Every time I went to her house, she would cook fried chicken and mashed potatoes. They were my favorites then and still are today, though no one makes them like Grandma. She was a great cook and the fact that she had a huge garden didn’t hurt. Those homegrown vegetables she cooked in her little kitchen were the best I’ve ever eaten. You can’t get fried okra like that anywhere. I recently fried up some squash and savored every bite remembering those days. If she were alive and cooking today, my husband and kids would like squash. I helped her and played in the garden out back, digging potatoes, hoeing weeds, admiring watermelons and hiding in the corn. We would sit on the front porch and snap beans or shell peas. Her front porch was a testament to her ability to grow things. There were flowers and plants and more flowers and plants. She tended her yard lovingly and saw its beauty as God’s creation. Grandma said as a girl, she'd been baptized, but one day was working in the garden singing hymns when she felt as if at that moment she knew that she was saved. The next Sunday, she got baptized again.
She was so saving. My husband teases me for the little bit of saving nature I learned from her. She would not throw anything useful away; it had to be used up. Turn out the lights if you’re leaving the room. Keep the refrigerator door closed; that one came from the days of the icebox, which is what she called the refrigerator. The icebox was cooled by ice, not by electricity and coolant, so if you had the door open, the ice would melt faster. She would save up her kitchen scraps and throw them out back for the strays. Her refrigerator was full of leftovers, which she would pull out for anyone who stopped by or finish herself. Scrap material could be used for a quilt. Nothing went to waste at grandma’s house. Mom told me this is because she lived through the depression and didn’t have much growing up.
She had her “programs” she would watch everyday. I call them soap operas; Days of Our Lives was her favorite. She also liked “police stories and dog stories.” She loved dogs, but not cats because cats “went” in the house. Grandma had a dog at her daddy's house that she described as a good watchdog. This was high praise; while she loved animals, she was not easily impressed. She told the story of spreading out a blanket in the yard and telling the dog to watch the baby on the blanket while she prepared a meal. After a while, a snake came along and the dog snatched up that snake and shook it until it would never slither again. After seeing a picture recently, I realize the dog’s name was “Watch.” I never understood that all the many times I heard the story.
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