robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

In Western Kentucky (Ballard County)

When I was in elementary school and my youngest aunt was in high school on Friday's my little brother and I would take a bag with two day’s of cloths to school and instead of walking home we got on the bus that did the route past the farm with Aunt Jan and went out for the weekend. We got to help with the chickens and other light chores (and thought we were having fun).

Aunt Jan, Lynn and I did our homework together and at night we took a blanket and small flashlight into the front yard where we laid on our backs while Jan opened her Science textbook to the astronomy chapter and taught us the constellations and stars. We also would be overrun by the dog and the latest litter of farm kittens who demanded their own share of attention.

On Sunday we went into town to church and either walked home from there or rode the bus to school on Monday and then walked home until the next weekend.
Grandma's southern fried chicken, homemade bacon, ham or sausage, corn bread, rolls, biscuits with homemade jam or jelly, fresh vegtables from the garden and chess pie didn't hurt either.

Some Saturday's in the summer Granddad would take the day off (a neighbor would feed the animals and milk the cows Saturday night and Sunday morning (we would do the same for him at times) and the whole family, including aunts and uncles and great aunts and uncles, Great Grandfather(born 1865, died 1957) and maybe a few friends would all pack up the camping gear and go fishing at a private lake down by the Ohio just a bit east of the Mississippi junction where Granddad and two Great Uncles owned shares next to each other (only one share had a cabin) and fish all day then have a big outdoor fish fry and bon fire that night.

We slept under the stars (the old people and babies got the cabin) while the adults put their bed rolls in a circle with the kids in the middle.

Sunday we would drive back to town to go to the later church service before going back to the farm to care for the animals etc.

During the fall and winter hunting seasons we would sometimes do the same thing only we hunted and fished and the bon fire had a huge iron pot of Burgoo Stew with wild game meat added. https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/kentucky_burgoo/ Real Burgoo Stew had at least 3 kinds of meat and at the camp at least one was wild game.

It was a different time and way of life, almost a different world. Large parts of it still live in my memory, at least for a while.

clickety

A nostalgic narrative for sure. I can relate to most except I was always on the farm and don’t share the joyful memories of the chores especially as the years went by. One of the common delights was of course the food. You mentioned “chess” pie, which I have never heard before or was it “fresh” pies, which have remained a lifelong craving.?

Michael1079 Loc: Indiana

Loved this. Afraid those days may be long gone...

pendennis

Chess pie is a real southern delicacy. It's custard-based, with cornmeal or flour to thicken the custard, a "regular pie crust", and the pie is baked until the top browns and becomes chewy-to-crisp, depending on the baker. My grandmother used to fix them and they're absolutely delicious. My grandfather would make ice cream with a hand-cranked freezer, and we'd have a scoop of ice cream on top of the warm pie.

Sir, that is fine eating!

clickety

Sounds good but new to me, same as with “shoe fly” pie when we were transferred to Pennsylvania.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

It is a kind of custard pie with corn meal (sometimes) and white or cider vinegar. Some people added other things like beans or pecans which made it into a form of pecan pie. And yes, smelling or looking too hard at a fresh one out of the oven can cause clothing to shrink.🙄

Here is my Grandmother's recipe, then a cook book version:

“CHESS PIE”

Ingredients:

melted margarine(or butter?) 1 stick (1/4 lb.)

sugar 1 ½ cup

eggs (large/X-large) 3 or 4 (try each and pick)

corn meal 1 tablespoon

vinegar 1 tablespoon

vanilla extract 1 teaspoon

pie shell/crust 1 aprx. 9”

Process:

1. preheat oven to 350 degrees (F)

2. beat eggs well, until fluffy

3. melt margarine/butter, add to eggs with sugar and beat well

4. add cornmeal, vanilla and vinegar, mix well

5. pour into unbaked pie shell and bake in 350 degree oven for 35 to 45 minutes

6. cool before serving

Cook book version:
https://www.cookingclassy.com/chess-pie/

One story of the name is that when asked what it was the answer was "just pie" but with a real southern drawl accent it sounded like "chess pie".

And yes when we moved to California the first time we got a lot of grief over our accents - my brother spent a lot of time in the Dean's office for fighting but I went the "play along and make fools of the city slickers" route. Some of them figured it out and got mad at me but didn't want me sending my brother after them after he got a rep for not minding being in the office for fighting. Fighting was something he did very well. Beverly Hillbillies was the #1 show on TV at the time and we stayed in CA for my 10th and 11th grade years then went back to Kentucky for 12th and my first two years of college.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Thanks
I hope and pray that in some places a version of this life is still there.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

I have made them from Grandma's recipe and by the third one I had it right - but my wife and Weight Watchers forbid me to make it very often.

I have an electric crank icecream maker*, in the garage, the Baskin and Robbin's etc. are just too handy. Blue Bunny (or Walmart's Great Value clone) Vanilla Bean go great on pie, or alone.

