Experiences for a Future Generation

While reading Andrew Beahrs’ excellent book Twain’s Feast: Searching for America’s Foods in the Footsteps of Samuel Clemens I was utterly struck by Twain’s heartfelt desire for the dishes of his country. As a country boy living in the city (much less Europe) I have similar yearnings not for food exclusively but for the experiences of my boyhood. Worse yet, I fear such country doings are becoming increasingly rare as we not only leave for the city in droves, but lose the skills we once possessed. What is more, I want these things for my daughter who enters a world much different than I did a short three decades ago. Twain’s heart-of-heart desired this mouth-watering list:

Radishes. Baked apples, with cream Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs. American coffee, with real cream. American butter. Fried chicken, Southern style. Porter-house steak. Saratoga potatoes. Broiled chicken, American style. Hot biscuits, Southern style. Hot wheat-bread, Southern style. Hot buckwheat cakes. American toast. Clear maple syrup. Virginia bacon, broiled. Blue points, on the half shell. Cherry-stone clams. San Francisco mussels, steamed. Oyster soup. Clam Soup. Philadelphia Terapin soup. Oysters roasted in shell-Northern style. Soft-shell crabs. Connecticut shad. Baltimore perch. Brook trout, from Sierra Nevadas. Lake trout, from Tahoe. Sheep-head and croakers, from New Orleans. Black bass from the Mississippi. American roast beef. Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style. Cranberry sauce. Celery. Roast wild turkey. Woodcock. Canvas-back-duck, from Baltimore. Prairie liens, from Illinois. Missouri partridges, broiled. ‘Possum. Coon. Boston bacon and beans. Bacon and greens, Southern style. Hominy. Boiled onions. Turnips. Pumpkin. Squash. Asparagus. Butter beans. Sweet potatoes. Lettuce. Succotash. String beans. Mashed potatoes. Catsup. Boiled potatoes, in their skins. New potatoes, minus the skins. Early rose potatoes, roasted in the ashes, Southern style, served hot. Sliced tomatoes, with sugar or vinegar. Stewed tomatoes. Green corn, cut from the ear and served with butter and pepper. Green corn, on the ear. Hot corn-pone, with chitlings, Southern style. Hot hoe-cake, Southern style. Hot egg-bread, Southern style. Hot light-bread, Southern style. Buttermilk. Iced sweet milk. Apple dumplings, with real cream. Apple pie. Apple fritters. Apple puffs, Southern style. Peach cobbler, Southern style Peach pie. American mince pie. Pumpkin pie. Squash pie. All sorts of American pastry. Fresh American fruits of all sorts, including strawberries which are not to be doled out as if they were jewelry, but in a more liberal way. Ice-water—not prepared in the ineffectual goblet, but in the sincere and capable refrigerator.

For my daughter, these are experiences that I feel have in some way I must try to provide for her so that the soul of my upbringing is not lost (as if such a thing were possible):

Springtime

 

·         ‘Hunting’ for morel mushrooms

·         Fishing for slab crappie

·         Tilling a garden plot and running your hands through the dirt

·         Admiring a dogwood bloom

·         Feeling sycamore bark

·         Calling in a wild turkey with a wingbone call made from another wild turkey

·         Hunting squirrels under a mulberry tree

·         Digging sassafras

·         Getting caught in a shower

·         Eating ‘sheep showers’ (sorrel)

·         Watching (or helping) the delivery of a foal or calf

·         Saddling up your own horse and riding off on your own accord

·         Listening to spring peepers

·         Listening to the rain on a tin roof

·         Whittling a stick

·         ‘Witching’ a water well with a willow branch

·         Digging earthworms

·         Helping Granny pick beans or peas

·         Learning to throw a lariat

·         Working cattle

·         Gathering eggs

·         Raising banty or game chickens

·         Playing in the creek

·         Catching minnows, tadpoles, and crawdads in the creek

Summertime

·         Catching a flathead catfish with your own two hands (noodling)

·         Picking Sand Plums

·         Picking wild Blackberries

·         Picking Possum Grapes

·         Watching a thunderstorm

·         Eating a ripe tomato from your garden

·         Camping in a tent under the stars

·         Frying fish outdoors

·         Splitting the first ripe watermelon of the year

·         Making homemade ice cream

·         Listening to a chorus of cicadas

·         Making a mud pie

·         Running a trotline, jugline, or bank poles

·         Fishing all night

·         Seining a pond for crawdads

·         Gigging frogs

·         Shucking corn

·         Catching a monster bass on a topwater

·         Shooting a longbow until your fingers are numb

·         Playing horseshoes

·         Cooking a whole hog in the ground

·         Rambling over a fresh-cut hayfield

·         Frying squash and okra from the garden

·         Hunting doves in a scorching-hot field

·         Smoking meat

·         Playing baseball or softball in the yard

·         Drinking coffee on the porch

Fall

·         Cutting wood

·         Splitting wood with a maul

·         Becoming consumed with deer hunting

·         Killing your own Thanksgiving turkey

·         Chasing a cottontail behind a pack of beagles

·         Eating wild persimmons

·         Puckering up after eating an unripe persimmon

·         Spending all day with a shotgun in your hands

·         Falling asleep on a sunny hillside

·         Reeking of campfire smoke

·         Cooking a still-warm tenderloin or heart in a cast iron skillet

·         Picking out a pumpkin

·         Carving a Jack o’ Lantern

·         Going Trick or Treating in the country

·         Getting a little bit spooked

·         Getting lost in the woods

·         Listening to the rustle of crops in the field

·         Remarking at a skein of geese flying overhead

·         Picking an apple off a tree

·         Mulling apple cider

·         Sewing and harvest fall crops

·         No-kidding stalking up on an animal

·         Getting buck fever

·         Gathering pecans until your knees hurt

·         Butchering an animal with pride

·         Making a hellacious fire

·         Loving November

Winter

·         Making jerky

·         Cutting your own Christmas tree—especially if it is a scraggly Red Cedar

·         Going Christmas caroling

·         Breaking ice to retrieve a duck or goose—in jeans

·         Romping around in the snow

·         Trailing animals all day

·         Eating an icicle

·         Cozying up to the wood stove

·         Busting ice with an axe

·         Staying up until 2 AM coon hunting

·         Running a trapline

·         Calling in a flock of mallards

·         Bringing home mistletoe from the field

·         Shooting off shotguns at the stroke of midnight on New Years

·         Cooking on the wood stove

·         Finding frost flowers

·         Swapping stories with friends

·         Making a pot of chili to ward off the cold

·         Waking up to a glistening world after an ice storm

·         Donning Carhartts