane grindings, someone makes pure sugar cane syrup and Mark's Melon Patch sells it. 

This time of year is when the Mayhaws are gathered. The little red, tart, berries were gathered on our farm by spreading white sheets under the limbs of the low-growing bush-like trees. The limbs of the tree were then shaken and all the ripe berries fell onto the sheets. It took many of the little berries to make even one pint of jelly.

We took the berries home to Mother who had the wizardry to turn them into the most delicious jelly one could ever taste. 

As I craved some of these delicacies I decided to see if Mark's Melon Patch would ship them to me. They did. Right away I had to taste the syrup on pancakes. Soooo good. 

This morning, I opened one of the jars of Mayhaw jelly and it was as good as my mother made it. 

Two jars of Mayhaw jelly and one of pepper jelly

Do you have special foods you enjoyed in your youth and can't find where you live now?

You say you like my family stories. Here is one for you.

Recently I found myself talking to a friend about my brother, Coy Ray Council. He was the second to the oldest child in our family. My sister, June, firstborn, entered the world in Pelham, Georgia. Ray is the only one of us to be born in another state. June 29, 1926, Ray was born in Rubonia, an unincorporated community in Manatee County, Florida. 

My father, Coy Lee Council, had moved his little family from South Georgia to Florida to work on a farm for his older brother, Charlie Council, also in Manatee County. In the early 1920s, Florida experienced a real estate boom. Huge immigration took place with people pouring there from the north and other southern states. Prices were soaring. People were moving to Florida in droves. Life was good. Many members of my Council and Robison families moved there and raised families that still live there.

Rubonia was a community of working-class people, mostly black, who worked in the fruit packing industry and in the orchards and fields. 

My father and mother lived in that settlement in the northwest corner of the county in a rented house. Daddy had to take a second job working nights at the ice plant to make enough to pay the rent and feed his small family. My mother said she was afraid, alone at night because she could hear strangers walking right outside her window. 

Rubonia is in the upper left-hand corner of the county.

When Ray was born in June 1926, two major hurricanes in Florida had caused millions in property damage and hundreds of lost lives. The boom was busting. The Depression was looming.

Moving Back to Georgia

My mother, Lois, wanted to move back to Pelham Georgia where her family still lived in the house where she grew up on the grounds of the Textile Mill where Coy had worked most of his life.

Soon after Ray was born, Coy and Lois left Florida and moved their little family back to Pelham. Coy did not go back to the mill. Instead, he bought a filling station on Railroad street from his brother-in-law, Jimmy Tinsley. That is the story I heard, but I think he might have rented the store from a landlord after Jimmy and Aunt Judy gave it up. I can't imagine he had money to buy a store.

Ray was a toddler by that time and June remembered Daddy standing little Ray on the counter in the store and letting him sing for the customers. That first son was the apple of my father's eye. June said he never gave her that kind of attention and I am not surprised. 

My father had a plan. He wanted a family filled with boys who could work on the farm with him, the farm he would one day own.

Little did he know how important Ray would become to the entire family. It is likely that he was the person who saved the land, the company, C. L. Council and Sons, and became the pseudo head of the family when he was a teenage boy. 

In 1943, Ray was seventeen years old. He missed the last three months of high school because he had to stay home and do the spring plowing and planting. The family depended on it. Daddy was too sick to do that work. 

Ray was not a big strapping boy. He was about 5 ft 8 inches tall and was not built like his younger brothers. He told Max later in life that on those days when he had to plow all day long, he became exhausted and had to stop at the end of each long row, lie down on the ground, and rest. 

What is beyond me is that he did not quit. He never said to Mother or Daddy that it was too much and he couldn't go on.

He plowed mules and horses because there was no money at that time to purchase a tractor. The heat and humidity in south Georgia are unbearable even in the spring months. But that young man felt such responsibility for his family and he knew his father was depending on him to get the crops planted. They say what doesn't kill you makes you strong, and perhaps that is what happened to my brother. 

Max said, "Ray missed the last three months of school, but went in to take his final exams. He aced them all." Max, who wasn't a good student, was in awe of Ray who never took books home with him. Ray finished his homework before he left school and then passed his tests with top grades. 

His teachers knew Ray was a diligent student who was not afraid to take on challenges. When given an opportunity, Ray entered contests at school. He entered and won an essay contest. As the winner, he had to read the essay to a group of adults, probably from the club that sponsored the contest. 

