The Sugar Bowl
On the left-hand side of my stove, flanking the door to my tiny dining room, is another skinny, narrow cabinet and drawer combo. The drawers on the bottom hold the vast majority of my cooking utensils. Wood and stainless-steel spoons collected and gifted over the years, various deadly looking implements for juicing, zesting, and pounding all matters of edibles to perfection. Above the handkerchief sized spot on counter, that is practically useless by the way, hangs a treasure trove. Three shelves stuffed to bursting with STUFF. Mainly boxes and containers of teas. Some frankly stale but I am a hoarder you know. I just mix those with fresher batches and stretch them out. Waste not want should be on my family crest. There are also various jars of local honey, molasses, and sorghum syrups. Sweet things that remind me of my child hood and high calorie, high fat, full flavor family meals around my parents and grandparents’ kitchen tables. Some cold frosty morning this winter cook a batch of scratch made pancakes on a cast iron griddle. Smother them in butter and sorghum, pair with iced tea, coffee, and fried side mean and then call your loved ones to eat. I assure you that you will almost know what heaven is like. Back to the cabinet. Should you push further towards the back of the middle shelf, the one that houses the dried dates and cranberries, you will find a simple white ironstone sugar bowl.
Most folks would throw this bowl out the first time they laid eyes on it. Its chipped and crazed. There are brown spots where various matter has leached in to the very foundation of its being. Simply put, it is a worn out, antiquated sugar bowl like folks used to pick up at any five and dime or grocery store with Green Stamps. This worn-out eye sore is one of my most prized possessions. I know what you are thinking. He has finally lost it. The hoarder is in full swing if he is keeping this. Give me a chance to explain before you call for my white coat.
I grew up next door to my maternal grandparents. Well more like down the dirt path but still. We moved in to the house my parents still occupy in the fall of 1985. I was five and had just started kindergarten. We had moved from a much larger home that we had rented to a small cottage that my parents had purchased and had moved to the edge of my grandparents’ farm. That is a whole other story for another time though.
After school, weekends, holidays, I would practically live at grandmama and papa’s. The path between our houses was kept hot by my bare feet. I despised wearing shoes. Still do. I went bare footed as long as possible each year. Most summer mornings I would get up and goof around a bit then head out the back door. Sometimes I walked down the path but the fields between the two houses was much more interesting. I would stop to inspect the acer or so of garden that my parents and grandparents mutually tended between the two houses. Maybe I would meander over to the double row of fruit trees that Papa maintained as a small orchard. I did not bother with windfallen fruit. I would sneak a good apple or pear if I thought I would not be caught and chastised. If the weather had been fair and the soil slightly damp I would make frog houses.
Frog Houses or Toad Holes are one of the best inventions ever thought up by poor rural children. You need slightly damp loamy or sandy soil. It must be damp enough to hold its shape without additional supports but dry enough that it is not too heavy or muddy. After the proper soil is located the building begins. You make a mound of dirt over your bare foot and pack it down tight, then using one swift motion, remove your foot straight back. If all goes well you will be left with toad sized Hobbit Hole. I just knew that all the local amphibians were grateful for my continuous building. I am certain that I single handedly was the largest Toad Hole contributor in Eastern North Carolina. Too bad I never collected even a single fly in rent.
After “messing around for a good half hour or more I would finally be at the edge of my grandparent’s lawn. It was just a quick run past the enormous Cape Jasmine bushes and I would be at the little metal gate. Their tiny “patio” around the back door was enclosed by white picket fencing and an ancient metal garden gate. This was all needed to keep any stray dogs out of my grandparent’s petunias and off the door step. I would fling open that gate and rush to the door step while being mindful of the snake hole in the second step. You see the door steps were poured concrete. On the right-hand side of the second step was a half-moon hole right where the back edge met the house. Grandmama swore that a snake stuck its head out once.
