Making Pear Preserves - a Family Tradition

My grandmothers peeled and preserved pears and my mother did the same, all from the same pear trees.
Today I gathered pears from my brother Perry's pear tree and I'm spending the afternoon peeling pears, getting them ready to make preserves. They will sit overnight covered with sugar,  and I will cook them tomorrow.

It's not an easy chore - making pear preserves.  First you gather the pears and they are so heavy you can't put many in the bucket at the time.  You have to be careful not to bruise them.  After you peel the pears you cut the pear away from the core in small slices or like apple slices.

Cover with sugar and slowly  boil for 3-4 hours

You need a pan of water for peeling pears, a pan to put the peeled pears in, and another for cooking the pears. You pour  sugar on them and let them stand for a few hours or overnight,  before preserving them by cooking them slowly for a long, long time - all afternoon.  Takes 3-4 hours, depending on how fast they cook.  I usually let them come to a boil and slowly boil so they have thick syrup and the pears become dark

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Tiger Town Playground needs a "facelift" on 7th anniversary

Tiger Town Park in 2009 when old school entrance was restored

Tiger Town playground was dedicated on September 29, 2006.  This park provides a safe place for children to come play.  It's time for a face lift and two groups have expressed an interest in helping "spruce it up". They asked me to let them know what needs to be done and I gladly made a list and send photos.  

I was very involved in getting this beautiful playground built and go by often to check on it.  It gets a lot of use, even in the hot weather this summer.  Probably the thing that needs the most attention is the ground cover.  

Tunnel Slide needs mulch

Elba United Methodist Church has a new outreach

Our church has taken on a new outreach project - "The Methodist Hour" for residents of Taylor Mill Oaks assisted living facility.  We currently have 3 church members living there.

Sunday our pastor told us of the ministry and how we could help.  I heard him say "Bake Cookies" and I knew I had found my niche.  Each Wed. someone from our church will plan to do something for an hour at Taylor Oaks.  I will be assisting a friend in helping residents plant a flower for their bedroom.

I looked over the list of things needed and signed up to make cookies.  I started today by baking a full recipe of my specialty - oatmeal cookies.  Our leader asked if I would make some for this week for her to take with her when she gots to Taylor Oaks for the kick-off meeting.

Today I made a recipe (my favorite) and baked around 10 dozen.  I will give my leader a couple of dozen for Thurs and freeze the others until they are needed.

Taylor Mill Oaks

Taylor Mill Oaks is an assisted living facility in Elba, AL. Assisted living is for seniors who cannot live entirely independently but are cabable of enjoying many activities with some daily assistance. Assisted Living Facilities such as Taylor Mill Oaks often provide personal care and health services according to an individual's needs. They typically also provide assistance with bathing, dressing, grooming, toileting, and eating. Daily meals, activities, transportation, and even religious services are often offered at an assisted living community.

Jim's Family Album

My husband James Emory Gilmer, Sr. has a very small family.  Just he and his half-brother Larry are the only ones left. Larry is the son of Jim's father J.T. Gilmer and his second wife Mary Alice Logan Gilmer. Our two sons Bill and Ron and their 5 girls make up the rest of his family; Larry has no children to succeed him.  No boys to carry on the Gilmer name.

Dorothy Newton Carnes Gilmer

Jim's mother died from breast cancer when he was only 8 years old and his brother Ronald was 7.  She was a lovely young lady, Dorothy Newton Carnes.  Jim only has 3 pictures of her and they are shown in the collage.  One was when she was a teenager and she is holding her nephew, Marion Griffin (Aunt Frances' son).  Another one  is a color photograph when she was 16 (shown here).  The 3rd is a snapshot taken in their back yard when Jim was about 6 years old.   Click photo to enlarge

The left section of the collage is the Carnes family, with early photos of Jim and his brothers Ronald and Larry.

The right section of the collage pictures photos of his Gilmer grandparents and his father, James Thomas (called J.T,) Gilmer.

I included these "treasures" for him in the collage and labeled the photos for future generations to know their ancestors and what they looked like.  My favorite photo is J.T. in his knickers and one of him in the 4th grade (taken from a school group photo).

Jim's favorite hobby is searching his roots.

My Succulent Garden

I decided to pot some succulents and place them on some rocks in a narrow flower bed connecting the sidewalk to the front porch.

I chose these plants because they can stand the hot, dry heat and this area is in the sun all day.  Most of these were given to me this summer and were small plants.
They are a welcome addition to our entrance to the front door.  And I don't have to water them very often.  Their fleshy leaves retain moisture and they don't wilt in the hot sun.

The pots can be lifted off the gravel and placed in our greenhouse for the winter.  I plan to have many more varieties next summer,  These plants have more than doubled their size during the past month.

The stained glass stepping stone was a gift from my sister Carolyn.  She made it for us when we lived in the country.  The big rocks came from the farm and have fossils imbedded in them (seashells).

