Welcome to my third installation of columns written over the past year. Come celebrate coffee, make apple butter, and grab fast onto some family ties. Thanks for being here, and thanks for reading.
Java Jive
Sept. 28, 2017
Sometimes in the quiet of a solitary day, I might surf TV channels to see just what I can waste time watching. Years ago I remember coming upon an old sci-fi thriller. I don’t know what it was, or who was in it, or even how things turned out. But what I found fascinating, and what made me stop changing channels, was that 1.) The world was apparently going to end, and 2.) There was a lady in a pillbox hat serving coffee to everyone.
The characters were all in some underground bunker, all aware that the world had but a few hours left to spin. And this woman — in her tidy blue skirt and matching jacket and hat — had a tray of coffee cups, which she carried from man to man. And each man took one, as if it were any other day, having their coffee before being obliterated. That image has stuck with me for years. And I always thought — I should write about that someday. Apparently the day has arrived.
What impressed me was that coffee was still relevant, even as the planet was circling the drain. Handing it out gave the lady a task. Maybe it kept her mind off her approaching demise. And the guys grabbing it off her tray — perhaps they were satisfied for a moment, too, and able to redirect their panic. Yeah, it was just a movie. But coffee … it’s life.
The fragrance of coffee never disappoints. The rich, soul-touching scent is like no other. I can be distracted by that scent like a cat following a mackerel. Coffee is home to me. My mother is a coffee hound, with her own coffee bean grinder and her theories of how best to do it and how best to store the beans. My sister has roasted her own raw beans, and she uses a coffee press to create an intense, dark cup, with frothed milk on top. My three brothers all drink it — rich, dark, and daily. Like my mother, I have loved the flavor my whole life. She remembers well how her mom would allow her to have half a cup, with the other half milk. Used to be that little kids weren’t supposed to have that, but her mother loved it, too, and empathized enough to give her 10-year-old a little java now and again.
I begged for it early on, usually asking my dad for a sip of his, since he used milk and sugar. When I was really little, I insisted that he wait to add the milk until I could get in a good position to watch the white ribbon swirl into the black. I loved how it turned it to such a creamy color. In college, I would get coffee from a machine at the WVU Creative Arts Center. It was its own kind of horrible, but grabbing a cup before sitting through theater history (four semesters’ worth) was simply vital nonetheless. In my apartment there, I actually used Folger’s instant coffee, which today would make me scoff but then was quite sufficient. I looked forward to opening a new jar, as I think the scent would release a whole pile of endorphins for me, somehow.
Yes, coffee has always been good, except in two situations. One was when I was an antsy kid, ready to vamoose from a restaurant after a meal but then hearing my parents order two cups of coffee to mull over and talk more! Ugh! A prison of pure boredom. The second was when I was with child, and coffee was suddenly disgusting. How I could have such a falling out with my lifelong friend, I didn’t know, but it flat-out made me retch for a few months. Tea was a sad stand-in during that time. I was always relieved when we made up, a few months in. Since then, I have preferred coffee without any additives at all. Black is the best.
Two of my three sons drink it, often to the extreme, and my husband, too. If we are all home, and the fragrance wafts up from the kitchen, the comfort is real. All my life it has meant family, home, and a new day. I hope those poor people in the thriller got to have a new day, too. With more coffee.
Apples and Flames
Oct. 12, 2017
This past weekend I was transported back to years past through an activity that has been part of my life, and my family’s, for decades. Maybe a century. The event lasts about 30 hours from start to finish, and we end up with something to share and have for quite some time. But the having is not as key as the making.
We started with 14 bushels of apples — Jonagold and Golden Delicious — and we ended with about 35 gallons of apple butter. Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? But the process is arduous and such great fun at the same time, and a tradition, which as always has its own charm. From start to finish, we had 62 people lend their help.
We gather to peel and core the apples first, although my mom and I missed that part, as we made our trek to Romney, W.Va. — the home of my cousins where the event took place — a little too late Saturday to make the coring party. I was a little disappointed, honestly, but if I had made it and started in on the 14 bushels from the beginning, chances are high I’d soon be wishing I had missed it. The apples make your fingers turn brown, but only after you wash them. And the brown stays for few days.
Everyone gathers, bringing food and stories. Sometimes we bring friends to experience our tradition with us. And then we commence to arguing, which is a vital part of the process. When should we put the kettles on? Who is staying up? Who is getting up for the next shift? On and on it goes, as it did Saturday, when we finally arrived at starting the kettles around 12:30 a.m., and the crews would shift around 3 or 4 or so.
