Pecan Corner

How I gathered, prepared, and cooked Shepherd's Purse and Henbit to have as mixed greens for New Year's!   Shepherd's Purse is a member of the Mustard family, and Henbit is a member of the Mint family.  I was interested to learn from Wikipedia that Shepherd's Purse is a regular part of cuisines in Japan, Korea, and parts of China.  Both are winter annuals that are readily available this year on New Year's Eve in Texas, as they will tolerate freezing temperatures for a while.  I think they are VERY tasty!

The 1920's - "the Roaring Twenties" - was a boom time, much like the 1980's or the 2000's, the communications and manufacturing revolution was going on, prohibition stoked a powerful illicit economy, lots of people had money and the stock market saw massive inputs from young, inexperienced traders. Many fortunes were being made - in theory. Mostly, the money was available for people engaged in emerging industries or occupations, or who were dishonest enough to be smugglers or distillers. Those in traditional occupations continued to live much as they had for the prior 50 years.

My grandfather's family were poor during this time. There were 8 children in the family, and Nandy was in the middle. Nandy's father was a share-cropper in East Texas and Southern Oklahoma.

At that time - around 1900 through until 1940 - seventy per cent of all farmers in the whole region were share croppers. Race had nothing to do with it - then as now, money, effort, ingenuity and plain luck were the deciding factors between poverty and wealth. People who could not afford to buy land worked for those who did. Everyone I have ever known who was born before 1935 picked cotton at some time in their lives.

This is Nandy's story of Christmas when he was 8 years old in 1922, and the part The Salvation Army played in it. While other "charities" have forgotten their mission, only The Salvation Army still focuses on precisely the same people & needs they always did.

From "Precious Memories" by Sidney Gilstrap:

"We finally arrived in East Texas [in 1921] and stayed at Grandma and Pappy Bruton's until Papa could find a "share-crop" farm for us to live on. A Share-crop farm is one that the owner furnishes the farming tools and buys all the seed to plant a crop with. A share-crop farmer is one who works the farm, planting, plowing, and harvesting the crop. He also takes care of the farm, such as clearing land, building fences and things like this. All profits are shared half to the owner and the other half to the farmer. This and a house to live in is the farmer's pay. The better the crop, the better the pay.

"Papa had to clear nearly all the land of trees and underbrush. Most of this was done with an ax and crosscut saw. There were no such things as chain saws. It was all done the hard way, by hand. The larger trees were cut for firewood for cooking and heating. There was no such thing as natural gas, propane or electricity, especially in the country.

"Our new home was a three room house (almost new), with a porch all across the front... Our house was located on the West side of East Mountain, right at the foot of it. There was a small creek about 200 feet between our house and the mountain. It had little waterfalls and was spring fed. This was our water supply as there was no well at the house.

[After about a year in East Texas, the family moved back to Cornish (near Ringling) Oklahoma, and Papa found another farm to share crop.]

"In the Spring, Papa was plowing and getting the ground ready for planting. Back then, it was done with horses pulling a plow and the farmer walking behind the plow and guiding it. Nothing but old hard work for a farmer in those days. One morning the weather was cold and misty and Papa worked until about noon. He came to the house with chills and fever that developed into pneumonia. Old Dr. Dorsey came (by horse and buggy) but he couldn't help Papa. This was on April 13, 1922. ...

"I remember Papa as kind, gentle, pleasant, and a hard worker. He would kid with us and we always had a good time when he was around. We missed him for a long time....

[His mom then took the children and moved to Denison, where she had family.]

"Mom got a job at a peanut factory and Lester [older brother] and I got us a job selling papers in the afternoons. [In the summer when school was out] we would also go down to the Farmers Market and get vegetables and cantalopes to carry up and down the streets to sell. We had to carry them in tow sacks. We would get a percentage of what we sold. Sometimes we sold some and sometimes we didn't.

"Mom's job didn't last long, so she got another one at the cotton mill. They made cloth out of cotton. We moved to the other side of town [close to] the factory and close to school too.

"We spent our first Christmas without Papa there and it looked like it would be just another day. We were just barely getting by and nothing to spend for Christmas. We all knew that. On Christmas morning, I went out on the front porch. I couldn't believe what I saw. There were two large boxes with all kinds of goodies, toys, clothing and food in them. No one could have made me believe that there was no Santa Claus.

