June,
Month of brides, wormy apples, peaches, plums, watermelon, TOMATOES AND FAMILY REUNIONS.
Lawd Hammercy! I just ate my first tomato 'samich of the season thanks to someone hanging a bag of those globes of wonderful on my front door knob.
For breakfast y'all.
Two slices of fresh Sunbeam, gobs of Duke's smeared around, a dash of salt, a hard shake of black pepper.....little bit more........
there now!
It was just that good.
The month of June always brings good things out in the open.
Like tomatoes.
And family reunions.
Let me tell you about my lifelong affair with tomatoes,
and family reunions.
Tomatoes won't kill you, but you may come close to killing yourself with ignoring the biblical warning of gluttony.
Family reunions will make you wish you could die.
But, so glad you didn't because the memories are so wonderful.
I nearly did die from tomatoes and so did my little brother Buddy.
Our Smith family reunion was held at our house one time in the early '50's. The garden was coming in full tilt. Mama had us under the shade of the old china berry tree by just after breakfast every morning cleaning and preparing produce for her canning of the vegetables.
Her mantra: "These tomatoes will be really good this winter".
My mantra: " Mama, they are really good now".
Mama and Daddy planted vegetable gardens like they were running the kitchen for a logging camp.
Daddy to Mama,
"Quarter of an acre of tomatoes should about do it".
Mama to Daddy,
"Yes, but stagger the planting so as not to have them hit me all at once".
Me to anybody that cared,
" Please Lord, don't let the worms get more than I do".
So school let out, tomatoes started to ripen, Smith Family Reunion rolled around and here they came form Atmore, Flomaton and Jay with wash tubs and buckets and pans and panic on their faces.
Jay kinfolk didn't act that way because they grew their own and they were down in the dirt and normal like we were.
" Hey y'all, how you doing Hons, let me kiss 'yo neck, are the 'maters ready"?
Harumph!
Prissy town cousins dressed in new summer shorts purchased from Bowab's in Atmore ran to the garden while pulling off strappy sandals to save from,
" getting 'em messed up cause Mama will be mad".
Harumph!
My brain spoke to me,
" Wish I had summer shoes, my sturdy oxfords are for church only", I hate prissy".
So all the aunts and uncles and prissy girl cousins stomped down and tromped through Mama's pea vines and squash plants and cucumbers to get to the tomatoes.
The grabbing was run amok.
I knew all that good fried chicken and butter beans and Aunt Versie's fresh grated coconut layer cake with marschino cherries was waiting for the tomato harvesting to be done with and that gave me the hives.
Finally!
Tubs are sat under the fig tree to stay out of the sun until time to go home.
"Oh aren't they pretty"?
Harumph!
We played and sweated and drank gallons of lemonade from a shiny new galvanized wash tub filled with block ice and real lemons and bags of cane sugar supplied by cousin Albert Watson from his grocery store in Flomaton.
Cousin Albert was our hero. He supplied all the potato chips and Jacks cookies we could ever want. He entertained us by pulling his top eyelid up to fold and stay that way to make us laugh.
Lordy!
Family Reunion!
The loss of afternoon shade moved the front porch crowd to the back yard for some relief of the china berry tree. Uncles smoked cigarettes and pipes and one dapper uncle smoked a Cuban cigar and bragged about his new Buick.
It all smelled nasty to me.
I never liked Buick's.
Daddy drove an antique used Chevy truck to haul cotton and youngun's.
Aunts fanned themselves and eventually pulled those heat seeking silk stockings completely off along with several that disappeared to take off their girdles for relief of heat and dinner consumption.
There was a comfortable rhythm to the day at this point.
We girl cousins played jump rope and hop scotch and hide and seek.
Boy cousins played war with cobs at the barn.
Mama showed off her canned goods to sisters-in-law.
Daddy spit his snuff and shared his love of Prince Albert with all his brothers and brothers-in-law.
I was full of fried chicken and fixin's but kept going to the garden with prissy cousins to eat some more tomatoes right off the vine.
This kept up until the slant of evening caused leaving.
Mama and Daddy were exhausted, the baby was teething slobbered and sour smelling.
Everybody had gathered on the front porch to wait out the gloom of evening to call bedtime.
I started to feel hot and itchy.
Buddy started to scratch.
Mama called us to her to check the red splotches all over our bodies.
My eyes were disappearing behind swollen lids. My hair hurt, I began to look like an alien.
Buddy cried.
We were diagnosed with TOMATO rash.
Mama smeared on some Calamine lotion and put crushed ice from the lemonade tub in towels for us to lay on our legs and arms to get some relief.
The night was hot and humid and the sheets scratched. Eventually daybreak brought us comfort.
Buddy and I stayed out of the tomato patch until later in the day before we decided the rash wasn't really all that bad.
Home grown, vine ripened tomatoes are still just that good and worth a rash.
Matter of fact, think I'll have another "mater samich for lunch.
