A person wouldn't think that someone living alone would need an iron skillet, but I've discovered that they are the best thing for popping corn. Sometime in the flurry of that last fire, my old popcorn pan got thrown away. I can just imagine the girls disdain when they opened a smoked-filled cupboard door and saw that disrespectable pan sitting there. I can see them picking it up with two fingers to drop it in the trash. They just didn't realize, that it had popped corn for 40 years and enough corn to circle the globe. Some of them have eaten it.
Now I'm enjoying using an iron skillet for that. I have several sizes. I wouldn't fry bacon in anything else, some with fried chicken. I fry donuts in one and bake cornbread in the small one. Sometimes I fry potatoes and onions for my daughter and myself for Sunday dinner because I just don't do that for one. When the boys were in the service the great big one was for fried okra. They would get so hungry for it. Now they can buy the product at any fast food place but it just isn't the some as home grown okra fried in the big skillet.
When the son was home from Texas last week, I baked a very large meat log in it. It had been more than six years since he had put his feet under mama's table. We had a good crowd, so many that we filled two tables and then they had to fill their plates and sit wherever they could -- lawn chairs, porch railings, etc. Seven grandsons, five of them getting married and starting their own families. The one dead grandson, oldest, had a wife and baby but she has since vanished. They all knew ahead of time that he would be here so they made sure they were, too. Oh, how they made Grandma proud.
My sister's offspring in Iowa are calling me, wanting to know how to do the right thing for their mother. Boy, if I had the answer to that I'd be a saint. One never knows if you are doing the right thing until it's all over.
I spent part of one day walking through the Walnut Hill cemetery and realizing how lucky I've been to have known so many good people.
I tried to call Michele Webb to find out where the ambulance went. She is another great neighbor. She lives where Doc and Lorene Burroughs' house stood. She always knows the answers to my questions. A year or so ago I had to call Harold Beard for an answer no one else had. John Miser can usually give me answers. I see him at church and he called to see if I knew that Olivia had passed away. He's like the rest of us, just puts one foot in front of the other, every day.
Read this in a magazine: "Don't Wait for others to be friendly; show them how!"
•••
Editors note: Edith Lammey has been a resident of the area for nearly 40 years. She can be contacted through The Times at 451-1196 or [email protected].
Editorial on 06/11/2014