Sometime in the mid to late 1930s the U.S. Government told farmers that hoof and mouth disease was prevalent and that cattle had to be destroyed and buried.  There was no testing of the animals to see if they were infected, just an edict to destroy and bury.  It must be noted that although animals can get hoof and mouth disease humans can not.  My grandfather was told to destroy his three cows.  He destroyed two and showed the Government inspectors where he had buried three.  Of the three he “destroyed” and buried one was actually buried, one was slaughtered and canned, and the third was hidden.

Many farmers believed then and still believe that there was no outbreak of the disease and even if there was it was not widespread.  As I mentioned the cows of my grandfather were not tested.  Many believe it was  ploy to drive up the prices for cows and beef.

Farm wives did much of their cooking in early morning before it got really hot.  Houses were not insulated and cooking was on a wood burning stove in the kitchen.  Too, after cooking many wives worked in the garden or in the fields.  It is proper to remember that all washing of dishes and cooking utensils was by hand.

Most farmers started the day (after milking) with a big breakfast of eggs, bacon or sausage or ham, biscuits, coffee and sometimes mush (I’ll write about this shortly) or flapjacks (pancakes).  About noon the farmer would come in from the field for another large then rest before going back into the fields until dusk or milking time again.  A big meal was had then.  The noon meal was called dinner and the evening meal was called supper.

On the farm chickens had a coop or small shed where they could nest and lay eggs but for the most part they could roam at will.  There was always a rooster so eggs would be fertile and thus hatched.  Male chicks were kept and raised until eating size.  Once at that size they were usually fried.  Female chickens that got so they did not lay eggs were killed and usually boiled for eating.  Sometimes these boiled chickens were cooked with small pieces of dough.  This dish was called chicken and dumplings.

After church on Sundays we would go to my grandfather Bilbrey’s farm about once a month.  We almost always had a big meal and usually chicken.

When I was growing up we were not affluent but neither was anyone else in town except perhaps the physicians and the bankers.  There were two physicians.  We also had two banks.  There were no savings and loan companies.  Credit unions did not exist.  Almost everyone was in the same situation.

When I lived in town, breakfast was either cold cereal (sometimes with milk but more often with water), oatmeal, grits or mush.  What is mush?  Just stir some cornmeal into boiling water and when it thickens it is mush.  It is something similar to cream of wheat but made with cornmeal instead of wheat.  On rare occasions we had eggs but seldom with any kind of meat unless we had brought some home from my grandfather’s farm.  We also often had fried potatoes and sometimes biscuits.  There was no going to the store for Bisquik or frozen cans of biscuits.  Cold, leftover mush or grits were sometimes fried.

Biscuits are made with baking powder, flour and water.  We sometimes had butter to put on the biscuits.  Once in a great while there was jam or jelly almost always home made.  There was a wild bush called algerita.  It has yellow flowers and in the fall it has berries.  Those berries make great jelly.  The algerita is a member of the barberry family.

Almost every meal other than breakfast we had fried potatoes and pinto beans.  Many times that is all we had.  My mother would take the beans and soak them overnight.  This caused the sand and rocks in them to fall to the bottom then she would cook the beans for several hours in a pot on the stove.  Sometimes salt pork, chili powder or cayenne pepper was added to the beans.  Almost everything we had was fried.  There was no Wesson Oil or Crisco.  Lard was used.

Here I must mention that before flour was used it was sifted.  This was through a wire funnel like device.  Sifting took the lumps out of the flour and allowed one to remove the weevils.

At every house we lived in we had a garden.  We grew tomatoes, turnips, carrots and corn.  The house we moved in on Commercial Avenue had a garage with a hen house attached,  a smokehouse and a pen where a cow had once been kept.  This was in the heart of the town.  The garden was planted in what was once the cow pen.  Things really grew there.  I guess because it had been naturally fertilized.  I remember going into the garden and eating tomatoes right from the vine.  I also remember digging a turnip up, peeling it and eating it right there.  Turnips have a purple ball growing in the ground and leaves above ground.  These were called turnip greens.  They were cooked as you would spinach.  Sometimes the purple turnips were cooked with the greens.  Sometimes the greens and turnips were cooked separately.

Growing wild was a plant called lambsquarter.  There was some of that in the cow pen also.  It is used just as you would spinach.  We also had hominy.  That is field corn which is boiled and a little lye added.  It has to be rinsed several times.

Fried chicken was common for Sunday dinner.  The noon meal was always called dinner and the evening meal, supper.  We may have just had fried potatoes and pinto beans during the week but Sunday dinner after church was special.  In a great while we would have chicken fried steak.  For those who are not Southerners and particularly Texans, that is a piece of steak dipped in batter and fried just as you would chicken.  Almost always we would have cream gravy.  Brown some flour in a frying pan or skillet, then add salt, pepper and water or milk then stir constantly so that is well mixed and has no lumps.

For dessert there might be a cake, pecan or other pie, or cobbler pasrticularly peach cobbler when peaches were available.  On very special occasions we would have banana pudding.  When my mother made this pudding she would line a pot with vanilla wafers, add some pudding mix, another layer of wafers, more mix etc. until there were four or five layers then another layer of wafers on top.

Typically, on Sunday night we would have cornbread crumbled in water or sometimes milk.

As an aside, when someone was sick the neighbors always carried food to the house of the ill person.  If a death took place the neighbors always carried food to the house of the deceased.  It was also common that after a funeral the ladies of the church would prepare a meal for all who attended the funeral service.

I will write another note about my father, but here I will mention only a little, so that things may be put in context.  My dad fought in World War I.  There were five major battles and he was in each one.  He was hit by several machine gun shells in one of those.  All were removed but one.  That one was with him until the day he died.  That shell moved around in his leg from 1917 until it finally became infected in 1938.  He was in the hospital for about 10 months and was released in early 1939.  There was no health insurance, unemployment insurance or social security disability.  While he was in the hospital there was virtually no family income.

After he got out of the hospital and returned to his business I remember when I was not in school I would go to his shop with him.  For the noon meal he and I would have sorghum sandwiches.  This was a biscuit with syrup on it.

One treat we occasionally had was popcorn balls.  To popped corn add syrup and form into balls slightly larger than a baseball.  Hmmmmmmmm.

In another note I will write about eating out after I was a teenager.