"I found out, later, it was the Salvation Army that brought our Christmas to us. I still have a very warm spot in my heart for them. They are still helping families like we were. In those days [1922], there was no such thing as welfare, food stamps, Social Security, WIC, AFDC, or any kind of government assistance for the needy."

And today, 90 years later, the Salvation Army stills puts its first interest into sheltering people no one else will help, and giving needy people a real Christmas. The Salvation Army is the only organization all over the country that provides transient men a safe and warm place to sleep for a couple of days. They also help with disaster aid, work therapy, locator services to reunite families with loved ones, meals, and many many other essential daily needs.

They don't pay their administrators outrageous salaries and they don't do it for publicity.

When we went through Hurricane Claudette, the Salvation Army helped us and our neighbors. The hurricane was stronger than expected, and by the time it was over on Monday the area looked like a war zone. Power was out everywhere, many were without water too, and several of our neighbors' homes had been destroyed.

The Salvation Army showed up in our tiny beach community on Wednesday morning and fed hot, cooked meals three times a day for the rest of the week until power was restored and everyone had decent living arrangements.

They refused to take a single dime for the food, made no test of need, and would not even accept donations. They were the only outside group to help our community. None of the "famous" organizations or agencies came, not even to look around.

So we put money in every bell ringer's pot, going in and coming out. They've been there for us, and we want to be there for them.

God Bless the Salvation Army.


*Photo: "Papa, Mom, and Rosalie" (Thomas Lester Gilstrap, Minnie Lee Bruton Gilstrap, and youngest daughter Rosalie).

Okie doke, for one of my daughters-in-love, here is my recipe for Macaroni and Cheese. You all enjoy! I'm cross-posting at Facebook, and putting it here so it will be easy to find in the future. That is why I originally started this blog - to make it easy to find the recipes the kids asked for.


For this batch, I used a 12 oz bag of elbow macaroni, and an 8 oz bag of grated cheddar cheese. I used to always grate my own cheese, but now it is usually the same price per pound (especially if you get the store brand) for grated as it is for block cheese. We always used cheddar or a variety (like colby, longhorn, or red-rind). You can use whatever cheese you have or like best.

Nandy loved to make his with sharp cheddar when he could get it - he called it "rat trap cheese". Boys, if you remember, he made his mac and cheese by putting one layer of cooked macaroni in a backing dish, covering it with cheese, and baking it for about half an hour. That was how we ate it when we were kids - Macaroni and Cheese was one of the meals Nandy cooked. That, and his vegetable soup, and Weenies and Saurkraut. Pretty much that was it, since either Mema or Big Grandmother did most of the cooking.

Now, where was I.. oh yeah....

Cook macaroni in salted water until done, and drain.

Put about 1/3 of the cooked macaroni in a baking dish, sprinkle lightly with salt & a grind of pepper, and dot with butter.

Dot with small spoons of either sour cream or cream cheese. I use whichever I have on hand. You could even use both, whatever you like. I started using these to make the cheddar go farther, in the days when all three boys were home and I made huge pans full of this.


Sprinkle generously with shredded cheese.

Add half the remaining macaroni to the dish, on top of that, and repeat the whole process: lightly salt, pepper, dot with butter and sour cream, sprinkle with cheese.



Top with the last of the macaroni, and do it all again. After adding the sour cream, pour a small amount, maybe 1/4 cup of milk or cream around the sides.




Finish off with a nice topping of shredded cheese.

Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.




Serve immediately.

Say Grace, and enjoy! :-)

Cardinals tend to flock in the winter, and this week they've been in our yard. Devin pointed out this tree full of them and I was able to get some pictures.


Cardinals mate for life. I don't know if they stay together all year, but they do come back together each Spring to raise their annual family. There were females in this flock. The little ladies don't show up in this photo, but the beautiful red birds have decorated this tree themselves.


Mema saved a baby cardinal that fell from its nest before it had feathers. This would have been back in about 1952 - now we know that it would be ok to put it back in the nest, and if unable, we'd need to take it to a licensed wild bird rehab person. But at that time, it was not illegal for her to rescue the baby bird, brush the ants off of him, and raise him to adulthood.

