We weren't rich growing up, my parents had to work hard for us to have what we had and daddy had a second job selling real estate between the school year. We were a middle class family plain and simple.
We didn't travel a lot, other than to visit family and friends in Florida and South Georgia, but when you grow up in "God's Country" you don't really have to travel far to find everything you could want.
For a small town Clayton, Ga had some fairly well known restaurants, some of which can easily be described as Great Southern Kitchens. One such restaurant was LaPrade's.
LaPrade's was only open from Memorial Day until Labor Day, it sat high atop a hill on the banks of Lake Burton. Nestled between huge azalea bushes and rhododendron, LaPrades was a family style restaurant that attracted the Lake Burton well to do and the locals of the area each time the doors opened. Served all you can eat and at a reasonable price, LaPrade's was perfect for our middle class tastes.
We often found ourselves at LaPrade's for lunch after Church on Sundays. Ma-ma and Gramps would meet us there as Lake Burton was 1/2 way between my parents house and their house.
LaPrade's served two seating's for lunch and two for supper, one hour each, and the menu was basically the same ever day. People from all over would gather on the sweeping front porch of the lodge prior to going in for their meal time. The porch provided a gorgeous view of the lake and the boats speeding by with water skiers or fishermen.
When I was a child, daddy never let my brothers or I play carnival games, he said they were a waste of money, but when we went to LaPrades he would let us play the electric bowling machine and we would have family tournaments on those lanes with the miniature balls and pins.
Once the bell was rung and guests were admitted into the dining room diners would file in and find a seat at one of the 4 long tables lined with benches. Each table was probably 50' long and you never knew who you may be sitting by during the dining experience. The President of major corporations would be seated next to farmers and so on down the tables as approximately 200 people enjoyed each seating.
The food was served family style, huge platters of fried chicken, country ham, pork chops, fresh green beans, squash and fried okra along with corn, mashed potatoes, slaw and biscuits and gravy. Home made chocolate cake was always served for dessert. Everything was fresh from the garden, no frozen foods here, just good ole country dining at its best.
Servers ran a constant marathon back and forth to the kitchen bringing out platter after platter of deep fried, dripping in butter, stick to your ribs country cooking. Feeding time lasted for 60 minutes, so to get all you could eat during those sessions the eating was constant, but the conversation of the guests never wained and the families gathered together around this massive table became one.
Once the meal time was over, we would file out just as we came in, although stuffed to the gills and ready for a nice long nap, after a feast prepared with pride.
LaPrade's closed down in the late 80's as fast food and chain restaurants invaded God's Country, during the last year it was open my family made one last visit to our old stomping ground.
On that last visit my sister-in-law was very pregnant with my niece. After dinner we all took a walk down the hill, to the lakefront and back up the mountain, we did this in hopes that the exercise would encourage my niece to make her entry into the world, I don't think that walk made any difference in her arrival date, but it made one last memory for my family and I at LaPrades, a Great Southern Kitchen.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Pickin N Singin
Saturday has always been my favorite day of the week. Growing up it would include Georgia Bulldog Games in the fall and early winter and snow skiing once it got cold enough to slide down the tiny hills of Sky Valley.
Daddy was a High School coach and our lives revolved around football. Friday night would be the games he coached and my brothers played in and on Saturday we would don our red and black and travel to Athens for the Georgia Games.
Daddy had a good friend who was one of the coaches on the JV team for Georgia. We would meet him at the gate where the players got off the bus and he would grab my brother and I and rush us onto the sidelines with the team. This was long before heightened security, when life seemed simpler.
After my brother and I were safely inside the stadium with Doc, my parents would make their way to their seats. We would enjoy the game on the sidelines and then meet mama and daddy back at the car after the game.
When the Dawgs played away games, mama would cook a bit pot of stew or soup and the entire family would listen to Larry Munson on the radio call the games usually while watching it on TV as well. The announcers on TV did a good job, but they weren't Larry Munson!
