Rooted.
An interview with my Nana about cooking, health, and growing up in North Carolina.
I’m not sure how to introduce Ms. Louise to y’all because, to me, she’s just Nana. I’ll try, however.
She’ll be 76 years old this year. She’s a born and bred North Carolinian, maintaining the roots our family was forced to put down two centuries ago. She’s intelligent, witty, and funny. She’s also quite serious.
But, perhaps, most significantly, she is the steward of our family’s history. She maintains the Bible detailing our family’s lineage back to Columbus Fortune. The fact that we know his name is a testament to oral tradition’s strength over formal research. You’re not going to find Columbus on Ancestry or in any archives. He doesn’t exist in formal records, but his legacy is written in the pages of our Bible. The women who retained this knowledge before Nana—her mother, aunts, and grandmothers—have all gone home to glory.
With this in mind, I wanted her to tell us what she knows. You can find a snippet of what I hope will be an ongoing conversation below. It has been edited for length and clarity while maintaining the rich central North Carolina AAVE dialect in which my Nana and I talk.
Julia: I've interviewed you before, but this one's different cause I'm not interviewing you about politics. I’m interested in what you know about ancestral health, how Muss1, Grandma Vinnie2, and Papa York’s3 mama Grandma Betty took care of themselves and y'all before the rise of modern medicine. I remember one time when me and M were visiting, and you told us how Grandma Betty taught you how to measure food with your hands. Can you tell me more about that?
Nana: I observed Grandma4 and Aunt Cora. They never used a measuring cup or measuring spoon. They would always put the ingredients in the palm of their hand, which they called a dash. They never said “teaspoon” or “tablespoon.”
They just put it in the middle of they hand and threw it over in the pot. When grandma was making a cake, she would put the flour in the pan, and then she would put her ingredients in her hand, and she just turned up the vanilla flavoring bottle and poured what she thought she wanted in there and mixed it up. And the cake came out beautiful and good (laughs).
Grandma Vinnie did the same thing. I guess because back then, they couldn't read or write, so they just started doing things the way that they could figure it out. Now Mama's mama, I wasn't around her. I was more so around Daddy’s people. All of us were down there in a place they called Possum Alley.
Do you still do that, or do you use measuring cups now? I can’t remember if I saw measuring cups in the house.
I use a measuring cup and measuring spoons cause I couldn't pick that up.
Why not?
Cause I might would've overdone it or underdone it. So I didn't pick that up, but I seen how they did it.
Makes sense. I know that Muss used to rub whiskey on everybody's chest when they got sick5, but what other stuff did she and your grandparents do whenever y'all got sick?
Well, Mama did a lot of Vicks VapoRub on us. But Grandma Betty, when Daddy would go fishing, she would tell him to bring this plant back called a camel root—or that's what they called it. And I know what it looked like, looked like about what ginger look like now. But it grow on the fish banks, and that would help with your cramps when you had your monthly. Grandma would get that and boil it like a tea. And I drank that, and that eased off the cramps.
And she would send Daddy and 'em down in the woods, and some bought bark off a tree. That was a remedy for almost anything. If you got stung by a bee—and they dipped snuff6—they would take some of that snuff, and it would already be in their mouth, and they would rub it on a bee sting. That's about all I can remember that they did. The snuff was for everything.
That's gross (laughs). Remind me of when I use to knock over Muss spit cups7 when I was playing too close to where she kept 'em sat.
Well, it helped (laughs). The stinging stopped.
Did it draw the stinger out? I know sometimes the stinger don't get left in there but.
It might have drawn the stinger out, but it helped. Oh! Blackhaw. They had what they called a lumber yard. It’s not a lumber yard, but they would bring lumber from the plant, from big logs that they couldn't skin off. They would stack 'em up down there. And there was a blackhaw tree that growed down there. Grandma would tell us to eat them. A lot of times, that would be your laxative.
I also remember you telling me that Grandma Betty used to keep a pot on the stove all the time.
Grandma always had a big pot sitting on the stove. It was a wood stove. And I asked her, I said, “Grandma, why you got that pot sitting on that stove?” She said, “Cause I drop a little bit of this and a little bit of that in it. Cause somebody might come by hungry, and I’ll have something to give them.”
She would cut up potato, carrots, add some peas, and whatever else. If she had meat, she would put all that in that pot like a stew. They had a wood stove, and it had an oven up top, which they called a warmer. That kept food warm; that's where they kept the biscuits warm. So she said they can have a bowl of this soup and a biscuit. And let me tell you, that was off the hook (laughs).
