Chapter 2: My Regrets, Fleeting Memories and an Idiot Gives Advice

This will be a short chapter: just a  little musing of what I have done, regrets about what I should have done,  a promise to do better and advice from an idiot.

 My daddy told many tales about his experiences and a few old stories passed down from previous generations of which I remember details, but I am not sure to which ancestor he was referring – Anderson or Rainey. But now he is gone and his memories with him.  I wish I had written them down. Memories are like that – they exist in the mind of the living and, upon death, vanish into the mists of time -- unless written down.

I am enjoying this project – the writing as well as the telling of the tales:  I have told you that I like to write. I have a grave responsibility.  I am the sole repository not only of my own memories, but also of those my father pasted down:  both his own and a few from distant generations.  Wouldn’t you like to know about the voyage that brought our ancestors to these shores;  life in the new world and, later, on the plantation; dealing with slaves and fighting for the “glorious” but lost cause –and the horrors of reconstruction that followed?  I certainly would, but those memories are either lost forever or as nebulous as my mother’s recipes

Be vawy quiet, I am going wabbit hunting.  My mother had faults a-plenty, but she was a great cook and she wrote down many of her recipes.  The trouble was she always left out an essential step or ingredient.  I think it was information she kept for herself so no one could cook her dishes as well as she could.  She was a bit jealous.

Mother made tomato gravy that I loved.  Paula does not like tomato gravy; therefore she does not cook it.  I once asked Mother for her recipe.  She told me, and I tried.  It was just OK, not even as good as just good tomato gravy, and certainly nothing to compare to hers.  One day as she was making tomato gravy  I watched surreptitiously and, aha, I caught her in the act -- she was adding sugar!  “Wait a minute,” I said, “You didn’t tell me anything about adding sugar!” 

“Well,” she said, “I shouldn’t have to.  Everyone knows you have to add sugar to kill the ‘twang’ of the tomatoes.”

She made a FINE pecan pie, and left Paula the recipe.  Paula has used it to make some very good (but not FINE) pecan pies.  Some little something is missing. But we will never know what.

Now that I have the missing ingredient – sugar -- the tomato gravy recipe is complete and has become the basis for my Cajun shrimp creole, for which I am universally admired and adored (at least my family likes it).  I make tomato gravy, add the Cajun trinity, Toney Cacherie’s Creole seasoning, my secret ingredient, cook it until the flavors blend, and add peeled shrimp at the last minute and cook until they are just firm.  Oh my gosh!  Heaven in a skillet! And NO I am NOT giving you the secret ingredient.  That joker is going to the grave with me!

But it should not be so with family stories and history.  Write them down.  Don’t worry about wordsmithing.  As Sgt. Friday said, “Just the facts, Ma’am. “ By the way, here is a bit of trivia that only I and a handful of other people in the world know:  Who was the lady to whom Joe Friday made this remark?  Give up?  Her name was Mrs. Face. See?  If I had not written that down you would not know, and your world would be a smaller and less enlightened place.

Oops – I just remembered a fact, no story to go with it – just a fact that must be written before it is lost. Our ancestors produced nearly everything they needed on the farm, but there were a few essentials  they had to buy – salt, flour, coffee, matches, gunpowder and lead -- that kind of stuff, so they made up a wagon train and went to Mobile, once a year, for supplies.  One fellow came back from the trip and told of the wonders he had seen in that city, including a machine that made ice – in the summertime.  They turned him out of church for lying,

Oops, there’s another; I’ve got to catch it.  Whew, that was a close call.  It was quickly fleeting.  This, memory is a second-hand one, for it was passed down to me by my daddy.  Here, take a look at this little gem.  That, my friend, is Latson Douglas Anderson’s trunk, and it is made of a LOCAL bear skin!  I sure am glad I caught that one, for the trunk now exists nowhere but in that memory, for after Latson’s death, the family gathered up a bunch of “junk” and burned it.

A trunk made of a local bear skin!  Now isn’t that amazing?  I wonder what value the Antique Road Show people would put on it.  Probably $50.

But here is the real amazing thing about a trunk made from a Jones (or Covington) County-killed bear:  We are on the cusp of doing it again! As a REAL conservationists – not one of those phony left-wing tree huggers – I am astonished by the changes – positive changes – I have seen: forest acreage expanding (and not just pine plantations, but also natural forests), air and water cleaner than in more than a century and animals that were once very scarce or on the verge of extinction, like beaver, deer, wild turkeys, alligators and all kinds of water fowl and raptors are either plentiful or recovering.  Now it is the bear’s turn.  Once there were just a few more in Mississippi than you could count on your fingers and toes, but the numbers are increasing – just increasing, not burgeoning – just yet.  But stand by.  I hope this page outlives me and a grandchild, or perhaps a great-grandchild, kills a bear in Jones County and makes a trunk from its skin – just like Latson Douglas Anderson’s – and reads this prediction

I am afraid I wasted this opportunity by bloviating rather than entertaining, but there some things I just had to say and memories I had to save that I could not figure out how to weave into a longer story.

The next chapter will be more entertaining.  I promise.