Evidently, Mother and Daddy went to hear him read because an influential man came to my father afterward. "Where is Ray going to college?" he asked Daddy. My family had no money to send any of us to college. 

I don't know what my father said to the man, but the wealthy man told my father, "When he gets ready to go, let me know. I will pay his way. This boy deserves and should get a college education." 

I am impressed that Ray was elected class president and even though he missed so much of his senior year, Max said he was Valedictorian at his graduation. What I am most sorry about is there is no school annual the year of Ray's graduation. Because of the war, it was not published.

Ray, at age 18, joined the military during the last year of WWII. He joined rather than wait to be drafted because he was told he would have a chance to serve in the Navy instead of being a soldier in the Army. I will never forget the sight of and my feeling of fear when I saw my father and mother embracing, both crying on the morning Ray left.

I can imagine Mother's fears for her son. She adored him and leaned on him after Daddy was hurt in an accident on the farm. I remember how my father suffered from chills and fever and pain. I can still hear his moans as my mother piles quilts on him. I don't know if there was ever a diagnosis for his illness, but I do know that he was treated for kidney disease at one time. 

I was five years old when Ray served in the Navy. It seems to me he came home almost every weekend, hitch-hiking in the dark on long south Georgia roads. He told us the story of when a long black car stopped and picked him up one night. It was dark in the car. He threw his duffle bag in the back seat and climbed in. Suddenly he realized there was someone else there. A man sat on the other side of the back seat. In the front was a driver.

He knew the men in the car had seen him on the side of the road in his white navy uniform. But who was this man in the car with him now? In the dark, he heard a voice ask him, "Where are you stationed, young man?" Ray answered and the man in the dark continued asking him questions about himself, his family, and what he thought about the Navy.

Ray politely answered everything he was asked. The man told Ray how much he appreciated his sacrifice for his country.

Ray asked to get out when the car reached Acree, a little settlement about three miles from our house. He would walk home from there. Ray, having been taught good manners, and being respectful of his elders, felt he had impressed the man in the dark car and was happy to have the chance to talk to someone of such importance. 

Somehow in that dark car, Ray came to understand he was riding with and talking to Georgia Governor E. D Rivers, a Democrat who accomplished many improvements in the state government. 

In today's world, one might be scared to get into a big black car in the dark with someone you can't see. But during that war, a man in uniform was treated as a very special person. Military men had no problem catching rides home on weekends. Civilians wanted to help in any way they could. In school, we donated our pennies to help the war effort. 

Ray would get to the farm Friday night in his uniform that made him so handsome and change into his farm clothes the next day to work with his brothers. One of them would drive him, now in uniform, over to Acree late Sunday afternoon where he would step out beside Hwy 82, hold up his thumb, and the first or second car that passed would stop and pick him up.

I will stop my tale for now. If you want to know more about my brother, Ray, and what he overcame to be the awesome man I miss so much today, let me know. I will tell the rest of the story.

Let me hear what you think. 

Home for a wedding and visit with family

The holidays are over and I am back home. I had a great time with family at Christmas and down in south Georgia where I attended the wedding of one of my great nephews, Colby, the grandson of my brother, Max. The wedding was held at the First Baptist Church in Camilla, Georgia, the hometown  of Kathryn Stripling Byer, my friend, and the first woman poet laureate of North Carolina. My parents grew up in Pelham, Georgia which is in the same county.

The wedding was touching as the bride and groom had written their vows and spoke them to each other instead of the pastor saying the typical words spoken at most weddings. 

It was fun to see all my nephews dressed so nicely in their formal clothes. I usually see them in jeans or shorts. Saturday, the day of the event, was beautiful, but that evening turned cold. The reception, held at the old Shackleford house, a landmark, in Albany was overflowing with guests and many of the younger ones were outside dancing. Not liking crowds, I went outside in the cold, had someone bring me a chair and enjoyed talking with the handsome men in my family. I truly enjoyed the evening.

I had not been back to my hometown for a while and it is always surprising to see what has changed there. We had a good dinner on Friday night at a new restaurant, The Flint, in old downtown. We all hope this is the beginning of the city rising from the ashes.The owners came over, welcomed us and invited us to tour the large facility. With my hip and knee problems, I stayed in my seat and visited with another nephew's lovely girlfriend. She told me about Terry HoYum Yum sauce made there in Albany. She is CFO of the company. I'm sorry I didn't get some sauce to bring home.