Entering the actual house was a ritual in and of its self. At the time I do not think anyone realized it. First you wiped your shoes or bare feet on the runners made of carpet scraps grandmama kept on the back steps. After your soles where clean, you reached over to a small homemade wooden table next to the steps. This housed five-gallon buckets, a homemade boot jack, and rags. Usually the rags where soft well-worn towels but occasionally one of Papa’s old button up cotton shirts, devoid of buttons would end up there. These cloths were to wipe your legs and tops of your feet. Grandmama ran a tight ship when it came to keeping house and you were “not tracking dirt in my house”. Once all the dust was wiped clean you could finally go inside.
The back porch was what folks today call a mud room. A small room with two widows on one side, a chest freezer locker, washing machine, hot water heater and papa’s roll top desk. There were three doors. One to the bath room, a later addition to the house, one to a hallway running the length of the house and one to the kitchen. When you passed that threshold, you entered grandmama’s domain. All were welcome but don’t make a mess.
In my life time that kitchen went thru two styles. The original farm house kitchen with no cabinets on the walls but instead a Hoosier in one corner and a small upright dish cabinet in the other. A fridge, white enameled gas stove and sink were along the edges of the room. The rock maple kitchen table was in the center and on the remaining wall a bow front pegged, hairy paw china closet. Later when I was maybe six or seven, my grandparents remodeled the kitchen. Floor to ceiling oak cabinets were installed. Gone was the celotex ceiling panels and the 1960s linoleum. The only thing that remained familiar was the stove, table, and china closet.
That kitchen was my childhood. Usually grandmama met me at the door unless she had her hands in dish water, and would give me a hug and I would kiss her on the neck. We would walk back into the kitchen and I would ask her what she was doing. Normally it was house work. She was always cleaning. The house smelled of Liquid Gold and almond oil. Multiple times a week her base boards and furniture were wiped down with a soft cloth liberally soaked in one of the two. She seldom swept her floors but instead vacuumed her linoleum the same as her carpeted areas. Dishes seldom sat long in the sink. Over my childhood we came to an understanding. If I left a glass on the counter by the sink it was safe from washing until I left. This truce was needed otherwise, every time I finished a glass of tea, it would be wiped, dried and put away.
The cabinet that held the glasses also cradled a sugar bowl. Not the one taking up valuable real-estate in my home today but one smaller and similar. That bowl looked worse than mine! Darker, more chipped, it held the sugar my grandparents used in their coffee, sprinkled over their raisin bran, and in the spring liberally applied to the fresh strawberries picked from what seemed like a mile-long row next to the orchard. This battered bowl matched the plates she served every meal from, white scalloped iron stone dishes that were older than I and in about the same shape as the sugar dish.
I admit that the sugar bowl was not prominently displayed on the table. It was in a cabinet out of sight until needed, but it always there. All you had to do was open a door and there is was, full of sweet goodness that everyone loved. I can remember sprinkling that sugar on my cereal on those rare occasions grandmama did not cook a full breakfast. Usually there was bacon, sausage, or side meat with buttered toast, and eggs but occasionally we just had raisin bran or corn flakes. In the winter my grandparents occasionally had coffee and the bowl stayed on the table to sweeten the bitter brew. Friday and Saturdays were when grandmama made her desserts for Sunday. When making the meringues for her chocolate pies or banana puddings she would always add a few spoons full of sugar from that bowl. I would then beg to use her old manual egg beater to whip the egg whites to stiff peaks. To me then it was fun and besides I felt like I was helping.
The best memory of that sugar bowl was the doughnuts. It was a hot summer’s day and everyone was tired and cranky. Grandmama and I stayed inside as much as possible during the heat of the day. Other than watching “the stories” there was not much else to do. Well not much else a kid wanted to do. I had already read all the magazines in the house and my library books checked out each Friday when I accompanied her to Laine’s Beauty Shop for her weekly wash and set. The ancient encyclopedias in the living room had been looked at so much I feared the ink was going to rub off the pages. Even if we went in to town there was nothing to do there either. So basically, it was the height of summer in any east coast southern town. I could not have been more than 10, practically grown you know, and I wanted to do something. Grandmama loved cook books and often would look thru the few she had or the recipe sections of various magazines. That day for whatever reason we decided to break up the boredom and make doughnuts. We found a recipe that seemed doable and dove in. As soon as the batter was mixed we divided it up in to different bowls and pillaged the spice cabinet for spices. Some bowls were flavored orange, other lemon, some coconut. If we had an extract we used it. While grandmama finished up the mixing I was sent to the pack house for lard. We killed hogs every winter and the lard we rendered on those frigid days lasted almost till the next winter. Stored in metal lard stands or tins most would call them, they always smelled of grease and felt sticky.
