Tag: Personal Storytellers

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

In these days of prepared just about everything, for many people what I like to call “old timey” cooking is just a distant memory, and for many others not even that.  Tuesday night I got the idea to write this because I plan, when The Little Girl goes to sleep, to show The Woman how to make chocolate syrup at home for a fraction of the cost of even the store brands.

It is easy, and the recipe can be increased to make as much as you want.  After thinking about that, I sort of randomly selected a few other things that used to be made from scratch that rarely are any more, or that simple are no longer eaten much.

I think that this will be sort of fun, and I suspect that many of you reading will have some recipes in your memories’ horde to share.  Let us start with chocolate syrup.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

Well, tonight is different because I have an update about Junior Jace Potter, the new kitten.  And I also have to announce that henceforth I shall not use the term The Girl for The Girl.  She told me Monday that since she was going to be 20 years old Tuesday I should henceforth refer to her as The Woman.

Back in June I wrote about her cat being killed and how we found a kitten to fill in for him.  Tonight is part update on how he is going and part recap of her birthday party from yesterday evening.

In the text are some pictures of the gifts that I gave her, and Saturday night at 7:30 on the Big Orange I am guest hosting What’s for Dinner? with step by step directions for making the cheesecake in the picture here, with lots of pictures of the process.

Sorry to post late, but I got an emergency call from next door because The Little Girl had lost her bottle and The Girl was trying to get her to the bed so that she (The Girl) and I could visit.  I hope that everyone understands that important personal interactions are more important than blogging.  The Girl found her bottle, in an area that I suggested.  She and I make a good team.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

I have written about Dad gardening before, so I hope that these are new stories.  I think that at least most of them will be.  Dad did not garden as long as my grandmum did, but when she got too feeble to garden effectively Dad, who was retired by then, took over the chore.

Dad did not do things an a small way.  He just about tripled the area that Ma gardened and moved the garden from the north side of the driveway to the south because there was more room.  He bought a rear tine tiller from the former Mrs. Translator’s father and broke the entire space with it.

I took a week off from blogging last week for a number of reasons.  One was that I was having trouble getting my mind around topics.  Another was being in sort of a strange set of moods that have made concentration rather difficult.  Yet again, and probably the root cause of the other two is either spending large amounts of time with someone (no time to write) or no time at all (no motivation to write).  In any event, I think that I have some balance back.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

Dad was sort of obsessive about the lawn.  We had a big yard, the front being the largest and the back second, with the sides being somewhat smaller but still large by most standards.  The problem was that we had lots of large trees.  In the front were two post oaks, a hackberry (that was hollow at the bottom), a mockernut hickory (one with really sweet nuts, unlike many mockernuts), and a papershell pecan.

The side on the south had a walnut tree that I planted, and the back had two large walnut trees.  The side on the north had a very tall pine and a redbud tree.  All of that shade made it sort of hard to grow grass.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

From the 1880s to the Great Depression Hackett was a booming town.  Coal drove the economy, but there was significant agriculture as well.  Coal was king, though.  Hackett coal is ideal for making coke, basically the coal counterpart of charcoal.  Coke was and still is used in enormous quantities to produce steel, and during The Gilded Age the steel mills were running at capacity.

Not just any coal will make suitable coke.  The particular kind of bituminous coal found at Hackett is ideal for coking and hundreds of men mined it there.  There were rail lines to carry it away and it found its way up north to the steel mills.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

My maternal grandmum married John Mackey, a really nice man who had been a doughboy during World War I.  She had been widowed for many years (my grandfather died years before I was born) and John had been married briefly decades before, so he was essentially a bachelor.

John had a little candy store on Main Street in Hackett where he sold candy, cold soft drinks, flashlight batteries, and sundries.  He never made any money with the store because he gave so much stuff away to kids (like me).  He lived in the back of the store until he married my grandmum.  He had a little pension for serving in World War I and also a black lung pension for being a coal miner for years.

The store was the gathering place for the old men in town.  He had an awning over the storefront and several benches and chairs under it.  He also had chairs and tables inside for winter and he had a pot bellied coal stove in the store.  At the time coal was readily available for the consumer market in Hackett.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

I have written about Ma’s garden before and shall not repeat that.  If you want to read them, you can look here, here, and here.  What I want to talk about tonight is that I have begun harvesting from my own garden recently, and just Monday got the first large tomatoes and purple hull peas.  I had been collecting cucumbers for a while.

I garden in a rather unconventional style.  For starters, I HATE to hoe and will go to great lengths to avoid it.  I do not mind tilling, but my soil was still nice and loose this year and did not even have to do that.  At least with tilling, you do it once and are finished for the year.

I had a bit of trouble getting the garden started this year because it was wet in the spring (not as bad as last year).  I finally did get it in, though, and my philosophy has changed considerably since I first started gardening living alone.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

When I was in school I had the good fortune to have a great many excellent teachers.  I even keep up with some of my high school teachers, and I was graduated in 1973.  Sr. Cabrini correspond on Facebook, and Sr. Pierre calls me from time to time.  They were both excellent and I glad to call them my friends.

On the other hand, I have had some really horrible ones.  One who has to be near the top of the list was Bill Holder, a mathematics teacher that I had at Westark Community College in Fort Smith.  That is now part of the University of Arkansas system, The University of Arkansas at Fort Smith.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

When I was around eight or so Uncle David built a jon boat out of marine plywood.  Uncle David is really good at woodworking and makes some nice pieces.  As far as I know it was his first attempt at a boat.  I rarely write about living people, but the humor in this piece is not at Uncle David’s expense and I bet that he gets a kick out of reading this.

He did a really good job of it, and it looked really nice.  It took him several days to finish it, and since they lived just across the street I watched quite a bit of how he built it.  He had gotten some plans from somewhere, but could have built it without any prepackaged plans because he was that good.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

Before we get started, please allow me to wish our great Nation a very happy 236th birthday!  Although the United States is not completely perfect, it is indeed a more perfect Union than had ever been conceived up to the time, and remains more perfect than any other.  As long as the People are in charge, this will not change.  Actually, I sort of begrudgingly look at 04 July as the anniversary, because I believe that the Nation actually came to be with the adoption of the Constitution of the United States on 04 March 1789, making it 213 years old, but the Founders chose 04 July, so I shall not argue too much.  Actually, the Declaration of Independence was signed on 02 August 1776, but the wording of the document was approved by the Continental Congress on 04 July 1776.  By the way, John Adams preferred 02 July because that is when the Congress voted to secede from the UK.

There were not very many formal observations of Independence Day in Hackett when I was little.  Actually there were none.  However, we still celebrated it in our own ways.