*The hand cranked one on the farm the kids strong enough to turn it would take turns at family get togethers and compete to see who could crank it the most/fastest/hardest. We thought that was fun but I am sure the adults were snickering and flipping a coin to see who had to crank it the last few minutes when only the older kids could even make the crank move.

pendennis

I'm a native Kentuckian, from Louisville, but my grandparents were from Larue County (Lyons Station). I spent a good deal of my young life there, and had a wonderful life being spoiled rotten by them. When I got old enough, I got to "help" crank the ice cream maker, but usually fussed a bit, when my grandfather added more rock salt, and made the crank more difficult to turn. Their small home there, didn't have indoor plumbing or hot water. But, my grandmother raised vegetables, canned the surplus, and my grandfather loved squirrel and gigging frogs in the Rolling Fork River.

Alas, though, they were forced to move to Louisville after my aunt contracted polio in 1952. They kept the little house for a couple of years, but staying there wasn't quite the same. It didn't change my grandmother's gardening, though. She grew grapes, tomatoes, and green beans at their Louisville home, and she kept small salt shakers on her back porch, so we could eat tomatoes right off the vines. We lived next to them until I married.

My mother learned from grandmother, and made her own delicious chess pies. My mom could also put together a wicked pecan pie, and the best peach cobbler...

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Country boys will survive!
And with memories of a different way of life.

In the late 50's just before Granddad passed on they put in a gas floor furnace and added an electric pump to the big cistern while adding on a small bathroom with a large water heater, toilet and shower next to the dining room. Also running water in the kitchen and replaced the elctric stove they had put in when I was too young to remember it with a gas model.

The large appliance store/utility company in town had a fleet of trucks that delivered water for the cisterns; propane gas for the tank that fed the furnace, water heater and kitchen stove and also gasoline for the tank Granddad had to fill the farm machines (it had a hand pump).

When Grandma sold the farm while I was in Vietnam (late 66- Jan 69) the farm still used delivered water. The electric pump on the well had died when I was a baby and the cost of drilling down 150' to replace it was too much just after WWII ended so they just cleaned, patched and starting using the two cisterns again. One of those actually came up in the enclosed back porch so you could get water in bad weather and the other bigger cistern was at the SW corner of the house by the kitchen - the add-on bathroom was built next to it with a door in the corner of the diningroom.

She bought a big old nearly 100 year old house in town next to her brother and across the street from her sister. I visited on leave in Dec 67 (I got one month free leave and round trip tickets to anywhere I wanted for volunteering to stay in Vietnam 6 more months. I did the same again 6 months later. Both times I flew to PA to see Mom's family, St Louis to see my Dad, Stepmother and half brother then drove down to Kentucky to see Grandma and Dad's family and on to Los Angeles to see Mom and back to Vietnam. I didn't have enough time on my enlistment (Regular Army, not a Draftee) for a third extension but when I got back to the States with two months left they just sent me home and mailed my discharge papers to me at the end of March 1969.

Then in Dec 73 my wife and I took our Honeymoon by driving to Disney World, up to Kentucky where we stayed in Grandma's house while visiting family(she was visiting Dad in St Louis) and then up to St Louis to spend Christmas with Dad and Grandma (I still have the 12" gold tree with lights I bought at Walmart for our room at Dad's. I is on a shelf by my desk with its 3rd string of little electric lights) and then across country to Washington and back down the coast to the LA area where we lived in an apartment I took over from Mom when she remarried and they bought a house. A few years later our first son who was two at the time and I drove cross country to visit his Great Grandmother then drove to Kansas to meet "Mommy" who flew to the town where her best friend (Maid of Honor at our wedding.) now lived when she got her vacation (I was a teacher and had the whole summer off.) Then we drove back to CA through the Central Rockies staying in camp grounds along the way. Do you realize that a two year old can get a personal guided tour of Dinosaur National Monument by looking cute, holding up a toy dinosaur and calling it by its scientific name to a young college coed "Summer Ranger" at the front gate? She had just told us the place was closing in 10 minutes and to come back at her lunch time the next day. She was given an extended lunch by the head Ranger to give him his personal tour of the museum and grounds.

Plieku69 Loc: The Gopher State, south end

Excellent story of the good ol days. I remember them well from my formative years on a farm smack in the middle of Minnesota. It is a different country up there and I like it.
There was no light pollution then and many summer nights were spent sleeping on a blanket in the front yard and looking at the sky wondering and amazed by it all.

I have ideas of returning to that time upon retirement, but things change and those days are gone forever.

Ken

yssirk123 Loc: New Jersey

Wonderful memories - thanks for sharing,

Jim70 Loc: Delaware

Thank you all for the posts. They brought back memories of my childhood, especially on my great grandfather's farm His name was Paddy but my great-grandmother called him "himself". He had 2 large Belgian horses he used to plow the fields, and, in the winter, he would hitch them to a sleigh. The harnesses were shiny black with bells. We would go to town where he'd give the "townies" sleigh rides. When Paddy died, hundreds of people came to the wake and funeral.

The farm is gone now and so are my grandparents and parents, but your posts kindled a series of warm memories, so thank you for those.

gtilford Loc: Woodstock, Ontario, Canada

This is such a lost art, the ability to take the reader back in time to what we view now as a much simpler time. The biggest lose is the history that is past from family member to family member and sometimes the community, the families today seem to never have time to listen and perhaps learn a thing or two.......thank you so very much for sharing your memories they are not lost on this younger old guy and how they can make me feel taking me back to that time.

tomc601 Loc: Gilbert, AZ

A happy read.