ke time enough to cook
right now; They are always in too big a hurry to be doin' something else
and don't cook things long enough. Back in dem days they put the
vegetables on to cook early in the mornin' and biled 'em 'til they was
good and done. The biggest diffunce I see is that folks didn't git sick
and stay sick with stomach troubles then half as much as they does now.
When my grandma took a roast out of one of them old ovens it would be
brown and juicy, with lots of rich, brown gravy. Sweet potatoes baked
and browned in the pan with it would taste mighty fine too. With some of
her good biscuits, that roast meat, brown gravy, and potatoes, you had
food good enough for anybody. I just wish I could taste some more of it
one more time before I die.

"Why, Child, two of the best cake-makers I ever knew used them old ovens
for bakin' the finest kinds of pound cakes and fruit cakes, and evvybody
knows them cakes was the hardest kinds to bake we had in them days. Aunt
Betsey Cole was a great cake-baker then. She belonged to the Hulls, what
lived off down below here somewhere but, when there was to be a big
weddin' or some 'specially important dinner in Athens, folks 'most
always sent for Aunt Betsey to bake the cakes. Aunt Laura McCrary was a
great cake-maker too; she baked the cake for President Taft when he was
entertained at Mrs. Maggie Welch's home here.

"In them days you didn't have to be runnin' to the store evvy time you
wanted to cook a extra good meal; folks raised evvything they needed
right there at home. They had all the kinds of vegetables they knowed
about then in their own gardens, and there was big fields of corn, rye,
and wheat. Evvy big plantation raised its own cows for plenty of milk
and butter, as well as lots of beef cattle, hogs, goats, and sheep.
'Most all of 'em had droves of chickens, geese, and turkeys, and on our
place there were lots of peafowls. When it was goin' to rain them old
peafowls set up a big holler. I never knew rain to fail after them
peafowls started their racket.

"All our clothes and shoes was home-made, and I mean by that they growed
the cotton, wool, and cattle and made the cloth and leather on the
plantation. Summer clothes was made of cotton homespun, and cotton and
wool was wove together for winter clothin'. Marse Jack owned a man what
he kept there to do nothin' but make shoes. He had another slave to do
all the carpenterin' and to make all the coffins for the folks that