She had hogs, and she killed hogs. And that fatback meat was tough! Back then, you was eating everything that was put on the table. It was no, you ain't going to eat just cause you got high blood pressure. You ain't going to eat this cause you got cholesterol. What we put on the table was good, and we ate it. Ham, fatback meat, molasses, biscuits. Oh, that was good eating back then.
I need to come visit because I wanna biscuit.
I don't make them no more, but I can.8
Who taught you how to cook? What did you learn about food and the health benefits of it?
Well, I watched everybody. I watched Mama. I mostly Grandma and Aunt Mary and Aunt Cora cause I was always up there. Mama was working. So that's how I learned how to cook. When we was out of school during the summer, and Mama and Daddy was working, I was the one left there to do the cooking for supper. Daddy would come home from work, he would walk from the plant9 home at lunchtime, and I had to have his pinto beans, his biscuits, and fatback meat ready (laughs).
I got this pot up under this cabinet now of Mama's where we cooked the beans in. We ate off of that pot of beans three times, well, two times, actually. Daddy ate off of it three times. Then we got ready for our supper. We would eat the beans, fatback, and biscuits.
Back then, times was kind of hard, so the best meal we enjoyed would be on Sunday. Mama would have fried chicken, green beans with mixed potatoes, and cornbread. I'd do the biscuits, or whatever we had. But I tell you, what I couldn't really stand is breakfast. We ate three times a day; now, people eat when they want to. But for breakfast, I could not stand them grits and that oatmeal. I had to eat it or go hungry. And then Mama made them pancakes. The only thing I eat off the pancakes was around the edges. I didn’t eat the middle cause it's too much like bread to me.
But back then, they wasn't thinking about health and nutrition. You just ate what was cooked.
I didn't know you didn't like pancakes, either. But Muss still did that when she was raising me too. Every Sunday, it was green beans, rice, fried chicken, and cornbread.
That was our meal. I was looking for it on Sunday. They used to what they now call a revival, but they used to have what they would call a big meeting back then. We were out at Zion10 at that time. And Mother11 and all them women would be cooking. Mama would be cooking. She had a stackable tray thing—I think I still got it up under the house, but I ain’t for sure—and on top she would have potato salad. On the next tray, she would have fried chicken, and next salad, she would have some greens.
There was some food back then during that revival! The old cooks down there at Zion had a little building called “the hut,” where they kept the food until time for it to be spread out. The yard at church had long tables. They put tablecloths on them. Everybody would bring in food.
The only time Mama could get Daddy to go to church was during somebody revival ... Cause back then, they could go down in the woods, and people would be back there selling white liquor (laughs).
That's so funny. Oh yeah! I don't remember if it was you or Mama12, but one of y'all told me that Jim Click13 made moonshine.
He did.14
Tell me more!
When they lived down on Old Linwood Road, they called it Red Mill Crossing. We used to go down to Grandpa’s. They lived in a little house that had imitation brick that they put on the side. I don't think you seen that.
Mhm.
No, you ain't never seen that. You wasn't even thought about then.
Oop!
But anyway, they had a well out there in the yard. The well was the source of water back then in the country. Couldn't nobody afford to have running water put in the house. He would make the white liquor, and he would make what they call home brew. He would put it in a little basket and have it down in that well water to keep it cold. Then people would come and buy it from him. He had quart jars of white liquor and homebrew. But now that homebrew would keep you running to the toilet.
What was homebrew?
It was some kind of mixture with liquor in it. I don't know how he made it, and we couldn't drink it then. But nosy me, I tasted some of it. And he know I did because I had to keep going to the toilet (laughs). And guess what? I got my tail end tore up, and I didn't try it no more.
This is what I called my great-grandmother, Nana’s mother, and now it’s what everyone calls her.
This is Muss’s mother.
Muss’s husband, my great-grandfather, and Nana’s father.
Whenever my Nana says “grandma,” she’s referring to her Grandma Betty.
Small studies have found that since blood vessels dilate in response to alcohol, it can help our mucosa can clear out more effectively .
Snuff is basically chewing tobacco.
Muss chewed tobacco, and she had spit cups. I would knock them over and cry because she made me clean it up. It was disgusting.
At this point, I have a big smile on my face because I’m still Nana’s little girl—at my big, grown age. (She still cuts my corn off the cob for me, too, lmao.)
Plant is another word for factory.
This is my family’s original church home.
In the Black church, Church Mother is a distinction given to older women who have a deep understanding of the Word and can share that knowledge with the congregation. These women are also conduits of culture, passing down traditions orally.
I’m referring to my mother here.
My great-grandmother’s father, and Nana’s grandfather.
❤️