Memories of Life in the 1930s in rural Alabama - 3rd installment

This is the 3rd  part of the Early Memories of Mrs. Averett from Enterprise, AL:

SUNDAY MEETING

On Sunday morning, everyone was scrubbed clean and we put on our Sunday dresses and went to church. Uncle Alph stood by the church organ and led the singing. I thought the organ looked so strange because it didn't look like the organ Papa bought for us in 1910. The church organ was short

and it didn't have the mirror and the tall top like our organ at home.

But the music was just as sweet as the whole little church full of people sang the gospel songs like "The Sweet Bye and Bye" and "Jesus, Lover of My Soul" and "There Is a Fountain Filled With Blood." I wasn't too sure about the one, "When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder, I'll Be There." They told us that we had to be good if we expected to go to Heaven. I tried to be good, but I found that I wasn't good. It was years later that I learned that the Bible tells us there is none good. No, not one.

In the summer, every church in the area had a "protracted meeting." Today, these meetings are called revivals. As children, we went to Klegg to Methodist Sunday School, and once a month on Sunday afternoon, we went to Methodist Church that met in the Klegg schoolhouse. The circuit rider

preacher had so many churches that he could not come to Klegg on Sunday morning, but he brought the same message that told us to "give our hearts to Christ" and not to sin. I can remember so well where  I sat on a long handmade bench one Sunday afternoon thinking, I am not going to sin next week. But you know, I never did reach that perfection.

As teenagers, we attended protracted meetings for several weeks in the summer. It didn't matter whether it was at a Baptist or Methodist, and occasionally a Holiness Church. At the Holiness Church, we sat in the car at night and watched the people sitting under the brush arbor. 

The Baptists at my mother's church had services all day for about a week. They carried trunks full of delicious food and served it from a table built in the church yard. For the life of me, I cannot know why we never got ptomaine poison from food that was carried there in open wagons and was left in the wagons until dinner time. But never once did I ever hear of any illness from spoiled food. We had never heard of a

refrigerator. It was only in the 30s after I was married that I got an ice box, but even then, we had to go to town to buy ice. 

If there were church services at night, the children did not go to a nursery because there weren't any. The children slept on quilts at the rear of the church. For churches which had morning and night services during the protracted meetings, it was arranged for the visitors to go to a different home every

day for lunch. Sometimes, the same ones stayed for supper before church time.

For the Baptist churches, a Baptismal Service was held at the end of the week at a nearby stream or a tiny pool just large enough to get baptized. 

Mama's church finally decided to start Sunday School in the one-room church building. To accommodate the different classes, little spaces were cut off by hanging sheets from wire strung to form rooms.

_______________________________

This ends the information from Mrs. Averett's Memories.  She continued with writing about teaching.  Since my mother and father were not teachers, I did not include that info in my blog.  But much of her life experiences were identical to that of my parents and my early life.

I could remember doing many of the same things she described in the late 30s and early 40s when I grew up on a farm in the Curtis Community in the western part of Coffee County. 

Early Memories in Rural Coffee Co (continued) - Part 2

This is the 2nd part of the Early Memories of Mrs. Averett from Enterprise, AL:


DINNERTIME
In Alabama back then, dinnertime was at noon. Mama went to the garden early in the morning and would have those vegetables in the iron pots, socked down next to the fire in the wood stove boiling away until about 11:30. Then, she would put on the hoe cake bread before going out and ringing the big dinner bell hoisted on top of a high pole to call Papa in from the field.


Now, Papa took out time at least until one o'clock, to eat dinner and to let the mules eat also.
As soon as he ate, he got his daily newspaper or his weekly papers, the Southern Star, or his
Progressive Farmer,  and read awhile before going back to the fields.


FAMILY CHORES
Everybody in the family had chores. Mama had eczema on her hands and didn't need to have
them in water too much so the daughters took over. Two daughters washed and dried the dishes, twodaughters milked the cows, two more cooked the bread for supper and set the table. In the morning, each of the girls made up beds, swept the floors with the broom-straw brooms, being sure to sweep under the beds. If there was a new baby, one girl rocked the baby in the cradle. That was one chore I really hated. When 1had to rock the baby, I would lie down on the floor and rock the cradle with my foot. Another chore I hated was churning. Papa always kept two or three good milk cows. In the summer, the milk was put into a large container and let down into the open water well to keep it cool. At other times, the milk would be placed into large pans and put into the kitchen safe with screen doors. By noon, the cream would have risen to the top and it was then skimmed off. Mama and Papa drank the
skimmed milk. The cream and the remaining milk were mixed with the warm night's milk and placed in the large churn and left overnight to clabber. If it was cold weather, the chum of milk was placed near the fireplace to make the milk sour quicker. The next day, the clabbered milk was churned by a dasher on a chum stick stuck through a hole in the chum lid. My arm would get so tired going up and down, up and down, but the reward was the good buttermilk which we children enjoyed every meal.  We mashed up the good yellow butter in syrup to eat with Mama's hot biscuits at breakfast.


