Nostalgia for my youth

I don't know why, but over the last year, I've been harkening back to my early youth. As I've said, I'm a hillbilly and wear the title proudly. Growing up, we didn't have much, but we always had good food. We had a huge garden and grew just about everything or gathered it from the hills. Pecans, Walnuts, Blueberries, Blackberries, wild Strawberries, Apples, Poke Salad, Rhubarb, it all came from those hills.
We had chickens and a few hogs too. 10 years old, I was slaughtering hogs and when Nanny said "go get me chicken for supper" She didn't mean go bring in a chicken. You went, got a chicken, put it across the stump and took the head and feet off, plucked it and then took it inside.

Just the head. Nanny kept the neck for broth to go in chicken and dumplings.
Home made dumplings by the way and that woman made the best damn biscuits I've ever had bar none. She taught me how, but I can never get mine to taste as good as hers. Maybe it's just me, but there was magic in those biscuits that I can't seem to conjure up. Maybe it's my 56 year old mind trying to relive my 10 year old fondness of those biscuits and the memories they bring back.

We had lumberjack style breakfasts because she made sure you were full for a days work.
Porkchops/sausage and/or fried chicken, biscuits and gravy, fried potatoes, a huge pile of eggs, sliced tomatoes fresh out of the garden, fried apples with brown sugar and cinnamon, strong black coffee made in an old percolator on top of the stove.
You left that table full and ready to go.

These memories have been with me for decades, but they seem to be floating to the top more often these days and I welcome them because they bring a smile....and an urge to go make biscuits.

a reply to: DAVID64

I'm 56 too. You know what I think it's happening with us ?

I believe the late 70's, all the 80's and maybe the early 90's were so intense and cool that everything sucks under our sight now. I mean everything, what they eat, the way they dress, their music,....all.

a reply to: DAVID64

Life was a lot simpler back then...

a reply to: DAVID64

I miss my Grandma too.
Poor coal miner's wife from WV...But, boy, could that old woman COOK!

originally posted by: Trueman
a reply to: DAVID64

I'm 56 too. You know what I think it's happening with us ?

I believe the late 70's, all the 80's and maybe the early 90's were so intense and cool that everything sucks under our sight now. I mean everything, what they eat, the way they dress, their music,....all.

I think what happened to us was television. That is when everything sped up. We shipped industry away from our shores and made TV the national babysitter.

David64 is making me think that we grew up not far apart. I was just talking to a friend last week, about how stupid we were as children. Our mothers were making us fresh homemade bread straight out of the oven, and we were turning up our noses begging for "Wonder Bread".

Television, it sucked our brains dry, in preparation for the internet. Welcome to the Matrix.

a reply to: IAMTAT

My grandparents could throw down in the kitchen. God damn that was good eating.

My grandfather could make pies and cobblers out of this world. Fresh berries picked out the yard, lard crust. The man couldn't read or write, but knew his way around a kitchen. Recipe? What is that... it was just done by feel.

Fish and grits. Buttermilk biscuits. Slabs of fatback bacon.

I miss it too.

I remember when my grandma used to go out and get a mess of greens - lettuce and stuff - and dress it with some mild vinegar and little bit of sugar sprinkled in all tossed together. I used to think it was the best snack ever in the middle of the summer when it was all hot.

And she used to make these things for breakfast in her muffin tin. Some crumbled bread with a big strip of bacon around the outside. Bit of cheese on the bread and an egg cracked on top. Then it was all baked until the egg was done. We'd eat those while watching Lawrence Welk together; yeah, it was her favorite.

My other grandma could make pie like no one else, and they had a huge garden. She made the best homemade dill pickles. It get to where that's all she used to have to give me for Christmas a boxed dozen jars of her pickles. Oh, they were so good! And then springs raiding their ginormous strawberry patch ...

It's funny how we miss that cooking...and that so many memories revolve around, not just the food, but those meals together at the dinner table.

originally posted by: NightSkyeB4Dawn

originally posted by: Trueman
a reply to: DAVID64

I'm 56 too. You know what I think it's happening with us ?

I believe the late 70's, all the 80's and maybe the early 90's were so intense and cool that everything sucks under our sight now. I mean everything, what they eat, the way they dress, their music,....all.

I think what happened to us was television. That is when everything sped up. We shipped industry away from our shores and made TV the national babysitter.

David64 is making me think that we grew up not far apart. I was just talking a friend last week, about how stupid we were as children. Our mothers were making us fresh homemade bread straight out of the oven, and we were turning up our noses begging for "Wonder Bread".

Television, it sucked our brains dry, in preparation for the internet. Welcome to the Matrix.

Television wasn't a problem for me. I didn't have a color TV until the late 80's. Then we got a set and the VHS was the problem, oh man.

a reply to: DAVID64

Dude, no threads like this when I'm hungry.

My Lord, now I gotta go make a kickass breakfast.

Love the old days

originally posted by: NightSkyeB4Dawn

I think what happened to us was television. That is when everything sped up. We shipped industry away from our shores and made TV the national babysitter.

David64 is making me think that we grew up not far apart. I was just talking a friend last week, about how stupid we were as children. Our mothers were making us fresh homemade bread straight out of the oven, and we were turning up our noses begging for "Wonder Bread".