Junior loved Mema. He thought she was his mother, I suppose. If she talked to him he would sing for her (and cardinals have the most beautiful song - you can listen to it if you click here then click the "Listen" icon on the eNature page). Nandy made a large cage for him, and they often let him out in the house to fly around. Because he didn't eat bugs, his coloring was more subdued than the wild birds.

Junior lived to be 16 years old. He passed away peacefully and naturally while I was still in elementary school. It's unfortunate that he didn't live wild, but he still had a very good life, warm and well fed, and we all loved him.

Cardinals are delightful wild birds. They LOVE the water sprinkler on hot days and will come bathe and play in the falling spray. They like to nest in hedges, and will come back to the same yard as a nesting pair if you keep a good habitat for them.

Before WWII broke out (for the US - it had already started in Europe) with Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States imported vast amounts of the goods in our stores from Germany and Japan. Once we were at war with these countries, suddenly there was a dearth of products. US factories that might have picked up the slack were diverted to production of necessary items and defense material.

Retailers around the country began looking closer to home to source toys, dishes, printed items, novelties and other non-essentials that, then as now, made up the bulk of their profitable sales.

This created an opportunity boom for families everywhere. Then as now, families were always looking for ways to bring in extra income, whether by taking second jobs or producing sellable goods from home businesses.

Some bought small printing presses and set up businesses doing custom printing of business cards, Christmas cards, and wedding invitations out of a corner of their house. New potteries sprang up in areas that had good sources of clay in the ground. And some, like Nandy and Mema, used their home workshop to build toys.


With metal rationed, the raw materials available were perfect for small-scale manufacturing: wood, cloth, paper. Nandy started a business building small wooden toys that he sold to Kress Department Store, which was located downtown on Main Street. I don't think Kresses was still in business when the boys were little but if you have ever been in an Alco or a Dollar General, it was a lot like that. These stores were a mainstay and everyone shopped at them. Kress, Woolworths, Ben Franklins were the Walmart/K-Marts of their day.

So Nandy and Mema made little cars, trucks, trains out of wood. Nandy would cut out the pieces at night after work, and Mema would help paint and assemble them.

Do you remember that Mema was missing part of one of her thumbs? She helped with cutting some of the parts while Nandy was at work and one day the saw went through the wood and cut off her thumb, and into her pointer finger. She always told that when she called the hospital, they asked "Are you sure you cut it off?" to which she replied "Yes I am sure, I am in the house and my thumb is laying out in the garage on the saw!" Her first finger was always stiff after that - and Nandy did all the cutting with saws after that too!

Mama still has a few of the toys Nandy made at that time: a black Locomotive, and a little army jeep. The toys that the boys made with him in his workshop were from the same kinds of patterns, and same materials. These toys were a big success and, along with renting out the other half of their duplex, helped them pay off their mortgage ten years early.

Other people all over the country made toys and souveniers like this too. Some mixed glue and sawdust to form a "composition" material that they molded into toys, like the little battleships and planes pictured above. Some items were decorated with paint and others were woodburned with heated pokers or special woodburning tools.

These little items are readily available still in antique shops and flea markets - since they were unbranded, they have never been "hot" as collectibles. True to their era, they have an enduring charm and lasting appeal.

They also remind us of the unbounded creativity that allows us to find and make what we need in our own back yards.

When we first moved here, we kept meeting people who either used to live in this house or knew someone who did. In a town of 150-odd houses, and a house that is 115 or so years old, I guess that is to be expected.

The best we know, the house was built in about 1895. That was the date on newspapers found on the walls when some renovation was done on the house before we lived here. I need to go to the museum and do a little research to see if they know more. It consisted, originally, of two rooms. It probably had a porch. Standard achitecture for an average home of the day in this country. The original walls are solid plank boards. The living room and original bedrooms still have their wood floors.


We go to church with the people who lived here from 1968 through the 1980s. Carolyn brought me the picture, above, of the house when she first bought it. They later built onto it - first, what is now the laundry room, onto the South side (right side of the photo), where a side porch had been. Then, she and Gerald put in a larger addition onto the North side, adding a dining room, small office, bedroom and new bath (left side of the photo).

We also know someone who lived here during World War II. Rita's family lived in this house when they first moved to Blanket from a farm. It was in 1942, and her father had gotten a job building Camp Bowie in Brownwood. There weren't enough houses and this was the closest he could find to his work. She said she was in high school and did not want to move away from Comanche! She met her future husband while at school in Blanket, and the town became her home.

