Tag: Fern Jones Sings

I’m ready for potluck.

By Anita Garner

The tall lady on the left is the pastor’s wife, my mother,
Sister Fern Jones.   

When we’re ready to gather again,  a potluck is worth gathering for.  Potluck meals are the best reason for church basements, community centers and multi-purpose rooms everywhere to exist. Any space that’ll hold rows and rows of folding tables covered with makeshift tablecloths is instantly inviting.  And over there, along that wall,  more rows of tables laden with the best food in the world brought by home cooks.

Growing up in the Deep South, bouncing back and forth on tour with our gospel singing family then settling down briefly while Daddy pastored a church, potlucks were the highlights of every stop for my brother and me.  Daddy was a great natural cook.  Mother, who didn’t bother with preparing day to day food, was a superb baker during her middle of the night creative sessions but both our parents were as excited as Leslie Ray and I were to meet local cooks.

Churchpeople brought their specialties.  Washtubs were filled with sweet tea or lemonade.  Tables like the one in the photo above featured all kinds of desserts.  Kids swarmed while cooks soaked up  praise for their best recipes.

In New England, where every picturesque town seems to have one or more equally picturesque churches, I heard about bean nights.  Though they started in the basements and social halls connected to churches, they weren’t intended only for church-goers.  They were also important fund raisers.  Anyone could buy a ticket and eat their fill (two sittings per night) of beans and franks, salads and breads and, of course, desserts.

The New York Times ran a story featuring
community potluck nights.  This is their photo.

That picture looks like many church basements I’ve visited since leaving my parents’ traveling ministry. The churches Daddy was in charge of were either small or in the process of being built.  Growing a congregation was his specialty so we didn’t always have social spaces inside.  Our potlucks became “Dinner On The Grounds,” providing opportunities for kids to run around from table to table asking for samples. Ambrosia for me.  Fried chicken and deviled eggs for Leslie Ray..

Potlucks were already perfect the way they were decades ago and they don’t need much changing, though many churches I’ve attended now have big sparkly kitchens.  I’m still a fan of crepe paper streamers if you’ve got them and if you can get able bodied volunteers to drape them.  An old piano in the corner where anybody can play, and there’s always someone who can.

The best part then and now is joining the people around the buffet lines carrying our plates to our tables and stopping to ask, “Who made this?”  then seeking out the cook to get the recipe. There’s a good chance you’ll see multiples of that casserole at the next gathering and every casserole dish will be carried home empty by a satisfied cook.

I can’t wait for the next time we’ll be standing around talking about how good these beans are.

One more for the road.  Potluck pies.

 

1950’s picnic on The Glory Road

By Anita Garner

Nita Faye Jones & Reverend Raymond Jones
Birthday picnic at Narrows Dam, Arkansas, 1952

This picture represents groundbreaking, earth-shattering, modern behavior for our family.  I see wax paper and store-bought, sliced bread. We didn’t purchase either of those items often. Most of our everyday, carrying-around lunches traveled in brown sacks with contents wrapped in brown paper like the butcher used, so the rustle of wax paper meant excitement for Jones kids, no matter what it held.

We made our own bread at home:  Two kinds of biscuits, some for breakfast and another skillet of “cathead” biscuits to be sliced and used for sandwiches.  The name came from their size – “big as a cat’s head.”  Cornbread was cooked later in the morning and Daddy usually finished off the last of it at night, crumbled into a tall glass of cold buttermilk.

Daddy had no truck with store-bought food but Mother was my ally on this occasion. Because it was my birthday, and because she loved it too, she persuaded him to buy a loaf of “light bread” and a jar of smooth-whipped pimento cheese spread instead of our usual homemade kind.  Our other everyday sandwich staples were baloney or sizzled ham. Daddy fried them and tucked them into cathead biscuits and that’s what Leslie Ray and I carried to school.

Some of the unwrapped parcels of wax paper on this picnic table held big wedges of pie, which Mother baked in the middle of the night while she worked on writing her songs.

Soda pop was allowed when we traveled and for special occasions, but there was no stinting on the everyday intake of caffeine and sugar in our house. That snazzy thermos jug on the table was filled with Daddy’s sweet tea.  He made pitchers of it every day, stirring in gobs of sugar while the tea was warm.  We also drank jars of lemonade sweetened with simple syrup.  A slender thermos just out of sight held Mother’s very strong, very sweet coffee which went everywhere with her.

The expression on Daddy’s face here is probably because he was caught mid-chew, but it could also mean, I’m eating this store-bought stuff because it’s your birthday, but tomorrow it’s back to real life.

Note the preacher at a lakeside picnic in the Arkansas piney woods is wearing a dress shirt and tie.  That was also part of our real life.  Soon after our meal, we’d pack up the car, he’d drop us off at home, then he’d head out to spend hours calling on members of the congregation who needed him.

******

 

Spellchecking the South

By Anita Garner

Spellcheck and my book manuscript don’t speak the same language.  Spellcheck can handle “y’all” and “ain’t” but  I write a conversation from the Deep South in the 1950’s and Spellcheck lays down squiggly red lines.

Evangelists outside a tent revival meeting look up at the crop duster they hired to drop leaflets and one of them says,

“Well now he’s just showin’ out.”  Spellcheck wants him to say “showing off” but of course he wouldn’t.

Another place Spellcheck and I tussle is when I type lyrics to songs Mother recorded, and I spell them out the way she sang them. I never saw anybody in an audience who didn’t understand what she meant, but Spellcheck would like them fixed.

All through the editing process,  we make a million stops together with Spellcheck asking are you sure and me saying, I really meant it.  I type the name of this song I’m about to link for you. Spelllcheck asks would you like to correct it?  I say no thank you. I ain’t messin’ with Sister Fern.  I didn’t mess with her when she walked amongst us, and I ain’t about to start now.

In this song,  she gets wound up and I can see Spellcheck about ready to give up. “Furthermore” is fuh’-tha-more and she’s got her own version of boogeyman.  You’ll catch it.

You Ain’t Got Nothin’