The Black Cast Iron Kettle

My paternal Grandmother was a hard worker and an excellent seamstress.  She sewed for practically everyone in town from ministers' wives, school teachers and some of the Black women down the street from us.  She never asked for more than $1.25 for anything she made.  She had a Singer treadle machine and could really make that peddle move when she was sewing.  I loved to watch her sew and I kept scraps to make doll clothes.  She also kept some larger scraps for quilting pieces to use when town ladies would come over for quilting bees.  That was fun--watching those ladies working those needles in and out while I sat beneath the quilting frame and played with scraps.  I never learned the art of quilting, I have to admit.  Either I was too preoccupied with dolls and my paper dolls or playing "Sheena of the Jungle," I just never wanted to learn those things.

A good memory about my Grandmother was that once every other week she would make wonderful homemade rolls. When I came home from school on a cold winter's day, I smelled those rolls baking as soon as I stepped onto the front porch.  I headed straight for the warm kitchen, grabbed a couple of hot ones right out of the pan, smeared on the homemade butter, and to this day I don't believe I've tasted anything better than those homemade rolls.

My grandparents planted a huge garden in their acreage behind our house.  We had potatoes, cantaloupes, tomatoes, lettuce, beets, carrots, cabbage, cucumbers, squash, okra, corn and peas and spinach (ugh!).  I grew up on good, healthy home-grown food and never ate restaurant food or fast food until I left home.  As they grew older, they sold off that lot to one of Grandpa's cousins who built a nice home there.  No more garden--they were getting too old to tend to one by then.

My Grandmother kept cow in a pasture down the road from our house.  We always had fresh milk, butter, the best buttermilk you've ever tasted, and cottage cheese.  We made our own butter and cottage cheese.  I churned butter and I remember Grandma would put the buttermilk or some leftover stuff from the butter we'd churned into cheesecloths and hang from a wire on the back porch dripping until it made cottage cheese.  I should have taken notes on how to do those things, but it really didn't interest me at the time.  I grew up eating fried chicken, cornbread and fried potatoes most of my life. I enjoyed the food, and by the way, I was never overweight and unhealthy from eating homegrown food and never got sick from drinking cow's milk.  I even tried to milk old Bossy once or twice, but I didn't like doing that very much.  Grandma also raised the best strawberries I've ever tasted and made the most delicious strawberry shortcake, and to this day, I cannot make anything that comes close to that huge, succulent strawberry shortcake soaked in homemade crust that she put out on the Sunday table during strawberry season! 

We also had chickens for a long time, and hogs for a short time.  I watched my Grandpa and some men slaughter the hogs one day, and how sausage was made, and to this day, I will not eat sausage.  We ate fried chicken every Sunday after church.  I wanted to wring a chicken's neck one time on Saturday for the Sunday dinner, but I didn't like doing that either.  It was awful sad to see the poor chicken flopping around on the ground with a broken neck.  I did like "plucking" the feathers though, and that was the best fried chicken I've ever eaten to this day.

I could go on and on about my Grandmother, but something that vividly stands out was her black cast iron kettle, or cauldron you might call it, where she made lye soap and boiled water on washdays and for our baths in the big tin tub.  You see, even although we lived in town, we didn't have indoor plumbing for a long time.  Well, that's another story.  She really never got used to "city" ways, but most of the older people in town had gardens, chickens and maybe a cow or two, so I guess it was quite natural back then.

Anyway, she made this icky lye soap out of animal fat, lime and lye I think, and cooked it slowly over a wood burning fire in her large black cast iron kettle in the back yard.  She swore it was the best soap in the world for washing your hair and great for dishes and laundry.  After preparation of this smelly mixture and stirring until it turned a certain color (kind of dirty white), she would pour it into a big square pan and cut into bars once it was hard.  I was afraid it might make me go bald if I used it on my hair, so I preferred to use my Prell shampoo, but I may have bathed with it a time or too.   I don't know why I didn't take to that "country" way of living, but it didn't appeal to me even at a young age--I had "lofty" ideas even then.  I wanted to live in a big city, with sidewalks and streets and traffic lights.  What was I thinking?

That black cast iron kettle stayed around the house for many years--I don't know who in our family, if anyone, wound up with it, but it looked just like what you'd imagine the witches of yore may have used to mix their magic potions--not comparing my sweet little Grandmother to a witch, but she did have a black cast iron cauldron.