By Olivia Fowler
For The Courier
Grilling can dry out meats, especially if the cut you bring home from the market is not the most tender. Sometimes our pocketbooks control the cut of meat we select. But just because we buy a tougher cut doesn’t mean it has to come off the grill or out of the oven that way.
One of the easiest and most flavorful ways to tenderize meat is to marinade it before cooking. All the marinades we include here are tried and true. It’s important to cool marinades completely before using on raw meat.
If you plan to grill Saturday night, there’s nothing easier than mixing up your marinade the night before or early in the morning, covering the meat with it, tossing it in the refrigerator and forgetting it until time to grill.
The one exception to this is fish. Because fish is more delicate and easily broken down, it’s best not to marinate it more than an hour. We hope you’ll have a good time with this. It really is amazing what a difference marinades can make.

The City of Liberty hosted the annual Pickens County Municipal Association Picnic at Freedom Park last Friday. The picnic offers an opportunity for mayors and council members from all municipalities in the county, along with the Pickens County delegation, to get together and enjoy good food and discuss the issues facing their particular cities. Above, Pickens Mayor David Owens is all smiles as he fills his plate during the event, which was sponsored by Duke Energy.

Arial Baptist Church in Easley celebrated its 80th anniversary on Sunday. Members enjoyed a day of fellowship. The day was made extra special when Johnny Holcombe rang the church bell, which had been lost and only recently recovered and restored to its original location at the church.

A daughter reminisces about ‘the good old days’ again…

in her own words

By Oliva Fowler

Lifestyle Editor

A while back I wrote about our early childhood. Now, I would like to finish the story.

As I said before, nearly 100 years ago times were hard. We were sharecroppers, but Daddy and Mama provided for us as best they could. They gave us a high school education, fed us and raised us in a Christian home, with lots of love. They were a God-fearing and hard working couple.

When you farmed back in those days, work was never done. We had revival meeting the first week in August. That was a leisure week. We had preaching in the morning and at night for the week, but other times there was something to do. In the spring, planting and tending the crops; in the fall there was cotton to be picked, fodder and tops from the corn to be cut and dried, corn to be gathered, wood to be cut for the fireplace and wood for the cook stove, cut and stacked. There was grain to be stored, ground turned for next year’s crop and cow stalls to be cleaned out.

We all had our chores to do after we came in from the field. Calvin helped Daddy down at the farm, Maebell had to fill the wood box up for Mama’s cook stove. I had to go to the spring to get the milk. We had cornbread and milk for supper.

In the winter, Mama had a baker (a four legged thing made of cast iron) She would put hot coals on the hearth and set the baker over them, pour in cornbread batter, and cover it with a lid. The cornbread was good and crusty, but soft on the inside. Daddy fixed a bar across the fireplace with a hook on it, and that was where Mama cooked a lot of our meals.

We played in the creek. That is where we took our weekend baths. In the winter we washed in front of the fire place. Before going to the field in the mornings we would fill a washtub with water and set it on the cement well floor. The sun would warm it up during the day. When we came in from the field at night we would do our chores, then wash up in the warm water.

Daddy never planted any of the sweet corn like we have today. He would go to the corn fields and get white field corn for Mama to cook. We always had a big garden. We raised everything we ate. We had fruit trees for our fruit and fruit for homemade jelly.

Daddy would carry eggs and homemade butter cakes to sell and with the money he got from the eggs and butter he would buy the things that Mama needed about her cooking, laundry and other things that we couldn’t grow.

When wash day came we didn’t have a washing machine. We had a wash place, a big black pot, three wash tubs, a battling board and a battling paddle. One of us kids would draw the water and the rest of us would carry it to the wash place and fill up the pot and tubs. Mama used one tub to wet her clothes; she would boil the white ones in the black pot, she would wet the overalls and shirts then soap them with Octagon soap. Then one of us kids would battle them out on the battling board with the battling paddle. If you ever got wacked with a wet paddle you remembered it for a while. We thought Octagon soap was the only kind of soap and shampoo made.

We did not have toothpaste or toothbrushes. We would break a limb off of a certain kind of bush, after chewing the end for a while it was like a toothbrush. The two girls used the stick regular, and we still have our natural teeth.

Miss Alpha, our neighbor, would give her kids about six eggs once a month. On Saturday afternoon, when our chores were done they would come by and get us kids and we would walk a mile to Charlie Dalton’s store, and trade the eggs for candy and gum. We would eat candy all the way home (he gave us a large sack of goodies for the eggs). We would save our gum until last. At night we would roll the gum in sugar, leave it over night and the next morning we would have sweet juicy gum.

