Though I was raised in the South, some Southern foods are not suitable to my palate. Grits and greens are not on my menu, and I don’t get excited about a pot of gumbo thickened with slimy okra. See, I heard about gumbo from my mom, and she had a different story about gumbo, and it had nothing to do with food.
Mama grew up on the prairies of Montana. That meant times of drought. When the rains came, the ground slurped up the moisture like a sponge, grass turned green, and flowers sprouted up. But the rain brought something else – gumbo – thick, heavy, sticky, gooey, slimy mud. Mama told stories about getting mired down in gumbo. She said if you got stuck in gumbo, you might be there a while. When it dried, the ruts were left in its place, and if you got stuck in a rut, you could be in it for a long time, too.
The other day, we took a drive down one of the dirt roads through the countryside – one of those that turns to gumbo at the mere mention of rain. As we drove down the country lane, we stirred up as many memories as the clouds of dust that rolled behind us. Parts of the road were not much more than a grass centered lane full of ruts and rocks. When it’s wet, it’s gumbo just like in the days of Mama’s youth, and can be almost impassable. Yet that rutty road took us to places that were dear to my mom’s heart.
When when Mama heard “gumbo”, memories of younger days came to mind, some of which she shared with us. Here are a couple of events from her youth.
On the way to their Baccalaureate, my mom, her sister, and friend (who became her sister-in-law), headed to town. Most of the roads in the country were dirt except when it rained, then it was gumbo. This happened to be such a day. As the girls neared a hill, they saw one of the neighbor ladies stuck in the mud. The girls stripped off their dress clothes, waded in the sticky mud, and pushed the car up the hill. That’s what neighbors do. They had to go wash up and get dressed again before their Baccalaureate.
Another such incident might make your cheeks rosy. One day my dad’s sisters headed to Cavill School to pick up my mother where she taught in the one-room schoolhouse. As they headed to the mountains, the clouds opened up and poured out their wet wrath. The road immediately turned to gumbo. It wasn’t long before the car was stuck. One of the girls crawled out of the car and wallowed in the mud trying to get the chains on the tires. By the time she was done, she was as mired down and muddy as the tires. Her clothes were ruined. There was nothing else to do but strip off her clothes, and just put on her coat. The girls headed on as the day began to get dark. Up ahead, a neighbor waving a lantern stopped them and said the bridge was out. He invited the girls into his family’s house for the night. All the girls but one took their coat off, and I’ll bet you know which one. I guess they failed put an extra set of clothes in the car for such emergencies.
My dad claimed to grow three inches taller if he was lucky enough to cake the bottoms of his boots with gumbo. That was unless he got his boots sucked off his feet instead, then he lost an inch or two. So much for gumbo.
Gumbo, anyone? No thanks. I don’t care for any gumbo.
