Memories of My Granny

A couple of things today inspired me to write this, one being it is the holiday season and the second being I have read a couple of books the last week that got me thinking about my own childhood, and it gave me some fond recollections I just had to share.   My great-grandmother, Ottie Turner, has been gone from this world now for about 26 years, being she reposed in 1985.  As she had a great influence on my life when I was growing up, and in a lot of ways I carry on a lot of her legacy myself, she is an important person to me that I love and truly miss at times.  Although I know that she was only human and not by any means a perfect person, I think of her as a saint, because to me that was who she was.  And, I want to share some of those memories with you now.

Back when I came into the world in the little town of Parsons, WV, back in 1969, the first place I ever lived when I went home from the hospital was Granny's in the nearby town of Hendricks.  She lived in this big house down by the Black Fork River next to an old swinging bridge that was there forever, and as a youngster that house became the center of my universe growing up.   I still remember smells I associated with the old homeplace - blueberries and lilacs come to mind, except in Granny's bedroom off the living room, which smelled like Easter candy.   It was a beautiful house, a sanctuary, and from the time I was born up until I was around 8 years old we called that place home a lot.  Unfortunately, in the Flood of 1985, it was wiped away and no longer stands there, and the picture below shows what happened to the house during the flood:

Granny's house was at the right of the picture.

Over the years, I have tried to bring a little piece of that old house to my own places I have lived, but it can never be the same exactly - Granny's was a unique house, but it does live in my memories and always will.  I do dream about it on occasion, and those dreams provide a nice visit, but I do miss the place.  And, I miss my Granny too - she was a wonderful lady.

Granny's roots began up in an area just north of Parsons called Holly Meadows, which was at the edge of a beautiful region in central Tucker County called the Sugarlands.  A couple of centuries back, a number of German Dunkard families settled that area, seeing the great potential for agriculture due to the rich bounty of the Cheat and Blackwater Rivers that border it, and among those were two families, the Stevens and the Helmicks.  Sometime in the late 1880's, a young Dunkard farmer named David Stevens married a young Dunkard girl named Antoinette, or "Nettie," Helmick, and they started a life together eventually having four children.  Granny was one of the youngest, being born in 1902, and she later married young when a 40-ish Dunkard preacher by the name of Charles Judson Strahin proposed to her when she was about 17 or so.   She ended up having four sons with him (the oldest, Walter, died in childbirth), and their second son, my grandfather David Frederick Strahin, is my grandfather who was born in 1925.   My great-grandfather Charles later died in 1932 of complications from black lung disease, and Granny soon after remarried her second husband, Delbert "Mose" Turner, with whom she had five additional children.  Her life was full but often hard - she was a young preacher's widow, and later had a bad end to her second marriage, and later she worked at the local hospital where she walked the three miles from Hendricks to Parsons every day for years until constant bouts of colitis soon forced her to retire.  But, she also was a woman of great faith - she never missed church on Sunday unless she was sick, always prayed at night before falling to sleep, and knew her Bible well.   That, along with a great gift for cooking and maintaining a wonderful house meant that life rarely slowed for her.  And, that is a legacy that lives after her today.



The Sugarlands in Tucker County, the home of Granny's folks.

My memories of Granny at this point are very personal.  I recall for instance her eating a bowl of Fruit Loops with me every morning when I was about six, and although she could cook some delicious breakfasts (fresh sausage patties and large, thick lean strips of bacon were often on the table), she enjoyed doing that with me.   However, her favorite thing was this stuff which in German was called Kopfkase (literally "head cheese," and the imagination goes far with that!) but the Americanized market version of it was called scrapple.  For those of you not familiar with Penn-German cuisine, scrapple is this square of grey jelly-like stuff made from boiled pig parts, corn meal, and seasonings (in the old days, it was also made from boiling a pig's head, hence the name kopfkase!), and the way it is typically prepared is sliced into squares and fried - it resembled a grey cheese.   I never really had the taste for it, as it just looked too weird, but Granny could live on it had she been able to. 



Scrapple, or Kopfkase (sometimes called panhase by the Mennonites).

