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<TITLE>Memories from Walnut Cove </TITLE>
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<H3> <center> A GRANDDAUGHTER'S STORY</center></H3>
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Pick a quiet wintry afternoon, light a fire and pull up the rocking chair.
Lift a
little child to your lap and spread her toes so that each tiny crease
absorbs
the warmth of the flickering blaze. Rock quietly for a few minutes till you
begin
to discern the frosty etchings on the window pane and hear the rattle of
dry
leaves as a breeze rushes through the cove. Reflect for a moment, if you
will,
on a tale of Christmas Past. <P><HR>
America's Great Wagon Road tracked south from Pennsylvania through the Valley
of Virginia and traversed my home county in North Carolina. It's told that
some of the folks who lived along the Wagon Road wanted to raise their
families away from the milieu of American's first thoroughfare. They found a
pleasant walnut grove cresting a hill that sloped down to a hollow fed by a
river branch. They called their little village Walnut Cove. Maples crowded
the hillsides and flashed silver when clouds scuttled across the sky and wind
began to stir. Summer tree frogs were so numerous and so loud they were a
baby's first lullaby. Higher blue hills in the distance dappled the horizon
like the rumpled peaks of an old and comfortable quilt.<P>
I spent most of my childhood in this little village in Stokes County where my
Grandmother lived. By the time she married and left her home in Rockingham
County, the quiet little cove had come to tolerate daily arrivals of Norfolk
and Southern trains. The sound of those steam engines huffing up the hill and
the wail of their whistles as they rounded the curve before stopping at
Walnut Cove were as familiar as the crunch of wagon wheels had been in former
days. My Grandmother raised eleven children, three sons and eight daughters.
She had been totally absorbed by her family and the Walnut Cove community by
the time my Grandfather died, before I was born. I never thought of Christmas
Day in Walnut Cove as a unity of traditions. It was just the way Christmas
was celebrated at my Grandmother's house.<P>
. . . . . . . . I awoke to the sounds of someone building a fire in my room
and snuggled down till I could hear the flames crackling in the pine logs and
sensed that the chill was gone. By the time I was dressed and downstairs, the
kitchen was already steamy and warm, lively with activity. Turkeys roasted in
the ovens of the old wood stove. Katie peeled big white potatoes over a
bucket to catch the peels while Susie monitored the pots that were already
simmering on the top of the stove. Whatever day it was, however important its
content, patties of sausage and biscuits were always warming on the back of
the stove. Fresh butter and homemade blackberry jelly were on the table.<P>
Spicy hams, brought in from the smoke house and cooked the day before, sat on
the back porch shelf. Nearby, little puffs of steam rose from the milk that
had already been boiled and stood cooling so the cream could be skimmed off.
On most mornings, the cream would be churned into sweet butter. But this was
Christmas Day and it would be the nectar of a Grandmother's Christmas Gift.<P>
Christmas Day in Walnut Cove was as bright and merry and garrulous as you
could ever imagine that a Christmas should be. The little town shone with
gem-like radiance, morning frost silvering the rooftops and glittering from
every clump of greenery. Chilled air moving from the mountains through the
valley sent smoke curling up from every chimney in town. The maples' bare
branches etched terse tracings against a winter sky.<P>
All morning long, cousins arrived by ones and twos and threes, dressed in
Sunday clothes and showing off their new toys. Aunts and Uncles, burdened
with heavy winter clothing and gaily wrapped packages, hurried into the house
to stand by the fire warming their hands. Watching the family arrive,
listening to their greetings, absorbing the merriment of Walnut Cove on
Christmas Day was as exciting as a visit from Santa Claus.<P>
By mid day, the huge family had arrived. They roamed from one house to
another -- Uncle Paul's across the street or Aunt Anne's and Aunt Sadie's two
doors down, or farther down the street to Uncle Bill's or Aunt Sallie's. It
was marvelous to walk into their living rooms. Christmas trees were cut from
the tops of the white pines that grew in the pasture down by the branch. The
fresh aroma permeated each house. Aunts and Uncles and cousins crowded the
living rooms, and spilled into adjacent rooms, everyone smiling and laughing