There were, at the time, only 4 rooms in the house (5 if you count the bathroom). The kitchen, bath and second bedroom had been a separate building that had been moved in and joined to the back of the original house.

Rita said that, due to the housing shortage, her family rented out one of the two bedrooms to a soldier stationed at Camp Bowie and his wife. She said the wife would come out and use the kitchen during odd times and it worked out fine, albeit a bit crowded!

Rita told me they had always used kerosene lamps at the farm and this house had electricity. Her mother hurried to get the power turned on before her father arrived home from work the first day. She said as it got dark, he went to light a lamp and her mother reached up and pulled the string to turn on the single bulb that hung from the kitchen ceiling! What a surprise! It was the first time the family had ever had electric power.

I used to wonder why Mema and Nandy would sit in the twilight of evening until it was very dark before turning the lights on. Now I realize it was because they grew up without electricity, and were accustomed to conserving lamp fuel by not lighting the lamps until it was too dark to see without them.

This cat in our yard is not our cat. She/he/it belongs to the neighbors but loves to hang out in our yard. She makes us smile to see her.

We are between cats at the moment. when Baby died, we decided against getting another for a while. It's now been the longest either of us has ever gone without a pet. Thanks I'm sure in part to this cat and other animals in town, we still don't feel the need for another yet.

That day will come, but for now it is nice to not have to worry about who will feed the cat and such. Baby really spoiled us, because, even though she was a mostly-in-the-house cat, she got to a point where she only "went" out of doors, so we did not have to keep a litter box! Oh that was wonderful! My expectations for cat behavior will now forever include "asking to go out"!

I learned recently that cats can be used to predict the weather. Other than that when they are wet it is raining, I mean. Heh.

"When a cat washes her face over the ear, tis a sign the weather will be fine and clear." The other indicator in the same vein is if, when you pet the cat, it raises a lot of static. Both of these are because the humidity is low. The drier the air, the more static electricity cat fur will generate. The cat is licking itself to get a bit of moisture into its fur and stop those annoying little flashes of static. Cats groom themselves daily, but this proverb relates to increased grooming, specifically about the face and head.

That one makes so much sense to me. Baby was a long haired cat, and when we lived in West Texas, where it is always dry, her poor fur was always tangled and matted. No matter what we did, or how much we brushed her, her fur was always a mess. But when we moved to the coast, her fur became silky and soft and untangled. As if by magic, we didn't even have to brush her, she was able to attend to her own grooming. The constant humidity gave her a beautiful well-kept coat.

The second bit of lore, you will have to test for yourself. Not having our own cat, we can't observe for ourselves. It is this: you know those times when suddenly, for no reason at all and at a truly random time like the middle of the night, your cat leaps up and dashes madly around the house and over the furniture and skids around corners and leaps and bounds and whizzes around for 3 or 4 minutes and then just as suddenly stops and goes on about her business? When the cat becomes loud and boistrous and carries on - again for no reason?

Well, they say that indicates a storm is brewing. So next time this happens, watch and see if you don't get some kind of bad weather in the next, say, 24 hours or so!

My family was not generally very superstitious. But there were a few superstitions that people held to, and I will mention them from time to time. The old idea that a black cat crossing your path is bad luck was strongly believed. Nandy wrote that when his family moved from
Cornish Ok to West Mountain Tx (near Gilmer) in their covered wagon in 1921, a black cat walked across the road ahead of them. His "Papa" pulled the wagon to the side and waited. He said he would not move until someone else had crossed that spot before him. They ended up
camping there overnight. The photo of the man in overalls is Papa, with Little Grandmother and Auntie Rose, one of Nandy's sisters. Notice how pale her hair was? Nandy was towheaded as a little child too. It was only later his hair turned black.

And as late as when I was a child, Big Grandmother, Mema's mom, turned her car around one day and went around the block to avoid crossing the path of a black cat. The photo with the seashore backdrop is of Big Grandmother and Big Grandaddy and Mema.

Most superstitions that I heard about were considered jokes, and they told them to children as a way of teasing us. But the lore of the black cats was strong and the old folks weren't taking chances! Of course, later on we had a black cat as a pet and I think that dispelled the last of that old belief. :-)