After football season was over Saturdays would turn into ski days. From early morning until late afternoon I would go up those small hills and slide back to the bottom feeling the rush of the wind in my face and the slick man-made snow under my feet. Snow skiing was a passion, a time when I had total freedom and could excel at a sport of my own.
As much as I loved the Georgia Games and snow skiing, to me they couldn't hold a candle to the Saturdays of summer and spring.
When my parents built our house, it was designed perfectly for entertaining. I don't think they meant to build a party house, but it evolved into it. A great room encompassed the majority of the downstairs, kitchen, dining room and living room stretched from one end of the house to the other. During the spring and summer, this room was filled with friends and family for Saturday Night cook-outs and Pickin and Singin.
Mama and Daddy both loved to cook for others. A meal for our family was expected, but when they were cooking for 20 or 30 people they were at their best. Every Saturday mama and daddy would plan the menu. Fried fish, frog legs, chicken, steaks, whatever the main course for that night may be.
Daddy always handled the main course, he would stand out by his deep fat frier and cook fish for hours. Mama would be in the house preparing hush puppies, slaw and the other delicacies that would go with the nights menu.
When daddy cooks he has a method to it, everything is perfectly timed out and mama would fight each week to keep up with his time frame. Mama is a "love cook" she makes it take as long as it takes, putting every morsel of love she can into what she is preparing, it was a constant battle between them, but somehow they made it work.
Usually the Saturday night prep work would begin around 5PM. Friends would begin arriving with their contribution to the meal. The women would gather in the kitchen/dining room area for chit-chat. The men would gather under the garage while daddy cooked, to solve the problems of the world and the kids would run the neighborhood playing in our forts or tree houses or wading through the creek to the waterfall on the other side of the highway.
As the meal was prepared and all us kids had been corralled back to the house we would gather in the dining room for the blessing. All of us, the Galloways, the Rogers, the Singletons, the Stocktons and whoever else was with us that night would hold hands and say grace. These moments brought us together as one large family in fellowship moving through the good and bad times of life together.
After our dinner feast my favorite part of the night would begin. It was time for Pickin and Singin!
Tom McClure and Doug Stockton would pull out their guitars and begin to tune. Tom was a double amputee who had been in a wheelchair since he was young. I don't know what put him in that wheelchair, but I know it never confined him. Tom lived life, he enjoyed life and he enriched the lives of all of us who knew him.
Doug was my brother Tommy's age. After Tommy died, Doug became an older brother to my brother and I. He went on family vacations with us and was always a looming spirit in our house, he was someone we could look up to, a steady force in a childhood that wasn't always so.
Tom and Doug would pull up next to each other and the rest of us would form a large circle around them, in old beat up lawn chairs lit by the glow of lighting bugs and the moon. Once they began to pick their guitars, a warm spirit would fill the room. I never felt safer or more loved than when I was in that circle listening to the harmonies of Doug and Tom singing and joining in with the rest of our "choir" to sing along.
We would sing old hymns and country favorites of the day, "The Green Green Grass of Home", "I'll Fly Away", "A Boy Named Sue" and my favorite "Will the Circle be Unbroken".
All of us would join in the singing, going on for hours, until it was time for us all to return to our own homes looking forward to another week of Pickin and Singin. I loved those moments more than any others, the sound of music, the fellowship of friends and family and a Circle that would be Unbroken.
Daddy was a High School coach and our lives revolved around football. Friday night would be the games he coached and my brothers played in and on Saturday we would don our red and black and travel to Athens for the Georgia Games.
Daddy had a good friend who was one of the coaches on the JV team for Georgia. We would meet him at the gate where the players got off the bus and he would grab my brother and I and rush us onto the sidelines with the team. This was long before heightened security, when life seemed simpler.
After my brother and I were safely inside the stadium with Doc, my parents would make their way to their seats. We would enjoy the game on the sidelines and then meet mama and daddy back at the car after the game.
