My Grandma Allred was my dad’s paternal grandmother, and at the time I remember her, she lived in Bismarck, Arkansas, in a small, wood frame house with a porch across the front and a small porch to the side. I guess I was maybe eight or nine, and I remember Grandma Allred being very old. She had out-lived several husbands, and we called her husband at the time, "Mr. Carpenter". I thought for a long time his name was "Mr. Cobbinder" because that’s what I heard when Grandma Allred called him. I feel certain they were both older than dirt, and he eventually outlived my Grandma.
Grandma Allred was a tiny lady with a face so worn from weather and work that I was never sure if the wrinkles were from smiles or frowns, but I think they were from smiles. She was pleasant enough to visit with, and she always wanted to give us some little something from her house such as a doily or some home-canned goods. We’d look at mom for the okay, and she would either nod or shake her head if we were offered a gift. You just never knew what you might come home with.
I remember my mom taking us kids to visit them every month or so, and often mom would help Grandma Allred and Mr. Carpenter by cleaning out their refrigerator, straightening the house and cooking them a meal. Both of them had very poor eyesight at this point, and I recall a small, open container of jelly with a spoon on their dining table on top of a lazy Susan with a few other condiments. They never knew about the steady stream of ants mom cleared off the table when we were there, and that she dumped out the jelly dish and replaced it with a sealed jar of jelly. She cleaned out some of the canned goods, too, that had gone bad. Grandma would give her jars of the canned goods, and often they had not sealed properly, and mom would take them home and dump the contents into the trash. The old jars were still good for canning, and some of them were so old, they had glass lids. The contents were often dark brown, but Grandma would hand a jar to mom and say, "Now here’s a jar of peaches." Or, "I believe this one is muscadine preserves."
On one particular visit to Bismark, my brother, Steve, and I begged mom to let us go down the road to a little stream to play, and it was shallow enough water, so we were fine. I don’t remember ever seeing a snake or worrying about any, but I’m sure they must have been around. The water was perfectly clear in the stream, and we saw perch everywhere. We waded into the water and actually began catching fish with our hands, but we had nothing to put them in. We ran back to the house to tell mom that we were catching fish with our hands, and she gave us an old white, tin bucket from the side porch (the kind with the red rim around the top), and we took the bucket and began to catch a dozen or so perch. It was so much fun, and we proudly returned with our bucket full.
Steve helped mom clean the fish, and she added them to the meal along with the vegetables she had already started cooking while we were fishing. She made a lemon cake that day, and I can still remember there being no cake mix and mom just making it from scratch with flour, sugar, baking powder, sugar, etc. and some lemon flavoring she found in the cabinet. How did she know those ingredients would make a cake? I believe that was the first day I saw how much talent and work and ingenuity it took to be a good cook and manager of what you had on hand. Making do. She made a lemon buttercream icing, too, with margarine, powdered sugar and the same flavoring--nothing from a can or a mix.
And then we sat down to a great meal of fresh vegetables, fried perch, corn bread, iced tea and hot coffee and then lemon cake for dessert. What a feast! It’s been many years ago, but I still remember the fish and the lemon cake from that day.
Barry and I recently drove past the place where the house used to be, and there is another house located there now. I still think about our visits, and I’m glad mom took us to see Grandma Allred during the winter of her life. It gives me a perspective on things that I might not have had. They lived simply, Grandma and Mr. Carpenter. And they didn’t mind eating perch from the stream or having a meal from scratch prepared by my mom. Simple life. Simple pleasures.
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