Soon I was back in the house and excited. Doughnuts just like those you got at Krispy Kreme, I thought. Grandmama had to gently explain that these would-be doughnut holes and not as light as those of the famous southern bakery. Still, what other kid was making doughnuts! We made bags and bags of doughnuts. We made doughnuts until we were sick of them but it was fun. As the golden-brown morsels were pulled from the scalding grease it was my job to sprinkle them with sugar from the bowl. Grandmama and mama both saved the bags that sandwich bread was sold in and it was those we used to wrap up our bounty. I can remember leaving for home that evening with two of those long plastic bags full of doughnut holes for my parents. I have not made doughnuts since. Maybe it is because it really is a messy undertaking if you are frying them but honestly, I think it is because never will I have as much fun as I did that sweltering summer afternoon.
Years later, when I was in high school, I came in thru the back door for supper one Friday night, and I noticed that grandmama had set the table with new plates. Heavy Pfaltzgraff dishes with pink roses. She had even used new glasses. Small ones tinted light blue. I stared. Eyes beaming, she asked me how I liked her new dishes. I softly murmured that they were nice but asked where the old ones were. “Oh those? I finally gave in to everyone’s complaints and threw them out since they looked so bad.”. I was heartbroken. Even at that age I did not like change and I have gotten worse as I aged. That night I snuck outside to the burn and trash barrels and dug around. Sure enough I found the dishes. They were old when I was born so it was no surprise the spider web of cracks that barely held them together finally gave way when they were tossed out. I found one plate mostly intact and stuck it under the seat of my truck. I stayed there until after I was out of college and my daddy used that truck. Completely broken by then, in pieces, the last survivor of my childhood meals was finally let go. In my anguish at this injustice of change, I did not even think about the sugar bowl while digging thru the trash. It was not until later in the week I happened to go in the cabinet for a glass I realized it was still there. Finally! Something familiar.
Fast forward a few more years and I hear grandmama fussing that the sugar bowl I just falling apart. The lid split and papa glued it back together. The handles were long gone. Pieces were falling from the rim in to the sugar. I cringed fore I knew what was coming. I just pushed it from my mind. Then one day I reached for a glass and realized that the sugar bowl was gone and in its place, was a small lidded glass dish. I just sighed.
Sometime after this I was at a flea market. A good friend of my family maintained several booths there and I always stopped to talk if he was in and peruse his wears. That day I spied something familiar. A white ironstone sugar dish. Larger than the one my grandparents had used for so many years but still similar. I had to buy it. I NEEDED IT. I clasped that treasure to my chest and once home washed and dried it with more tenderness than a mother shows her first born. I grinned from ear to ear when I gave it to my grandmama. I doubt she realized how important it was to me. For a long while she used this new to us dish. It powdered their cereal and sweetened their coffee. One weekend when I was home from college I noticed the sugar bowl was no longer in the cabinet. I paused to ask what happened. I assumed it had been broken or one of its many cracks finally gave way. Instead my grandmother explained that they seldom used sugar anymore and she felt that since it was such a pretty bowl she would place it out to look at. High atop her china closet was that battered bowl. A substitute for the one of my childhood. A memento of my childhood.
The sugar bowl stayed atop that china closet until my grandmama died. Several years later when my mama and aunt cleaned out the house after papa’s death I asked to have it. No one else wanted it. It was just a chipped, stained, beat up sugar bowl. I brought it home, lovingly washed off the grime, and gently placed it in my cabinet. It is a physical memory of a fleeting period of my life when I was carefree. I did not have to live up to anyone’s expectations. I did not have to battle prejudice and ignorance. I did not have to worry about paying bills or being an adult. I was simply a little boy spending time with his grandmama. My grandmama was my sugar bowl. She held sweetness that she gave to anyone who happened to stumble in to her kitchen.
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