When the Dawgs played away games, mama would cook a bit pot of stew or soup and the entire family would listen to Larry Munson on the radio call the games usually while watching it on TV as well. The announcers on TV did a good job, but they weren't Larry Munson!
After football season was over Saturdays would turn into ski days. From early morning until late afternoon I would go up those small hills and slide back to the bottom feeling the rush of the wind in my face and the slick man-made snow under my feet. Snow skiing was a passion, a time when I had total freedom and could excel at a sport of my own.
As much as I loved the Georgia Games and snow skiing, to me they couldn't hold a candle to the Saturdays of summer and spring.
When my parents built our house, it was designed perfectly for entertaining. I don't think they meant to build a party house, but it evolved into it. A great room encompassed the majority of the downstairs, kitchen, dining room and living room stretched from one end of the house to the other. During the spring and summer, this room was filled with friends and family for Saturday Night cook-outs and Pickin and Singin.
Mama and Daddy both loved to cook for others. A meal for our family was expected, but when they were cooking for 20 or 30 people they were at their best. Every Saturday mama and daddy would plan the menu. Fried fish, frog legs, chicken, steaks, whatever the main course for that night may be.
Daddy always handled the main course, he would stand out by his deep fat frier and cook fish for hours. Mama would be in the house preparing hush puppies, slaw and the other delicacies that would go with the nights menu.
When daddy cooks he has a method to it, everything is perfectly timed out and mama would fight each week to keep up with his time frame. Mama is a "love cook" she makes it take as long as it takes, putting every morsel of love she can into what she is preparing, it was a constant battle between them, but somehow they made it work.
Usually the Saturday night prep work would begin around 5PM. Friends would begin arriving with their contribution to the meal. The women would gather in the kitchen/dining room area for chit-chat. The men would gather under the garage while daddy cooked, to solve the problems of the world and the kids would run the neighborhood playing in our forts or tree houses or wading through the creek to the waterfall on the other side of the highway.
As the meal was prepared and all us kids had been corralled back to the house we would gather in the dining room for the blessing. All of us, the Galloways, the Rogers, the Singletons, the Stocktons and whoever else was with us that night would hold hands and say grace. These moments brought us together as one large family in fellowship moving through the good and bad times of life together.
After our dinner feast my favorite part of the night would begin. It was time for Pickin and Singin!
Tom McClure and Doug Stockton would pull out their guitars and begin to tune. Tom was a double amputee who had been in a wheelchair since he was young. I don't know what put him in that wheelchair, but I know it never confined him. Tom lived life, he enjoyed life and he enriched the lives of all of us who knew him.
Doug was my brother Tommy's age. After Tommy died, Doug became an older brother to my brother and I. He went on family vacations with us and was always a looming spirit in our house, he was someone we could look up to, a steady force in a childhood that wasn't always so.
Tom and Doug would pull up next to each other and the rest of us would form a large circle around them, in old beat up lawn chairs lit by the glow of lighting bugs and the moon. Once they began to pick their guitars, a warm spirit would fill the room. I never felt safer or more loved than when I was in that circle listening to the harmonies of Doug and Tom singing and joining in with the rest of our "choir" to sing along.
We would sing old hymns and country favorites of the day, "The Green Green Grass of Home", "I'll Fly Away", "A Boy Named Sue" and my favorite "Will the Circle be Unbroken".
All of us would join in the singing, going on for hours, until it was time for us all to return to our own homes looking forward to another week of Pickin and Singin. I loved those moments more than any others, the sound of music, the fellowship of friends and family and a Circle that would be Unbroken.
