1925: Memories of a Salt-Cured Ham

By Grace Cash © 1992

Issue: July-August-September, 1992

Editor's Note... The following is one of a series of articles written by Grace Cash. She lives in Flowery Branch, Georgia. Watch for more of her stories in future issues.

The Fall of 1924 Papa rented a farm at Chestnut Mountain. It was the second farm where we would work on the halves - half for the landlord, half for ourselves. At this new farmhouse on a hill our nearest neighbors lived on a red hill cater-cornered from our house. We could see a goodly portion of their comings and goings, which took a lot of watching, since Mr. Charlie and "Miss" Mamie had nine sons and five daughters, and a daughter to be born later on. The children in our family numbered seven, and a son to be born in 1927. Mr. Charlie had built big to accommodate his large family, such as a fireplace that reached halfway across the fireroom. There were beds in every room except the kitchen.

The first visit this family made to our house was on a dark winter night. The second daughter Willie came with six brothers and a nine-year-old sister who was my age. (The oldest son and daughter were married and living away from home, and there was one grandson.) Two of the brothers who visited us that night were often mistaken for twins, but one was twelve and the other thirteen. The eldest of the two would die not two winters hence, bringing to each of our houses a poignant sense of loss.

Mr. Charlie was a brick mason, and he owned a large redland farm. Even with this added income, Miss Mamie had to practice the utmost thrift in order to feed and clothe her family.

By the spring of 1925, Miss Mamie and Mama had become borrowing and lending neighbors, each knowing just about what the other had to lend. That is probably why Miss Mamie thought she might as well tell Mama about the salt-cured ham she was saving for special company. They were sitting on one of our four porches, and I watched Miss Mamie pronounce, with a wave of a hand, the set rules she had made about the ham. "I got one ham left and I aim to keep it hanging on the rafters in the smokehouse for special company."

Mama didn't have a ham, and not many laying hens. She had "spared" this one for a store purchase and that one for a school book and another for castoria and castor oil and Epsom salts at Mr. McEver's Store. She didn't have a thing to show for 1924, except the baby Frances, born at our first halves-farm at Macedonia. She thought Miss Mamie was saving the salt-cured ham, tied up in a meal-sack, for the Baptist preacher at Chestnut Mountain, or for company richer than any neighbor she had. Mama even thought she would pick out her choice of drop-in kinfolks, if indeed she cut the ham at all.

That same Spring Papa hitched up the mules to the wagon to take Mama to town so she could trade for summer clothes. Irma invited Willie to go with us. I sat between Irma and Willie on a riding board behind Mama and Papa and the baby, who rode on the front driving seat. My oldest brother sat on the floor in the back of the wagon and Carl, Lillian and Ruth stayed at Miss Mamie's. She had insisted that she take care of some of mama's children, in exchange for inviting Willie to go with us to town. Mama agreed, but she told Miss Mamie her children would eat just what they ate, and not to go to any trouble for them.

It was a ten-mile trip to town, the mules clop-clopping on the pavement. Papa drove to the hitching lot and we walked to the Jake Sikes Store on the Square. The Town Square was jammed with stores and shops, but Papa liked to trade with Jews, whom he knew about from the Bible and church sermons. If the Jewish merchants had been cattle farmers like Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, he might have talked with Jake Sikes and the keeper of the Hub Store like he did his own rail fence neighbors. These merchants knew enough about farmers to talk their language. At least, they allowed Papa to "jew" them down with the same firm bargaining words he used to deal with a mule trader or a cow trader.

Papa always traded with Jake first, before going on to the adjoining store called The Hub Store. While we were at Jake Sikes's Store, Uncle Homer came to trade for his family, who hadn't accompanied him in his one-horse wagon. He wanted a hat for Eva, but he like best of the lot, the lilac hat I was modeling before the small mirror on the wall, behind a rack of women's ready-made dresses.

Eva had been my playmate since early childhood, and I begged him to take the lilac hat to her. I liked the pink hat, almost identical to the lilac hat I had on - both of pastel straw and turned up brims and matching dried flowers at the ribbon-hatband. But he held on to the pink hat, and he laughed and said, "That's Grace's hat, I can see in her eyes she likes that hat."

Willie's spending money allowed a pair of pale blue silk stockings that matched the pale blue dress she had made for herself. In 1925 the grownup girls wore knee-length pastel-colored dresses and matching silk stockings and white felt cloche hats and white high heel pumps. Some of the girls still wore long hair drawn in a knot at the back of the head, but Irma and Willie had bobbed hair, worm straight, parted on the side and held with a barrette. Irma was fourteen before she got to cut her hair, but her younger sisters had always worn short hair with bangs.

Mama and Irma bought hats for themselves and the other little girls, and cloth for dresses and silk stockings for themselves, and knee-length ribbed cotton socks for the little girls. Mama got shirt cloth for the boys, and Papa bought a Sunday hat. (Papa wore wool hats winter and summer. When a Sunday hat became dingy and frayed, he wore the old one every day and replaced it with a new one for church and funerals.) Mama bought patent leather slippers with a strap held with a round berry-like button for the girls and lace-up oxfords for the boys. Papa barely had enough money left to warrant dropping in at The Hub, and trading for blue bib overalls for himself and the boys, and a pair of leather brogans which he would wear every day.

Just as Papa felt "at home" with the Jewish merchants, I felt like town ought to be my home. Even the sound of a milk wagon clanging down the street was like music to my ears, but the time had come to drive back to the farm. We walked to the hitching lot, loaded down with Spring and Summer goods. And then we began the ten-mile journey to Chestnut Mountain, knowing we wouldn't see "town" again till Fall, but more likely the next Spring.

Silent, let-down, droopy, we arrived. Willie got out at the path leading up the hill to her house, and Miss Mamie's three "visitors" came tearing home with a tale for Mama past believing: Miss Mamie had fried big slices of the cured ham for dinner, and she cooked a blackberry cobbler and all the biscuits two platters would hold. There was coffee for everybody down to Mama's Ruth and Miss Mamie's Mary Lou, both five years old. Miss Mamie had bowls of vegetables and cornbread and all the milk you could drink. On top of all that, the tall grown-up sons carried on a conversation with Carl, Lillian and Ruth as though they were grownup folks company.

Mama knew about the big kitchen with multiple pans and pots and dishes, and the extra long table and the benches for children and young folks to sit on, so that nobody had to eat at a second table. She knew Miss Mamie was a good cook, and a thrifty housekeeper, and she said, "I believe she set a good table. But I don't believe she cut the ham she was saving for special company."

"Wasn't a word said about saving it for somebody else," Lillian said, helped on by Carl and Ruth bobbing their heads up and down.

The next time Mama visited Miss Mamie she told her the children had never enjoyed themselves better than they had at her house. Mama confessed - laughing - that she hadn't believed her children when they told her she had cut the ham.

Looking back, I believe Miss Mamie knew when she cooked her first mess of the salt-cured ham for Mama's children, she was stamping LIFETIME NEIGHBORS on their house and our house.