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Friday, February 1, 2013

Zoose-ing the Buttermilk

"Mom, Lois Jones Latham, was a wonderful caretaker. She had a bit of nostalgia craving about her. If there was anything antique or ancient, it didn’t make any difference what it was, she wanted it. And if she could get it, she’d get it. That’s right, she was just one of those kids.
"She got my dad and they went up to Old Man Pink Cook’s place. His property joined her mother’s property. And her mother’s property joined our property. Old Man Pink Cook died and he had a wooden kitchen table, and that thing, I bet it reached from that wall almost down here to this bar. And it was just wide enough that you could sit and here and reach about the length of this. All the way across it. And there was a bench that was made in the wall over there. And that table sat right up against that bench. And Mama got Daddy to buy that thing when Mr. Cook died and she bought it and put it in our kitchen. and she had a big wooden table. Seems like it was pretty nice table. She always had it covered with oil cloth. But it was just made out of regular I think it was 1 x 8 or 1 x 10 plans. But this thing, if I remember right, it had two by fours that laid flat and plain. And I don’t know if they filled those cracks or what. But it was polished. I mean, it was just as slick as glass. And the legs were that big around on it. Big old legs on it. And I remember pulling my chair up and getting me a big glass of buttermilk and a big piece of cornbread and I was crumbling that bread up in that milk, and I turned it over and it went all the way across the table and went into my older sister Eloise’s lap. Eloise was sitting over there. And you know I come the nearest to getting a real good thrashing for that. My dad was sitting down here at the end of the table. I think what I did was I reached over like that maybe to get more cornbread or maybe to get a piece of onion. Piece of tomato or something or other. And it kicked that glass over. And that buttermilk just zoosed across the table. I’ll remember that as long as I live. And you know what? Mother scrubbed that table for three or four days. To get that white powder of that buttermilk out of those little pores that was left in the table." -- T.J. Latham



Zoose more buttermilk and cornbread with W. Jeff Bishop's A Cold Coming.

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