One happy day, this churning chore came to and end. One of Papa's cousins from Enterprise
carne-and sold Papa on the idea of buying an electric plant. The plant was a gasoline-operated dynamo which produced electricity. The electricity was stored in large batteries which we kept in a specially built little house in the back yard. Then we had electric lights in every room in the house, one line hanging down from the ceiling with a light bulb turned on and offby hand. But the great news was the Papa bought an electric chum with metal dashers that went up and down.


HOME CONVENIENCES
We had an open well with a windlass and rope to let the bucket down into the well. The
windlass had a crank which unwound the rope as the bucket went down. We carried the water to the house in buckets. On the front porch, there was a shelf on which we kept the water bucket with a dipper in it. Everyone who wanted a drink used the same dipper. That shelf had a hole in it for the washbowl to sit so it would be steady when we washed. Nobody would even think of going in to eat without washing our face and hands. There was a flour sack towel hanging near the basin for drying. For the kitchen, we had a metal wash pan for the same king of washing, but at least once a week, usually on Saturday, we got our all-over bath in a wash tub. Every night, no one dared to go to bed without washing our feet.


As for an indoor toilet, the only one we had ever seen was once when we visited Grandpa and
Grandma Byrd in Ozark. They had one. We flushed that thing until I know Grandpa's water bill went sky high. Then rented that house from the Holmans, and in later years, one of the Holman sons told me a funny story about when they put the toilet in. When the plumbers came to the house to install the  commode, Grandma Byrd called Grandpa in town and said, "Curtis, come home. They are fixing to put the toilet in the house." It was a big event. Out at our house, we had what we called a "backy." I never knew why, but it must have been because it was so far back of the house we lived in. Inside the backy, we kept the Sears catalog and not for making an order or looking at the pictures. Sometimes, Mama put in a bag filled with small soft pieces of rags and a box of cobs from the com crib after Papa had shelled some com to take to the mill. Cobs that had been left in the trough when the mules had eaten the com were hard, but the shelled com cobs were soft.

ANIMAL FEED
Papa always had a good supply of corn in the com crib to be used for food for the family and
for the animals. He had a hand com sheller which was used to shell a large bag of com to be carried to Thrower's Mill for grinding into com meal. The mill was operated by water from a mill pond which turned the big rocks that crushed the com. The miller was never paid with cash but was given a toll of the meal for the grinding.


For cow feed, Papa carried com, hay, and velvet beans to a crusher and had it ground up
together. For the chickens, a bucketful of shelled com was thrown out and scattered over the chicken yard every evening. For the dogs, Papa made up two thick hoe cakes of com bread and cooked it on the back burners of the wood stove while Mama cooked breakfast. Then, he broke the bread into pieces and placed it into a large pan of buttermilk. His dogs, never, never got a store-bought meal. The cats ate the leftovers from the table.


PASTIMES
Papa always kept several fox hounds. He also kept Henry Steagall's dogs for him while the
representative was in Washington. When Congressman Steagall came home to Ozark, he and Papa went fox hunting with other friends. I went with Papa one night to fox hunt, but I could never become excited over hearing the dogs barking out there. One time was enough for me.
Mama enjoyed fishing in the creeks and branches close to our house. She had her own worm
bed and she had a catalpa tree which produced nice green fat worms that bream couldn't resist. She made a cushion to sit on at the fishing hole. It was a large croker sack filled with shucks and it served its purpose. It kept her seat dry. You talk about patience! She might sit there waiting for a bite for half a day and come home with three or four little perch or catfish. 


But, it was free and she thought it was good recreation. Every member of the family had some form of recreation. For the teenagers, we often planned parties either in our house or in homes of our friends. At these parties, we played parlor games like musical chairs. What we would do is line up two rows of chairs back to back and everyone marched around the chairs single file while music was played on the Victrola or the organ. When the music
stopped, everyone tried to sit down but there was one who couldn't find a chair, and that person was "out." Another chair was removed and this went on until there were only two left and one chair.


Then, we sometimes had a candy-drawing. Several boxes of stick candy of different colors were placed into a large box with a hole in the top. A boy and a girl would each put a hand through the hold and draw out a stick of candy. If the two sticks were alike, they could draw again until they drew two sticks of different colors. Then, another couple could draw.


During the winter months, we sometimes attended peanut shellings. The farmers had to have
their peanuts shelled by hand. Couples would shell peanuts from a large pan which they held together. After the work was finished, we would have a candy drawing, or cake and ice cream might be served. 


Sometimes, we played "hide and whoop," a game the city children called "hide and seek." One
child was the hunter. The child would close his eyes and wait until a "whoop" was heard. That meant that everyone was hidden. The first one found had to the hunter the next time.


To be continued....