I was standing by my window,
On one cold and cloudy day
When I saw that hearse come rolling
For to carry my mother away
Will the circle be unbroken
By and by, lord, by and by
There’s a better home a-waiting
In the sky, lord, in the sky
I said to that undertaker
Undertaker please drive slow
For this lady you are carrying
Lord, I hate to see here go
Will the circle be unbroken
By and by, lord, by and by
There’s a better home a-waiting
In the sky, lord, in the sky
Oh, I followed close behind her
Tried to hold up and be brave
But I could not hide my sorrow
When they laid her in the grave
Will the circle be unbroken
By and by, lord, by and by
There’s a better home a-waiting
In the sky, lord, in the sky
I went back home, my home was lonesome
Missed my mother, she was gone
All of my brothers, sisters crying
What a home so sad and lone
Will the circle be unbroken
By and by, lord, by and by
There’s a better home a-waiting
In the sky, lord, in the sky
We sang the songs of childhood
Hymns of faith that made us strong
Ones that mother maybelle taught us
Hear the angels sing along
Will the circle be unbroken
By and by, lord, by and by
There’s a better home a-waiting
In the sky, lord, in the sky
Will the circle be unbroken
By and by, lord, by and by
There’s a better home a-waiting
In the sky, lord, in the sky
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Two Southern Ladies
My love of the kitchen was molded by two southern ladies, my mother and my grandmother. Mama and Ma-ma, today, Mother's Day, I think of them both.
As a child, and still today, I am a mama's boy, from my earliest memories I was with her whenever the opportunity arose. She is the greatest influence on my life. Growing up, mother was often sick and in the hospital, when she wasn't with me I was usually with ma-ma.
I can remember sitting at the kitchen table while ma-ma prepared lunch or supper, there was always something cooking in her kitchen and the aromas would fill the house with the smell of vegetables straight from the garden. Ma-ma was also an amazing baker, from her I learned to love watching the cake rise in a pan or how to dollop sugar cookies just so.
Mama was a stickler for making sure the family all sat down together at supper time. She was a teacher and would come home every afternoon to prepare a full meal. Meat, two vegetables and biscuits. Mama's biscuits weren't from a can, she would roll the dough every day and cut them out using an empty Vienna Sausage can so that each one was the same size and thickness.
Often on Sundays we could travel to ma-ma's house, about 30 minutes away, for lunch. On those occasions you could always count on the good china and white linen table cloth being on the dining room table. When we gathered together it was meant to be something special, not just an ordinary meal but one to be shared with family.... the best kind of meal.
When my ma-ma passed, I got that old dining room set for my own, today I use it to entertain my friends and family on. Like ma-ma and mama, whenever friends or family are here for a meal, it is meant to be an occasion, with the nice plates, a table scape and linens, after all it isn't just any meal but one to be shared with those you love.
Thank you mama and ma-ma for your love of the kitchen, your love of tradition and your love of family.
I miss my ma-ma and celebrate my mama every day.
As a child, and still today, I am a mama's boy, from my earliest memories I was with her whenever the opportunity arose. She is the greatest influence on my life. Growing up, mother was often sick and in the hospital, when she wasn't with me I was usually with ma-ma.
I can remember sitting at the kitchen table while ma-ma prepared lunch or supper, there was always something cooking in her kitchen and the aromas would fill the house with the smell of vegetables straight from the garden. Ma-ma was also an amazing baker, from her I learned to love watching the cake rise in a pan or how to dollop sugar cookies just so.
Mama was a stickler for making sure the family all sat down together at supper time. She was a teacher and would come home every afternoon to prepare a full meal. Meat, two vegetables and biscuits. Mama's biscuits weren't from a can, she would roll the dough every day and cut them out using an empty Vienna Sausage can so that each one was the same size and thickness.
Often on Sundays we could travel to ma-ma's house, about 30 minutes away, for lunch. On those occasions you could always count on the good china and white linen table cloth being on the dining room table. When we gathered together it was meant to be something special, not just an ordinary meal but one to be shared with family.... the best kind of meal.
When my ma-ma passed, I got that old dining room set for my own, today I use it to entertain my friends and family on. Like ma-ma and mama, whenever friends or family are here for a meal, it is meant to be an occasion, with the nice plates, a table scape and linens, after all it isn't just any meal but one to be shared with those you love.
Thank you mama and ma-ma for your love of the kitchen, your love of tradition and your love of family.
I miss my ma-ma and celebrate my mama every day.
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