In the fall, kill a mature sow. They say it’s best to do this by the light of a full moon, but I’ll leave that to your discretion. Once the beast is skinned, build a fire in your back yard and render the hide down to lard in a big black kettle. Strain out the cracklings and eat them with wanton glee.
Keep some of the lard on your stove in a nasty looking Mason jar. Use a little to start your bacon every morning. After cooking the bacon, cook your eggs in the same hot grease and then drain the remainder back into the jar. If you are doing it correctly, layers of sediment from each meal will stratify. Never clean the pan or allow water to touch it unless the skillet is scorching hot. Just wipe it out and get on with the day.
Lead a hard life. Build a farm. Marry a southern country girl who has her own frying pan. Pick a girl who benefits from the wisdom of her grandma’s kitchen and the soul of her papa’s BBQ joint. She’ll like salt on her watermelon and take absolute relish in gnawing a pork chop bone to the marrow. Don’t screw around on her; she’ll pickle your liver.
Make good friends with your mother in law. Bring her a nip of bourbon or moonshine now and then, and she’ll tell you exactly why her children are so mean.
Taste the honeysuckle. Pull out the stamen and put the inner tip on your tongue. Teach your children to do the same. Put a porch swing out front and use it on summer nights. Sit in the dark with your family and listen to the tree frogs and the crickets. You might hear your neighbors laugh from a half mile away and wonder what could be so funny.
Cook your supper cornbread in the same skillet as your bacon. Make it with buttermilk and white cornmeal. Make it thin and crispy–just a couple of layers of crust really. It should be the last thing out of the oven before the blessing is said.
Keep the yard swept clean of all grass. It makes it easier to spot snakes. Best to shoot them on sight because the children won’t be able to tell if they are poisonous. Teach your kids to shoot and handle a gun properly–boys and girls alike. They should know how to use a shotgun and a rifle. Pistols are only made for killing people; you don’t need them around.
Be polite to peddlers, even if you can’t afford to buy something. He’s come a long way in the afternoon dust. Offer him a glass of cold well water and a chair on the porch. Look over his wares, and let him catch you up to the goings on in the world. Chances are he’s in this occupation more for the talking than the selling.
Chickens bring rhythm to a home. Let them roam your yards and fields during the day and they will reward you with rich, yellow eggs. Guinea hens are even better. They will teach you the land as you hunt for each nest.
Send the children off to school. Though you didn’t need it to run a farm. You know they won’t be farmers.
Watch your husband die young in the very bed you kept with him. As the years go by, watch your children leave, each in turn. Don’t re-marry after he’s gone. Neighbor men will covet your land. So tend the old back garden he and you built together. Keep it going and strong every year; even as tractors threaten in the distance. Shell peas on the porch out of a galvanized bucket. Hoe and rake the rows in the morning and at twilight. Over time, your tools will show decades of self-reliance .
Take everything the kids will offer: the electrical service, the gas stove and some years later, the indoor plumbing. Your neighbors all have it. But don’t trust the television. If you can see them it’s likely they can see you too. Always be properly dressed before you watch it.
Don’t fret about the grandchildren. Keep a warm kitchen for them. Let them push their trucks in the yard, run in the fields and climb the trees. Enjoy the looks on their faces when they realize what the outhouse was for. One day after you’ve lost count of grandkids, your daughters will want to move you to the city. Tell them you don’t want to go. Hold off as long as you can. It’s hard to go from your own rich eggs to store bought.
They won’t know how to respond to you. Your are fading to them and in their confusion they shower you with empathy. But all you can feel is outrage. Your senses are betraying you, each in turn.
Pack the frying pan in newspaper. But oil it first. Put it upside down in the top of the box, that way water won’t settle on it.
Make friends with these new old strangers. You are going to die with them.
It won’t take long.
Just withdraw from the canned, tasteless meals, and the ever droning lobby television, and the endless distraction of bingo and prayer.
And one twilight summer evening you will find yourself back in the garden, the two of you working each side of the last row in tandem. Your first child moves inside you and you pause to show him. While he puts away the tools, you move inside to light the lamps and make the cornbread.
© 2009 by Rodney Gleghorn. All rights reserved.
