Summer Down South

It is Summer Down South again.  This is the first gardenia of the season, and it smells as heady as it looks floating in my pink depression glass. 

Gardenia Martini

We just love to float flowers Down South, and a gardenia in a martini glass is the quintessential symbol of the beginning of Summer when fireflies and candles light up air filled with the heady scent of Summer. Cheers to true Southerners who savor Gardenia Martinis in June.

Southern Treasures

For several years Being Dead Is No Excuse by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays has been a staple in Southern homes.  Why?  Because we recognize ourselves in the stories.  We take funerals very seriously and put on the dog with great old Southern recipes like those included in this book.  I was particularly fond of the comparison of Episcopal and Methodist funerals Down South and found hilarious truths in the descriptions.  I also found the perfect coconut cake recipe there which happens to be my Mama's favorite.   

I am thrilled to report that Metcalfe and Hays have moved from funerals to weddings with Somebody is going to die if Lilly Beth doesn't catch that bouquet.  I haven't read it yet, having only found it today in Atlanta.  But if it is anywhere near as good as Being Dead, I have great expectations of  laughs and more good recipes to come.  

Nothing...but nothing...beats a good laugh, a good recipe and "doing thoughtfulness right" in the South.

Southern Women

"Despite their cattiness, Southern women often get along beautifully and enjoy each other's company in a way that other women cannot manage.  They are the only American women who, bereft of their men, once stood alone together and faced an invading army.  This makes for a special closeness in the descendants of those not-so-fragile flowers who greeted a battalion from their front porches with a frigid bow." 

~Florence King, Southern Ladies and Gentlemen

Mockingbirds

Kymulga Grist Mill near Childersburg, Alabama

A Southern classic, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird is required reading in the South. Published in 1960, the story is a vision of the summer of 1936 when the Alabama author was ten years old. A brother and sister, Jem and Scout, along with their friend, Dill, run around a small town in overalls, playing the hardy imaginal games taught by freedom to roam in the heat of a Southern summer, learning the lessons of injustice and mercy. Southerners always seem to identify with one or other of the characters, and, like the characters in Gone with the Wind, they might as well be real people who live down the street since their actions and inactions are discussed accordingly.

When the children’s father tells them that it would be a sin to kill a mockingbird, a neighbor, Mrs. Maudie, explains why. A mockingbird is one who

“…don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.“

A mockingbird was revealed to the children in the form of a reclusive, downright odd neighbor, Boo Radley, the town spook, so to speak, with a tragic past, a man scorned and feared. Boo watched over the children without their knowing. Unable to relate to the children, he loved them nonetheless, and left them presents in the hollow of a tree. Treasures left by Boo included: two pieces of Wrigley's Double Mint Gum; two scrubbed and polished pennies; one ball of gray twine; two “almost perfect miniatures of two children” (Scout and Jem); one whole package of chewing gum; a tarnished spelling bee medal; and “a pocket watch that wouldn’t run, on a chain with an aluminum knife.”

Ultimately Boo’s greatest gift was saving the lives of the children and bringing them home. Boo was, in the end a mockingbird, doing no harm, giving without expectation, singing his heart out in his own odd way.

Boo wasn’t such a strange man. I would imagine that many people make containers similar to tree hollows in which they give others their druthers.  Love is seldom melodramatically grand. Often its symbols are little, unpretentious, tentative, yet faithful. Gum, pennies, twine…that’s the stuff with which we sing out our apprehensive, worn out hearts.

Country Roads

Somnolent Summer scenes on any Southern road are drenched in color and haze, providing a sense of fantasy and blessing...how could any place be so naturally rich?  How could I have been so blessed to be born and to live my life in such a God given painting?

Southern Saudade

I am fascinated by words that do not translate into English.  These foreign words demonstrate, to some extent, differences in cultural values.  In one language a particular feeling has a word symbol assigned to it; in another no word symbol was created that hits the mark.   Take, for instance, saudade, a Portugese word that can be roughly translated to mean a vague desire.  