and talking and joking. When I introduced my new husband to Christmas in
Walnut Cove, I began to appreciate what had always been mine. He was dazzled
- awed - by the size of this family, overwhelmed by the sound of it,
enchanted by the merriment of Walnut Cove on Christmas Day.<P>
When everyone reassembled at Nannie's house for Christmas Dinner, the
furniture was pushed back against the walls to make room for tables and
chairs in every room. The big dining room table was reserved for Nannie and
her older children; her younger children and the spouses were relegated to
the sun porch that opened onto the dining room; grandchildren had places in
farther rooms. Someone said the Blessing; at least we presumed so because
there was lots of shushing from the grownups' room. We never heard it but
knew when it was over by the murmurs of "Amen." The seating order governed
the serving order. By the time we children were served, Aunts and Uncles were
waiting for seconds. Forty or fifty or sixty people had dinner at my
Grandmother's every Christmas Day until she was almost ninety years old. Her
sons and daughters tried in vain to convince her that Christmas Dinner was
too great an undertaking, but she never agreed to doing it any other way.<P>
After everyone had eaten all they could of turkey with dressing and gravy,
ham, string beans and mashed potatoes, baked apples and sweet potatoes with
marshmallows, squash, biscuits and cornbread, the desserts appeared -- so
many different kinds of cakes and pies, I can't even remember them all.
Christmas Dinner was a rich and abundant feast of hardy tastes and smells;
but one item on the menu surpassed all others. Nannie's Boiled Custard was
the very essence of Christmas in Walnut Cove, rich and robust and lusty. She
served it from an old pressed glass pitcher set on a tray in the middle of
the sideboard. One Uncle checked our distant room every Christmas so he could
return and report that we were all done and the Boiled Custard could be
served.<P>
By 1962, my Grandmother's family had grown to seventy-five or eighty people.
She had enriched each life with precious memories of Christmas Day in Walnut
Cove -- a special day that frolicked and laughed and hugged and joked and
glowed. My children and their children will not know a Christmas as vibrant
as it was in Walnut Cove.<P>
. . . . . . . . . . When I was a young woman, I asked Nannie how to make
<a href="custard.html">Boiled Custard </a>like she did, with lumps. I carefully wrote down what she told
me and tucked it away. One summer day, Nannie went to her sideboard and
gently lifted an old pitcher from one of its nooks. With her sleeve, she
brushed away specks of dust. This was her Mother's pitcher, she told me, so I
should always take care of it. I wrapped the old pitcher and put it away,
almost forgetting about it. I did not understand then that her gift embodied
the essence of Christmas in Walnut Cove.<P>
Soon, I was caretaker of my own family's Christmas. I rumbled around and
found that old pitcher and shined it up one Christmas morning. By now, it was
almost a hundred years old and I was at least the fourth in a line of
Granddaughters who polished it on Christmas morning. I did not comprehend the
perfection of it's message; but I remembered that the old pitcher had once
stood on Nannie's sideboard on Christmas Day filled with Boiled Custard. That
Christmas morning, I made Nannie's Boiled Custard and poured it into the old
pressed glass pitcher that was her Mother's, and set it on the sideboard. Our
sons are young men now with children of their own, and I'm no longer the only
Granddaughter in my family. Caroline Browning is almost five years old.<P>
Each Christmas, the old pitcher is shined and filled with Nannie's Boiled
Custard and we accept it now as our Christmas tradition. Through the years, I
have come to better comprehend its message. Maybe I had to know Christmas
through my own Granddaughter's eyes before I could understand. In time I
added a sprig of evergreen, signifying life everlasting; and I fastened it on
with a red ribbon to celebrate the joy of Christmas. Then I set it on a tray
on the sideboard. <P>
Last Christmas, I learned that Boiled Custard is still a cherished tradition
on Christmas Day in Rockingham County. When I asked my informant - to his
total and utter astonishment - if Rockingham County custard is lumpy and
lusty, he told me that it is. Now I understand. <P>
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Submitted for publication by <a href="mailto:[email protected]">Joyce Browning</a>
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