Sometimes helps a soul
August 15, 2011 (Monday)
My twin sisters and I lived with our maternal grandparents from the summer of 1941 to the summer of 1944, the year both our parents married our step parents. From then on, each of us lived with the parent of our choice, moving back and forth between the two homes, until we graduated from high school, going our separate ways.
The following experience took place while we were living with our grandparents in 1942 or 1943.
I was in the sixth grade when I got sick at school one morning. I went to the nurse’s office and she told me to go home, which I did. It was lunch time, so my grandfather suggested I eat if I felt like it. He fixed me a big bowl of blackeyed peas that my grandmother had already cooked. I loved her blackeyed peas. She learned to cook in the heart of East Texas, and knew what she was doing. Boy, I can almost taste those peas right now.
When I say, “big bowl” of peas, I’m not exaggerating. What he served me was a serving bowl full of delicious blackeyed peas. In my frail, sickened condition, I decided to try and eat. Well, one spoonful led to the next, and before I knew it, I had devoured all the blackeyed peas in that big bowl.
I’m telling you the truth about this; I’m not making it up. I had come home sick, hardly able to put one foot in front of the other (the school was just a few blocks away), but after eating all those blackeyes I felt so good I went back to school! A miracle cure!
Maybe our local pharmacies should start stocking blackeyed peas, available as an over-the-counter medicine. They surely cured me.