Another little habit that crept into our family from our Penn-German Dunkard roots that my grandmother had a lot to do with was the use of certain names, either as terms of endearment or names said in anger if one of our parents or grandparents got a little ticked off at us.  One I remember well was GabeScheiss which I could never find a literal meaning of, but generally it had a connection to someone being a goofball.   Another one of these terms was Dumkopf which of course means "dumb head," and could be used as a term of endearment or exasperation, depending on the context of the situation.   Yet another was Machschnitz with "schnitz" referring to apple and rotten, meaning a spoiled brat basically.   Granny and her folks passed stuff like this down through the generations, and today I still call our cats those names when I get exasperated at them.  

Often, when I was little and we stayed with Granny too, I remember often getting to sleep in her bed at night, especially when it was cold out.  One ritual she always had was heating up this old antique iron (which actually was black iron) on the coal stove in the living room, then wrapping it in a towel and putting it at the foot of the bed.  It was an old practice of keeping the bed warm at night, and worked well during our cold winters.  And, she always said her prayers before bed too - she would kneel next to the bed and pray for everyone in the family, as well as for neighborhood people who had sickness or whatever, and I remember always lying there whispering to her, "don't forget me too, Granny!" - she never did either.  And, she also made sure - as did Mom - that I went to Sunday School.  After my great-grandfather passed in the '30's, Granny attended the Free Methodist church there in Hendricks, which was up the street from the house, and we often walked there on Sundays.  Although the church my great-grandfather built was in nearby Rosendorf - it has been home to the Pentecostal Church of God congregation since the 1930's - she chose to attend the Free Methodist parish because of its close proximity.  Her family's church though was up in the Sugarlands, an old Dunkard church that still stands and meets today and where the reunions of her mother's family, the Helmicks, are held every year still as they have been for decades.   Granny was a woman of strong convictions and beliefs, and Mom often pays me a high compliment by saying that I remind her of Granny with my own convictions.  Hearing that gives me a sense of great pride and awe, because to carry on my Granny's legacy in that way is a great responsibility, and for Mom to say that means something significant.   I only hope that when I see her in heaven one day, Granny can say the same thing. 

Although a sweet and compassionate lady of great conviction, Granny was also someone who didn't take a lot of nonsense either.  She was a little lady, but she also commanded great respect, and we did well to make sure she got it.  I remember crossing that line with her once when I was seven years old, and although I was not supposed to be down near the river - I couldn't swim, plus there were deadly snakes in the area - I ran off down there anyway.  Within a short time, here came Granny with a spatula, and she gave me a tanning on my rear I wouldn't soon forget!  Of course, at the age of seven, I often had my own names for stuff, and instead of spatula I called it a "skillet spoon," and to this day my family still loves telling stories about me and that "skillet spoon!" 

I also can remember the Sunday drives Mom took me and Granny on, as well as the yearly expeditions to pick the berries Granny turned into delicious cobblers, preserves, pies, and other goods.  Granny's favorite spot to pick huckleberries was up in the Stoney River region above Thomas, where the berries grew thick and plentiful in those days.  I of course loved helping, and berry-picking was a family affair for us all.  She also loved picking blackberries and red mountain raspberries up in Shaver's Fork, an area out on a dirt road just south of Parsons.   For about a week after the house smelled of berries as Granny canned and baked stuff with them.   Today many of those places where the berries were plentiful are no longer there, and not many people take foraging berries as seriously as the older generations did - many of them did it to survive, and as a result our forebears always ate well even when money was scarce.   It was Granny also that taught generations of our family to make candy out of potatoes at Christmas, gravy out of tomatoes in the summer, and fried cucumber slices, among other good stuff.   She also had home remedies that I still use to this day - she knew that whiskey and sugar water would knock out a cold, mint would cure a stomach ache, and the juice of fried onions would calm a teething baby's gums.  That wisdom is valuable, but it again is what the older folks needed to survive the harsh Appalachian winters.   When I think of how much I really learned from Granny, it is amazing, and the world is a poorer place today without people like her in it anymore.   And, mostly because of her, today blueberries are still my favorite fruit and lilacs my favorite flower - they evoke such good memories.

Much more could be said about Granny's legacy, but time and space do not permit.  However, I am glad to share it with you, and hope this will maybe get you thinking about your own folks.   I wish you all a happy holiday season, and until next time stay safe and take care.



A Carrot, An Egg, and A Cup of Coffee

 

(This is a story I saw recently in the Saint Antony Messenger, published by the Coptic Monastery of St. Antony in Barstow, CA. It has a good message, and hope you will enjoy it too.)


A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up; she was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved a new one arose.

Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to a boil. In the first she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and in the last she placed ground coffee beans. she let them sit and boil, not saying a word.

