CrockPot 2014

A Remembrance of Grandpa Wallingford by Lora Holt (1998):

Grandpa walked with a cane, smoked a pipe, sat on the front porch a lot in a rocking chair to watch the road traffic. He was a portly, tall man. He loved to eat. I remember his hot "gut" saugage - so much red pepper in them you had to cover a bite with a biscuit and follow it with water. He also liked a tomato and corn dish with lots of red pepper. He would eat heartily and wipe the sweat. At family dinners, he sat at the head of the long table in the dining room and cut the meat and served it on plates that were passed around; then the vegetables and bread were passed around. He always cooked the meat and eggs at breakfast and Grandma made the biscuits. He ate heartily. The big safe that they had always had some cold biscuits and preserves - that was our snack if we got hungry between meals.

I remember family meals when Grandpa would buy a keg of "salt fish" and have a fish fry meal. The fish were in brine and had to be soaked over night to remove some of the salt but even then they were plenty salty when fried and we had to drink lots of water after a meal. When they had homemade ice cream, it would be one freezer right after another until all the ice block they had bought was used up. I remember Moma saying Grandpa would eat until he could eat no more and say his favorite saying, "Dog my shins - this ice cream is beginning to taste bitter!"

I understand he was a fine upstanding Christian man and was well thought of in the community; also an Elder at Galilee. He was taken care of as a baby by a black girl "Mandy." (She was still living when Grandpa died, I believe, and came to his funeral.)

Grandpa died the year our house was built in Pine Valley from lumber from the old school house. He came to see it in June and got a bad nose bleed - bled for many hours. He was anxious to see it when it was finished but he didn't live.

In the summer they cooked and canned in the summer kitchen across from the back porch: this kept the heat out of the kitchen. Breaking beans, peeling apples and peaches was done on the back porch - lots of flies as I remember but the breeze was cool there. They had a cistern but also a nice spring down over the hill that we would get water from sometimes and also bring up some wild mint.

Grandpa's brother, Uncle Boone, and his wife, Aunt Icie, lived down near Maysville - he had managed the train depot. It was a special occasion to visit them. They had a formal dinner served and cooked by a hired black woman. We looked at pictures through a contraption we held to our eyes. [stereoscope?]

Grandpa was embalmed at the house. I don't recall the funeral but do remember going out there in the early morning before dawn and as we left we could hear the cats in the fields coming as they could smell death. It was a scary, eerie sound.