Joyce McDonald Hoskins

            “Fried bread!” my big brother, Frank, yelled, as he took off running.

            “Fried bread!” I yelled as I took off behind him. My shorter legs could never catch him. I doubt if they would catch him even today.

            It was Indian Summer, 1950, and the soft fall breeze carried the smell of Mamaw’s special Friday treat, homemade bread.

            On Thursday night, after the dinner dishes were done, Mamaw cooked a potato so she would have potato water to dissolve the yeast for her special light bread. She would get up early Friday morning, tie an apron around her hair, roll up the sleeves of her house dress, and begin to prepare the dough. While my brother and I were at school the dough would rise. After what she called the first rising, she would punch the dough down and pinch off small pieces. Next she would pull the dough pieces into an oval about two inches by four inches, and fry the dough in a lightly greased iron skillet.

            I knew the process because the year before I was the only child left at home in our small neighborhood. Everyone went to school, but me. Everyday I longed for three o’clock to come so I would have someone to play with. It was a long day for a lonely four-year-old, but not on Friday. Fridays were special. On Friday I watched Mamaw bake bread.

            Fridays were still special even now that I was in first grade. We could smell the bread frying blocks from our Peck Court home.

            “Fried bread!” my brother yelled again as he paused at the door to our apartment to catch his breath. My short legs almost caught up to him as I ran up the three steps that went to the front porch. “Fried Bread!” I yelled as I started up the steps to our second floor apartment. Half way up the steps, on the landing where the steps turned, I looked out the window. I could see the other neighborhood children slowly walking home to their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which I knew they would have on store-bought bread. No fried bread for them. I ran to the bathroom sink where my brother already had his hands lathered with Ivory soap.

            We hurried to the table and sat down. Mamaw was at the stove turning the fried bread in the large #10 Griswold iron skillet. It didn’t take long to brown the bread and in a few minutes she placed the platter on the table. My dad gave us a nod to signal we could start eating, and passed the home grown tomatoes he had brought from our other Mamaw’s garden. He laughed when I asked him to pass the stick onions. I called scallions stick onions from the time I could talk. It is still one of our family words.

            My mother put a fried chicken leg on my plate. Dad commented that we must be doing okay if we could have chicken during the week, because they could only afford to have it on Sunday when he was growing up.

            In my memory I can turn back the hands of time to a place where Mom’s hair was red, my Dad came home for lunch in his blue City Tire work uniform, and Mamaw  fried bread. I can remember the sweet home churned butter melting on the bread. Like the tomatoes, home churned butter, and milk that had not been homogenized, or pasteurized, were all gifts from the other Mamaw. She was a good Mamaw, too. But the best Mamaw lived with us, and helped to raise us. Plus, she made bread.

            We rode back to school in the back of Dad’s red Ford pick-up knowing we would be coming home to a dinner of hot rolls and a platter of corn-on-the-cob. There would also be loaves of bread cooling on the counter for us to eat the rest of the week. The hot rolls and the bread were good, but nothing could come close to being as good as fried bread for lunch.

            Even today when I pass a bakery and smell bread baking my mind goes to a place where the war to end all wars was over, everyone liked Ike, and kids walked home for lunch.

            Mamaw might sound like a storybook grandmother in the above memory, but she was not. In truth she would take a good bit of embellishing and polishing to make her even come close. What Mamaw loved most was Mail Pouch tobacco. She was once known to have fanned her arse at a neighbor.

            She was proud of her fifth grade education, and married at 15 on Groundhog Day. Every year on Groundhog Day she would comment, “I always told him, I was married on Groundhog day, and look what a groundhog I got.” This statement was always accompanied by a snort, a laugh, and a spit of Mail Pouch.

            Once she came running to the livingroom telling my brother and me we couldn’t play with our popguns indoors. She froze at the door when she saw we were playing checkers. I can still see her sniffing and looking back into the hall at the coat closet, with a questioning expression. About that time Mom opened the closet door and was hit with bottle tops and splattered with beer. We giggled all afternoon. I think it was the last time Mamaw made homebrew.

            But what I remember most about her was she raised my mother, her grandchild, in a time when it was unusual for a mother to leave a child. She worked hard to do it, and even worked out of her home as a cook in a country schoolhouse.

            When she was in her 80s, the doctor recommended a little wine to build up her blood. She asked my dad for a bottle of Mogan David (as seen on TV). He went to the package store (the only place you could buy wine at that time) and got her a bottle. She drank a little wine, and a little more and felt a tad dizzy. She steadied herself by leaning on the Christmas tree and down went the tree, Mamaw and all. The tree and Mamaw were relatively undamaged.

            Mamaw made the lightest light bread, sauerkraut in crocks, and applesauce pies, but what I remember most about her was she loved my brother and me. She loved us fiercely.

In memory of:

Maggie May Boner,

1882-1962

Clarksburg, West Virginia