October 23, 2015 (Friday)
My grandmother, Mary Gladys Ross Lowe, was born in Leon County but moved to Angelina County as a little girl. She was raised near Lufkin, and her family lived there when I was a little boy. Occasionally, we would make the trip of about 100 miles to visit her relatives. Her parents were still living. She had a brother, Joe, who was a purple heart veteran of World War I, a brother, Ed, and his twin sister, Edna. She had a sister, Clyde. They all lived there in Clawson and Keltys, both now a part of Lufkin. They called my grandmother “Gladsie,” and her sister, “Clydesie.”
On one of our trips, I saw “Clydesie” churning butter. Here’s what her churn looked like:
I wasn’t very old, still a pre-schooler, and when I saw her pumping that stick up and down in the jar, it looked to me like she was using a “plumber’s helper.” Like so many other things, I had given our plumber’s helper my own creative and descriptive name. I called it a “toilet stick.” So I reported to my grandfather that “Aunt Clyde was making butter with a toilet stick.” My grandfather, who exulted in his only (at the time) grandson’s every effort to say something charming, sent the remark to the local newspaper to be used in a column that featured cute things that kids said. They refused to print the “toilet stick” remark–we lived in a prim and proper age. He sent it in several times with the same result. He always quoted the remark to me as I grew up. He thought it was cute.
Of course, Aunt Clyde was doing something many people of that era did–she was making her own butter. It can be done today, using an identical churn and cream. Other churns are available today and perhaps the easiest to use is a little jar with a hand-crank that works like the old-time ice cream freezers. Some folks have said that fresh butter made in a churn tastes just like ice cream. Takes about 30 minutes to make, and after you add a little salt for taste, spreads easily over home-made bread and is delicious. After you remove the butter, what’s left is buttermilk, which you can use to make great biscuits. Yum, yum. Just try not to think of my childhood remark. Actually my grandfather was the only person in the world who enjoyed talking about it.
Traditional buttermilk is acidic, and when you make biscuits with it, you add a little soda and that combination turns into a gas that makes the bread “rise.” My grandmother made great biscuits with a handful of this and a pinch of that, so that the result was never exactly the same every time. Her favorite remark when my grandfather would brag on her biscuits was, “I think they have too much soda (which she pronouced, ‘sody”).” Her biscuits were always good. My grandfather loved whatever she cooked but did not favor store-bought bread, which he called, “Duffy.” * We used store-bought butter on the biscuits, but never margarine, which was an innovation back then, and commonly called “oleo.” When you bought it and brought it home, it was white, but you added a pack of coloring that made it look like butter. My mind is gathering this information as I write. Had not thought of this stuff in many years. Reminiscing is one of fun things we do when we get older.
* (From a blog last year:) *”Duffy” may have been a reference to a Catholic Chaplain in France in the first World War. The troops were low on rations, and Father Duffy found 12 loaves of bread which were offered to the men in their tents in handfuls instead of supper. I’m just guessing–I never asked my grandfather why he called bread from the store, “Duffy.” Wish I had asked. Of course, it may have been a name he pulled out of thin air, because he was so fond of nicknames for just about anything and anyone.