Do you ever have a vague, unquinchable desire?  This feeling may be human nature; it is, no doubt, a feeling we have down South, and we even talk about it outloud but do not have a word symbol to assign.  We just say "there's no place else on earth like the South," and we mean it with all our hearts.  Sometimes we say "Southern by the grace of God."  Born of history, lush landscape and heat, Southern sensuality evokes poignant feelings of love and loyalty.  The sweetness of screen doors slamming, the squeek of rockers on front porches, fans, homemade ice cream, old oaks, watermelon, laughter remembered, laughter anticipated, flickers of lightning bugs, memories carried in the distant train whistle, magnolias in blooms, roses in cemetaries, spring azaleas, the thick, lush heat of summer, memories of ancestors we never knew, a desire to pass on this intense loyalty to the next generation...  

As  A.F.G. Bell wrote in In Portugal (1912):

"The famous saudade of the Portuguese is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness."

An indolent dreaming wistfulness is a way of romancing a land/culture/history worthy of being romanced.  So I will borrow from the Portuguese and use their language to describe the Southern Saudade that smells like Confederate Jasmine in bloom and tastes like fried chicken, cornbread and iced tea. 

Caramel Cake

My family goes way back with caramel cake, but Mama nor Daddy ever mastered the art of making one.  Mama and I nonetheless would buy perfect caramel cakes from the Montgomery Farmers Market made by some local person whose name now fails me.  The cake was yellow and soft; the caramel slightly grainy in a fudgey way.  The combination superb, especially with a cup of coffee.  Over the years I have made facsimiles of that caramel cake, but I never hit the mark.  Sometimes the humidity would be too high, and the caramel just didn't work exactly right.  But I finally did it.  The photo above shows the last slice of a caramel cake I made over the weekend to take for coffee hour at church.  At long last, it matched the caramel cake of my youth, and I credit hand whipping the icing.  That and this old fashioned recipe that did not allow for whipping the flour, which can make a cake hard or tough (as we say down South).  I was amazed at how everyone had a special place in his or her heart for caramel cake, and they ate it with wild abandon, even the diabetic and the guy who didn't stay for coffee hour but stuck out his palms to take a piece as if it were the Eucharist.  

We also have a saying when food is beyond good - it's good enough to make you slap your Mama.  But I didn't.  I took her some cake, and when she gave it a full endorsement I knew I had arrived.  Could anything make a girl prouder than her Mama telling her she sure knows how to make a cake?

A good cake is a tradition - the taste of family, home and memory.   These things are important down South where good recipes and good people are not forgotten. 

Sweet Home Alabama

"Make it a slow one, Miss Stella."

"Sweet Home Alabama...where the skies are so blue.  Sweet Home Alabama...Lord I'm coming home to you."

                                             ~ A great line from "Sweet Home Alabama", the movie

Fried Green Tomatoes

Tonight I watched "Fried Green Tomatoes" again, probably my favorite movie.  It will always be the movie that takes me home.  I laughed and cried and remembered the lines I have learned from repeated viewings.  I simply more than know these characters.  I grew up with them; I understand them; I am one of these characters.

So everyone wants to know the answer to the burning question - what was the true nature of Idgie and Ruth's relationship?  Were they friends, family, lovers, soul mates or all of these?  They shared a home, ran a business together and raised Ruth's baby.  They worked, laughed and cried together, served as each other's defender and Ruth died to the sound of Idgie's voice telling a tall tale.  Idgie was, obviously, not your typical Southern Bell, more male than female, full of nerve and daring.  And Ruth?  Ruth was tangibly spiritual and just plain charmed.  On screen nothing is confirmed, but I assure you that they were everything any two people can be to each other. 

I know The Whistle Stop Cafe, a little knock about place in Alabama where iced tea and bar-be-que are still served over the sound of a train whistle.  The leaves still dance in the wind along with spirits from the past, and for eternity honey will be left at Ruth's grave with a note that says "I'll always love you.  The Bee Charmer".