Television, it sucked our brains dry, in preparation for the internet. Welcome to the Matrix.

My thoughts go back to the Rural Purge of the mid to late 60s. Television executives decided to dump any shows that held rural settings in a positive light and replace them with more urban settings. It didn't matter how popular the shows were. Shows like Green Acres and The Andy Griffith Show got the axe and were replaced with shows like All in the Family, Good Times, and a slew of urban cops and robbers shows.

The "new normal" went from small communities living in peace and harmony to larger cities dealing with strife, racism, and crime.

a reply to: DAVID64
We are the last generation to experience fun and freedom.
Those things have been steadily hunted down and eradicated by the current mob.
Their future does not include those things.
Not surprising that the past seems simpler and better.

I bet the magic in the biscuits was the gravy that went over them, with maybe a little blackberry jelly? Your story reminds me of my great granny. I grew up in East Tennessee. She use to tell me stories about the the fist time she saw an automobile and an airplane. She never did believe we went to the moon. She passed in 1974 at the age of 99. I sure do miss her.

originally posted by: Trueman

originally posted by: NightSkyeB4Dawn

originally posted by: Trueman
a reply to: DAVID64

I'm 56 too. You know what I think it's happening with us ?

I believe the late 70's, all the 80's and maybe the early 90's were so intense and cool that everything sucks under our sight now. I mean everything, what they eat, the way they dress, their music,....all.

I think what happened to us was television. That is when everything sped up. We shipped industry away from our shores and made TV the national babysitter.

David64 is making me think that we grew up not far apart. I was just talking a friend last week, about how stupid we were as children. Our mothers were making us fresh homemade bread straight out of the oven, and we were turning up our noses begging for "Wonder Bread".

Television, it sucked our brains dry, in preparation for the internet. Welcome to the Matrix.

Television wasn't a problem for me. I didn't have a color TV until the late 80's. Then we got a set and the VHS was the problem, oh man.

Wish I'd kept some of those old vhs movies.
When I compare the old "straight -to-video" kind of b movies and horror schlock stuff to the boring, formulaic, on-message garbage now!...

Bring back rubber monsters!

I'M A YOOPER. I still go out picking blueberries, blackberries, and wild strawberries every year. I will go out and get a few young tender dandelion leaves and add them to a salad. I still plant a garden and want to go stream fishing, but am getting old and don't like to walk down a stream alone anymore. I no longer hunt deer, I toss them carrots and potatoes and fresh baked organic bread with the wife out the patio door every day. I can't shoot my friends. We no longer have outside cats, but we do have a new mouser living under the wheelchair ramp, a pine martin is living under there now. It is kind of friendly, he looks in our patio door and he has got rid of a lot of mice and some chippies. Too bad I know of nothing he likes to eat...if I do start feeding him he will get just as lazy as our inside cats and won't be mousing anymore.

This summer I will do more outdoor stuff, I just renewed my membership yesterday at the rod and gun club, so I will teach my grandkids to shoot next year too. I don't have to get nostalgic to do what I used to do. except the part about partying and wild women, I have no death wish, a young hot woman would give me a heart attack quickly.

Grandad was a coal miner and a stone mason. I remember, when I was a little boy, he had arms like Schwarzenegger...used to roll his Lucky Strikes in his sleeve.

Grandma used to be a school teacher in a small town in Penn. When my little sister and I were bored...there was no TV there for us...Grandma would take out the huge jars of old and detailed buttons she'd collected all her life...and let us play with them on the kitchen table while she cooked the most amazing things on that old stove.

originally posted by: IAMTAT
It's funny how we miss that cooking...

Not to braaagggg ... but uu uutt, my wife is a master chef. Her cooking erased all memories of other food.

My parents have passed and we're a long way from anyone related. If you've got your kin close, you're probably better off than just getting fatter. We have a kitchen table that seats eight. Never downsizing it.

originally posted by: Snarl

originally posted by: IAMTAT
It's funny how we miss that cooking...

Not to braaagggg ... but uu uutt, my wife is a master chef. Her cooking erased all memories of other food.

My parents have passed and we're a long way from anyone related. If you've got your kin close, you're probably better off than just getting fatter. We have a kitchen table that seats eight. Never downsizing it.

We make better food at home than a person can find in ninety percent of the restaurants around here. There was a Chinese Restaurant here that a woman from China had, I cannot cook oriental food as good as she could. And of course, I do not have the big fryer to make great fried fish, we use our fryer strictly for french fries, using corn oil. But we usually do our fish in the oven, once in a while a good fried local whitefish dinner from one restaurant in the next town is necessary....it was all you can eat before covid,

Thanks.... now I'm missing grannies biscuits N gravy.....


Nice thread, thanks for sharing.

I have been thinking a lot of my younger days too.. Missing all of the wondrous and amazing things I was so fortunate to grow up with. My grandma made the best ever peach pies.. o man! We lived far away so I didn't spend as much time with my grandparents as I wish I could have.. but I remember all of the home grown tomatoes, corn, strawberries.. homemade biscuits and jelly and juice.. Who knew times like that would be just a dream to future generations. Sorry.. I am really down today.