In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl. Turning to her daughter, she asked, "Tell me what you see."

"Carrots, eggs, and coffee," the daughter replied.

Her mother brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted they were soft. The mother then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally the mother asked the daughter to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its rich aroma. The daughter then asked, "What does it mean, mother?"

Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversary - boiling water. Each reacted differently. The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior, but after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened. The ground coffee beans were unique however. After they were in the boiling water for a while, they changed the water.

She asked her daughter then, "Which are you?" "When adversity knocks at your door, how do you respond - are you a carrot, and egg, or a coffee bean?"

Think of this: which am I?? Am I the carrot that seems strong but with pain and adversity do I wilt and lose my strength?  Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat? Did I have a fluid spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a financial hardship, or some other trial, have I become hardened and stiff? Does my shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and hardened heart?

Or, am I like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstances that bring the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor. if you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get better and change the situation around you. When the hour is darkest and trials are at their greatest do you elevate yourself to another level? How do you handle adversity - are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?

The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way. May we all be COFFEE!!!!!

Snowed In At the School - 1979

One of the many things I remember as a kid is something that revolves around school.  Back when I was younger we moved around the state of West Virginia a lot, but one of the schools I was in for some time was Augusta School in Augusta, WV.   The two years I went there were separate years - one of them was the 1977-1978 school year, when I was in 2nd grade, and the other was the 1979-1980 school year, when I was in 4th grade.  Both years were very memorable, and for the most part I had the same classmates during both.   However, it was a winter day in late 1979 I recall that really stood out.

My mother and I at the time were staying at my grandmother and step-grandfather's place, about a couple of miles southwest of Augusta near the base of Short Mountain.  Getting to school then was a little bit of a challenge, as we lived quite a ways back from the main road then and my grandparents' house was only accessible via two narrow dirt roads that wound their way back through cow pastures and pine forests to the actual house.   You entered both roads via these gates, which had to be opened manually (a BIG pain in the butt, since for some reason I always got that wonderful task then!) and then closed after your car went through the gate, being the owners of the land, the Beery family, had a sizeable herd of cattle they didn't want loosed.  However, of a morning, my uncle Junior (who was in the 8th grade then) and I had to walk all the way to the front gate in order to catch the bus to school, and that could be quite a hike in bad weather.  Generally, since I liked walking along by myself, I took a forest path down below the house out to the gate while Junior walked the road, and it was a good time to think and meditate while I walked (as much as a 10-year-old meditates, anyway!).  That therefore sets the scenario.

For the most part, the Potomac Highlands of West Virginia has pretty manageable winters - we get snow there, but not on the level that some place like Wisconsin or Minnesota gets.  However, there are those occasions where freak blizzards and snowstorms happen, and one of those hit that year in the month of December.   And, that is what this story was about.

Our day started out normal enough, as most of us went through a normal school day in our small 4th-grade class with our teacher, Ms. Mary Day (later she separated from her husband and reverted to her maiden name Magnetti, but she was still Ms. Day at this point).  Although a bit scary at times, having her as a teacher was not too bad, and we managed well.   The day itself was overcast, very chilly, and a bit unusual for December.  By early afternoon though, snow began to fall, and it blanketed the town quickly.  By the time the school day was over, the roads outside were a mess and the snow I recall was coming down very heavy, so much so that our bus couldn't get to the school.  Therefore, about 6 or 7 of us ended up being stranded with Ms. Day, and there was no clear direction as to when we would get to leave given the conditions outside.   But, we made a good time of it, and as many kids our age get, we all needed something for sustenance while we waited.  As it turns out, Ms. Day had a piece of carrot cake left over from her lunch, and she divided it up among the group of us to tide us over until we were able to get home.  That was something I will always remember, because for the longest time I kind of thought of her as a sort of cross between a witch and that mean old lady with all the cats on the next block we all thought was weird.   However, it turned out she was looking out for us in her own way, and as I look back on that, she did a very noble thing taking care of us kids when things seemed uncertain and our parents were all probably freaking out about the whole thing.  

That night, at around 6 or so, the buses were finally able to roll and transported us home.  Fortunately for me, my step-grandfather was down at the gate and I didn't have to walk in that dark and snow all the way over the ridge home - what a blessing THAT was!  At any rate, that was a childhood adventure I will not soon forget.

Stay tuned for more good stuff later, and look forward to you visiting again soon.