Making apple butter is fairly common here on the mountaintop. Lots of families and churches do it, and everyone has their own rules and stipulations. Our family certainly does. There are so many regulations to be followed and/or shouted out during the 30-hour process. “Don’t leave any toenails in the apples!” Translated: Get the seeds and hulls out. “Don’t let the wood touch the kettle!” Indeed, a hot ember can melt through a copper kettle, or so we have all imagined with great trepidation. “Keep stirring!” Good heavens, yes, don’t ever stop, even for a second. “Figure eight is best,” says one brother. “Nah, you gotta go back and forth along the whole bottom, and then back,” says the other. “You’re dumb,” says the third.
So we add apples and some water and we keep stirring, with the fires built to the exact height necessary to keep the stuff hot, but not so hot it boils over. Stir, stir, stir; and chat, joke, laugh, and reminisce. As a kid, the act of being up in the middle of the night, outside, with the fires burning and the smoke swirling, is nothing short of magical. The stars were bright, and the air was warmer than usual. My great-niece Lydia, who is 10, was a trooper, up at 2 a.m. and learning how to stir. She loves it now, too.
As the day woke up and wore on, we stirred and stirred, and then we had to add sugar, and at the end, cloves and cinnamon. Those acts are always tense, as we don’t want to ruin the stuff we’ve stirred all night. There is tasting, contemplating, opining, arguing, and more of the same, until some satisfaction is reached, and only one or two are left shaking their heads a little and grumbling “too much cinnamon….” or “not enough sugar….” Stories of past mishaps are always shared, like when my cousin Gene was little and dropped the entire bottle of cloves into the kettle. Yikes!
Since nostalgia is my constant companion, I drifted back so many times to the days with my dad, who taught me how to stir by standing behind me and guiding my hands, and my Aunt Susan Williams, at whose house we usually gathered for the event, who would make fresh rolls for us to use in wiping out the empty kettle late in the day. So many more dreams of days past; so much love for those no longer here. But the present was kind, too, and the apple butter is delicious. Every taste of the sweet and smoky flavor takes me back to my reunion with my siblings and cousins last weekend, and it will always do so. Until next time, everyone.
An Enduring Cord
Oct. 29, 2017
Members of my dad’s side of the family met over the weekend to say a final goodbye to a beloved married-in, Tom Brown, the late husband of my dear cousin Jane Hanst Brown. Tom was diagnosed with cancer in the early spring of 2015 and was gone by that summer. It was a devastating loss, and it took Jane some time to finally bury his ashes. She and Tom were so happy together, having married later in life and jumped into love with all four feet. They had 16 contented years together, and then it seemed that he just disappeared. Life is so very unpredictable. We think we know what’s around the bend, but we sure don’t.
So having been forced into one of those gatherings that was never predicted, we cousins stood solemnly in the Kingwood Cemetery on Saturday as words were spoken of Tom’s kindness, sense of humor, and love of family. We stood on ground where we have stood before to say goodbye. Jane’s parents, George and Polly (Johnson) Hanst — my grand-uncle and grand-aunt — are buried there, too. Uncle George was the editor of The Republican newspaper for decades, from the 1940s until the 1970s. Aunt Polly wrote columns for the paper, too. So there we stood, with all that family around us, both under the earth and on it. I know many people don’t know where their families are. They have lost track, or have never even been on any track, with connections lost in hazy memories. But I was standing there with mine all around. And then some of us walked through that cemetery, finding the headstones of our great-great-grandparents (David Young Morris and Mary Eleanore Morris), and then our great-great-great-grandfather Charles Byrne (I think), all buried there. There is a spire for one beloved woman, Addie, the sister of my great-grandmother, who died at the age of 26 and shattered so many hearts. We have letters written by “Tay,” my great-grandmother, to B.H. (Sincell), great-grandfather, in which she tells him of how her sister is “very ill again.” So Addie wasn’t well most of her life, apparently, and only lasted until her 27th year. Her tombstone is tall, with what looks like a blanket carved into the stone, and a branch of strawberries. Born Aug. 9, 1869; Died Apr. 28, 1895.
Standing on that ground, I knew that my great-great-grandparents stood there, too, bereft, so long ago. And then their children said goodbye to them there, on that same spot. Strange traditions we human beings have. But somehow comforting all the same.
After we bade Tom farewell on Saturday, we gathered at a big Deep Creek area house my cousins had rented for the weekend. There we remembered how funny we are, and we laughed a lot. The place was abuzz with kids running around, the WVU football game blaring, people preparing food while shouting conversations over their shoulders, and so much laughing. The place was alive. Awake and breathing, heart beating. We looked again into those faces we have always known, and listened to those voices again, and the familiarity was a comfort and a saving grace. There was joy and such warmth. And so it goes.
I like to imagine that those of us who love one another, family or friends, are bound by an unseen fiber… a band of some sort… connecting us all, even as we fall through the cracks of the world, or take unwise turns, or when our footing is shaken by one of the countless outside forces of this random universe. That band stretches and twists, adjusts and holds — always tethering us together, no matter what the outside pressure may be. Even through death. And we come together again, and there is cheer, and there is peace.
Blessed be the ties that bind.
