My mother was a very sensible woman.  As an only child, and growing up on a 46 acre farm in the country, she had a lot of time to explore and learn about nature.  She trained in Laboratory Science and work for several years in laboratory technology.

When I was a child, she delighted in showing me the ‘scum’ off of pond water which was teeming with microorganisms, paramecia and the like. I was also fascinated to see under the microscope the blood cells of my small green frog coursing through his illuminated arteries or that of a dragonfly just plucked from flight.

So when my mother requested that I go and pick her some ‘poke salad’, I assumed it was something of medical or medicinal importance to her.  She showed me the ‘poke salad’ plant, which was the early stages of what we commonly called ‘Pokeberry‘ This is an abundant country weed which comes up wherever the birds chose to deposit its seeds. The birds eat the purple berries and as the seed pass through their intestines unscathed, they are often deposited near posts, fence lines, eaves of barns and the like.

So I knew where to find “pokeberry.” The strict instructions to me went like this: “Pick only the young tender leaves as it is coming up from the ground. Anything longer than 12 inches leave and don’t pick it, as it might be poisonous.” Now this is a very interesting fact, as the Poke Berry gets larger it apparently becomes poisonous to people. By the time it makes its juicy purple berries in the fall, it is highly dangerous to eat either berries or leaves. My mother could always tell if we have been playing in the poke berries, as the purple color of the berries stained clothes, skin and anything else it touched for very long.  I have never eaten a ‘poke berry’, as my mother strictly forbade it, but I have squeezed many of the purple berries, just to see how far the juice would squirt.

My mother she set me on a journey to pick a ‘mess’ of ‘tender poke leaves’ newly sprung from the ground. I found this intriguing, so I set off with a large sack to pick the poke shoots. In about an hour, I felt I had enough to return, so I gave the bag of poke (a poke of poke) to my mother. She was very pleased and sat it next to the sink so she could inspect and wash every leaf.  Finding her satisfied with my offering, I set out to do something else.

About two hours later I returned to a house which had a large aluminum pot full of steaming water and ‘poke salad’ cooking on the large eye on our electric stove.  I went closer to look, but about that time I noticed a horrible stench filling the whole room.  It was one of the most pungent, irritating and miserable smells I had ever encountered in my young life.

“Mama,” I said, “what are you cooking?”

“Poke salad,” she said.

“Is that what smells so bad?” I asked.

“Yes,“ she replied, “I’m cooking the greens you picked to eat and I making a medicinal tea.”

That’s as close as I ever got to “Poke salad.”  I, being an astute young lad, felt she might make me drink the stuff, or worse, eat some of the greens in the pot. I hurried outside.  She never asked me to partake of any, thank God!  However, for my mother, this became an annual ritual. When I was not available to pick for her the ‘poke salad’, she did it herself and year after year she would eat the cooked greens and drink some of the ‘medicinal tea.’  Apparently, wild greens have some kind of nutrient in them which she felt was needed for a good constitution.

I never asked her if she liked ‘poke salad’ or not. My grandmother would wax eloquent about the value of castor oil to cure sick children and make them wish to go back to school quickly, which I managed to avoid completely. So, I had no desire to partake of something, even medicinal and for one’s health that smelled as bad as ‘poke salad’ did when cooked inside the home.

I can still remember the smell many years later. The smell lingered in the house for about 2-3 days. I found it so severe to my nostrils, I slept out in the porch of our home until the odor subsided. Now sassafras tea, I like. I tolerate eating turnips as long as they are raw, never cooked. I ate sweet potatoes religiously for dessert for days upon end. I even learned to appreciate muscadine hull pie, which if you have never had is quite good, provided it is made from the black or purple muscadines. My mother made us save the hulls when we ate muscadines just so we could have this delicacy at least once or twice in the fall.

We spent a lot of time putting up grape juice in a frozen form.  We froze fresh strawberries, both cultivated and the half wild which were tart. My grandmother made quantities of spiced clove peaches which only appeared on the table for important company, like the minister of the church or special guests in the home.  She also made quince preserves, which are so firm they never fall apart on the toast.  We ate cooking apples that remained green until cooked in the pie. We had striped apples which were so sweet the juice dribbled as we ate them. We had brown skinned apples that were so tart, they could beat a green persimmon for pucker.

As I child, I never knew I was living in a paradise of food. But older now, I long for some of these delicacies and can never find them. To this day, I would give any amount of money to have some of my grandmother’s fruitcake which she gave as gifts to the relatives at Christmas. Full of dates, black and yellow raisins, black walnuts, English walnuts, a few pecans and many special fruits, but nary a citron among them; it was the most heavenly of productions. I helped her make it in a pan so large, lined with tin foil, I could not lift it to the oven. She gave away 4 inch by 6 inch squares, never more nor less, and our relatives fawned over themselves to obtain just a few slices.

I tell these other stories as a way of balancing off the smell of that awful ‘poke salad’. We also put up dozens of quarts of canned tomatoes and peaches. Our freezers were full of frozen creamed corn and beans. One 21 cubic foot freezer was always full of grass fed beef and the other of similar size was full of all kinds of frozen vegetables from our garden. I remember going with my grandfather to the local grocery store and only buying refined sugar, baking powder, and a few specialty products like oranges, bananas and a loaf of wheat bread. Everything else we grew at home, except at Christmas we bought the brown sugar and the white confectionery sugar needed for making a fruit cake, as mentioned above.

My grandfather always demanded a live turkey for Thanksgiving Dinner, which my grandmother and I cooked each Thanksgiving, and I helped her baste sometimes ‘till 3 or 4am.  The largest on record was 24 pounds, such a monstrous bird to prepare and eat, we had turkey leftovers for almost a week afterward!

I suppose that’s enough reminiscing for now. I remember all the good things to forget the smell of the ‘poke salad’ cooking on the stove top.  Later years when my mother boiled her medicinal tea, I simply left home for a day or so and visited my best friend Ray while the poke was cooking. Ray and I had many great adventures. His mother made the best fried rabbit I have ever tasted. On the days when I was especially hungry, I ate first at her house and then came home to eat again at my own. His mother was a great cook in her own right. I wonder now what has happened to the women who used to cook in the home. My wife is a wonderful cook. She hardly does it much anymore, as we’re all are just so damn busy!  I expect that is what is wrong with our children. They grow up eating chicken nuggets, french fries and pizza and never get to taste the truly delightful and healthy cuisine of my youth. They have missed out on some of the greatest pleasures of life! Some day when I wish to wax and wane truly eloquent, I will tell you about Mrs. Flanagan’s lemon pie. It is the closest to ‘heavenly cuisine’ I have ever had on the face of this earth! I begged her at our Thursday Night Church Singing to please save me a piece of her lemon pie. I shall never forget her smile, holding out a piece of her pie for me as I rounded the corner into our church kitchen. I don’t know who had the most delight, me in my eating or she in her watching me enjoy. I would have married her had I not be five and she around seventy.  But what is age in the sharing of a lemon pie? The bonds formed in that moment will last me for an eternity.  I hope one day to meet her again when we can reminisce about old times and the joys we shared way back when.