We did not have floor covering on our kitchen floor; it was made of two wide planks. About half a mile from the house was a big ditch. In its banks was gritty white sand. Mama would give us three older kids buckets to go to the ditch and get sand. While we were gone, she’d scrub the floors. When we returned with the sand she would sprinkle it over the floors. It stayed on the floors for a day or two, then she would sweep it off with a straw broom ( she would get the straw to make our brooms from the field). The floor was pretty and white. She did this once a week.

We would stop working in the fields Saturday at dinner time That is when we did our chores. Maebelle ironed and cleaned house and I did the yards. I would chop the weeds, rake them up and carry them out and sweep them with a dog wood brush broom. The boys helped Daddy.

When the wheat and oats were ready to harvest, Daddy would cut it with a cradle (it was a thing with a long handle, curved blade, and with fingers). He would cut the wheat and oats, lay it on the ground and Mama would go behind him binding it into little bundles. It took them several days to cut it and haul it to the barn. The thrashers would come by and thrash out the grain. Daddy would take the wheat to Central to a roller mill and have it ground into flour; the flour wasn’t white or self rising like we buy today. We made hot biscuits, homemade jelly, and fresh churned butter. The biscuits were pretty good. Mama made biscuits every morning for breakfast. For school lunches, she would fix our lunch, a jelly biscuit and a baked sweet potato; we would carry them in a lard bucket.

Daddy would take our corn to a corn mill. They would grind it into corn meal. Somehow they would beat some up and make grits. Now with hot biscuits, grits, fatback, and saw mill gravy we were eating up on the hog.

Our house had a leak in the roof; one morning while it was too wet to go to the field Daddy was going to fix the leak. He went to climb up on the roof and his foot slipped, and he fell, hurting his back. He was bedfast for the rest of the spring. Our crops were ready to start thinning and working. Mama and we three older kids had to make the crop. Calvin was 12 (he did the plowing) Maebelle 10 and I was seven. Mama put me in front of her. I had a hoe bigger than I was, but Mama taught me to hoe. Leroy was only three, so Mama would take a burlap sheet and make him a shade. We worked in sections so we could keep an eye on him. We always had sweet baked potatoes and water for our snacks. The water was warm but we didn’t know anything about ice water. Mama would run to the house every two hours to check on daddy. This was in ‘29 during the depression and Mama knew if we didn’t make a good crop we would go hungry for there was no money. With the rain and help from the good Lord we made a good crop. That fall Daddy tried to pick cotton, but his back was still bothering him. He told our Mama,” I just can’t do it. I’m going to town and find a job and get help to pick the cotton.” He went to work for Bivens Lumber Co. as a carpenter making $1.25 a day. He worked there until he retired.

We never got any toys for Christmas. Daddy would buy a few apples and oranges and two boxes of stick candy. Mama would make two cakes, make pies and kill a chicken. We would have a happy Christmas with lots of love that made up for the things that Daddy and Mama couldn’t afford.

We never had any toys to play with. Mama would give up a worn out sock of Daddys, and we would ravel it out and make us a ball. We had a ball field down in the pasture and all the neighbor kids got together on Sunday afternoon and played ball. For a bat we had a plank. We played lots of hide and seek, climbed trees and played in the woods.

When we were all about grown, Daddy picked the banjo on Saturday night. We would all get on the front porch, and Daddy would pick while we sang. Calvin sang bass, Leroy tenor, Maebelle alto, and I would sing soprano. “I’ll Fly Away” was our favorite song. We thought we were pretty good. Early in 2008, us four siblings got together, we had Lewis come and pick his banjo for us, and we were going to sing together one more time. Well, it was a flop. Old age has taken its toll, for our voices didn’t sound too good. We had a good laugh.

Back in the day, it was not against the law for parents to whip their kids. Mama read the Bible and believed it, but there was one verse she really went by, Proverbs Ch. 13: V 24, “He that spareth his rod hateth his son but he that loveth him chasteneth him.” Mama went right by this verse, for we all got our share of whippings. Whoever made the law that a parent can’t chastise their kids, with the teenagers doing the things they do today, they should be sorry they made the law. The kids know their parents can’t whip them for the law will protect them. I don’t think parents should abuse their kids, but a good whipping never hurt any kid. We all got our share (some of us got more than others). Back then you never heard of a teenager doing the things they are doing today.

In 1941, President Roosevelt put electric power in the rural communities. That is when we had the first electric power in our home. As I said before, Daddy bought a farm down below Pickens. The house was around 100 years old. He redid the outside and the inside. They had all the things that they needed to make life better than it was back in their farming days.

These have been the highlights of our lives. We all married and had children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. All of our mates are gone. We are all getting up in age, and soon one of us will go, but we had a good life. Those that are gone are on our minds and in our hearts. We had two wonderful people for our parents. Thanks Mama for all the whippings you gave us.

“With love to all of those that are gone,” your four