Growing up in the 1950's life was so different than today. I was blessed to grow up in my early years in my grandparents home with my parents and even my great grandmother. My uncle would come occasionally on weekends. We lived on Graydon Avenue in Norfolk Virginia, and he worked in Richmond Virginia for the then Vepco Electric Company.
Every meal we would sit around the large oval dining table. My grandfather would always said the grace before our meals. He sat at one end of the table and my grandmother sat on the opposite end. In the summer months we would gather to eat on the large screened back porch for our meals. There were awnings around the porch so even when it was raining we could still eat outdoors. I have often wished since that I too had such a fine place to eat close to nature.
My grandmother cooked everything from scratch. You could smell the wonderful things cooking. The enticing aroma of onions sauteing or chicken frying. She made corn bread and spoon bread even hush puppies with both onions and bacon. There was fried fresh fish, spots and croaker, caught locally. In the fall my grandfather would go down to Back Bay and go duck hunting with his buddies. My grandmother would cook the ducks, geese, or even quail for us to eat. These were strange but wonderfully different. There were no picky children at our table. You ate what was served. My grandfather was a banker. He helped farmers with loans. I remember him bringing home vegetables and even a box of strawberries that farmers had given him in appreciation for his help.
We ate some things that you just don't find easily any more. There was the soup that my grandmother made from an old hen and in the soup was an egg that had not yet been laid. There was oyster stew that had little red crabs in it that had come along with the oysters. Another thing that I have not had for years was tripe fried like chicken. One of my favorite things was smoked tongue. She cooked pork ribs with sauerkraut, and then there was pigs feet fried. She fried fresh corn, fried green tomatoes, even cabbage.
We would sit on the back porch and snap beans or shell peas. We did this together talking as we worked.
When it was time to do the dishes, someone would wash another would dry, and a third would put the dishes away. The generations would line up to help.
We went crabbing at a cousins house on the Lynnhaven River. The older ladies did not wear pants to crab and I vividly remember my grandmother walking in the river with her skirt rolled up and tucked into her panties. She had mud from the river all over her legs. My younger brother about 3 at the time put his hands on his knees and said,"Look at my Nana." Later, I was horrified when a bucket of crabs were dumped into a pot of boiling water, and I heard then scratching to get out. This did not keep me from crabbing; however, I devised away to lull them by soaking them in warm water first. Crab cakes were made with an egg and salt, pepper and only a tiny bit of flour to hold them together.
A treat that went back generations was both Smithfield smoked country ham and smoked sausages. My great grandfather after moving to New York City had my grandfather mail these to him, one time he decided to take some back home with them and he packed the sausage in my great grandmother's suitcase without telling her. When they arrived back home in New York, she was dismayed to find that the sausage had gotten grease all over her clothes.
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