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Summer is when I learned from Grandma

Growing up I spent summers with my grandmother Ruby Thompson. I learned not to take things for granted and that it takes hard work to prepare home-cooked meals. Each morning we would pick vegetables from her garden. She would push me around in a wheelbarrow with freshly picked vegetables.

Afternoons would find me and Grandma under her oak tree shucking corn, snapping beans and shelling peas. When I asked why we had to do this she replied, “Food just doesn’t taste good unless it’s homegrown, and it takes hard work for good things.” I miss her homemade biscuits, fresh vegetables, blackberry jelly, apple pies and peach cobblers. She loved sweets and little bottled Cokes. She told me, “A meal just isn’t a meal without something sweet.” And, “Cokes don’t taste the same unless you drink it out of a bottle.”
Grandma died at 92 in February 2008. I have some of her Farmers Almanacs, a bottle opener and some cooking utensils. My mom has some of her recipes, but nothing is the same as Grandma’s.

You tend to take little things for granted, but when you reflect back they were big things that you’ll never forget.

Jessica Renee Blake, Mt. Gilead, Pee Dee EMC

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