But I did pick up some May Haw Jelly, one of my favorite foods when I was a child. Mother made the jelly every year from the tiny red berries that only grow in that area. I even found some syrup made from sugar cane which I can't get up here in the mountains. When I was a kid, I went with Mother to the cane grindings in our community each fall. We drank cane juice and always came home with lots of cane syrup. But here in the super market, I can only find maple syrup, and many brands made with corn syrup and artificial flavors. The popular syrup made in this area is sorghum syrup, but it is too strong for me.

I will share a few photos I made at the wedding. I am not the greatest photographer, but these are OK.

Groom, Colby Council,  with his lovely bride outdoors at the reception

Gay and Stu, having fun. Gay held my wine and my purse so I could take photo.
 She was very cold all evening, wore her coat, so you didn't see the beautiful dress she wore.

Glenda and Gay, great aunts of the groom

Three of my generation were present. My brother, Max, Gay and me. I missed my brothers and sister who are no longer with us. It was particularly sad when Max came in and walked down the aisle alone because his wife is ill and could not be there with him for their grandson's wedding. 

More family history from my brother

Every time I talk with my brother Max, I learn more of our family history. 

Recently he told me that he, my sister June, and my brother Ray had malaria when Max was only four years old. Malaria is a serious and sometimes fatal disease caused by a parasite that infects a certain type of mosquito which feeds on humans. People who get malaria are typically very sick with high fevers, shaking chills, and flu-like illness. 

My family lived west of downtown Albany, GA, in the southwest corner of the state. At that time that area was mostly undeveloped wetlands, and small sinkholes filled with water each summer. These holes or little ponds became stagnant water, a perfect breeding place for mosquitoes. This was typical all over the south where swampy land existed.

Some of our relatives, who saw Max as he was recovering, thought he would not live. I imagine many children died from that dread disease in the late thirties and early forties. My aunt Lillian once asked my parents why in the world they lived in Albany, the “Malaria Capital of the World.” 

The most effective antimalarial drug was quinine, a very bitter substance, made from the bark of a certain kind of tree. Max said Mother gave them a green, grainy tonic called Grove’s Chill Tonic. One of the ingredients was quinine. The original name was Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic and was created not as a cure, but as a preventative and relief for the chills and fever accompanying the illness. Quinine has been used for more than three centuries and until the 1930s it was the only effective malaria treatment.

Mother had great faith in Grove’s Chill Tonic. She continued to use it as her first method of treatment for everything. I came along six years later. I can still remember how I dreaded a dose of chill tonic which she gave for whatever ailed us.

“I had a little drug business in Paris, Tennessee, just barely making a living, when I got up a real invention, tasteless quinine. As a poor man and a poor boy, I conceived the idea that whoever could produce a tasteless chill tonic, his fortune was made.”—E.W. Grove

Mr. E.W. Grove built the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC in 1913. By this time his medicinal products had become so popular his little drug business had grown into his Paris Medicine Company. He moved to Asheville for his health and constructed a number of places besides the Grove Park Inn. The Grove name is widely known in the mountain city. A popular place  for shopping is the Grove Arcade. Wise  people invested in his products and his company. I know our family contributed to his fortune with all the bottles Mother purchased. 

Barry and I spent a weekend in Asheville at that beautiful Inn about twenty years ago, and I almost asked for a discount claiming I helped build that place.

By the 1950s malaria had been eradicated. The Communicable Disease Center was founded in 1946 and with state, local and federal cooperation, DDT, an effective insecticide discovered in 1939, was sprayed everywhere mosquitoes could breed. Now only a few pockets of malaria are found in the United States each year.

Today the CDC warns about another mosquito-borne illness, the Zika Virus.

I wonder if I should suggest they try Grove’s Chill Tonic.

Note: The chill tonic was so popular the British army made it standard issue for every soldier going off to mosquito infested lands and, by 1890, more bottles of Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic were sold than bottles of Coca-Cola.

Did you ever take Grove’s Chill Tonic or did your mother rely on another tonic?

My Home Town in pictures

Although many things have changed in my hometown, Albany, Georgia, since I lived there, Betty Rehberg has photographed some of what has not changed and what is beautiful. 

I grew up on a farm where every morning brought sights and sounds of nature. Beside our house was a giant old Oak tree and in the backyard was a China-berry tree under which we played and in which I climbed. Behind the barn grew a pecan tree that covered the ground each fall with nuts. Squirrels and birds of all kinds lived in the trees. 

The livestock never hurt for water. Three ponds provided cool places for the cows to wade out and drink. The small lakes were surrounded by trees that drooped limbs over the banks when I was a kid. Many of those trees were May Haw trees that provided little tart red berries we gathered for Mother to make jelly. 

