Like most Southern men, my world was framed by the women in my life, my mother – Mollie Francis Herring Stowers, her mother – Ada Mae Aycock Herring and my other grandmother, Miss Willie Hamilton Stowers.
I spent more time with the first and last but the middle one spent 96 years in Caile and raised six kids on 40 acres of cotton dirt on the side of Highway 49 in the southernmost edge of Sunflower County.
She married a farmer/carpenter from the hills of sweet potato country in Calhoun County, Thad Milton Herring. I don’t know how they met or how they ended up in Caile.
I’m sure I’ll get the story soon.
But Ada Mae, simply known as grandmother, didn’t have much to work with but kept it all sewn together in that little house. A trip to grandmother’s would include “swapping” newspapers. We had a Commercial Appeal subscription and she had a Clarion Ledger and a trip to her house would include swapping a week’s worth of newspapers with some Greenwood Commonwealths thrown in from Miss Willie for good measure. That way we all stayed up on news from Memphis to Jackson and beyond with a good focus on Leflore and Sunflower counties. I reckon we all got The Enterprise Tocsin back then.
But after dropping off the newspapers, grandmother would ask the magical question, “You want some candy?” She always knew the answer – an enthusiastic YES! She’d open her ancient fridge and there would be two Cool Whip containers. One had homemade chocolate candy with no pecans.
The other was chocolate candy with pecans. I was always a no-pecan chocolate candy grandson. Later I’d learn what a delicacy the other one was. A simple recipe from the back of the Nestle powder chocolate can that just took a healthy dose of time, love and patience to make.
Each piece was like a snowflake as none were exactly alike in form or size. It was heaven in a plastic bowl. I’ve tried to make her confection but I don’t have enough experience to create the full magic; but I do keep an empty Cool Whip bowl in the pantry.
Ada Mae always had the other Nestle chocolate powder can recipe – a chocolate pie – replete with meringue. Now I have gotten that one down pat sans meringue. Another true slice of heaven and home. The one recipe handed down from her that my mom taught me are the buttermilk biscuits I’ve been making since I was eight or nine. That recipe has traveled the United States and I still have former roommates asking about them.
She watched her CBS “stories” and we knew not to show up while they were on. If we did, we sat quietly until they were over. She had an acre garden and a green apple tree she always shared her bounty from. And she could sew.
Her living room always seemed to have a quilt frame filled with the latest creation. I still have one of her treasured quilts and can feel the love and comfort she sewed into it.
She lived to be 96 and the first time I took my fiancé/wife to meet her she was in her 90s. Grandmother always came outside when we drove up and going back in my fiancé/wife whispered for me to “help” her get back up the two wooden steps and into her house. As I reached up to “help” Grandmother, she swatted my hands away, a reminder that she had lived on the 40 cotton acres, raising six kids and being a foundational member of the community, she helped others, not the other way around.
A strong, proud, sturdy woman who made a whole lot of very little. I wish I could go “swap” some newspapers with her today. Miss you, Ada Mae Aycock Herring.