In the video you will see the bridge where my school bus crossed the Flint River on the way to the school I attended. We could see the train trestle from the bridge. 

Also in the video are pictures of the waterfront where, after I left, a lovely area was built so that visitors can walk and sit to enjoy that powerful river. She shows us thee statue of Ray Charles and his piano. You see, Ray Charles was born in Albany one night when his mother was passing through town. I doubt he ever spent a day there until he came back as a man and sang at our Civic Center. 

We had several famous people who did live in Albany. Ray Stevens, the singer, went to Albany High School when I was there. A famous baseball player, Ray Knight, lives in my hometown and his wife, a famous golfer lived there also. 

In this video, I saw the old State Theater where my brother, Hal, was supposed to pick up his two little sisters after his date one night. But Hal dropped us off and forgot about us. When he got home late that night without us, Mother sent him back to town. The manager had come out and found us huddled together, sitting on the curb. We told him we were waiting for our brother to pick us up. So, he turned off the lights and went home. Hal found us there in the dim glow of a street light in front of the movie house. I don't think Mother ever trusted Hal to bring home the babies after that night. 

I saw pictures of Lake Worth where Barry took me on a boat ride on our first date. I'll never forget the moss covered trees and the quiet water with sounds of frogs calling out as dusk fell. 

The music in the video is perfect -- all about home. I don't plan to live in Albany again. I love it here in the mountains, but this glimpse of my hometown brought tears to my eyes. When I go down there again, I will look at it with different eyes. I will look for the beauty, the history and the good memories. 

Family Photos from annual Christmas Party

If you are a regular reader, you know I like to use pictures as prompts for stories and essays. I am sharing some photos from our recent family Christmas party down in Albany, Georgia.

Stu and Gay, Me, and my only brother still living, Max and his wife, Salita.
No one would believe that in May his cardiologist had given up on him.

 Max has been the subject of a number of essays I've written and is in a few poems. His life is rich and has the makings of a good book.

One of my handsome nephews. He is a Star Teacher and loves his work.

"The Kids" - my nieces and nephews and some cousins

As Scott Owens has said, as long as we have family we never run out of subject matter for our writing. The tall handsome guy in the very back has a darling grandson, Elliott. This grandfather and I were neighbors on the family farm in south Georgia. He created a Haunted Forest that brings hundreds out to be frightened every October. 

The men in the above photo are all Councils. The three women on the left are children of Councils. The two women right in the middle are descendants of the Robison family, my mother's maiden name.

I learned yesterday that Mary Mike Keller will once again teach her genealogy class with writing about our ancestors for Writers Circle studio in Hayesville in 2014. My study of my family history began many years ago and I have tons of research printed and in my computer. I published a family history, "Profiles and Pedigrees, Thomas C. Council and his Descendants" in 1998. 

I believe that we should document our family history, stories and details that others will never know unless we take the time to write it down. Although "The Kids" might not be interested in collecting the history at the time, there will come a time when they will wish they had asked more questions and saved more things relating to their ancestors. 

Do you need a prompt to get you started with writing today?

Choose a family member and write what you remember from childhood about this person. Include details.

A Hidden Council Family Cemetery

Today I talked with my brother Rex. Within a few weeks the farm where I grew up, the farm my father bought in 1942 with a loan from the government, the farm where I played or rode my horse in every field or clump of woods, where I walked through early dew and smiled at morning glories swinging from a fence, that farm will no longer be mine in any way. It will belong to the sons of my brother Max Council. And so things change. But at least the farm will stay within the family -- at least for a generation we hope.
The Council Family Cemetery is located on that farm on Fleming Road in Albany, Georgia. Coy Lee Council and Lois Robison Council are buried together there. Stanley Hunter is buried there and my brother Coy Ray Council is buried there.
Few people even know this cemetery exists. You won't find it listed on graveyard.com or even on Ancestry.
Coy Lee Council, my father loved that land so much, he never wanted to leave it. He wanted to be buried there. He prepared himself years ahead to be in that place for eternity. On Sunday mornings he walked or drove his pickup over to the area where some years before a large swimming pool was built by our family. He sat there for a couple of hours on Sunday and communed with his God. Now, just past the swimming pool, on the other side of a fence, these four graves announce to visitors that they have entered a cemetery.
Depending on how well it is cared for in the coming years, my other brothers and my sister June will be buried there.